Robert's Picks: Top Films viewed in 2004

NOTE: Expanded reviews of these films can be found at Robert's Picks--Films viewed in 2004

1. Million Dollar Baby	11. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter . . . and Spring (South Korea, 2003)
2. The Sea Inside (Spain)	12. Dying at Grace (Canada, 2003)
3. The Aviator	13. Finding Neverland (UK)
4. Sideways	14. Valentin (Argentina, 2002)
5. Vera Drake (UK)	15. Spanglish
6. Oasis (South Korea, 2002)	16. Door in the Floor
7. A Very Long Engagement (France)	17. Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself (Denmark, UK, 2002)
8. I’m Not Scared (Italy, Spain, 2003)	18. The Twilight Samurai (Japan, 2002)
9. Maria Full of Grace	19. The Woodsman
10. Closer	20. Fahrenheit 911

1. Million Dollar Baby.  Directed by Clint Eastwood.  The magic in this film begins early with the scene that captures us.  The old trainer, Frankie, won’t touch the young woman boxing prospect, Maggie (Hilary Swank), even though she keeps after him.  In so many films an early scene captures our imagination and commemorates our decision to commit ourselves to the characters.  In this film, the scene occurs when Maggie is working a punching bag late at night in the gym.  The director plays a simple piano melody to underscore the importance of the moment.  The first time it’s played through one key at a time; but the second time a sub-woofer-like fully orchestrated bass line plays under it and magnifies its emotional punch.  We are hooked.  The old trainer’s friend, Eddie (Morgan Freeman), begins to give the young woman advice on how to attack the punching bag.  Up to this point in the film I was interested, but not committed.  Now I was committed.  I wanted to watch the rest of the story unfold.  And this emotional response began with an emotional response to the right music. 

Frankie is an original character.  He thinks he is past his prime.  His one last hope for a title fight, a young African American boxer he trained for 8 years, walks out on him because he knows that Frankie is afraid to give him a chance at a title fight.  Frankie has walked that road before, with a tragic outcome.  Now his first rule of boxing is to tell his fighter, “Protect yourself at all times.”  Of course, he only says that because he feels he has failed to protect his fighters in the past. He loses his protégé one scene after he commits himself to train the young woman.  So the film is already about an old man that is given a second chance to grab the brass ring.  He never would have imagined it would be by training a woman.  But times have changed.  And finally he changes with the times. 

I kept writing in my notes, “Where is this all headed?”  I could not believe it would be a conventional story of the underdog that wins the title, a simple tale of redemption and glory.  What works in an Eastwood film are the things that are felt—the mood of a scene, the warmth of a longtime relationship between a trainer and his old second, and the gritty atmosphere of a locale where the two old men have spent years together.  (The gym, by the way, is known as “the Hit Pit.”)  Then there is the remarkable voice of Morgan Freeman in voice-over, a reprise of the approach used in The Shawshank Redemption.  Ah, notice the word in that title—redemption—is this film going to be one about redemption?  What kind of redemption will be required? Who will be redeemed?  That mellifluous bass voice of that old actor was music to my ears in this film.  I preferred the atmosphere, and the sense of destiny that underlay the action in this film, compared to that of Shawshank.  In that earlier film the ending was too perfect, too much of a fantasy to stick to the ribs.  But here—I had a hunch that any redemption would come with a cost.

Another joy in this film was to grasp the way the young woman handled Frankie like a fighter handles her opponent in the ring.  She knew how to get what she wanted from Frankie.  He had a lousy relationship with his daughter—and that relationship is never explained (no need to be specific).  This boxer becomes a surrogate daughter, just as he becomes her surrogate father.  She works him, with a jab here and a blow to body there, and she gets her way.  She gets her first fight.  She gets her title fight.  And she exacts even more from him before the film is over.  What works here is that beneath all of her wheedling and manipulating of Frankie is a strong relationship, based upon love and intimacy, between this old man and this young woman.  In many respects, he is her father, and she is his daughter.  

Finally, we get the title match we have been waiting for—or at least, the climax we think we have been waiting for.  It does not work out the way we expect it to work out.  And here is where my review has to shut down, in a sense, because the film takes a drastic turn.  What keeps us going here is the intense and radiating love between them throughout these scenes.  Frankie does not leave her.  Frankie faces a new challenge, and he faces a tough fighter—his new protégé.  And she will win this fight, just as she won the others.  In one scene, after the young woman has decimated one of her “opponents,” Frankie comes into her room and says, “Someone ought to count to ten.”  We have a new problem here, and Frankie seeks advice from a number of quarters.  Everyone he talks to listens to him, and everything they say makes sense.  That’s rare for a Hollywood-type movie.  There are no villains in this part of the film.  Late in the film, we find out the function of the Morgan Freeman character’s narration, and we are not surprised.  The film ends with a simple scene, and no dialogue, and the main piano theme plays again, and then there is that orchestration to support it, and we feel as if our hearts are broken.  That’s how you make a film.  Despite some qualms I have about how we as the audience have been manipulated by certain twists in the plot, I would say the film still satisfies because it deals with basic human emotions and the dilemmas associated with being human: the way love flows between people, the way events change our destiny, the way redemption comes in the least expected ways, and the way love has a way of making sense out of the craziest twists of plot.

2. The Sea Inside. Directed by Alejandro Amenábar (Spain).  I was mesmerized by this story, based upon the true story of Ramón Sampedro, who fought for more than 25 years to have the right to die with dignity.  The key to my enjoyment of this film was watching HOW it was made, how each section of the film was seamlessly tied to other sections.  Amenábar’s writing and direction (even his music) was astounding.  Sampedro has an incredible sense of unity with the sea—even though it is where his accident occurred (when diving into a shallow bay).  In one of the best sections of this or any other film I saw this year, the director creates a montage (using one of my favorite pieces of music, Puccini’s Nessum Dorma, while the quadraplegic imagines himself standing up from his bed, jumping out the window, and flying low over the landscape and around hillsides and bends in the mountains and rivers and ending up standing before the sea.  And when the music ends, my dear students, the montage ends—and the best ones end with an ironic image.  In this case he is back in his bed, and we know he has not moved an inch from where he lay before he imagined this fantasy.

This film is a love story, even more deeply felt than the love story portrayed in Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby.  Here Sampedro’s birth family and extended family love him in the one way he needs to be loved—they honor his request to die and they let him go.  One of the most important scenes in the film occurs when Sampedro decides to keep fighting in the Spanish courts for the right to active euthanasia, even after a scene between him and a potential lover that seems to suggest he does not need to continue his legal struggle.  Something in him knew that it was right for him to continue the struggle, to act on behalf of other disabled people, or people suffering from terminal illness, to have the right to choose death just as others have the right to choose life.  Then there is the acting of Javier Bardeem. 

Sampedro is the most vital and engaging character in the film.  In spite of his disability, he is freed from many of the conventions of daily life.  He can flirt openly with women, he can speak his mind on any number of topics.  And yet he is not doing so out of either alienation or bitterness.  He says early in the film that although he is always smiling, he learned early on (after the accident) that he could cry in those smiles.  He is more than what he appears to be.  Why does it take a disability for us to see that people are more than the sum of their parts?  This film is a rich mine of images, montages, acting, writing, direction, music, sentiment, and purpose.  Sooner or later, everything in life comes down to whether or not we can see people as individuals.  This film offers us that lesson with great sensitivity and humanity.  See this man.  Understand this man.  Listen to this man.  Do not judge this man.  Learn from this man.  Do not sentimentalize or idealize him.  He is not all quadriplegics.  He is Ramón Sampedro, one person, with one consciousness and one history.  And yet he is greater than this.  He inspires, he frustrates, he is limited, and he knows no limits. 

3. The Aviator. Directed by Martin Scorsese.  I was delighted to see this film, because I think Scorsese found the right subject—an obsessive Type-A male personality—for this film.  Everyone remembers the Howard Hughes from Melvin and Howard (1980), as magnificently played by Jason Robards, Jr.  Here we have the young artist/engineer/aviator version of Howard Hughes at the dawn of the Hollywood sound era.  The reviewer for The New Yorker maintained that Scorsese found his Citizen Kane in this story of Howard Hughes—and I think he is right.  But beyond that, Scorsese had to make this film, because the first breakthrough Hughes made was as a film director in Hollywood, making both a silent and a sound version (after 1929) of Hell’s Angels.  Who better than Scorsese, whose greatest accomplishment was Raging Bull, to make a film about a raging original of a director, a director’s director, Howard Hughes?  Scorsese understands the mind of this kind of genius.  The film breaks into two parts: one is a fast-paced, energetic tale of one of the world’s richest men, a young man that moves to California for a “fresh and clean start” and astounds the world with his vision of creativity and innovation.  He is an original character, a real American, an individual—and he gets his way.  He spends money like there is no tomorrow (shades of Citizen Kane), and he surrounds himself with loyal followers that help him make his dreams come true. 

