by
Julien Faddoul
10. The Card Counter (Paul Schrader, USA)
Messy, downbeat parable with Schrader’s typical allusions to Bressonain themes, though not the form. William Tell (Oscar Isaac) is a casino card counter who lives a spartan existence. This is shattered when he is approached by Cirk (Tyler Sheridan), a vulnerable and angry young man seeking help to execute his plan for revenge on a military colonel (Willem Dafoe). Like all of Scharder’s films, there’s the constant fear of it going over the top, but the characters here remain endlessly fascinating.
9. The Worst Person in the World (Joachim Trier, Norway)
Joachim Trier completes a trilogy of sorts about the rambling thoughts, feelings, and general goings-on of young adults in Oslo, Norway. Chronicling four years in the life of Julie (Renate Reinsve), a young woman who navigates the troubled waters of her love life and struggles to find her career path, the film is told to us in 12 chapters, a prologue and an epilogue. As drama it’s often beguiling, beautifully played and elegantly constructed.
8. Days (Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan)
Tsai, at his best, is more transportive than any other filmmaker currently living. Apparently, this entry was somewhat made-up as he went along. The first half consists mostly of shots of Tsai regular/muse Lee Kang-sheng receiving acupuncture for a neck pain and the younger Laotian newcomer Anong Houngheuangsy praying and washing vegetables. The second half brings these two together in a series of prosaic moments that prove incredibly moving. 127 minutes comprising of only 42 shots, Tsai’s singular cinema is always resplendent to behold.
7. Parallel Mothers (Pedro Almodovar, Spain)
Almodovar’s most overtly political film sees him mixing melodrama with argumentation. As a result, he focuses less here on mise-en-scène than he ever has before, and more on performance. Two single women give birth in the same maternity ward on the same day. One (Milena Smit) a teenage mother pregnant from a sexual assault, the other a middle-aged fashion photographer (Penélope Cruz, magnificent here) having an unplanned but much-wanted first child. Afterwards, their lives intertwine. Almodovar lets us fill in most of the drama for ourselves and although some of his excavations are better than others, every year that boasts a new film from him is richer for it.
6. Flee (Jonas Poher Rasmussen, Denmark/France/Norway/Sweden)
An engrossing, highly affecting animated documentary on the real life story of “Amin Nawabi's” (a pseudonym used to protect his true identity), who arrived in Denmark as an unaccompanied minor in the mid 1990s after escaping the Mujahideen in Kabul and spending a childhood in shipping containers, an Estonian prison cell, and a claustrophobic hideout in Moscow. For the first time he is sharing his story with his close friend (director Rasmussen) as he plans to marry his long-time boyfriend and embark on the next phase of his successful Academic career. Both the conceptual use of animation as a stylistic agent for a non-fiction, interview documentary and the particulars of “Amin’s” story are nothing decidedly fresh, but there’s something about the incarnated, overwhelming humanity here that feels unquestionably significant.
5. Red Rocket (Sean Baker, USA)
The greatness of Sean Baker as a storyteller lies in the fact that he depicts intense belligerence in a hopeless milieu, and yet always pulls it off without an ounce of condescension. On the contrary, his films are often hilarious, but never supercilious. He truly loves these characters and that’s a palpable representation. Finding himself down and out in Los Angeles, an ex porn star (Simon Rex) decides to crawl back to his hometown of Texas City, Texas, where his estranged wife and mother-in-law are living. Just as this dysfunctional family seems to be making things work, he falls for a teenage girl working at a local doughnut shop. This film belongs in a very fashionable category of film nowadays that entertainingly depicts the relentless seediness of an idiot hustler. This one trumps most of them not only because of Baker’s aforementioned humility but because of Rex’s astonishing performance, which is a staggering illustration of an inner intensive force. If posed with the question of what was the best performance of 2021 for me, his is my definitive answer.
4. Pig (Michael Sarnoski, USA)
Delivered to us by a first-time feature filmmaker, a truffle hunter (Nicolas Cage) who lives alone in the Oregonian wilderness must return to his past in Portland in search of his beloved foraging pig after she is kidnapped. An unpredictable and invigorating journey through a world that is both reverently familiar and completely made-up, with truly one of the greatest actors of our time as our tour guide. Most modern movies are saturated in an ocean of automatic pilot. This one's not only consistently emotionally surprising but is able to make all its points in 92 minutes. Rare.
3. Memoria (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand/Columbia/UK)
The most transcendent sensory experience I had in a cinema all year. Tilda Swinton (excellent) plays a Scottish expatriate living in Bogotá, Colombia who finds herself bothered by increasingly loud bangs which prevent her from getting any sleep – colloquially known as Exploding Head Syndrome. Her attempts to treat this ailment lead her deep into the Columbian countryside. When often asked to name my favourite directors working today, Apichatpong Weerasethakul is always one of the first names I bring up (and not just because I love pronouncing his name). He is of the Asian slow cinema but his experimental narrative and Buddhist-like rhythms make him unique even in that group. I will admit that Memoria feels somewhat lighter to me than his earlier works on reincarnation – this is a film about diegetic sound and its efficacy in cinema, in relation to real life. But he remains the prime sensual filmmaker for the senses.
2. The Power of the Dog (Jane Campion, New Zealand/UK/USA)
The favourite film of most critics this past year, Jane Campion’s long awaited eighth feature seems to exist from a different era of cinema – despite the fact that most people probably experienced this film on Netflix. A charismatic rancher, Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch), inspires fear and awe in those around him. When his brother (Jesse Plemons) brings home a new wife and her son (Kirsten Dunst and Kodi Smit-McPhee), Phil torments them until he finds himself exposed to the possibility of love. The brilliance of the film is in its deceptive superfluousness; it unfolds less like a dream and more like a dream of a dream. But an ultra-precise one. The final moments crystalize all that has come before, not just narratively but emotionally. Superb.
1. Licorice Pizza (Paul Thomas Anderson, USA)
One of the bewildering potentialities of art is its power to transport you and even make you wistful for a time, place and emotional climate that you weren’t even alive for. This is why the popular practice of looking back and soaking in one’s own autobiographic path is unnecessary, despite its inherent comfort. Culturally, in the era we live in now, the outgrowth of this has been bastardizing. Nostalgia is bigger now than in any time in history. But the key to this problem percolates less in the macro sense and more the micro, which is that people are nostalgic for the unsophisticated garbage they associate with their childhood innocence. People long not for the important times of their development but the comfortable times. I don’t feel there has ever been a film that encapsulates this better than Licorice Pizza.
Paul Thomas Anderson’s sprawling, episodic, masterfully realized paean to the San Fernando Valley in the 1970s is told to us in kaleidoscopic fashion, taking place over 3 years, with an ever-expanding cast of characters whose imperfections Anderson embraces. A romantically tinged if essentially chaste friendship between a 15-year-old boy (Cooper Hoffman, son of the late Philip Seymour) and a 25-year-old girl (musician Alana Haim, exceptional here) is the centre of this panorama, and one which has proved controversial among audiences this year. But even though the film is essentially a coming-of-age romp, it never shies away from the queasiness of its period either. Everything here is just so evocative and specific; shot in plump 35mm and written and filmed during the pandemic, every avenue taken within this polygon repays gratifying dividends and proves utterly irresistible.
Honourable Mentions:
Drive My Car
Luca
The Tragedy of Macbeth
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