While we're all about celebrating the positive here, I'm also not naive enough to assume that everyone is in agreement about everyone else's choices or perception of the year past. In that spirit, here's a quick piece, hopefully meant to stimulate a bit of discussion:
"When it comes time for these awards and encapsulations recalling the best movies of last year, people tend to gush about what a great year it was. They shouldn’t this year. Compared to 2011's A Separation, Margaret, The Tree of Life, the amazing documentary The Interrupters, and toss in Abbas Kiarostami's Certified Copy (if we go by U.S. release date), 2012 was a downright wasteland for great movies. Even my 2012 favorites, The Turin Horse and The Loneliest Planet, are hampered by repetitive action (part of their points, sure, but one can overdo it).
Most of the year's lauded films belong to some time-tested auteurs. While The Deep Blue Sea, Django Unchained, Holy Motors, The Master, Moonrise Kingdom, and The Turin Horse are not bad, they're not comparable, in some cases not remotely so, to their directors' peaks: Distant Voices, Still Lives for Terence Davies, Pulp Fiction for Quentin Tarantino, either Mauvais Sang or Lovers on the Bridge for Leos Carax, There Will Be Blood for Paul Thomas Anderson, Fantastic Mr. Fox or Rushmore for Wes Anderson and Satantango for Bela Tarr, respectively. Michael Haneke and the Dardennes have made any number of films superior to Amour and The Kid with a Bike. Shouldn't a very good year be a peak for somebody?" - George Wu
Well? Maybe so. What say you guys?
Yeah, I'm picking up what he's laying down. Plenty of strong films hit screens in 2012, but few of them contained the thrill of the new in the way that, say, DOGTOOTH or A SEPARATION or SYNECDOCHE NEW YORK have in recent years. Even my pick for best cinematic breakthrough was somebody who's been kicking around for years making shorts, and I chose him because he finally made a film that was eligible for the Muriels.
ReplyDeleteStill, that's kind of the nature of the beast, isn't it? Even if the best of 2012 don't compare to, say, the best of 2007, our task is to honor the superior achievements of this year. Nonetheless, it's useful to have some context like this, to help us assess the possible cinematic legacy of this year. I know I'm curious to see what will win the anniversary award a decade from now.
I'd like to argue in favor of 2012, really - I saw a number of films this year that'll stick with me for a long while. Still... I look at my Top Ten, and I consider that my #1 pick is a compilation piece. That says a lot right there.
ReplyDeleteUnlike some of the previous "instant-classic" years, I think 2012 will require a few years' worth of hindsight before we can really digest how major it was. For example, it's possible that once more of the Kickstarter-fueled indies (such as ONLY THE YOUNG) become widely seen, they might reveal themselves as part of a trend toward small-scale, homegrown cinema. Or not, I dunno.
ReplyDeleteStill, the fact that there was no major film standing astride 2012 the way we had THE TREE OF LIFE in 2011 or THE SOCIAL NETWORK the year before that makes it interesting in its own right, if a tad harder to boil down to something easily digestible.
"makes it interesting in its own right, if a tad harder to boil down to something easily digestible"
ReplyDeleteDefinitely Paul. I found myself having to choose from about two dozen good-to-great films. I had no 10s, but four 9s and twenty-one 8s. Usually there's a clear 10, and a handful of eights and nines.
How can you say 2012 was a weak year when it gave us THIS IS NOT A FILM? Talk about a fresh, mesmerizing, and "new" cinematic experience.
ReplyDeletePersonally I thought 2012 gave us a much stronger showing than 2011, a year which felt painfully thin in alot of different ways. True there may be no instant classic or true breakthrough film to point to but overall I thought quality was up this year. I was particularly impressed with documentaries this year, which in years past I never really considered for my Top 10. This is definitely an argument worth having though.
ReplyDeleteI suppose that's the crux of the argument here, and one both you and Philip above there are getting at: Is a "great year" one with a couple huge spikes -- titles that stand above the rest? Or is it one where the general quality ends up higher than average?
DeleteRight. It's all a question of how you measure a "great year" in movies. So many moving parts, and all of them reflective of some trend in arts or social mores or filmmaking technology or what have you. 2012 could go down as a watershed moment in documentary, what with the breadth of offerings in the form- THE IMPOSTER, ONLY THE YOUNG, and THIS IS NOT A FILM are so wide-ranging in their style and methods they hardly seem to belong in the same category. So even while at first glance there hasn't been a single culture-shaking game-changer in documentaries this past year, the overall impact could prove to be great. Time will tell, I suppose.
ReplyDeleteAnd that's not even mentioning Shut Up and Play the Hits, Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Bones Brigade or Marley. All of which made the most of their material in different, inventive ways. It made me wonder if we should have a separate documentary category, while still allowing those films into the general voting/conversation.
DeleteThat's not a bad idea, Bryan. What say you, Paul?
DeleteWhile I disagree with you about how good "Moonrise Kingdom" is (I think it is Anderson's best film, and his previous best film is "The Royal Tenenbaums"), ou're right about everything else. I don't understand how people are claiming this year is so strong? There were, maybe 35, 40 truly great films or performances or films with something really special in them, and this year... I mean, ten might be pushing it. Very overrated.
ReplyDeleteSteve, it's definitely worth discussing. Originally, I was against doing any awards devoted to specific kinds of films- foreign-language, animated, etc.- but of the specific subsets of movies out there, I'd say that documentaries would be one of the more deserving of their own category, since making a good documentary can be quite different than making a good "fiction" film. Something to think about for next year, I suppose.
ReplyDelete