The key relationship in this first half of the film is between Hughes and Katherine Hepburn (played luxuriously by Cate Blanchett, one of my favorite actors).  The great scene of many between the two of them is the one where Howard takes her for a ride in one of his planes and suddenly hands over the controls to her.  That scene is slick, sexy, and revealing.  Even better was that Hepburn  possessed what no woman in Citizen Kane had—the ability to be an emotional, and even a physical, match for the Big Man on Campus.  She was his equal in every way—and it worked for both of them. Another treat early in the film was Scorsese’s masterful use of POV shots, showing Howard Hughes, larger than life in the foreground, standing before the masterpiece that was his early life.   

I kept responding to another key in the depiction of this character.  Through and through Howard Hughes was portrayed as an engineer. I think he was most comfortable around engineers.  He talked their talk, and he walked their walk.  How does Scorsese tie together his Hepburn affair with his identity as an engineer?  In one of the great cuts in the film—he cuts from the culmination of the airplane scene, where Howard and Hepburn recline on a sofa and he strokes her leg, to a shot of Hughes stroking the body of an experimental airplane—as if the steel skin of the plane was like a woman’s leg.  What a moment in this film!  And then the test flight in this plane—moving through space at 352 mph—an unheard of speed at that time.  Planes really were his women!  They were the objects of his desire, and he was never happier, more fulfilled, more relaxed, more in control, more sure of himself—than when he was in the cockpit of a plane that he had helped design. 

Then the wheels begin to come off as part two of the film begins.  His obsessive-compulsive hand washing kicks in.  Hughes will never regain that buoyancy of youth, riches, invention, and success that he once experienced.  After he splits with Hepburn, Hughes is shown burning every shred of their relationship—and all of his clothes—in a ritualistic cleansing by fire of his spiritual self.  No more Hepburn?  No problem.  Off to another fresh start, he thinks.  But cleansings with fire are not the way you resurrect your spirit.  The rest is a downward spiral, and yet at the end of the film there is a wonderful respite in a brief scene of Hughes regaining, for only a short time, some of the inner resources he once possessed.  The key to the film, I think, is that Hughes is shown as greater than the sum of his parts.  The signs of his undoing are present within his enthusiastic, zealous, and ambitious self that dominates in the first part of the film.  DiCaprio is perfect for this role; I believed his youthful exuberance, his passion for creativity and engineering, and his dark, secret obsession. 

4. Sideways.  Directed by Alexander Payne.  The key to this film is that from the beginning to the end it takes a consistent path with its students.  It never flinches, and at the end of the film you feel as if you believe what happened throughout.  Every character is realized in three dimensions.  One of the key details in the film: the two main characters were freshmen roommates in the dorm at San Diego State University.  Think of the maturity level of 18-year-olds.  Then think of two men in their 30s, one a failed novelist and the other a failed soap-opera-actor (hanging on with some acting in commercials).  But never forget those 18-year-olds.  They are like the ghosts of the men’s older selves. 

And an overriding emotion in this film is sadness—because of failed dreams, the smallness of men’s lives, and the capacity for self-delusion in the minds of these characters.  So the two men have one week to tour the wine country before the “jock” of the pair, Jack, gets married.  Note that Jack is marrying “up”—the beautiful daughter of a wealthy immigrant.  But the film belongs to Miles, a man with a hangdog look that expects the worst to happen.  Miles is played brilliantly by Paul Giamatti, in a role that is strikingly similar to that of last year’s Harvey Pekar in American Splendor.  What is Jack’s goal on this trip? To get laid.  What is Miles’ goal on this trip?  To show Jack the joys of wine tasting and to begin to heal from the two years of not getting over his divorce.  So there you have it—and the film is consistent to how these two men work at their goals. 

I loved Payne’s About Schmidt (2002), and yet I did not think he moved that character far enough along in his healing process.  That film ends brilliantly, but I still felt it lacked sufficient follow-through.  In this film Payne figures out what to do with Miles’ story, and it works.  Jack was one-dimensional, a lousy actor, a self-involved and infantile adult, and at heart a raging misogynist.  But with Miles there is hope.  And that hope is fulfilled in his delightful relationship with a woman he dates on the trip (Jack would term it as “picking up chicks”).  Granted, Jack knows something about his old friend Miles.  But he knows it cynically.  He can offer little to bring Miles out of his tailspin after the divorce.

Wine is a major character and a major metaphor in the film.  At one point Miles describes the pinot grape working hard to become “the pinot grape he needs to be.”  But he is describing himself. We learn about wine, and we learn about maturity. Educated people find educated people with similar tastes.  Relationships take time to ripen.  We have no doubt that Jack’s marriage will not last.  But we sense that Miles’ relationship with Maya has the makings of a fine wine, to be savored and enjoyed for a long time.  One of the sweetest scenes in the film takes place at the house of one of the two women they have dinner with.  Sex is happening on the other side of the house.  What pressure on Miles and Maya—to perform.  Instead, they talk, and later Miles goes to the bathroom.  Time to leave.  He returns from the bathroom, goes to the kitchen, where Maya is rinsing some dishes at the sink, and takes her in his arms and kisses her.  Even better, she reciprocates, but then gently closes this conversation and prepares to leave as well.  That’s maturity for you.  And yet before they part, she asks to read his novel—an act of such intimacy that it means even more than the kiss.  You just know this relationship is going to work.

The film ends with a perfect Keystone Kops sort of climax, revealing the absurdity of Jack’s vision of manhood, and yet showing even more deeply Miles’ absolute commitment to his friendship with Jack.  I won’t ruin this scene—safe to say, it is priceless.  And Payne ends his film with Miles acting on his newfound determination and identity.

5. Vera Drake. Directed by Mike Leigh (UK).  For a long time Leigh has been one of my favorite directors.  He creates here an indelible portrait of a middle-aged woman who serves her family and her neighbors as a good servant and a good soul—and who suffers for it because society will not accept individual judgments on complex social issues. Early in the film she is portrayed as a hard-working wife and mother that spends cleaning houses and doing good deeds and running errands for disabled neighbors and elders.  She likes to drop by and say, “Would you like a cup of tea?”  She is a small but vital light in the darkness of so many people’s lives.  But Leigh withholds for some time another task that Vera Drake dedicates herself to.  She is, after all, an abortionist.  She looks at her role as one of “helping these girls.”  She tells them, “I’m here to help you.” They need help because they are pregnant and do not want to have a baby. So she stops by, when requested by a go-between friend of hers, and induces the abortion, describes what will happen eventually as the abortion progresses, and then leaves the girls alone.  Vera Drake is not portrayed as either a heroine or a pro-abortion missionary.  She simply is what she does.  That may be disturbing to some people, especially in today’s political climate.  But I think her character is represented fairly—exactly what films, a subversive art form in that regard, does best.  That is, films portray the individual human being making individual decisions based on her own value system.  That means we, as viewers, have work to do when it comes to watching a film like this one.  What are we are to do with this character?

Leigh knows how to construct scenes, get good work out of his actors, and create memorable images.  He is a master of the art of the shot; and at the same time, when there is a cut, it has an impact because it moves the narrative forward in particular and sometimes painful ways. Leigh also creates characters that are more fully realized than almost all Hollywood films.  You believe in these people.  You suffer with these people, and you grieve with these people.  You understand that they are as trapped and as limited as most people are in this complicated world.  The film takes place just after the end of WWII.  One of the most beautiful scenes in the film was when the family invites a potential suitor over to their cramped apartment.  The homely daughter sits next to him on the tiny sofa and looks for all the world like she will never experience happiness.  And yet you know that the shy man next to her eventually will propose to her and they will join the ranks of the middle class as upright citizens that deserve everything they get. 

