Best of 2012

This is somewhat random in that the following is restricted to what I saw and read. So while this is hardly an exhaustive selection, I suggest all these works merit our careful attention.

If you’ll indulge me further, here’s the best of what I saw or read in 2012:

Best feature film: “The Master”, dir. Paul Thomas Anderson; strong runner-up “Argo” ,dir. Ben Affleck (the new Clint Eastwood).

Best non-fiction film: “Cuates de Australia” dir, Everardo Gonz (“Drought”en inglés) – a documentary about a community in northern México besieged by drought and globalization; runner-up “The Law In These Parts” dir. Ra’anan Alexandrowicz – a courageous, intellectually rigorous film in which the director stages a devastatingly clever mock trial of the very Israeli jurists and military governors who have built ‘legal’ bulwarks to justify Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories since 1967.

Best Fiction Book: “War and Peace”, Leo Tolstoy. I finally read it this year. Having done so, I figure it would be the best novel any year since Leo coughed it up in 1869 except perhaps “Madame Bovary” or “Oliver Twist”. Tolstoy manages to describe the most intimate and sweeping epochal events of human experience simultaneously. He was a genius. His novel about Napoleon’s doomed invasion of Russia reads like an account of current events.

Best Non-Fiction book: “A Geography of Blood – Unearthing Memory from a Prairie Landscape”, by Candace Savage. The sort of  history/geography/environmental study Canadians and Americans generally don’t want to know about told with great verve. In this case, people are reading it. Ms. Savage is winning awards. Her slim, powerful, elegantly written and researched effort is truly mind expanding.  “There are a lot of things nobody talks about in the imposition of colonial power.” -Keith Bell, companion of Candace Savage-

...and The Oscar goes to...

It’s almost Oscar night.  Accordingly, here are this filmmaker’s final thoughts in the run-up. These entirely subjective predilections – how could they be anything but? – are also somewhat selective.  I proffer my assessment based on categories in which I watched a majority of nominated films. Vamonos!

Black Swan, The King’s Speech, True Grit and Winter’s Bone are all highly commendable. Winter’s Bone is the best,  but it won’t win because it’s about the unspeakable – poverty and ignorance in America – it’s damn sad and almost no one saw it. I go with the worthy Black Swan by default.

Best Director:  tough call, but Darren Aronofsky gets the nod for visualizing artistry, horror, psychological trauma and sexuality in Black Swan.

I’d have never believed anyone but Natalie Portman should win Oscar for Best Actress out of Black Swan.  Then I saw Winter’s Bone.  Please, oh puh-leeez! Give this award to Jennifer Lawrence for her jaw-dropping, intense, yet nuanced, performance.

Colin Firth is wonderful in The King’s Speech.  Jeff Bridges is an American original, as much and as great as Clint Eastwood or Brian Wilson. Bridges proved it again in True Grit. However, Javier Bardem is incandescent inBiutiful.  Bardem deserves the Oscar.

Best Supporting Actress: the then thirteen-year-old Hailee Steinfeld in True Grit. It’s the wrong category because her character carries the narrative of the film, but this is one Steinfeld can actually win.  You go, girl!

Best Supporting Actor: Geoffrey Rush in The King’s Speech. Caveat – I say this without having seen Christian Bale’s performance in The Fighter. People I respect greatly tell me that Bale is a deserving winner. However, Oscar would not go wrong with the extraordinary Man from Oz.

Incendies, directed by Quebecois filmmaker Denis Villeneuve, is perhaps the best film of all. I hope it wins the Best Foreign Language Film category. It would put Villeneuve in the deserved company of Quebec film making greats like Denys Arcand, Claude Jutra and Jean-Claude Lauzon.  Further, as the Middle East blows up and transforms before our eyes, Incendies, likeWinter’s Bone, in its gaze into modern tribalism, is the most timely of fictional films. From the same category, Biutiful may have confounded the critics, but Mexico’s Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu remains one of the world’s great filmmakers. His latest film was, in my view, underrated. However, give the statue to Villeneuve. Right now!

Best adapted screenplay:  While I hate to deny Winter’s Bone anything, I give the nod to Joel Coen and Ethan Coen for having the genitalia and creativity to re-adapt, in an entirely different way, a work that had already won an Oscar for a previous version starring John Wayne.  That’s chutzpa.

Best cinematography: Matthew Libatique, Black Swan

Best Film Editing: Andrew Weisblum, Black Swan

Final thoughts:

1. The Social Network is widely nominated.  To me, as I’ve written earlier in this blog, that picture is a television movie-of-the-week in disguise. I don’t get it, but I know I’m in a small minority.  The film will win in at least one category. That will be me cringing.

2. A few years back, Clint Eastwood could do no wrong. He was on a deserved Oscar roll. In 2010, he released Hereafter, one of that great filmmakers most original works. Hmmm…I guess even Clint gets a slap now and again. I’d encourage you to  see Hereafter and judge for yourself whether it was worthy of Oscar nominations. I surely think so.

3. The Town, directed by Ben Affleck, also deserved a better fate.  If Affleck keeps working at that level, it won’t be long before Oscar notices.

Hereafter - Clint Eastwood's latest

Greetings!

I’ve been engaged with other matters for a bit, but here I am shiny and new like a sturgeon.

Briefly, I suggest you take a long peek at Hereafter, Clint Eastwood’s latest film. No, there is no gun play; nothing remotely western-like; and there are really no tough guys. However, an achingly beautifully photographed Paris, Charles Dickens, and opera all figure into a triptych about death and wondering about the afterlife.

With the notable exception of a glowing NYT review, the film has generally met a lukewarm, mystified response from many critics. To my way of thinking, Hereafter like, Gran Torino, might be unexpected to some, but it’s yet another installment in the astonishingly rich oeuvre of Mr. Eastwood.  As usual in his most recent films, the music, written by Eastwood himself, is wonderful. As well, the opening scene of a natural disaster in an Asian getaway and and the grand visual shock of a terrorist attack in London bear the influence of the film’s executive producer, Steven Spielberg, to great effect. Clint Eastwood is a great artist who continues to renew his vision entering his ninth decade.