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The Best Films of 2003

In their efforts to influence the tastes of film viewers, big league institutions waded in apathy (declining revnues in Hollywood), controversy (a lackluster Cannes) and dissent (the MPAA's attempted ban on screener tapes upon which rest the hopes of so many indie films), while the digital media revolution continued to make movies from all places and periods available to more people than ever. Viewers cultivated their own tastes, indeed, their own worlds set well apart from the mainstream. If the sheer number of interesting films to discover wasn't exhausting or invigorating enough of a prospect, the boon of movie websites, e-zines and discussion forums connecting people across the world to celebrate or contend with a dizzying array of opinions on those films certainly was.

It's puzzling to think how most of my daily discussions about my life's true passion occur with people I've never met in person. It's created a secondary (heaven help me if it's primary!) existence that I often have trouble reconciling with my "real" life (which is strange since I live in the cine-Mecca known as New York City and yet have few film fanatics as offline friends). Perhaps my uncertainty about what this vast, anonymous network means to me as a film lover (as well as a human being who wouldn't mind having more face-to-face relationships in life) is why many of my favorite films of 2003 were those that, to me, are the most attentive to the idea of community. By this I don't mean the shallow, cliquish, self-congratulatory sense of community implicit in mainstream alternative fare like Lost in Translation or Kill Bill, but in films that give rigorous critical attention to how people connect, or fail to connect. In a world where the administration of the most powerful nation threatens to rip the world apart with its divisive policies and its failure to empathize with the world beyond its borders, what could be more critical than understanding how to connect?

So, with tremendous gratitude for all the people whose opinions and ideas throughout the past year challenged and inspired me to articulate my own thoughts as best as I could, I offer the following:

(Special mention goes to Abbas Kiarostami's groundbreaking 10, which would be on this list had I not seen it in 2002)

1. Dogville

A chalk drawing sets the stage for the life and bloody death of Smalltown USA, starring Nicole Kidman (in her best performance to date) as sacrificial whore turned avenging angel. Too much has been written on this film already, some of it quite pointed, a good deal of it coming off as supercilious reaction to Lars Von Trier's own hype; certainly more of the same will be said upon its US release in March. But I found this film to be immensely attentive to its own ostensibly manipulative design, so that every interaction was imbued with a meditative quality unprecedented in von Trier's films, operating on different levels: contending political and cultural ideologies (personal, community and national), numerous not-so-superficial Biblical references, the persona of each actor as well as that of the director subjected to scrutiny, and a surpreme awareness of its own powers of storytelling, as well as the moral implications of such power. This is the one movie above all others in 2003 that made movies a dangerous world to inhabit. I absolutely cherished it.

2. Capturing the Friedmans

No other new film last year got me talking with my friends as much as this one. A Long Island family is torn apart when its father is arrested for child pornography and allegedly molesting children -- accusations which may or may not be the product of neighborhood hysteria with children being goaded to provide dubious testimony. While home videos made at the time of the trial provide the viewer with ample visual evidence of the "truth" behind this family in crisis, that conscious act of videotaping itself complicates one's ability to perceive what is real and what is being consciously presented. It's a film whose topic -- the representation of truth -- is so fathomless, it threatens to overrun first-time director Andrew Jarecki, and yet he does an astounding job weaving this unruly crisis into a streamlined narrative (albeit in a slick way, but even the slickness provides an ironic counterpoint to the film's unyielding non-resolutions). Watching this movie was a chastening experience for this film lover, showing how damaging and nightmarish the obsession of capturing life on film can be.

3 and 4.Blissfully Yours (undistributed in the U.S.) and Elephant

Two films that really nailed what it's like to inhabit the Moment. From Thailand, Apitchatpong Weerasethakul's gorgeously gentle feature about three people who manage a temporary reprieve from their daily cares to go on a mountainside picnic generously allowed me to spend time with these characters without pushing a story; just by being with them I absorbed their personalities and desires and drank in their humanity. In its own unassuming way, the film pushes headlong against several boundaries in contemporary cinema: documentary vs. fiction (Kiarostami), pornography vs. art (Breillat), mundane vs. sublime (Tsai). Few films have seemed more receptive to letting the beauty of the everyday speak for itself.