All hell breaks loose on the day when Vera’s family is gathered to celebrate the engagement of her daughter to the shy young man we saw earlier.  And there is a double happiness, because Vera’s brother-in-law announces that his wife is pregnant.  There is a knock on the door, and the police have come to take Vera Drake away so that she can face the crime she has committed. What does she say? “I know why you’re here.  Cause of what I do.  I help young girls out.  When they can’t manage.  When they’re pregnant.”  When the police investigator says, “You perform abortions,” Vera replies, “That’s not what I do.  That’s what you call it.” 

The rest of the film focuses on the effects on the family of Vera’s arrest.  There is some dissension within the family, but her husband remains strong even while Vera deflates further.  Then at a Christmas “celebration,” a gloomy time for the family, it is the future son-in-law that says, “This is the best Christmas I’ve had in a long time.”  God bless him, but it does provide comic relief.  It ends, of course, as you would expect.  Justice is swift, and justice is blind.  But in a brief scene in the prison, Vera talks with other women who were sentenced as abortionists.  None seem to be monsters.  They interact warmly, supported by the common bond between them. The last scene, dinner at home with the family, is filled with sadness. 

6. The Oasis.  Directed by  (South Korea, 2002).  This film teaches us that the film-viewing experience is a process.  Begin with a simple premise.  A young man gets out of jail—sent there after he killed someone in a hit-and-run accident.  He seems barely able to fend for himself, as if he were retarded.  His brother gets him a job.  He brings a gift basket to a house in a run-down neighborhood and delivers it to the family of the person he killed.  They are shocked and throw him out. After the young man leaves, the couple pack up and leave a severely disabled young woman—the man’s sister—behind.  This young woman has cerebral palsy.  In a long scene the young woman watches tiny white butterflies fluttering through the room.  How they got there is a mystery. 

At that moment, I had this thought: Why am I going to sit here and watch a film about a severely disabled young woman and an obviously mentally disabled young man?  I did not think there was sufficient dramatic intensity to warrant my continued attention.  What can happen between these two people that would interest me? Later, the plot moves forward. Eventually the young man, obsessed with the disabled woman, begins to hang around her place.  He sneaks into her apartment and begins to touch her and kiss her inappropriately.  He grabs her breasts and begins to rape her.  She passes out.  He runs away.  This scene was one of the most difficult I have watched in cinema.  We empathize with the vulnerability of the physically disabled woman.  The young man’s act seems unforgivable.  And yet after that scene I wanted to know how their relationship would turn out. 

And the film has additional layers extending beyond the framework of this simple boy-meets-girl theme.  Later, the young woman’s brother and sister-in-law drive her to a modern apartment—where they live—so that when a social worker makes an official visit, they are able to prove that their occupancy of this fine subsidized apartment is perfectly legal because it is where the qualifying occupant—the disabled woman—lives.  This blatant example of fraud is later connected to an example of a more heinous fraud committed by the young man’s family.  So there are layers to this film, peeled away like the layers of an onion.  The film proves that the film-viewing process requires us to engage in that peeling-away.  Things are not often what they appear.  Remember those white butterflies?  Later in the film the young woman is watching a white dove flying about in her apartment.  How could that be?  When the young man comes to visit her, the young woman’s concentration is broken—and the dove disappears.  Then I realized that the white butterflies were generated by the young woman’s imagination.  She exercised her imagination in order to maintain her sanity and entertain herself.  She had such powers of concentration that she was able to generate what appeared to be three-dimensional objects. 

As the film continues, the young man tries to persuade his family to accept her as his girlfriend—with disastrous results, of course. And then comes the revelation of a family secret that helps us understand why the young man was compelled to bring that gift basket to the family upon leaving prison.  The ending of the film was perfect—and it reminded me of the endings of films from the 1970s, where the societal powers of conformity and regulation thwart young lovers.  What can young lovers do to thumb their nose at these mind-control games?  In this film family secrets reveal the depths of folly as well as the heights of passion.

7. A Very Long Engagement. Directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet (France).  Audrey Tatou is an extraordinary actor.  In this film the “cuteness” that has plagued her is restrained, and she bursts forth like a flower in the fullness of her character. This film zips along at a steady pace, never out of control, but often zooming along with flashes of visual creativity.  Tatou’s character Mathilde seeks information on the alleged death of her fiancée at the end of WWI.  I was impressed with the director’s recreation of the trenches in France in WWI.  Not since Stanley Kubrick’s Paths of Glory have I seen the trenches portrayed with such horrific detail and realism.  The film succeeds because of its masterful storytelling, and its grasp of the long reach of human affection.  The story she hears is that he was one of five soldiers forcibly sent into No Man’s Land after each of them had suffered self-inflicted wounds (in order to avoid active duty).  All reports say that Menoche, her fiancée, was killed.  Now this means four other stories have to be pinned down in order to verify, finally, that Menoche is dead. 

So what happened to four of the five men?  Mathilde is indomitable in her will to search for the truth.  Along the way she learns that some of the secrets are ones the government wishes to withhold from the public.  Jeunet has always loved grotesques, and this film is no different.  Each of the characters is a kind of caricature—and yet they seem believable and three-dimensional.  Aspects of the film also reminded me of a detective story.  Jodi Foster plays a brief role as the wife of one of the four men.  Her performance is stunning—but so is everyone else’s.  Finally we return to the childhood of Menoche and Mathilde.  The young boy of ten is fascinated with Mathilde’s disability (from polio), and in one lovely moment he carries her astride his shoulders up the circular staircase of the town’s lighthouse so that she can enjoy the view from the top.  Years later they experience their first sexual encounter, and she holds his hand on her breast and suddenly we are back where we started in this film, the first scene—and this is what storytelling is about!  One of the many motifs in this film is when Mathilde mutters, under her breath, “If such and such happens, then he will come back alive.”  It’s like a crazy game she plays in order to hold onto the hope that he has survived—in the face of overwhelming evidence that he did not survive. 

Inevitably, we all want the story to end the right way—with Mathilde discovering that Menoche was not killed and the two living happily ever after.  Of course, real life is not supposed to end like the movies, is it?  I can say that happiness is a relative term, not something pure like driven snow, but something that comes with mixed blessings.  I will say that this film’s ending is practically perfect.  All is revealed, and what is revealed is deeply satisfying, if not fully resolved.

8. I’m Not Scared.  Directed by Gabriele Salvatores. (Italy, Spain 2003).  The film begins with a powerful image—of children running through fields of grain.  They are free, hopeful, floating, and absolutely safe. Compare this image to one of a group of children playing together—and making up rules that reward meanness and cruelty.  That image of entrapment contrasts to the early image of freedom. Early in the film the camera is placed within a cave-like hole in the earth.  Then the camera raises and reveals the field of grain that spreads out beyond the hole.  The key point about what happens next is that our main character, the boy Michele, is a good kid.  He has a sense of morals.  Soon he discovers a boy chained at the bottom of this hole.  The boy looks like a wild child, filthy and confused.  But he asks for water—an elemental need—and Michele brings him water.  What amazed me about this simple plot was that these two boys form an intimate relationship that surprises both of them.  Michele is the only boy in this poverty-stricken area that has a boy in a hole.  He has his own private captive.

Soon a small detail reveals another horrifying plot point—a bowl found in the hole matches the bowls in the kitchen of the parents of Michele.  How is the boy-in-the-hole, named Filippo, revealed to us cinematically?  First we see his face, then his body, then the chain attached to his ankle, and then he speaks metaphorically when he says, “I’m dead.”  Amazing, then, Michele’s response to this information.  He imagines that his parents had two boys—one blonde and one ugly (himself)—and the parents buried the blonde child in the hole for some reason.  Only a child could imagine that idea.  But soon the reality of this scheme becomes evident, and although it is more mundane than the act of the boy’s imagination, it still is horrible to imagine.

What made the film special, through all of this plot development, was the ongoing process of bonding and intimacy between these two boys.  In some respects they were alone in the world, occupying their own Garden of Eden.  Michele is elated.  He has his own private treasure, someone that depends upon him as if he were its guardian angel.  Of course, Michele will not be able to maintain his secret.  He has to tell someone, and eventually the most horrifying plot twist of all is sprung—in the climactic scene three characters are linked in a complex dance of emotional release and missed opportunities.  What is the meaning of that last scene?  To what extent is it realistic?  To what extent is it a visionary experience based on the desires of one of the characters?  Whatever the case, the ending will leave you in a reflective, questioning mood.

