MY TOP 10 FILMS FOR 2005

By Joel Johnson

It’s time for me to put together my list of favorite films for 2005. I delayed writing this article until more films, strategically released to coincide with “award season,” hit Maine theaters. Since this usually doesn’t happen until January or beyond, my list is a month later than those of many film critics, and my list usually doesn’t include some films for which there’s a certain amount of award buzz. This year, this means films like Match Point, Transamerica, The Producers, The Matador, and Mrs. Henderson Presents—all nominees for various Golden Globes—simply are not going to be on my list no matter how deserving or undeserving they may be for this kind of recognition.

1. Brokeback Mountain.  Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain uses lovely cinematography, superb ensemble acting, and patient pacing to bring to the screen E. Annie Proulx’s short story about two young men discovering during one summer that who they are is far different from what they thought and how this plays out in their lives. This is the “gay cowboy” movie that demands that we reconsider how we think about love and sexuality. Though there is extraordinary acting throughout the cast, two performances do stand out. Heath Ledger delivers his best acting performance, and Michelle Williams is terribly moving as a woman trying to do the best for her family and dealing with her husband’s needs that she doesn’t understand and can’t fulfill. This is film storytelling that leaves one wanting the film to go on after the closing credits to spend more time in the world with the people the film has created.

2. The Constant Gardener. Fernando Meirelles’s The Constant Gardener is Jeffrey Caine’s adaptation of John le Carré’s novel about conspiracies hatched by multinational pharmaceutical companies exploiting poor and vulnerable Africans. The strong ensemble acting features superb lead performances by Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz. Weisz has received recognition as the passionately committed liberal activist Tessa married to Fiennes’s career diplomat, but Fiennes is equally terrific at capturing the less flashy, yet stolidly driven Justin Quayle. Meirelles and cinematographer César Charlone successfully make Kenya’s color and energy another character in this powerful film.

3. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room is a compelling documentary that demystifies the infamous Enron scandal. Most people probably have heard something about how the company went belly-up and left the company’s workers with a mere shadow of the pensions they were promised, but the Enron story covers a lot more than that. Filmmaker Alex Gibney has provided the cinematic sinew and flesh to cover the skeleton provided by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind’s book The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron. One comes away with a much better understanding of how the macho gunslinger attitudes fostered at Enron eventually created a totally amoral corporate culture. To fool investors, elaborate frauds were repeatedly perpetrated so that Enron would appear to be a robust and thriving company. They profiteered at the expense of California power customers. A by-product, intentional or otherwise, of Enron’s deliberately induced power shortages was to severely undermine former Democratic Governor Gray Davis, making him a target of a recall election. Most discouraging of all, the many institutions designed as checks and balances against rampant unethical and illegal activity failed to do what they were supposed to do. Legal proceedings against the two most prominent Enron officers, Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling, will finally go to court in 2006, making this film a good refresher for a current event. This film will, no doubt, leave you with a number of questions about what needs to be done about this problem, but this is one that occurred to me: Should the death penalty be considered as a deterrent to grand-scale crimes of calculation like what happened at Enron?

4. Downfall. Oliver Hirschbiegel’s Downfall, a finalist for the 2005 Best Foreign-Language Oscar, is a powerful film showing the last desperate days of the Third Reich inside Hitler’s bunker. This has been told on television and in films numerous times, both in documentary and fictional forms. Everyone knows about Germany’s defeat and Hitler’s suicide just days before the surrender. This is the first time a German filmmaker has tackled this, and it is the first time this well-known story has truly come to life. Anchored by Bruno Ganz’s stellar performance as Adolf Hitler, this film draws us in and makes us witnesses to Nazi Germany’s tragic deathwatch. Ganz gives Hitler, the charismatic visionary of a monstrous worldview, humanity. The destructive Nazi ideology came from a human being and not simply a monster. We see a variety of responses from Hitler’s closest associates as it becomes more and more evident that total defeat is imminent, and we recognize each of those responses as human. Even with a human dimension we probably won’t feel sympathy for Hitler and his inner circle, but we will acutely feel the tragedy of the German lives wasted in a cause that was clearly lost by April of 1945. This is a fantastic historical film.