Critics of Gus Van Sant's Elephant regarded it as a stylistic exercise too evasive in its meaning for its own good; Derek Lam offered a memorable tagline, "an unhappy menage-a-trois between Abercrombie, Fitch and Bela Tarr". For me, it stands as the one teen movie in the history of teen movies that gets how so much of what defines the high school experience is found in what it feels like to walk down a high school hallway during recess. Here is a film that understands that both movie storytelling and the experience of life itself are matters of perspective, and seeks to frame one seemingly inconsequential moment of high school life in a series of shifting perspectives among several students, captured in long winding steadicam shots that are beautiful to behold, right before this moment explodes into inconceivable horror. I loved this film because it makes the viewer ask questions about what it is seeing and how it is being presented for them to see it -- even moments that appear at first to give rhetorical explanations as to individual motives (teenage boys showering together before going on a shooting spree) upon reflection become open-ended provocations that force the viewer to question what real explanations lie behind the most unthinkable acts.

5. The Fog of War

The fallacy of perception is one of numerous lessons from Errol Morris' masterfully manipulated interview with former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. Ever since A Brief History of Time (or perhaps even earlier with The Thin Blue Line), Morris' films have explored how men attempt to impose a sense of order on their worlds, a theme reflected in Morris' self-conscoiusly stylized brand of "documentary." Morris uses a self-designed camera that allows both him and the camera to make eye contact with his subject during filming; yet he frames McNamara at different positions and repeatedly uses jump cuts to disrupt the mellifluous flow of McNamara's charismatic delivery. Despite McNamara's conveyance of great experience and accompanying wisdom, the film doesn't exonerate him for what he has done nor give a clear conclusion as to what is the right and moral thing to do in times of war, putting the audience in the uncomfortable but necessary position of having to make their own assessment of this man and his views of how we should learn from our collective history in order to apply them to the crises of the present.

6. A tie between Divine Intervention and Waiting for Happiness

Elia Suleiman's deeply personal, aloof but refreshing comic meditation of Palestinian life under Israeli surveillance has a fragmented, episodic structure that may baffle many viewers, but somehow I found it to be quite suitable to the state of living it is trying to reflect: half-concealed, half-unresolved, with moments of inexplicable violence and unexpected beauty. There are plenty of laughs in this movie, but they are borne of a world faced with terror and absurdity on a daily basis.

Abderramme Sissako's ravishing feature about the multifaceted denizens of a Mauritanian port city was one the most beautiful portrayals of a multicultural city I've seen, at once languid in its daily rhythms yet in constant cultural flux. This film puts a lot of confidence in the innate specialness of its characters, and it's a risk that pays off -- you're not so much following a story as tracing a cavalcade of lives moving poetically from one encounter to the next. Count this as a major addition to the undervalued canon of African cinema. Both movies offer an "environmental" experience of cinema, one you don't so much watch for its narrative as absorb its lived-in rhythms and sense of community.

7. A tie between Raja (undistributed) and Seafood (undistributed)

The battle between the sexes took on fascinating cultural and political shades in two films set in Morocco and China. Jacques Doillon's intelligently nutty post-Colonial farce involves a rich Frenchman who invites local girls to work on his yard only to become besmitten by one of them. Numerous questions are raised as to how the Frenchman and the Moroccan girl may be using each other and whether genuine emotions have any part in the negotiation of their relationship, as well as how their affair affects various contingent parties. A comedy that turns into a tragedy borne of collective intentions: good, bad and ugly.

Zhu Wen, novelist-turned-director, issued perhaps the most transgressive Chinese film I've ever seen, about a prostitute who goes to a seaside hotel to kill herself but is noticed by an affable police officer who tries to save her from her own morbid thoughts, with rape being part of the rehabilitation. I suppose one could read this scenario allegorically as the relationship between underprivileged Chinese people and their government; I was taken in more by how the story and the characters seemed to reinvent themselves from scene to scene. Both of these films elicited a live-wire spark through intuitive performances and a refusal to rest on narrative convention, qualities that are rare for movies of any age.

8. A tie between Down with Love and Finding Nemo

My favorite two Hollywood films, one a smash hit and the other a flop, struck me as the most inventive, witty and visually ravishing commercial efforts of the year. The 50s retroheads who flocked to Far From Heaven last year apparently couldn't be bothered to embrace a film that had a far greater sense of joy and liveliness regarding its own unabashed nostalgia -- was it all just a fashionable trend, people? While the lukewarm re-enactment of familiar gender and race grievances in Far From Heaven left me underwhelmed, Peyton Reed's film, for all its nostalgia, manages to hit squarely upon a conundrum that still preoccupies working women roaming in a world of seemingly conflicting desires. (After all, if this movie's worldview is as outmoded as some critics claim, then why is Sex and the City such a hit?) The eye-popping production design and the hilarious script by Eve Ahlert and Dennis Drake are worthy of the period and films being paid tribute, but most impressive are Reed's inventive use of montage and split-screens (which contribute to one of the most hilarious phone sex scenes ever filmed).