9. Maria Full of Grace.  Directed by Joshua Marston.  This character-driven drama exposes the desperation of Third-World poverty and the bonding of women going through a similar ordeal.  The early scenes reveal the dynamics of Maria’s family life in Colombia, the oppression of her work life, and the lack of intimacy in her relationship with her boyfriend.  In these early scenes, and in many of the later key scenes of the film, the camera simulates hand-held shooting, the image slightly shaky, as if unstable and unscripted.  This style places one in the midst of the action, and there is an immediacy and visceral quality to the scenes.  But for it to work we have to believe in the characters, and I certainly did so in this film.  I say the film was “character-driven” because plot arises from the decisions characters make, and decisions are driven by the characters’ values and internal strengths or weaknesses.  In this case Maria is a strong, determined woman.  Her best friend, Blanca, is a follower, more easily manipulated and dominated by others. 

The major plot point in the film is simple: Maria leaves her dead-end job and—because she is pregnant, and there is no hope of a relationship with the baby’s father—she agrees to become a mule, someone that ferries heroin pellets to the USA by ingesting the pellets in Colombia and then defecating them at the other end of the journey.  One of the main reasons the film works is that all aspects of the process of this part of the drug trade are revealed in detail.  Another reason the film works is that this actor’s face dominates the screen.  Her eyes conveyed a look of sadness, rage, desperation, determination and vulnerability—all at appropriate times in the storyline.

In so many ways the film allows us to settle in and watch the processes involved in this aspect of the drug trade.  One day the man who has introduced her to the drug dealer drops her off at a pharmacy, but upstairs the pharmacist is revealed as one of the drug dealers, and Maria is invited to sit down and begin swallowing the heroin pellets.  That scene is rife with tension.  I could not help but squirm in my seat as I watched her at first retch, and then—determined—swallow the pellet.  A quick cut compresses the time between the first pellet and almost the 40^th pellet, and she struggles to begin swallowing another 23 pellets. 

On the plane to America, Maria befriends other women that are also acting as mules; and her loyalty and devotion to these women are impressive. Of course, something has to go wrong in order to illustrate that things do go wrong on these deals.  Throughout these scenes, Maria reveals more survival skills, and the Hispanic community is portrayed as taking care of their own.  The kindness of one of her relatives, the wisdom of an Hispanic man that appears to be a trouble shooter for all sorts of problems (jobs, housing, etc.), and the help provided by a woman’s clinic all affirm Maria as she tries to sort out what to do next.  These are all good and honest people.  In a way they mentor Maria in terms of seeking the American Dream. 

10. Closer. Directed by Mike Nichols. Shades of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and Carnal Knowledge. Those two films should be required viewing to prepare oneself for viewing this film. Keep it simple-a four-character play. In this case, the men are brutes (one more so than the other), and the women are used (one more so than the other). I was dazzled by the acting in this film, and I was dazzled by Mike Nichols' able direction of every scene. I was impressed with its insights into the secrets of the human heart. The second scene has Dan, the Jude Law character, being photographed by Anna. Dan has recently published a book called The Aquarium, about his relationship with Alice, the Natalie Portman character. The art of the photographer, in this scene, was a blending of flirtation and game playing. Each click of the shutter was like a metallic kiss, promising more. Little wonder that Dan flirts back, and the two end up kissing. The third scene, the porn chat room ruse by Dan, the Jude Law character (pretending to be a woman), was masterful. The dialogue, written by the author of the original play, was brilliant. Their interaction was like a chess game. It was a pathetic fantasy. . What we have here are four characters with different approaches to life. Larry believes in "red and tooth in claw." He is a Darwinist; he believes in evolution. But he needs to read The Dummy's Guide to Moral Values in order to set himself straight. He is brutal, and he believes in revenge. He also has a horrible handicap-working-class guilt and low self-esteem-both of which he deflects by a simple and straightforward mean streak. And by the end of the film you realize that his humiliation, at the hands of Dan (in the chat room ruse) must be vindicated. Dan is also easy to figure out. In the first scene of the film he meets a beautiful young woman, Alice, and he falls in love. The problem is that he feels he was never happier than at this moment. Why? Because at that moment he had this woman all to himself-he was the perfect rescuer, friend, and lover. He was in control. His needs were met. But poor Dan was unprepared for what happens in the real world when this response to love is your default position. He is doomed to repeat trying to accomplish that same perfect moment, time after time. Is that why some people suffer multiple divorces-because each new relationship is going to be the perfect one? In one of the last scenes of the film, Dan's values come back to haunt him. I kept asking myself, "How about some real intimacy from these people?" What is a world when the words "I love you" means nothing. The women were the interesting characters. But Anna, who ends up with Larry, is shown briefly lying in bed with him near the end of the film-and the look on her face is painful to observe. She is unhappy, unfulfilled, and trapped with a dangerous man. Only Alice makes her escape from this ménage-a-quatre. She leaves Dan at the end of the film, and we see her walking the streets of New York City, and she is the object of everyone's gaze. She is free, she is beautiful, and she reclaims her identity.

11. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter . . . and Spring. Dir. Kim Ki Duck. (South Korea, 2003). Here is how film works. You make five films, one for each season. Each film is an entire film in itself. That fifth film is the key-because it begins a new cycle of human life. As the film for each season unfolds, you realize that life is not complete until the new cycle begins. One thing about old age-life continues in the next generation. That's another reason why the film ends with a new beginning. The last of the life of the old is in the first of the life of the new. The film's premise is simple. A monk lives on a tiny raft-a Buddhist temple-moored in the middle of a lake. A child leaves with the monk. The little boy lives a good life. He plays and plays. One day he ties a string around a fish and frog-great fun, but mean-spirited play. He also ties a rock to a snake. When the old monk discovers the boy's pranks, he ties a stone around the boy's waist so that he can endure what he made the animals endure. The old man warns the boy that he must find the animals he harassed; and if one of them is dead, "You will carry a stone in your heart forever." The boy searches, but he finds only the frog still alive. He cries. The old man watches him. Now comes summer. The boy is 15, and one day a mother brings her young daughter to the temple because the girl's soul is suffering. As I recount this simple story, I have to note that the filmmaking was elegant with a simple, straightforward editing track. Shots were perfectly composed, often with balanced compositions. The film moved easily to the rhythms of the characters. Each of the seasons cast different light and a different slant on the look of the film. What power the seasons have in connecting us to our own inner lives. You know what happens in summer. The boy and the girl will fall in love-or at least, fall in lust. The response of the old monk-the girl must leave. Frustrated at this separation, the boy leaves too. When autumn comes the monk is even older, and now he has a white cat. The old man learns that his former pupil, now a man of 30, is a fugitive. He fled after murdering his wife. Guess what happens next? So fall is about rage and eventually restoration. The former pupil is emotionally stricken by what happened. The old man withholds judgment. In a sense, he thinks, "What did you expect?" Then in an incredible scene the old man comes up with an idea for the man to restore himself-or at least to rid himself of the anger that is disabling him. It involves the white cat, black ink, hundreds of Chinese characters, and the murder knife the young man brought with him. Justice is served eventually, and this section ends in a perfect way-even after the police come they wait for the young man to finish his act of self-restoration. Then they take him away-and the white cat leaves with the boat. Left alone now, the old monk has nothing left to accomplish, nothing left to prove. What happens next is a perfect Buddhist moment, an astounding image of Nirvana.Now winter comes. Of course, the cinematography resonates to the snow and ice that surrounds the temple and the lake. Guess who returns to this temple? Remember how the film began-with an old monk and a small child. Guess what has to happen again. Our man of 30 is now a man of 45. He sets out to discipline his mind and body and take over from where the old monk left off. The long ending section of this film-within-a-film connects the new monk's actions to the time as a child when his tutor tied a stone to a rope around his waist as punishment. One has to see this section to believe it. It is another perfect Buddhist moment as the new monk carries a bodhisattva, an image of the perfect Mahayana Buddha-the one that has attained nirvana but remains in the world to nurture others as a symbol of his compassion-to a high peak miles above the lake and its temple. Finally, there is spring. There are only a few shots to this section-but we know that the cycle begins again. And in this cycle there will be wisdom, learning, flowering of the heart, failure of the heart, restoration of the heart, fullness of being, and eventually a yielding toward another cycle as before.

