Reviews
Films of 2011
Gareth Higgins
The 2011 UK cinematic year is notable as a year of death
and resurrection. It began with two magnificent films about the end
of life, Hereafter and Never Let Me Go, and hit a
transcendent peak in the summer when The Tree of Life was
released; Woody Allen pronounced himself an optimist with
Midnight in Paris, which implies something like a belief
in the afterlife; Bridesmaids resurrected a friendship and
my belief in the potential for romantic comedy to be emotionally
profound and politically resonant; Contagion brilliantly
imagines what life would be like if death was in charge;
50/50 is thoughtful, funny, and moving about cancer; and
Hugo transports us to the place that cannot die - the urge
to create.
There were missteps and disasters along the way, as usual. After
Sucker Punch, The Green Hornet, and Cowboys and
Aliens, my nominee for most dehumanizing film of the year is
Transformers 3, which makes Transformers 2 look
like Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It does have
astonishing visual imagination, and there's a great opening set on
the moon, but this quickly gives way to rape jokes, homophobic
bathroom scenes, and summary execution of Middle Eastern-looking
stereotypes. For Transformers 3, violence isn't just a way
of telling the story, it is the story; we're hamsters on a
treadmill running around and around over a racist, sexist,
militarist, imperialist, and techno-fetishist subtext that may not
be the worst example of its kind, but is certainly up there. A
better film with similar themes was Battle: LA, which
thinks more seriously about wars in Afghanistan and Iraq than its
critical reception would suggest.
But this is all a prologue to the ten best films of
2011:
10: Clint Eastwood's Hereafter
A thoughtful and moving tale about the mystery of how life will
end. He doesn't get London right, but the emotional truth far
outweighs the cultural inaccuracies.
9: The Messenger
There was more grieving in this extraordinarily moving war at home
drama, in which Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster play soldiers tasked
with informing families of the deaths of their loved ones. No
rehearsal between these two and the actors playing the bereaved
parents and spouses took place, making the scenes of revelation
among the most powerfully, painfully moving ever committed to film.
This film is a lamentation against violence.
8: Howl
Lamentation is, of course, the point of this film - a magical,
moving, and artful docudrama about the poet Allen Ginsberg, the
struggle for sexual rights, and the gift of queerness.
7: Never Let Me Go
is close to perfect as a film about the commodification of life,
the awful power of fear in crowds, and the desperate need to fight
for the freedom to be human.
6: Super 8
is a blockbuster that has something to say about our world. There
is child-like wonder, for sure, in this tribute to Spielberg's
suburban choose-your-own-adventures, but there's something deeper
at work here. Super 8's
alien-meets-military-meets-kids-with-imagination narrative
represents nothing less than the inversion of the myth of
redemptive violence, and a proposal that the best response to the
real-world violence of the post-9/11 era might be a gentle
recognition that no one has a monopoly on suffering. Super
8's hero speaks a universal truth, and offers deep hope for the
future when he says, 'Bad things happen, but you can still
live'.
5: Beginners
In this film, Christopher Plummer gives the most subtle
performance of his career, Ewan McGregor is adorable as a bereaved
son, and a little dog makes us laugh. Much more than that sounds,
Beginners is an emotionally honest film about how to
integrate suffering with hope, and to love again after loss.
4: Take Shelter
offers perhaps the most realistic depiction of anxiety, and the
most hopeful imagining of how experiencing some fear may be the
best preparation for dealing with a lot of it.
3: Hugo
Scorsese's elegant and magical love letter to how the movies can
make us feel, Hugo is redolent with eschatological visions
of the reconciliation of all things.
2: The Tree of Life
With images so achingly beautiful they evoke longing for
transcendent experience, or maybe even inspire or accompany the
experience itself, The Tree of Life is a film about
the search for meaning in a God-breathed universe. A man reflects
on his childhood, his harsh father and innocent mother, how he
learned violence and discovered love, meditates on the nature of
Being and Becoming, discovers himself in the face of his loved
ones, and ends in an embrace with the divine - love itself.
It's an astonishing work of art that repays multiple
viewings, and serves as nothing less than an icon for worship.
The Tree of Life is only the fifth film in 40 years
from Terrence Malick, an apparently Christian humanist artist; it
also makes the best cinematic use of Brad Pitt and Sean Penn as
avatars of contemporary masculinity; it's the most moving film I've
seen this year.
1: The Guard
The film of the year, because it is a perfect fusion of humour and
pathos, prepared to look closer at the life of its otherwise easily
caricatured protagonist - a West-of-Ireland cop with a grumpy
attitude - humanizing him, and telling the story we find ourselves
in: of globalization's gifts and challenges, the failure of
institutional religion, the power of art and music, discrimination
and the distance between people, the corrosiveness of capitalism,
the necessity of friendship, and the unavoidability of
love.