While certain purists may regard CGI animation with a wary fisheye, the visual design of Finding Nemo succeeds brilliantly in submerging the viewer in a simulated underwater world alive with a seemingly limitless palette of color and texture. There's a laugh to be had at least every 30 seconds, thanks to a witty script and a diverse cast of sea creatures each possessing their own unique charms. There's a lot of life and creative energy invested in each computerized frame -- what struck me while watching the credit reel is how more unified and homogenized the Pixar community (located in San Francisco) appears to be compared to other studios (the credits listed numerous "Production Babies" birthed during the making of the movie -- how many credit reels do this?). It strikes me that the many talented people involved in this enterprise largely share an insular suburban worldview propelled by techno-geek interests, but whatever the case their product is vastly more enlivening than others issued by the hedonism factories of Hollywood.

9. Marion Bridge

In Chicago, I wandered on a whim (inspired by a rave review from Chicago Reader critic J.R. Jones) into a screening of Canadian Wiebke von Carolsfeld's adaptation of Daniel MacIvor's play about three reunited sisters sorting out their family baggage while tending to their dying mother, and I wasn't let down in the least. There's a dance-like charm to the movements of these women as they fiddle and fidget about their mom's creaky two-story house, sometimes bickering along the grooves of well-worn family problems, other times exploding into unexpected giggles. Molly Parker's fascinating face alone makes up half of her wiry performance as the middle sister with the biggest skeleton in the closet, while Rebecca Jenkins as the oldest sister serves mightily as the wavering anchor for this strained household.

10. A three-way tie between Hero (held hostage in North America by Miramax), Cold Mountain and The Magdalene Sisters

Miramax -- what more is there to say? What should have instilled a major resurgence of enthusiasm for the long, strange and recently flagging career of Zhang Yimou among U.S. viewers this year was kept on the shelf by Harvey Weinstein for reasons known only to himself. Perhaps more mysterious is the meaning behind this unbridled spectacle that made the effort to out-crouch-and-hide Ang Lee into a national phenomenon amongst mainland Chinese. Zhang's movies have always been as enigmatic in their meanings as they are evocative in their effects, functioning as whatever the viewer wishes them to be, and with this baby he really outdoes himself. Zhang breaks new ground in a unique idiom of grand hyperbole, with wall-to-wall action, dramatic gestures gone miles over the top and colors so rich they make the eyes water. I swing back and forth as to whether this film is a ringing, uncomplicated endorsement of the Chinese government, or a nuanced statement on personal transcendence in the face of social turmoil. Of course the two aren't mutually exclusive, and in some ways what Zhang is saying about people who wish to change the world for the better stinks of complacency. At one point I thought that this possible masterpiece was the second coming of A Touch of Zen, but I'm not sure if Zhang is nearly as invested in the Buddhist spiritual principles of forbearance and transcendence as King Hu was. As has been the case throughout his recent government-sanctioned period of productivity, this slipperiest of auteurs seems too careful to appease all sides. There is undoubtedly a lot of brilliance in this film, though I'm not sure how much of it involves the glossy packaging in which it is encased -- but I'd still say it rivals Eisenstein's Ivan the Terrible in its iconoclastic beauty and quizzical intent.

In many ways Anthony Minghella's adaptation of Charles Frazier's acclaimed Civil War novel is a reconfiguring of elements found in another Minghella adaptation, The English Patient: again we have an absurdist's view of war and the moral chaos it creates, infused with swooning romantic interludes between two star-crossed lovers. I find myself a sucker for this almost in spite of myself -- it's classy and respectable in the way that Miramax manages all too capably, and yet it is as powerful in its dramatic force as it is impeccable in its craft. I haven't read the novel, but Minghella's script has been severely criticized for excising prominent black characters from the source novel (the character played by Renee Zellweger was commonly thought to be of mixed race), exposing limitations in his version of the South. Nonetheless, as a portrait of a world in violent upheaval it makes a shattering impact: the opening battle sequence is overwhelming in its insanity, one of many absurdities to follow (including a pointed and relevant depiction of the Confederate equivalent of the Homeland Security Department, one that terrorizes its own people).

Criticism was leveled at Peter Mullan's unflinching lambast of the Magdalene laundries of Ireland for being shamelessly exploitive or retroactively self-righteous (the last of the laundries closed down a decade ago), but what I find uncommonly good about this film is its attentiveness to the vagaries in the relationships between the convent girls as their sense of responsibility to themselves and to each other shifts over time. In its own way it was as powerful and engaging an exploration of the fragile solidarity of sisterhood as Marion Bridge.