12. Dying at Grace. Directed by Allan King. (Canada, 2003). This documentary ran almost three hours in length, and yet I was ready to see more when the film ended. King follows five people (four older adults) dying at Grace Hospital in Toronto, Canada. His technique, exclusively, is direct cinema-much like the American documentary master, Frederick Wiseman. That is, the camera is present in all of the scenes and records the interactions of the family members and staff members with the dying people. The director does not add a sound track. There is no narration and no voice-over. Viewers are required to observe what the camera has observed and thus make judgments about the truths that are revealed in each of the scenes. In several scenes we watch nurses audiotape reports on the status of patients. In that way King simulates voice-over narration-but done in a way that is true to direct cinema documentary. Gradually we come to know the patients and we come to know the nurses and doctors. In a film like this you notice the power of human touch-when a doctor or a nurse touches a patient or when a family member holds a patient's hands. The Salvation Army runs the hospital, and often there are references to faith issues for these patients. The medical staff is not afraid to talk about end-time concerns. There is little evangelizing in the film; it is a given that faith issues may be broached in the ongoing conversations and interactions relating to patient care. The first case is an old woman, and her story is one of loss. She does not believe in God. At one point she says, "I'd like to believe." She concludes, "I feel finished." Her responses, like the others that follow, appear to be honest and forthcoming. Much of what has been hidden will be revealed. Viewers become aware of sounds-the ventilator that regulates breathing, the sound of muted conversations, the sound of footsteps, and the white noise of a hospital. Viewers also experience "direct cinema moments"-that is, intimate glimpses that reveal essential truths about human beings and their values. For instance, early in the film two women in wheelchairs interact quietly; in another scene a woman visits her former doctor-and the comfort of touch between them is revelatory; an old woman goes to a beauty parlor and gets a permanent-a simple act that raises her spirits; a father breaks down and cries when he is faced with his son's dying and tells the doctor, "I think he's ready"; a father clings to his son's dead body. The second patient is Eda, another older woman. She wants visits only from her brother-in-law. "I can trust him." The monotony of life in the hospital is broken when the old woman is taken by van to another hospital to visit with her doctor. This woman never gives up hope. She expects that someday she will leave the hospital and return home. Along the way Eda hears increasingly bad news about her physical condition. But it is only after she hears bad news after a CAT Scan that she seems to collapse emotionally. The third patient is Lloyd, a middle-aged man whose parents attend to him. Lloyd is depressed; and in your gut you just know he is going to have a bad time with his dying. And he does. Listening to the awful sound of his labored breathing was the most difficult part of watching this film. I was shocked when Lloyd seemed to rally-after what seemed to be his last few days of life. Scenes of these patients' dying are intercut with scenes of the fourth patient, Richard, a former heroin addict. He talks openly about a life of depravity and admits he was a whacked-out guy. He is a tough character, but his shining eyes draw the viewer to him. We want to hear what he has to say. "I'm getting sick and tired of this life," he admits. One by one these three individuals worsen. Lloyd's slow dying is watched over by his parents, and over and over they say, "He's okay. He's okay," as if to affirm their faith in the meaning of this suffering. A doctor visits Eda one night and tells her that it's all right if she wants to die. Breath becomes all. Rick dies off camera. We watch Lloyd die. We see two spasms, and then no more breathing. When we see breathing cease, we are shocked at first-as if we mean to say, "Where are the breaths? Why are they not continuing? We just saw him breathing. How can he not be breathing now?" Finally, the toughest one of the five patients, Eda, dies on camera. We watch her regular breathing, a rattle in her voice, and then there is one last gasp. We stare at her. We watch her eyes. We listen, and we are transfixed by this act of dying.I was impressed throughout this film at the absolute intimacy of medical treatment, as well as the intimacy of the experience of dying. In this film we are given a chance to share unbelievably intimate moments; and no moment is more intimate than the moment of dying. I found myself breathing in rhythm with the dying patient as I stared at their face in close-up. And when the person died, something in me died as well as I realized that I-the watcher-was still alive, while that person was now dead forever. There is magic and mystery in talking about that moment when life yields to death, when breath is no longer taken in and then expired. The human being, at the moments before death, is fragile and yet beautiful. This film allows us to see that fragility and beauty. The film allows us to say good-bye to these patients, an important step in coming to grips with the meaning of their existence.

13. Finding Neverland. Directed by Marc Foster (UK). I make it a rule to enjoy whatever Johnny Depp does. He is an American original, chameleon-like, the kind of actor that always surprises and delights. Early in this film his character, J. M. Barrie, the eventual creator of Peter Pan, goes off to the park and has a magical encounter with a young boy lying under his park bench. Inspired by the boy and other members of the boy's family, Barrie gives them a performance-directly from his fertile imagination. Not only has he found an audience-he has found a subject (his own repressed childhood) to mine for all of its treasures. Now most of the themes that pour out are fairly obvious: Barrie will become a surrogate father to these boys (whose father died), Barrie and his wife should have had children (but they didn't), Barrie's marriage is cold and dull (perhaps he will begin an affair with the boys' mother), Barrie will become a perfect father to these boys, Barrie's love for the boys will inspire the oldest son to act the role of the "father" when the time comes, and Barrie's imagination eventually will inspire little Peter to become the writer he wants to become. Now a major plot arrives when Barrie tells the boys' mother about the death of his own brother, James, when Barrie was only he eight years old. He tells her about Neverland, the imaginary place he escaped to in order to find solace from his grief. He has told no one about Neverland, not even his own wife. "Someday I'll take you there," he tells her. All has been sweetness and light, but now the boys' mother begins to cough-a universal sign in cinema that she is dying of tuberculosis. As I watched the interaction between Johnny Depp and the magnificent Kate Winslett, I realized that Johnny Depp loves to wear masks, to disguise his own face. He would make a great Phantom of the Opera, but in one respect he IS the phantom of the cinema. The film moves along, everything pleasing and appropriate, and the grief to come an inevitable part of the plot. We see Peter Pan rehearsed; we see the opening night of the play (and Barrie's stroke of genius-stacking the audience with 25 street urchins so that the adults are given permission to become children again in their role as members of the audience. But all of the film was at one emotional level when it is compared against the moment at which Neverland is revealed to the boys' mother. After telling Barrie she always wanted to go to Neverland, and after Peter tells his father figure, "You are Peter Pan," Barrie arranges for the dying woman to see the play right in her own home. Then there is the amazing moment that melted the audience, when a curtain goes up and the doors are opened to the garden in the back of the house: and there is Neverland, revealed in the fullness of Barrie's imagination. It was magic, I say! That scene was worth the price of the ticket, and it's a reminder of the power of cinema to move us emotionally to such an extent that we feel as if we, too, are transported to Neverland.

14. Valentín. Directed by Alejandro Agresti. (Argentina, 2002). I was won over by the young actor (and his character) in this film. He reminded me of an Argentinian version of Woody Allen's childhood characters-big thick black glasses, and a wisdom and insight beyond his years. His voice-over contributed to my understanding of his character. What a problem he faced! Here he is, a young boy, lonely, and with a grandmother as his primary caregiver. His grandfather died a year or two ago, his inconsistent and self-serving father visits irregularly, and later in the film we learn that his father brutalized the boy's mother and drove her away. A visit from the boy's uncle is the highlight of the early part of the film. The uncle brings a tape recorder! What a miracle of technology! The boy loves spending time with his uncle, and when the uncle leaves, Valentin clings to him-afraid to face life alone again. Valentín meets, by chance, a lovely blonde woman, and the two soon are bound by a common attraction. The basis of their relationship appears to be one part mother/son and one part girlfriend/boyfriend. But who is this young woman he meets? It turns out she is his father's latest girlfriend, and later in the film the two break up-because the young woman is Jewish-and the father could not imagine a relationship with a Jew. Along the way Valentín takes piano lessons from a rumpled young man who has broken up with his girlfriend. The young man is Jewish, and soon Valentine fixes on a solution to his problems. You guessed it! The young woman should fall in love with the piano teacher and become his de facto parents. Then Valentín will have a family again. The deliberate pacing of the film allows viewers to relate to, identify with, and become impressed with this young man's character. He is not afraid to take initiative. Valentín repeatedly is compelled to reevaluate his understanding of the truth of human relationships. He has to grow up, and he has to figure out a solution to his own problems. The adults in his world, especially his parents, are absent when they need to be present. They are worried about their own problems and seem incapable of dealing with the child's needs. Valentín blows up-and confesses his feelings of entrapment, only a few times in the film. Valentín's plot works, to the extent that it can work. Perhaps his new father and mother are more like an uncle an aunt as they relate to him (after his grandmother's death); but at least Valentín has succeeded in persuading adults to act like adults in the context of a child's needs. The key to the effectiveness of this film is the honest pain of the characters. We believe what they are going through. We believe what they are capable of, and we believe in a child who becomes the adult and teaches adults to grow up.

