Film Essay: A Year in Review, 1997 — The Gourmand Film Writer

I am beginning a series where I review a year in cinema, rewatching between 10-20 films and reordering my top ten. The first year I chose is the year before I started keeping track of films I watch. Here are my selections for the best films of 1997.

I didn’t remember the year 1997 being such a great year for film and yet, going back over the best films of the year, I couldn’t help but be struck by how many films could have made my top ten list. Great action films like Face/Off and Con Air, documentaries like 4 Little Girls by Spike Lee and Erol Morris’ Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control, spiritual movies like The Apostle and Contact all would normally make my top ten of a year, but not this year.

Themes often run through a year and this year’s best films tended to be subversive. The Sweet Hereafter, Eve’s Bayou, The Ice Storm, Crash, Boogie Nights, Deconstructing Harry, and In the Company of Men deal with perverse sexuality and power plays. I can’t remember another similar year, but that is the fun of going back and writing these lists.

10. Titanic ****

Titanic proves that films succeed not because of the ending of their story, but rather, by creating a story that pulls you into the film and provides an experience for the time that its on the screen. We all know that the ship, Titanic, sank on its maiden voyage. If, somehow, you entered this film not knowing that, Cameron wisely begins Titanic in the present with a team of treasure hunters searching the sunken wreckage of the Titanic. We meet Rose, old woman, who returns to the wreckage of the Titanic to finally tell her story. We know that Rose will survive, and we know that the love she meets will not. None of that detracts from this picture made in the style of old Hollywood Epics such as Gone with the Wind.

9. Jackie Brown ****

Jackie Brown is the most un-Tarantino, Tarantino film ever made. Yes, Tarantino dialogue is there, but the playfulness with time and structure is not. Jackie Brown is a character study of the titular character Jackie Brown, a brilliant Pam Grier, a flight attendant that both her drug dealer (Samuel L Jackson) and the police underestimate. She is joined by her parole officer, Robert Forrester, in another award deserving role, as she cleverly out wits both sides to get away with the money.

8. Deconstructing Harry ****

Anyone who never wants to see a Woody Allen movie is completely in the right. It is hard to judge works by artists who are accused of sexual assault or other crimes. I do not plan on seeing any new Woody Allen pictures and some of his works are now impossible for me to see or judge (Manhattan will not appear on my best films anymore), but I also cannot completely disconnect the pieces of art that have made me who I am. One of those pieces is Deconstructing Harry.

Deconstructing Harry may be Allen’s most personal film. It is about an author who ruins the lives of everyone in their life by writing about them. The film, based on Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, (which make a great double feature) explores Harry Block’s imagination and art as he journeys to his former college to earn an honorary degree; the same college that expelled him. The results are both hysterical and illuminating in revealing the truth about the very nature of art.

7. In the Company of Man ****

There are few films that better illustrate toxic masculinity (long before the term was popularized) than Neil LaBute’s In the Company of Men. Aaron Eckhart has told that story that a woman after a screening of the film spit in his face for “what he did that to that girl”. She meant the character he plays in the film. In the Company of Men is about the entitlement of men symbolized by two losers who, after being dumped, decide to take their revenge on all women by targeting one woman with love and affection and then dumping her for their enjoyment. The fact that they pick a young woman who is mute makes the cruel joke even harsher.

6. Crash ****

In many ways, Crash is the film that David Cronenberg has been working towards his entire career. In Crash, Cronenberg converges both his use of violence and body mutation into one of the most strangely perverse and sexual stories ever told. Questioning what drives sexual arousal, the film follows a group on the edge of our society who are attracted to car crashes. Sexually aroused by horrific wounds, the excitement of the crash and the vulnerability that comes from being injured, Crash rightfully earned an NC-17. This is a film for adults, about adult subject matter, which questions what happens when meaningful relationships can no longer satisfy sexual desire.

5. The Ice Storm ****

The counter culture’s dark legacy, free love turning into swinger cultural while the concept of family falls apart. In this haunting story about two families, both the adults, who are all having affairs, are as sexually confused as their sexually experimenting children. Ang Lee uses the frozen landscape to mirror the harsh cold reality of the world. His incredible ensemble cast (Sigourney Weaver, Joan Allen, Kevin Kline, Tobey Maguire, Elijah Wood, and Christina Ricci) all deliver the feeling of sexual confusion and isolation.

4. Boogie Nights ****

P.T. Anderson had not yet developed his unique style of making films, but Boogie Nights was a jumping off point; a place from which Anderson’s unique editing style, camera work, and story structure can be seen in their infancy. Chronicling a group of pornographic filmmakers who witness the end to their way of life with the introduction of VHS and the ability to privately watch pornography at home, the film follows a “family” of sorts as they bear witness to the end of their way of life. Even when they are riding high, there is an air of tragedy that permeates the film.

3. L.A. Confidential ****

The most entertaining film of the year. Curtis Hanson’s direction is a master school in creating theme and place. Juggling three main characters, L.A. Confidential takes a novel whose story is so complex it is almost undecipherable and makes it into a compelling and thrilling film noir about the rule of law, the role of justice, and the temptation of fame. L.A. Confidential is a labyrinth of a film that weaves the mystery of corruption in one of the best neo noirs ever made.

2. The Sweet Hereafter ****

Atom Egoyan is one of the true modern auteurs. Sweet Hereafter is his masterpiece. Set in a Canadian town after tragedy, the movie coils through time, moving backwards and forwards following several people: a lawyer going through the motions of trying to sue a company, a young woman who survived the tragic crash, a father who lost his children, and more. The result is one of the best films about the tragedy of surviving, the guilt of living.

1. Eve’s Bayou ****

Similar to Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter, Eve’s Bayou plays with our understanding of memory: “Memory is a selection of images, some elusive, others imprinted indelibly upon the brain.” Memories make us who we are. In many ways, the past is more alive than the present. Eve’s Bayou begins with the narrator of the film, a grown version of the main character, voicing this notion. As she talks, the present recedes. The film goes from mono to stereo sound and the films visual change from black and white to color as we enter the past. The summer in this young girl’s life will see her grow up with the realizations that her family is not perfect and that she has gifts she does not understand. This haunting masterpiece remains one of my favorite films ever made.

Runners Up: Good Will Hunting ****, 4 Little Girls ****, Contact ****, Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control ****, The Apostle ****, Wag the Dog ****, Mrs. Brown *** ½, First Strike *** ½, Waiting for Guffman *** ½, Hard Eight *** ½, Con Air *** ½, Face/Off *** ½, Selena *** ½, Anaconda *** ½, Austin Powers *** ½, The Game *** ½, Event Horizon *** ½, Mimic *** ½, Gattaca *** ½, Amistad *** ½, The Wings of the Dove *** ½,