The best movies of 2003

Looking over my list of favorite films screened in the Twin Cities in 2003, I realized that a number of them could be recommended for their innovative means of integrating violence (and, more importantly, the devastating shock of violence) into movie narratives and aesthetics: Gus Van Sant’s “Elephant,” Gaspar Noé’s “Irreversible,” Alejandro Gonzalez Inñaritú’s “21 Grams,” and any of the depraved comedies of the Walker’s Takashi Miike retrospective. Is this the latest breakthrough of world cinema? It seems primed to be, given the number of headlines in recent years declaring random violence without foreseeable end. One of the dilemmas in translating this reality to art, however, is establishing enough of an interpretation of the events while retaining the horror and confusion they inspire in real life.

It’s worth noting that of the films listed above, all but Inñaritú’s have been condemned by at least a few circles for being irresponsible and sensationalist. While the simple story of “Irreversible” (about a woman’s rape and her boyfriend’s bloodthirsty desire for revenge, told in reverse) could be branded as sensationalist, Noé’s stream of nauseating techniques—from ultraviolence to an incessantly swirling camera—keep things grounded in a believable sense of disgust. The same can be said of Takashi’s “Visitor Q,” which used in-your-face video cinematography to condemn TV news reporting as much as the moral bankruptcy which allows the movie to climax in necrophilia, mass murder and a husband and wife shooting up. And Van Sant’s use of detached long-take camerawork to contemplate a Columbine-like school shooting made “Elephant” less about the shock than about all-encompassing dread. Some of my peers accused the film of pondering a domestic, middle-class tragedy at the oversight of the pandemic tragedies in other nations; I feel, however, that it taps into the universal horror of death’s inevitability, an issue Van Sant emphasizes through an obsessive repetition of events, locations and behaviors.

What these films suggest overall is that changes in the culture demand changes in the arts as well. Olivier Assayas stressed this point in the interviews he conducted around the release of “Demonlover” (which played at the Lagoon in October), an intentionally confusing thriller about rival internet companies. Assayas says he constructed that film to mirror the way in which information is distributed on the net, with bursts of sex and intrigue functioning like links to subconscious desire. Indeed, several of the major films to screen here in 2003 confronted our society of information overload and distortion: Michael Haneke’s “Code Unknown” (a French film from 2000 that made its Twin Cities premiere in January at the U Film Society), Alexander Sokurov’s “Russian Ark,” and Peter Watkins’ “La Commune (Paris 1871)” (another film from 2000; it screened at the City Pages documentary festival in November). The fractured narrative of “21 Grams” did this to a lesser degree, and the storytelling breakthroughs of David Cronenberg’s “Spider”—which tried to adopt the viewpoint of a paranoid schizophrenic—seems indirectly related to the free-associative thinking that the internet has accustomed us to.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about living in the age of the internet is that the technology enables one to be constantly tied to the heart of information—which means that the position of being above or beside information is becoming increasingly anomalous, outmoded. In other words, the type of progress afforded by the world-wide web tends to overlook reflection. While we’ve been living with the internet for over a decade now, it seems like movies are only beginning to figure out what it means and what it’s doing to us. Assayas’ decision to cut from one extended hand-held shot to another and then another may be the most sophisticated aesthetic response yet to the information onslaught we live in, and it’s just one reason I find “Demonlover” to be so valuable.

“Russian Ark” and “Code Unknown” made even more pronounced uses of long-takes. “Russian Ark” was shot entirely in one take, documenting two men’s walk through the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. One man is contemporary, the other from the 19th century, and both encounter figures from the last 300 years of Russian history. Sokurov’s meditative style makes the journey both serene and personal, cutting-edge and timeless.

I’m not as sure as to how timeless “Code Unknown” is, given its up-front handling of immigration problems and Western safety concerns (not to mention the gorgeous celebrity of Juliette Binoche). Still, it is an essential movie of the present, and Haneke’s daring formal strategy—scenes shot in single-takes, beginning after the major characters of the scene have been introduced and ending after the action of the scene has been resolved —makes the audience ponder seriously what it doesn’t have a chance to see.

The six-hour cinematic/theatrical experiment that was “La Commune (Paris 1871)” was one of the most challenging, and rewarding, movie experiences I’ve ever had. Watkins re-stages the brief (only a few months) life-and-death story of the anarchist government that took over Paris at the end of the Franco-Prussian War in the form of contemporary cinema verité and television journalism techniques, making it clear that the film is as much about our world as it is the past. The movie is not without a doomsayer’s cynicism: The “official,” Versailles-mandated news reports, little more than outright lies designed to assuage the interests of the wealthy, were just barely satirical, a not-so-subtle suggestion as to why revolutionary movements currently face so much trouble in the West. (The movie’s real-life equivalent must have been “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” a documentary about the unsuccessful 2002 coup d’état in Venezuela; it also screened at the documentary festival.) Nonetheless, the film’s climax—in which the actors playing Communards broke out of character to explain what the 1871 government still means to them, while still carrying on a battle re-enactment—was the most triumphant movie moment I encountered this year.

My top two choices have, admittedly, little to say directly about either violence or the internet. Jean-Luc Godard’s “In Praise of Love” (which screened at the U Film Society in January) is another of the director’s recent masterpieces, and like the others, it is dense, emotional and profound. Godard’s investigation of history and aging is particularly sympathetic (the protagonist is perhaps the most vulnerably sympathetic male hero in Godard’s canon), and the film is especially attuned to what we lose in the progress of each.

Rob Nelson was one of the only critics I read who touched on the political nature of Richard Linklater’s “School of Rock,” and while I agree with him one-hundred percent, I feel that the secret of the film’s success is not simply its progressive nature: Here is a near-perfect example of a classic Hollywood entertainment, in which a filmmaker’s modest visual style and generous direction of actors parallels his hard-won philosophy. Within Jack Black’s work with his students lies a portrait (and an unsentimental one at that) of society as optimistic and enduring as anything by Howard Hawks, with genuine adoration for community and the easy potential for democratic process.

Lastly, I’ve included an additional top five of my favorite revival screenings of the year. Thanks to the ongoing efforts of Minnesota Film Arts, the Walker Art Center, the Underground Film Series and, often, the Landmark Theatres, the Twin Cities remain a vital center for film study and communal viewing. There’s one guilty pleasure on this list: “Dolemite,” which screened at St. Anthony Main’s “Atomic Midnight” series in December. Reading Armond White’s criticism has opened up a number of new meanings in blaxploitation and proved for me that the extreme violent fantasies of the genre are connected to a closely observed social reality. This is more than I can say for Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill.”

Top Ten Films Screened in the Twin Cities in 2003:
“The School of Rock” (dir. Richard Linklater; area theaters, Fall)
“In Praise of Love” (Jean-Luc Godard; U Film Society, January)
“Elephant” (Gus Van Sant; Edina Theatres, November)
“Demonlover” (Olivier Assayas; Lagoon Theaters, October) and “Russian Ark” (Alexander Sokurov; Uptown Theater, February) (tie)
“La Commune” (Paris 1871) (Peter Watkins; Oak Street Cinema, November)
“Code Unknown” (Michael Haneke; U Film Society, January)
“21 Grams” (Alejandro Gonzalez Inñaritú; Uptown Theatre, December) and “Irreversable” (Gaspar Noé; Uptown Theatre, April)
“Gerry” (Gus Van Sant; Uptown Theatre, March)
“The Son” (Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne; U Film Society, June)
“Spider” (David Cronenberg; Lagoon Theatres, March)