Special mention goes to:

Lee Chang-Dong's Oasis (undistributed U.S.), a brazen and at times visionary modern romance between a mentally disturbed ex-con and a housebound woman with cerebral palsy, made searing criticisms of the social mistreatment of the mentally and physically challenged. The best American film about illness and death was Mike Nichols' handsome and lively adaptation of Tony Kushner's epic Angels in America, which also happened to be the best TV production of 2003. The worst TV production of 2003, also about a kind of mass epidemic of death, goes to the network media's "embedded" coverage of the Iraq war, the most atrociously manipulated and manipulative instance of 'reality TV' this year (yes, even moreso than Joe Millionaire).

Three documentaries about youth and education: Nicholas Philibert's To Be and To Have and Jeffrey Blitz' Spellbound vividly captured the complex world of children striving within two very different institutions, the primary education system in the French countryside, and the U.S. National Spelling Bee (where I worked for four years escorting losing kids offstage). Rithy Pran's sobering S21: The Khmer Rouge Killing Machine (undistributed U.S.) investigates the legacy of a well-oiled system that trained teenagers to become mass murderers; those teens are now grown adults who deny responsibility for their actions in frank interviews that chill one's blood. Johnny To's PTU (undistributed U.S.) and Seijun Suzuki's Pistol Opera on the surface appear to be nothing more than cool, sardonic exercises in the aesthetics and mechanics of the action movie, but the level of creative activity on the part of their directors is impossible to deny -- and upon reflection they hint darkly at numerous social subtexts concerning power, corruption and lies.

Clint Eastwood's Mystic River and Peter Weir's Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World were two examples of classic Hollywood craftsmanship that explored their intrinsically right-wing values with far more human grit and shades of nuance than, say, the final overblown chapter of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Both benefitted greatly from fine ensemble work that humanized each film's respective moral arguments.

Ken Loach's Sweet Sixteen and Jafar Panahi's Crimson Gold effectively utilized restrained narrative techniques to make trenchant observations on the diminishing lack of opportunities for members of the underclass, while conveying their sense of everyday longing and disillusionment. In an even more unassuming manner, two Sundance-friendly indies, Thomas McCarthy's The Station Agent and Peter Sollett's Raising Victor Vargas charmingly expressed the daily disaffection of marginalized Americans -- a rustic dwarf and a urban Latino boy, respectively -- without relying too much on the cuteness factor of either minority.

Grygory Pyalfi's Hukkle and Sylvain Chomet's The Triplets of Belleville were far and away the two films that made the most evocative use of sound effects, which further enhanced their wonderfully warped vision of the world. I will never look at a pig's testicles or a bicycle race quite the same way again.

Favorite performances: Johnny Depp, Pirates of the Caribbean; Robert McNamara, The Fog of War; Keisha Castle-Hughes, Whale Rider; Oksana Akinshina, Lilya 4-Ever; Sol Kyung-gu, Oasis; Tim Robbins, Mystic River; Miranda Richardson, Spider; Kati Outinen, The Man Without a Past; The Friedman Family, Capturing the Friedmans; The ensembles of Dogville and Raja

Memorable moments from the New York Film Festival:

- Hearing a packed audience of Americans cheer the bloody massacre at the end of Dogville.

- Seeing a security guard push aside Naomi Watts to make way for Susan Sarandon at the screening of Mystic River.

- Tsai Ming Liang's awkward post-screening exhortation for people to buy shares or sell tickets for Goodbye Dragon Inn. With his shaved head and characteristically charismatic, tranquil demeanor, was he parodying a Buddhist sage stumping for temple donations? I sure hope it was just that...

Favorite retrospective: Lincoln Center's historic, comprehensive month-long tribute to Yasujiro Ozu. Runner up: the long overdue but not nearly comprehensive retro of the legendary Shaw Brothers' classics -- they put the Art in martial arts movies.

Directors whom I've gotten coziest with in the past year (other than Ozu): John Ford (Fort Apache triggered a major re-evaluation of his work for me), Robert Bresson (his mystery holds no limits for me), John Cassavetes and Nicholas Ray (anyone else think these two are a tandem?), Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, Kenji Mizoguchi, Orson Welles, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Chang Cheh, Seijun Suzuki (thank you Stephen Teo for your article), Fritz Lang, Ingmar Bergman, and the all-but-forgotten writer/director Robert Rossen.

Great directors I discovered for the first time: Jacques Demy, Sergio Leone, the great Czech directors of the 60s, Bruno Dumont and Lynne Ramsay.

Rarest gems encountered: Sadao Yamanaka's Humanity and Paper Balloons, one of the finest Japanese films I've ever seen, Corey Yuen's outrageous Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan, Charles Burnett's Killer of Sheep (an independent film in the truest sense), and Guru Dutt's feverish musical Pyaasa.