To start this on a personal note, 2013 was a great year for me as a cinephile. I was able to venture to Berlin and Venice for two of the three major European film festivals and was able to once again attend the fastest growing European film festival in London. However, it was also a tough year for me as an American in Europe, I was unable to see 12 Years a Slave, Inside Llewyn Davis, Her, or American Hustle, all which will premiere after the new year in England. Even without these films, it was a great year in cinema with many bold, unexpected films that chart new territories for cinema both within and outside the realm of the Hollywood narrative style.
With television and video games becoming more and more cinematic in the Hollywood sense, cinema has had a tough few years really redefining what makes it unique and special. In my mind there were three films this year that succeeded in this: Under the Skin, Gravity and Upstream Color. All three featured directors with strong, singular aesthetics and all reached into the uncharted territory of the cinematic heart attempting to find the limits of what film can do.
Under the Skin was far and away the best film of the year, the story of an alien (played by Scarlett Johansson) sent to earth (Glasgow, Scotland) to seduce men before murdering them for their body parts. The story is told almost strictly visually, with dialogue limited to (often hysterical) conversation between the alien and her victims. The film can be seen as a satire on gender roles, the limits of human compassion and/or a critique of western society's image of love and happiness. Ultimately, the film goes beyond this and redefines what cinema can be, a brilliant masterpiece.
Gravity, the best Hollywood film of the year, was able to show that density is not what makes cinema great. While there is undoubtedly a grandness to it, the film has a very simple premise, but Cuaron was able to show that a simple plot can be effective if it is populated with even one character with depth (in this case, Sandra Bullock). This film, along with another great Hollywood film, Enough Said, showed that what makes films great aren't necessarily narratives, but character-propelled narratives. As long as a film has strong characters, it will come off okay.
Coming off that idea, I think we can see why the Marvel characters continue to thrive. Despite neither Thor 2 nor Iron Man 3 being particularly great films (neither should be anywhere near a top 10 list) they were both propelled by strong characters and therefore were able to survive based on an emotional resonance with the characters.
Upstream Color is the only of the three films that I was unable to catch on the big screen, and, maybe not coincidentally, is the third of the three masterpieces from this year. One of the things that really stands out with these three films (Under the Skin, Gravity and Upstream Color) is how important it is to see them on the big screen. Despite seeing it on a 15 inch computer screen, Upstream still succeeded in telling a rather elaborate and original premise through a seemingly effortless visual style that seemed to go by in a flash. The film is the first, of what I can assume will be many, that attempts to take the Malick aesthetic and tries to bring a new perspective to it, I only hope the rest of the attempts will be as successful as this one.
One thing viewers of these films will notice is the commitment to the visual and how each story is told through the mise-en-scene, not through traditional novelesque tactics that Hollywood is guilty of much too often. Few other films this year came close to matching the depth and wonderment of these three films, Blue is the Warmest Color is the closest and probably the next best film of the year. It contains the best performance of the year by Adèle Exarchopoulos and was able to maintain a feeling of spontaneity while actually being tightly controlled by the director. The only scenes unable to maintain this combination of control and spontaneity were the sex scenes, which felt rigidly controlled and lacked the tenderness of the rest of the film. It's no coincidence that all the criticism has come to these parts, as they are the films worst moments. It sucks that a 180 minute movie is remembered for its 10 unfortunate minutes then its 170 minutes of masterful cinema.
Enough Said, which I talked a bit about above, was another example of Hollywood at its finest: telling a story where the characters propel the action and supporting characters can be fully whole characters who help support the main actor through their own issues and problems. This sort of organic storytelling has become Nicole Holofcener's forte, and hopefully with the financial success of this film, she'll start being able to make films more often.
Before Midnight, the third chapter in the romantic story of Jesse and Celine, is really the only film on here that hardly adheres to the auteur theory. The series is really a play thrown onto the screen with a lot of the same spirit of my top three films, asking the question What is Cinema? Can cinema be a story of two people talking incessantly, aggravatingly, with walking being the only form of "action" on screen? The ultimate success of the series falls on the actors, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, who once again throw themselves into the project, both physically and emotionally. I can only imagine the drain a film like this can have on the emotional stability of an actor.
We Are The Best! brings Lukas Moodysson back to teenage angst, his true talent as a director, and not surprisingly, it's his best film since his last teenage film, Fucking Amal. Parde (Closed Curtain) continues Jafar Panahi's exploration of loneliness and isolation as he has been cut off from filmmaking by the Iranian government. The film is devastating and heartbreaking, but ultimately uplifting as Panahi learns to deal with his grief, anger and depression. All the while he explores and examines cinema at its most basic level, proving that all you need to make a great film is talent.
To The Wonder and The Grandmaster are "lesser" films from Terrence Malick and Wong Kar-Wai, I say that with a little more than tongue-in-cheek as lesser films from arguably the two greatest directors currently working are still better than most stuff out there and each film adds significant weight to their respective canons.
Outside the arbitrary cut-off of 10 sits several wonderful films:
Like Father, Like Son is the first film I've seen by Hirokazu Koreeda, a great film that explores nature vs nurture and the conflicted feelings of fatherhood in Japanese society. It ultimately succeeds due to the power of the child actors and Koreeda's ability to understand that a child's emotional expression is usually displayed through action and giving the actors space to accomplish this action on screen.
Frozen is another example of proof of why Disney teaming their entire animation studio with Pixar was the smartest thing they've done in awhile. Despicable Me 2 was slight let down from the first but was still a wonderful way to spend 90 minutes. Eastern Boys, Locke, and The Congress will be hard-pressed to even get a big release on the arthouse circuit, which is sad as all three were well-made, impactful films.
The biggest disappointments of the year were The Counselor and Pacific Rim. Ridley Scott, coming off the inspiring direction of Prometheus was completely unable to turn Cormac McCarthy's atrocious screenplay into a watchable film. McCarthy, a novelist by trade (my favorite novelist), who has spent an entire career creating a canon full of novels that push the medium to its limits borrowing heavily from the structures and strengths of plays and movies, couldn't figure out how to create a script that wasn't an overwrought disaster. A disappointing surprise if there ever was one. Del Toro's Pacific Rim was a silly and unfortunately shallow summer blockbuster that's visuals and special effects were at points laughable and never could live up to Del Toro's abilities. Lets hope this was just a blip in an otherwise brilliant filmography.
1. Under the Skin
2. Gravity
3. Upstream Color
4. Blue is the Warmest Color
5. Enough Said
6. Before Midnight
7. We Are the Best!
8. Parde (Closed Curtain)
9. To The Wonder
10. The Grandmaster
Honorable Mention: Like Father, Like Son, Frozen, Despicable Me 2, Eastern Boys, Locke, The Congress