15. Spanglish, dir. James L. Brooks. Begin with a great comic script. Add to that an over-the-top, and yet believable performance, by Teá Leoni, a talented actress. Add to that a restrained performance by that icon of cool dumbness to young viewers-Adam Sandler. Add to that a straightforward, heartwarming performance by Paz Vega, a beautiful young Latino actress, and you have a hit. Brooks gets so many things right-especially the angst and desperation of self-indulgent yuppies who have perfect clothes and perfect kitchens and yet are clueless about the essentials of human relationships and family responsibility. Teá Leoni was an inspiration in this film. She was given a performance she could sink her teeth into-and I think she proved a point about acting. Sometimes over-the-top is not over-the-top. Sometimes over-the-top is the perfect note for the desperation of a character's inner life-someone emotionally wounded and definitely wound so tight you can almost see the stainless steel spring where her spine should be. One of the keys to understanding this film is to grasp how well Flor is portrayed as an intellectually and emotionally "sharp" character. She has a sixth sense, and she knows what to do with it. She is at her core a good person, and she knows how to help people-from behind the scenes. She is-metaphorically speaking-more of a chef than she is a maid in this household. She sustains this family with her common sense and her ability to empathize with the needs of others. And thus, Flor is the equivalent of the chef husband John, played by Adam Sandler. They are a matched pair! The first time John meets her, he does a double take. I think he recognizes in this woman his soul mate. In this respect, the film succeeds because it is a love story. And in that regard, if functions like any love story where the two people most destined to be happy with each other can never be together when the film ends. It is not their destiny to fulfill their love. And the trick of a story like this is to make us believe in the characters, and also believe that it is right and just that they do not consummate their love for each other. I think this goes a long way toward explaining the effectiveness of this film. John's wife, Deborah (Teá Leoni) is wretched; but she is not a wretch. No one in the film is the bad guy! So sometimes this is what life is-sometimes it's just as good as it gets. Sometimes you don't marry the cheerleader. Sometimes the crosses you have to bear are unfair and long-suffering. As soon as the early scene where John breaks down in front of Flor, and acts opposite of what is expected of a Latino male-and especially the head of a household-I think I understood where this film had to be headed. How can you not adore people who are basically kind and gentle and loving and affirming of underdogs! That's what you get in a film like this. You get good decent people who can handle just about crisis that comes their way. Even when sometimes in crisis you appear to be weak and too yielding of others' needs, you may actually be strong. Sometimes you have to think twice about what it means to be the strong one or the winner. The arc of this family has to be a descending arc. Deborah has to spiral downward in her continuing personal crisis. John has to face his own dark night of the soul. And always, always the steadfast Flor holds this family together. Again I return to the special nature of the relationship between the Anglo and the Latino. They share several moments of intimacy in this film. Even when the two are arguing with each other, there is an inescapable intimacy that comes through in their disagreements. Each bares his or her soul to the other, and eventually the two spends several hours one evening-at the emotional low point of the film, especially for Deborah-and the intimacy in that conversation is sexier than most derivative bedroom scenes (begin with the tracking shot across the bedroom floor-showing shoes, slacks, dress, underwear, etc.). I come away from a film like this remembering the joy of watching Jack Nicholson and Shirley MacLaine interact in Brooks' Terms of Endearment or William Hurt and Holly Hunter flirting in Broadcast News. Perhaps Brooks is a master at portraying intimacy.

16. The Door in the Floor. Directed by Tod Williams. Why are these people acting this way? And whose story is this? These questions are answered delicately and patiently by this screenplay and by this director. I emphasize the importance of the word patient. Williams allows the characters to reveal themselves and their secrets gradually, over time, often in scenes that were like mini-silent films. If any John Irving novel is perhaps too over-the-top for my taste, at least Irving has an insight into the secrets of the human heart that is worth listening to. An early image sticks in my mind-an insert close-up of a car's turn signal blinking on and off. Something is wrong in that image. Why not turn off that signal? What metaphor does it represent? Before long it became evident to me that the film was the young man's story, although the little daughter is a close second. The teenager is filled with lust for the wife; the little girl manages the legacy of this family-a time when it was a family, before the tragedy occurred. The first revelations belong to the mother, which she shares after she begins a sexual affair with the young boy her husband hires as his "assistant." I wondered if this couple, broken by their grief over the death of their son, had joined in playing a vicious game to break the young man's heart. But as the film wore on, I began to see that both husband and wife were locked tight into their singular grieving. I was swept up in their separate stories. After the sexual affair begins, the young man asks the mother about the car accident. The reaction shot by Kim Basinger was extraordinary: her green eyes looked numb, as if not seeing. The camera moved in and then back, as if to emphasize the inscrutable look on that woman's face. The father's story was far different, and had much more humor to alleviate the dull pain of the mother's story. Jeff Bridges was wonderful, simply wonderful, playing this character. Several times I was reminded of his father, Lloyd Bridges, when I saw some of the looks on his face. I think he was created to play this role. I was struck by the insecurity and the misogyny of this character. When he decides to dump his latest model, a middle-aged woman, the comedy that ensues is great comic relief for what came before. And then the magical moment occurs: the wife leaves the husband. And she takes all of the photographs and negatives of the happy family with her. I think she wants them both to get over their grief. Of course, little Ruth knows the photographs by heart. They are her family stories, and she tells and retells them in the upstairs hallway. Jeff Bridges' high point in the film occurs when he tells the young man the entire story of the car accident. Here his acting is at the highest level, and the director uses the camera with restraint as Bridges tells the story. The writing gave me just enough details to imagine the horror experienced by both of them. Then the father drops the bombshell: he hired the young man because the young man reminded him of their dead son. He hired the young man in order to give him to his wife-as a gift. That tortured reasoning makes no sense, of course-and that's why it makes sense. People do wild and crazy things because of their grief. Fortunately, that third character, the young man, grows up as a result of all of these experiences.

17. Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself. Directed by Lone Scherfig (Denmark, UK, 2002). After reviewing this film a second time, I realized one of the reasons for its success is that its Danish director, Lone Scherfig, also directed one of the sleeper hits of 2000, Italian for Beginners. The film works because it tells a traditional story of two brothers competing for the same woman with great tenderness and irony. Early in the film, viewers want to know the answer to an essential question: "Why does Wilbur want to kill himself?" After all, during the credits scene we follow the deliberate steps Wilbur takes to execute one of his suicides. An overdose of pills, the gas oven turned on to render him unconscious. He's all set to die-until his brother, prompted by a phone call from a neighbor, saves him. The next scene showed the hallmark of this director-a collection of weirdoes in a group-therapy scene at the local hospital. Everyone in the group is tired of Walter, because he expresses no remorse for his many suicide attempts. I was reminded of the collection of disparate and lonely individuals in scenes from Italian for Beginners. This director understands loneliness and alienation. Every minor character seems worthy of a larger role in another film. But soon the film focuses on the interactions of four characters: Wilbur, his brother Harbour, a young single-mother, and her ten-year-old daughter. Before long these four characters form a family of sorts. The single-mother marries Harbour, and they invite Wilbur to live with them after another suicide attempt on his part. Sandwiched between these two suicide attempts is another vintage Wilbur-suicide attempt-he tries to hang himself in the bookshop-but in that scene Alice saves him when she drops by to sell more books. Alice is a practical young woman. She rescues the dying man, and the camera lingers on a long embrace between the two people as she holds his body tight to hers and keeps the pressure off the noose around his neck. In that one shot the director has given away the direction of this film-as it relates to the basis of the relationships in this makeshift family. For after Alice marries Harbour, the safe one, she and Walter falls passionately in love. Eventually we learn why Wilbur keeps trying to kill himself. Just when we have that insight, and now think we will begin to make sense out of the world these people find themselves in, their world is shaken by a major plot twist. And at the same time that the fate of one person is changed dramatically, the basis of Walter's relationship to Alice is transformed as well. I think it's a good idea to stop here and remind viewers that creating four characters that form a family is no easy task for the screenwriter and the director. By this time in the film we believe in these characters. We have insights into their shared pasts, the sources of their loneliness, and their hopes for the future. Alice's little daughter, Mary, is a gem of a character. She tends to resolve crises with a quick summing-up of the truth of the matter. She is older than her years because she has had to give up her childhood ways early in order to help her mother cope with the world. These are all interesting characters, and when the plot twist takes effect, all of us can stand back and marvel at how these characters deal with their changed circumstances. Early in this film, the sound design gave away the ending. The main theme for the film is lush, orchestral, harmonious, lilting, and yet bittersweet and even melancholy. That is the nature of life-especially when you begin with an understanding of the frailty and vulnerability of the human species. In short, I am talking about a love story, revealed through many layers, and affecting many characters in the film-including the minor characters. Several times in this film we are reminded that the process of communication among human beings often is represented by tentative, halting steps, rather than direct and forceful expression of the truths of the human heart. Sometimes you just have to be patient, and eventually communication will win out.

