Transgendered Birds and Flying Babies: My top films of 2009

What a year! (For me personally, though film wise it wasn't so bad either.)

Combing through the obligatory end of year best-of lists, I mildly disagree with most reviewers (peruse Manhola Dargis, A.O. Scott and J. Hoberman.) Some films which are heading these lists, like Summer Hours (Assayas) were lovely stories. But its high rankings despite fairly straight forward storytelling mechanisms suggests that reviewers vote with their babyboomer anxieties. Another film topping the lists -- Where the Wild Things Are - bleeds brown as a violent romp. Some stories should stay on the page rather than move to the screen (and accompanying surround speakers.) Jonze's translation is a nuanced story painted in a softly glowing beige and golden palette. However, as the young boy who becomes king of the wild things rips their homes to shreds, the film felt more like kiddy-colonialism than ingenious auteur-ship.

In each list, however, is the brilliant The Hurt Locker, my top choice of the year. In order, here's what blew my mind in '09:

1. The Hurt Locker - Did I breathe once during Bigelow's verite style bomb detonation flick? Not since Three Kings have I enjoyed a smartly crafted war picture. It is timely and necessary work and moves Bigelow from the strange dayz of U boats into work wherein she drives and thrives.

2. The Headless Woman - An Argentinian film by director Lucrecia Martel about an upperclass woman who sustains a head injury during a car accident. In the days following her concussion, her fluttering subjectivity is rendered with varying depths of field. Medium wide shots with standard depth of field reveal moments where she is able to move and see the people around her. But close up shots and medium close ups with very shallow depth of field leave blurs and smudges in the frame as she grasps for meaning in her newly disordered life. Class is a central issue, as is female subjectivity (spoiler alert) for as it takes days for the people around her to see her and her divergent mind state, it takes weeks for anyone to recognize the loss of the poor boy she may have killed with her car.

3. The Beaches of Agnes - A heroine for female filmmakers, the great director Agnes Varda lays her life bare as she reflects on a remarkable path. At the center of the frame are her love of film and her undying connection to her deceased partner, Jacques Demy. Varda describes bits of her best work - including Gleaners and I, Cleo from 5 to 7 and Vagabond and tells the stories of the construction of these pictures. Her genuine honesty, humbleness and humor are rare and welcome in the autobiographic form. Humor comes largely from her voice over and through the innovative techniques wherein she is mirrored, reflected and refracted through her performance as narrator --much like memory itself (reflected, refracted and performed.)

4. Ricky - Francois Ozon is my favorite director. Period. I proselytize nearly all of his many works, from his shorts to his features. Ricky is his latest feature (spoiler) and the name of a baby who sprouts wings. His working-class mother and her daughter are challenged to raise this special and frightening child. While images of flying babies falling from the sky may sound traumatizing to some, here these images are humorous, tender and dark. Ozon is great because he masters all three tones at once in each of his films. This film is no exception to that talent and with Ricky, Ozon continues to beautifully explore the boundaries of normativity.

5. Bright Star - This is surely Jane Campion's comeback picture! After the disastrous and misogynistic In the Cut, my other favorite director has returned to her former glory with this beautiful love story. A 3 tissue film sprinkled with violet petals and butterfly wings, here we meet the amazing Fanny Brawne who inspired John Keats' love poems. As a cinematographer, I'm still trying to figure out how they succeeded in shooting the impossible: dimly lit rooms flicker with candlelight while the windows therein frame brightly lit snowy exteriors... all properly exposed?!
6. Up - The trend in this list -- I like films that make me cry. Up reminded me of the necessity of Love despite the joy, pain, sunshine and rain it brings. As an old man fulfills his dead wife's life-long wish by flying his house to South America, he meets a few characters along the way who force him to connect with the living. A chubby cub scout, sad eyed goof of a dog, and rainbow colored bird delight. But this bird, named Kevin, must be underscored as he/she stands as the first Transgendered character to grace the Disney screen. With rainbow colored feathers, a male name, and ability to give birth, Kevin's gender is never resolved. There is joy to be had in seeing Disney-fied queerness.


7. La Danse: Le Ballet de l'Opera de Paris - Wiseman may be the best living documentary filmmaker in the United States. With over forty years of work, from High School to Domestic Violence, Wiseman illuminates the people affected by public institutions. Here we see the inner workings of the Paris Opera Ballet and the endless preparation dancers and choreographers endure to stage a work. Through his patient and subtle observational approach, Wiseman launches a critique on classical ballet in favor of the innovative energy and beauty housed within modern dance. For 250 minutes, the viewer is allowed to indulge in movement, super-human athleticism and true artistry (of the documentary sort, as well as in dance.)

8. Avatar - I reviewed this film in my previous post, so here I will add this: In the theatre, I felt lucky to watch such visual wizardry. My eyes were happy throughout and I was lost in the world before me. Most importantly, this is a mass marketed film launching a political critique of the genocide and environmental rape repeatedly committed by the United States of America. So with all that eye-candy comes a gooey, nutritious center.

9. Lorna's Silence - Dardennes brothers' films seem simple. Handheld cameras, medium shots, real locations, ambient sound, natural lighting and quotidien working class settings suggest films that "happen" rather than films that are "made." But with Lorna's Silence, like La Promesse and The Child before her, the brothers Dardennes demonstrate how crafting a two-act character-driven film works. While returning to similar themes of immigration and xenophobia in the EU and Belgium specifically, here they highlight a an Albanian immigrant who must marry for her citizenship. In doing so, they seem to raise the character of Assita from their 1996 La Promesse, a woman who gets short shrift in that film though she drives the young central character, Igor's, story forward. Indeed, Igor, or Jérémie Renier, the actor who played him, is central in this film. After appearing in La Promesse, The Child and Lorna's Silence this actor, whose character has different names along the way, grows up through these three Dardennes films. When he appears here, it is a welcome return. (Spoiler alert) In his passing, we grieve for the wrong turns made and poor lessons taught to him in his youth in those earlier pictures.

10. Sita Sings the Blues - Thankfully you can watch Paley's breathtaking animated film for free on line any time. In masterful post-modern form, Paley combines her own break up tale with stories from the ancient epic, the Ramayana. Like other feminist writers of late, Paley puts a microscope over a tragic female character who gets short shrift in the epic tale despite her suffering (Anita Diamant does this in The Red Tent as does Margaret Atwood in The Penelopiad). Paley demonstrates the fluidity in oral histories by retelling a 2500 year old saga through her varying animation styles and through three narrators who reconstruct the story with lively, and at times oppositional, conversation. Because of copyright issues, we can all see this film for free online, but I implore you to support the independent spirit and find a way to send Paley some green for her brilliant efforts.