5. Good Night, and Good Luck. George Clooney delivers his own history lesson by stepping behind the camera to direct Good Night, and Good Luck., telling the true story of Edward R. Murrow’s exposé of Senator Joe McCarthy in 1954. McCarthy opportunistically exploited the nation’s fear in the face of a Cold War with a Soviet nuclear threat by pursuing communist sympathizers and spies. His unfair attacks (McCarthyism) based on innuendo, unseen lists, half-truths, and outright fabrications had ruined careers. David Strathairn, as Murrow, leads a fine cast. Shot in black and white, this film makes excellent use of vintage television footage, seamlessly inserting it into the film to show how Murrow used the “words and images” of McCarthy himself to make his case against the Wisconsin senator. The film tells an important story behind a watershed event that forestalled dangerous erosion of individual civil liberties in the interests of security. Do you recognize any echoes today?

6. Crash. Last year Paul Haggis received an Oscar nomination for his adaptation of F. X. Toole’s short stories into the Best Picture Oscar–winner Million Dollar Baby. Although screenwriters—even Oscar-winning screenwriters—tend to slide into obscurity pretty quickly, Paul Haggis has made himself a little more—maybe a lot more—memorable by writing and directing Crash. This film uses taut writing, economical direction, and outstanding ensemble acting to dramatize the mistrust and violence that exists at our society’s fault lines of race, class, and ethnicity. In a film chock-full of powerful scenes, the two scenes featuring Matt Dillon and Thandie Newton stand out as especially unforgettable. This opened last May. If you haven’t seen this one yet, what are you waiting for?

7. Grizzly Man is Werner Herzog’s documentary about self-proclaimed Grizzly Man Timothy Treadwell, his girlfriend Amie Huguenard, and their deadly bear attack in 2003. Herzog’s film exposes Treadwell’s fabrication of his early life by showing where he came from, introduces us to his closest friends, and captures the instability and recklessness coexisting with the effusive love he had for the bears with whom he spent half of the last several years of his life. Herzog finds voices supporting his contention that Treadwell, despite openly acknowledging the dangers posed by the grizzlies, violated the boundary between humans and wild animals. We are teased and taunted, knowing that horrific audio of Timothy and Amie’s encounter with the deadly bear exists, but we never listen to it. A hard lesson is that love may not be the answer in dealing with the wild, but we need to always respect it. Herzog’s film is by turns funny, unruly, solemn, and chilling.

8. Millions.  Danny Boyle’s Millions has a Christmas theme, but this did not factor in the film’s marketing strategy. Boyle isn’t known for sweet children’s films and has directed films (notably Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, The Beach, and 28 Days Later) so “dark and edgy” as to be inappropriate for children. Yet even though this one is sweet, Boyle still tells a great story. It is the story of seven- year-old brother Damian and his ten- year-old brother Anthony. Both boys—as well as their father—are coping with the loss of their mother. Then, serendipitously, hundreds of thousands of pounds enter their lives just days before Britain converts to the Euro, making pound notes worthless. There’s great urgency to use the money. Anthony internalizes the world’s values and spends money on material things, but Damian is fascinated by saints and wants to be righteous in what he does. The film touches on important issues. It introduces saints and their faith. It provides a catalyst for discussing money and morality. It helps us to address honoring the memory of a loved one who has passed away, how to heal from that loss, and how to move on to establish new relationships. It affirms family and, ultimately, affirms anyone trying to make a difference for someone else. It is a beautiful movie that should engage and entertain anyone six years old and up. It certainly did that for me. I loved this movie.