18. Twilight Samurai. Directed by Yoji Yamada. (Japan, 2002). Any preconceptions I had of what the life of a samurai would be were exploded after watching this film. Instead of a life of daring deeds, the life of this samurai, Seibei, was boring. The film emphasizes the family life of a widowed samurai with two children. He is devoted to them, but his robes are threadbare and there are holes in his socks. His demented mother lives with them, and it is obvious that he is barely able to make ends meet. In one scene he is humiliated when a high-ranking official comes to examine the supplies provided to these "warriors," and notices Seibei's torn sleeve. The "twilight samurai" is looked down upon by his peers and by his supervisor; he just is not one of the "boys." One of the joys of the film was the acting of the two daughters. They reminded me of the children in In America.

Then comes the major plot point.  Seibei’s friend’s sister Tomoe is married to a brute.  Soon she becomes available because of a divorce arranged by her family.  Of course, she is his future love—a candidate for a second wife.  When she visits his family, she brings life to this stale dwelling.  As I watched the film I thought of Clint Eastwood’s characters in old age—old and grizzled, but still tough. This older man is a gentle warrior, competent and yet humble.  He is more sensitive than aggressive. He has been changed by his widowhood and softened by his lovely children.  Then why not marry Tomoe?  Issues of class surface.  We learn that Seibei married beneath himself the first time—and his wife never was reconciled to this difference in class.  If he married Tomoe, now he would be marrying “up” in class.  He cannot conceive of that happening. So we have characters trapped by social rules and expectations.

When Seibei refuses to consider marrying Tomoe, she stops coming to his house and the light and gaiety goes out in that household.  Now comes another plot point: Seibei is ordered by his clan leader to kill a man who has refused to commit suicide honorably.  Earlier in the film we saw him engage in a fight—which lasted seconds rather than minutes.  We know he is a brilliant samurai warrior; and yet he has no interest in carrying out this order.  But he is trapped.  He will make more money if he fulfills this order.  Thus, he will be better able to care for the children.  If he does not go, then he will be killed.  His response, finally, is “I obey.”  You know that Tomoe will have to come into his life again, and when she does there will be such restrained intimacy that it will be painful to watch. Will he reveal his true feelings to her?  Will she reciprocate?  Or will their love be stymied again because of the choices they are compelled to make, based upon the strict codes of behavior they are required to obey?  I can promise you a swordfight that is better than anything in Tarantino’s Kill Bill—because it will be a fight whose action emanates from three-dimensional characters we come to know first hand.  I was disappointed with the ending scene, because it told rather than showed the truths of characters’ lives.  Still, I remember the film fondly because it showed me a particular character in a specific time and place and made me believe in that character’s values and desires—even as his hopes were crushed by the mean-spirited rules of his world.

19. The Woodsman.  Directed by Nicole Kassell.  Making a good film depends upon striking the right mood and sticking with it throughout the film.  Clint Eastwood struck the right mood in Million Dollar Baby and this first-time director accomplished the same in this film.  As I watched Kevin Bacon’s work in this film, I was reminded of his solid performance in the thriller Stir of Echoes (1999) as well as his solid work in last year’s Mystic River.  He projects an anxiety, a dullness of character, and a repressed personality. He holds back so much.   Then there is the simple truth of this character.  He is, by nature, a watcher.  So shot after shot shows him watching.  A convicted pedophile, we see him after he has moved into a small apartment that is next to a schoolyard.  He stands at the window.  He looks at the schoolyard.  He watches a suspicious man that sits in a car and watches the children.  He gives the man a name.  He calls him “Candy.”  He begins to keep a journal—at the urging of his therapist. He keeps to himself at the lumberyard where he works.  His only visitor is his Latino brother-in-law; that man accepts him because Bacon’s character, Walter, accepted him when he married Bacon’s sister.  But Bacon’s sister will have nothing to do with him.  So we watch the watcher. 

Soon a woman at work is attracted to him, and she breaks through his reclusive exterior and they have a date.  They have passionate sex, and he unleashes such strong emotions that she is shocked somewhat by his outburst.  Finally, she exacts the truth from him.  “I molested little girls.”  But he adds, “But I never hurt them.”  He spent 12 years in prison. Her reaction to his admission of pedophilia is perfect: she laughs, as if he is pulling her leg.  Then she realizes he is serious, and there is nothing to say anymore.  This scene was exceptional, because we had to see her response through her eyes.  We were witnesses; and we were shocked in similar ways.  Later, Walter asks his therapist, “When will I be normal?”  Later in the film, Walter goes to a shopping mall and begins to follow a ten-year-old girl.  Is he doing this to test himself?  Is he practicing for an eventual molestation?  Then, amazingly, his coworker, the woman, comes back to him.  This time she has a secret to confide—and we understand now why these two people may have found each other. 

Of course, sooner or later, we know that Walter’s movement toward happiness will to undermined and even destroyed by those forces in society that cannot accept or understand or forgive people like Walter.  Back to the therapist we go: and this time we are set up for an incredible reaction shot by Kevin Bacon, as he recounts his incestuous relationship with his younger sister, and as the therapist probes him to admit that he molested his younger sister, Walter only repeats the phrase “I smelled her hair!”  The look on that man’s face was an x-ray into his soul.  And in the next scene, when we see the lovemaking between Walter and the woman from work, we realize that he is reenacting the same behavior he expressed in his molestation of his sister—and this time the woman realizes exactly what he did to those two little girls more than 12 years ago. 

And yet she stays with him.  Ah, the secrets of the human heart.  Finally, we are led to Little Red Riding Hood—or an eleven-year-old facsimile of the fairy tale version.  The Woodsmen, you see, was a major character in the original version.  He was the hero of the tale.  He cut the little children out of the wolf’s belly, and in that way saved them.  One day Walter follows another little girl—when she gets off the city bus, he gets off and follows her into a park.  She is a shy, introverted girl, and she loves to watch birds.  You know that Walter will meet her again, and you will not want to admit—but will do so grudgingly—that he will attempt to seduce her.  The film does not make pedophilia a simple cut and dried subject; instead, we see the many sides of the issue.  We see that Walter has been in prison even when out of prison.  He has been watched around the clock, and he has a secret he has to keep forever from most of the people in his life.  Yet what he did was horrific, and it damaged people’s lives.  There is hope in this film, and there is insight into a complex social problem.

20. Fahrenheit 911.  Directed by Michael Moore.  This film is filled with visceral images that convey truths.  That’s the nature of documentary film, whether one likes it or not.  Documentary filmmakers traffic in the subjective and the biased.  Wiseman, dean of documentary filmmakers, said it is not possible to be objective.  What is one left with then, especially when considering the reputation of the filmmaker, Michael Moore?  I left this film feeling that Moore has arrived as a filmmaker, even more so than in Bowling for Columbine.  The film begins with a quick review of the way President Bush stole the 2000 election.  The image of African American lawmakers being told to sit down and be quiet (ironically by the same Presidential candidate that won the popular vote, and yet lost the election—Al Gore) was an extraordinary moment.  That was followed by a review of Bush’s many vacation days in his first year of office (on vacation 42% of the time).  Moore’s response to September 11, 2001, was a montage of the heads of the Bush team being prepped with make-up before “going on”—a metaphor, I think for their work as performance rather than substance.  These images are powerful, and I am sure they are repellant to supporters of Bush just as they were riveting to his detractors and opponents.  The power of the documentary is in letting the images convey meaning directly and viscerally, and using music effectively to support those images.  Moore knew what he was doing here.  When he moved to the actual events of September 11, he lets the screen go dark so that we absorb the experience in a fresh and horrifying way.  We have all seen the images of the burning towers.  He never shows them.  When he returns to visuals, he shows only reaction shots of the people on the street.  Then Moore follows these scenes with the famous one of Bush, sitting stunned and immovable, in the Florida classroom.  There he pages listlessly through the book used to teach reading with the story of the pet goat.  Seven minutes pass.  Moore had set the hook.   

Certainly Moore pushes too hard against too many brick walls.  But I believe the essence of his argument—that President Bush and his cronies are out of touch with the political mainstream in America—has some validity. Often I felt an overwhelming sense of, “This is only the tip of the iceberg.”  “Who’s your Daddy,” Moore asks, and then says that 30 years of Saudi support for U.S. administrations “buys a lot of love.”  I think Moore taps into perceived concerns and misgivings many people have felt for a long time.  He returns to his roots as a filmmaker with his response to the Patriot Act—hiring a van to drive around the streets of the Capitol while he reads pages from the bill (which none of the lawmakers read).  “Sit down, my son,” says the Michigan representative, John Connors, and that moment is a perfect metaphor for what Moore wants to accomplish—cut through the fog of bureaucracy and anonymity and sneaky use of power and tell the truth to the American people. That’s what he is after in the film.  His interactions with our soldiers revealed volumes about what is wrong with war.  We teach our young men to dehumanize the enemy.  Their macho talk was scary, downright revolting.  Moore keeps the pace moving here, noting that the national media “rolled over” and failed to cover important issues such as the way the administration hid the dead and wounded from press coverage—as if the American people are not wise enough to handle the truths of mortality, maimed bodies, and grieving family members.  His scenes devoted to Marine recruiters searching for the poorest of the poor—vulnerable young black males in Flint (Moore’s hometown)—was thought provoking.  

But Moore’s real triumph in the film was his discovery of the woman whose son, Michael Pedersen, was killed in Iraq.  Moore drops out of the forefront of coverage and lets the woman tell her own story.  He becomes a filmmaker par excellence in the way he shares the woman’s rage at losing her son to a war that does not really make sense. Lurking beneath his work is the fear that Americans are susceptible to fascism in their absolutist and bullying chauvinism. 

Honorable mention:

Several international films came close to making my top-20 list. Enduring Love was a complicated English film about the aftershocks of one traumatic event in a number of people’s lives.  One lovely fall day a balloon ride goes horribly wrong.  Several picnickers spot the balloon about to crash in a meadow, and several men grab onto the trailing lines and try to prevent the balloon from speeding away.  Tragedy ensues, and yet for one man—who jumped before the balloon got too high—the aftermath of the event becomes a worse trauma because one of the men involved becomes fixated upon him.  This is a dark film about the difficulty of finding redemption and the horror of being the subject of somebody’s obsessive love.

Good-bye Lenin is a valentine to a mother and to a passing political order—the transition from communism to capitalism in East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall.  The film is told from the point of view of the woman’s only son, Alexander, who comes to admire his mother’s strength of character and perseverance after his father leaves her in the 1970s and defects to the West.    Because Alex’s mother collapses in 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and lapses into a coma for almost a year, she misses the rapid social and political changes that led to the merger of East and West Germany.  In order to spare his mother a second heart attack, Alex comes up with an unbelievable strategy—he will recreate the world of communist East Germany so that she will not be shocked after she awakens from her coma.  His idealism and his vision are based upon his dedication to what he perceives as his mother’s ideals and her vision of a better world.  The film is adept at revealing truths about the ingredients of human life—the regrets, failures, nostalgia for the good life, and the way people put themselves back together after their lives are broken by a myriad of circumstances and personal choices.

Since Otar Left was a real surprise. The star of this film is the old woman that plays Otar’s mother.  Otar is the son that got away from poverty and parochial ways and emigrated from the former Soviet Georgia to Paris.  She is an original character, stamped with specific values and tastes.  Physically she appears frail.  Osteoporosis has wracked her spine so severely that she is permanently bent forward, and she must crane her neck to look up when talking to people.  Despite her disability, Eka is spry and determined, dresses beautifully, her white hair glows, and her thick gray eyebrows are expressive and optimistic.  Otar was the star of the family—the one who went on to a better life and now sends money home.  A letter from Otar is a major event in the old woman’s life.  But early in the film, after the three women have spent a weekend at their country house, they return to Tblisi and the daughter gets a phone call from Paris.  Otar is dead.   Then her daughter and granddaughter make a difficult decision.  They believe Otar’s death may kill Eka.  So they determine to keep his death a secret.  But how will these characters sustain this ruse?  This film is worth watching because it will remind you of the determination, wisdom, and love that only an old person can exhibit—especially toward the younger generation.

Three Hollywood films almost made my list.  I think Roger Ebert said it best when he commented that in Beyond the Sea Kevin Spacey performed Bobby Darin’s songs better than Bobby Darin performed them. The film hooked me early when the Kevin Spacey version of Bobby Darin meets his child self, and the older version listens to the advice of the younger version—and off we go The film was one part Woody Allen (where the mature character inhabits scenes of his own childhood) and one part old-fashioned toe-tapping Hollywood Musical from then on, and it was fun.  I was surprised at the power of Friday Night Lights, a story of a Texas community’s obsession with high school football.  The new coach, played by Billy Bob Thornton, is expected to win and win big—no matter the cost.  I was impressed at the style of the filmmaking here—with a grainy and high contrast film stock and a screenplay that revealed many of the ugly underpinnings of such compulsive devotion to sports.  In effect, the young people were expected to fulfill the empty lives of the town’s adults. At first, I was afraid that The Manchurian Candidate would try to be a remake of the 1950s-era original.  But it didn’t take long for me to figure out that Jonathan Demme wants to indict those who would meddle directly with the human brain in order to accomplish their political goals. Such meddling creates monsters, in a way, and yet the meddlers are the real Frankensteins.  This film became engrossing to me because Demme focused on the pain and suffering of Marco (played by Denzel Washington) and then used a simple but effective technique for telling the story—a parallel editing structure that kept comparing what was happening to Marco to what was happening to a former member of his squad in the first Gulf War.  That fellow was Shaw, whose manipulative mother revels in the promise that someday her son (her “creation”) eventually will become President of the United States.  The heart of the film is the elasticity of the bond of friendship between Marco and Shaw.  The love between two men empowers them in their time of need.  We have to watch some horrible stuff in this film; and yet the humanity of the two main characters always is present in the background. 

I enjoyed three films aimed at younger audiences.  I saw Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban this summer, and I simply enjoyed the energy of the film and the honest portrayal of the characters and their passions.  Similary, I loved The Incredibles because of the high-octane energy of the scenes, the inclusion of sufficient “adult” perspectives to balance the many repetitive chase scenes (for the kids). Even better was Shrek II, a masterpiece of animation, I think, because it honored the adults’ sense of humor as well as the child’s simpler tastes.  The major reason the film works is that Eddie Murphy’s tiresome sidekick, the donkey, is balanced perfectly by the tough-talking Puss in Boots character (voiced by Antonio Banderas).  That cat steals the show!  But the sight gags, the funny lines, the irascibility of the cat, the sweetness and naiveté in Mike Myers’ rendition of Shrek.  I laughed and laughed as I watched the film.  Funniest line: “I must not go crazy,” says the cat, hung by his four paws against the cold stone of the dungeon.  Then he looks up and sees all of the cartoon characters gathered around the grate. Reaction shot of the cat: “Too late!”

And last of all, a great film this past year was Super Size Me—I think the best documentary of the year. After watching this film I contemplated become a vegetarian.  This film worked because the young director thoroughly prepared us for the eventual outcome.  He was healthy, he got a clean bill of health from the doctor before he began his regimen of eating three meals a day at MacDonalds for a month, and slowly but surely he became fatter and unhealthier.  In a short time he was dangerously unhealthy, and the doctor expressed concerns about his long-term health.  This film was funny and yet it made me think about the way fast food has insidiously infiltrated our unconscious selves.  We eat what is easy to eat, what is fast to eat, and what can kill us.

Copyright 2004, Robert E. Yahnke.