9. Paradise Now. A few films this year (see honorable mentions below) attempted the daunting task of making sense of the conflicts that surround the Middle East. Hany Abu-Assad’s film told the most straightforward story and yet the most touching. It was the only one that addressed the issue from the Arab—or, specifically for this film—the Palestinian perspective. We meet Said and Khaled, two young Palestinian men trying to get their lives underway, who find that they have been “chosen” to go to Israel and martyr themselves as suicide bombers. One seems eager and the other less so. Both spend a last night with their doubts and dreams. One has just met a beautiful peace activist. We meet the families they will leave behind. They tape their martyrdom declarations that will soon be hot items in the local video market. We learn that martyrs can’t compete in that market with the final confessions of collaborators about to be executed. Something goes wrong on the way to Tel Aviv, and the young men get a second chance. Can they bear to go through this again? Who wants to live, and who is willing to die? Which will have more meaning? We come to care very deeply for these men and hope another way can be found to resolve the horrible conflict of which they are a part.

10. The Beat My Heart Skipped. Director Jacques Audiard’s The Beat My Heart Skipped is a French remake of James Toback’s Fingers (1978). Romain Duris plays Thomas, a man being pulled apart. Duris is probably best known to American audiences for roles in Le Divorce and L’Auberge espagnole. These films will not have prepared the audience to see Duris torn between following his father’s shady, tough- guy lifestyle—sly, vicious, and opportunistic—or pursuing a concert pianist career like his mother. Following a serendipitous meeting with his late mother’s former agent, he begins to earnestly practice the piano he had abandoned ten years earlier. He must choose between using his hands to punish—even kill—those who get in the way of his schemes and using his hands to make music. We see him reluctantly rescuing his ne’er-do-well father, who no longer can “muscle” his deals. We also see him torn between loyalty to a philandering business partner and his affection for this man’s deceived wife. Jacques Audiard and Tonino Benacquista’s script keeps the action flowing as Duris balances the chaos in his work, his love life, his unscheduled parental interventions, and his harried practice time. We become emotionally invested in Thomas breaking away from the brutal life in which he is enmeshed. Duris is terrific and receives fine support from the entire cast. If you like films that are gritty, tough, and real, you will love this film.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: Here are some that just missed out on being in the top 10 list. Look for Ron Howard’s Cinderella Man, Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins, and David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence in the video store. Two films addressing Middle East conflicts were Steven Spielberg’s Munich, telling of the high price to avenge the murders of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics, and Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana, which provides a complicated, multifaceted view of the Middle East and its essential commodity—oil. Documentaries that should be sought out include Murderball, the story of quadriplegics finding a new life through wheelchair rugby, and Shakespeare Behind Bars, showing how convicts discover meaning in a prison theater group. A complicated film enhanced by multiple viewings is Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s adaptation of Sébastien Japrisot’s novel A Very Long Engagement. A gem that is still waiting for audience discovery is Carroll Ballard’s cheetah adventure Duma. Two of my favorite films from this past year’s Maine International Film Festival (MIFF) were Sijie Dai’s Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, the MIFF Audience Favorite, and Ittisoontorn Vichailak’s The Overture, my choice for audience favorite, telling the story of a Thai music legend. Four films seen at The New Montreal Film Festival deserve to be checked out by film audiences. Julia Kwan’s Eve and the Fire Horse is the delightful autobiographical story of two young Chinese sisters trying to make sense of Jesus Christ and Buddha. Peter Entell’s Josh’s Trees is a very personal and incredibly moving film about his friend, filmmaker Josh Hanig, that was made for the young son that Josh left behind when he lost his life to pancreatic cancer. Peter Kosminsky (White Oleander) directed The Government Inspector, a docudrama about the Iraq War and the scandal surrounding the suicide of British weapons inspector Dr. David Kelly, who challenged the British government’s reporting on Iraqi WMD. My personal favorite was Mariano Barroso’s Ants in the Mouth, telling the story of an anti-Franco revolutionary just released from prison following to corrupt, pre-Castro Cuba the girlfriend he suspects of betraying him. 

 

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