Top Ten Films of 2010
"Black Swan"
(To abandon all context, skip to the list below).
In the final days of the 21st century’s first decade, the New Queer Cinema has arrived.
To understand the provocation of such a statement (specifically, the suggestion that the best films of 2010 are uniquely queer despite the fact that only two of the films on this list feature openly gay or lesbian characters), we should provide brief historical context to the first time a queer film critic, B. Ruby Rich, uttered the phrase the New Queer Cinema in the early nineties.
In the late eighties and the early nineties, for many in the gay community, the term queer began to represent something much different than the derogatory word used by homophobes to describe gays and lesbians.
As film scholar Michele Aaron notes, “Queer represented the reappropriation of the power of the antagonistic, homophobic society, through reclaiming the term of abuse but also through a new approach to ‘gay’ politics: a taking on of the institution, rather than a fearful, assimilated, complicity.”
“Direct action, as practiced by Queer Nation, ACT UP, and Outrage, was the key strategy of queer politics in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with AIDS accelerating its urgency.”
Nearly thirty years earlier, in the years immediately following the Stonewall riots in June 1969 in Greenwich Village, gay liberationist groups formed across the United States. These groups rejected the quiet assimilation into mainstream society that the previous generation sought.
And, their victories included, for instance, getting the American Psychiatric Association to remove homosexuality as a mental disease from their diagnostic manual.
Yet, their approach and their resulting victories led in a brief move away from incrementalism in the gay community in the seventies only to give way to crushing defeats under the rise of Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority, the New Right, televangelism, and the onslaught of AIDS in the eighties.
In 1977, for example, evangelist singer and former orange juice spokesperson for the Florida Citrus Commission Anita Bryant led the Save Our Children organization in an effort to repeal a six-month old Dade County, Floria ordinance that made it illegal to discriminate based on sexual orientation.
The initial response from the gay community to Bryant’s antigay crusade came in the form of the Dade County Coalition for Human Rights and the Miami Victory Campaign. Neither campaign directly addressed the issue of gay rights nor discrimination based specifically on sexual orientation, instead framing the debate in terms of a more general attack on human rights.
Anita Bryant and the New Right forces did not take a similar approach, focusing specifically on a campaign that compared homosexuals and antidiscrimination ordinances to “child molesting,” “gay recruiting,” “boy prostitution,” “threat to the family,” and a “national gay conspiracy.”
In contrast to the assimilationist efforts of the Dade County Coalition for Human Rights and the Miami Victory Campaign, the queer practices of groups such as ACT UP and Queer Nation in the eighties, with AIDS as backdrop, rejected the politics of assimilation and incrementalism. Instead, these activist organizations confronted the homophobia of the New Right, as well as the Reagan and Bush White Houses’ silence on AIDS with defiance and an increased visibility.
These queer activists focused their defiance, their anger, and their frustration directly at those political institutions and any forces that they viewed as complicit enablers of a homophobic society intent on silencing the voices of the gay community. This new generation watched AIDS devastate their community, watched their government refuse to acknowledge their presence or this devastation, and decided to respond with a queer politics that acknowledged the dire urgency of the moment, or else run the risk of not existing.
Through cinema, the filmmakers of this moment responded accordingly.
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And so, film scholar B. Ruby Rich returns from the 1992 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. And, in her highly influential essay, “New Queer Cinema,” Rich describes her experience at Sundance, her brief meeting in an elevator with opera singer Jessye Norman, a meeting made possible by filmmaker Laurie Lynd’s decision to use one of Norman’s arias in her film “R.S.V.P.”
Rich recalls her excitement watching eight queer filmmakers stand to the applause of an enthusiastic crowd, astonished in some ways just by the very presence of a queer panel.
“After all,” writes Rich, “none of this is taking place in a vacuum: celebrated in the festivals, despised in the streets. Review the statistics on gay bashing. Glance at would-be-presidential candidate Pat Buchanan’s demonising of Marlon Riggs’ Tongues Untied.”
Later, in her description of Lynd’s “R.S.V.P.,” Rich explains, “R.S.V.P suggests that the tragedy of AIDS have led to a new kind of film and video practice, one which takes up the aesthetic strategies that directors have already learned and applies them to a greater need than art for its own sake.
“This time it’s art for our sake, and it’s powerful.”
Thus, Rich declares the arrival of new films such as Gus Van Sant’s “My Own Private Idaho,” Jennie Livingston’s “Paris is Burning,” Gregg Araki’s “The Living End” on the independent film festival circuit as a New Queer Cinema, as art uniquely wrapped up in the anxiety and frustration of an era.
In the opening moments of her essay, in fact, Rich makes a decidedly political move in her decision to label these new independent gay and lesbian films as queer.
Still, Rich is quick to note that films of the so-called New Queer Cinema do not, “share a single aesthetic vocabulary or strategy or concern. Yet they are nonetheless united by a common style.
“Call it ‘Homo Pomo: there are traces in all of them of appropriation and pastiche, irony, as well a reworking of history with social constructionism very much in mind.”
Appropriation, as it turns out, might not be a useful word in describing what the individual films of the New Queer Cinema aim for in their aesthetics, their attempts to describe a moment in time that felt previously indescribable.
To that end, rather than thinking of these films as part of a coherent film movement, it helps to think of each individual films as acts of redescription, as films retooling the language of earlier films in order to say something new and different. In fact, to borrow from American philosopher Richard Rorty his notion of redescription, it helps to think of these filmmakers, and filmmakers more broadly, as poets, as “one who makes things new” or says things like “try thinking of it this way.”
As Rorty would suggest, the individual filmmakers of the New Queer Cinema get at something that no one else has and “expresses something which had long been yearning for expression.”
In other words, these filmmakers become poets, redescribing and rearticulating the experience of life in America in the gay community in the early nineties.
What follows, then, is my list of the ten best films of 2010. These films do not share in a single aesthetic vocabulary nor do any but two of them feature openly gay and lesbian characters.
Nevertheless, these films are quite queer, radical in their departure from the mainstream (and even independent) cinema in their approach to their respective narratives. Taken individually, each film offers and plays with familiar themes and structures but a sense of “the new” haunts these films.
We should, then, take a moment to abandon the traditional conversations on these films (who the fuck cares, for instance, if that spinning top topples over at the ending of “Inception?” It feels like that’s precisely the wrong discussion that movie wants to have, no matter how many of your friends insist on having it).
At the very least, that’s what this list intends to do, to shift the conversation, to shift the way in which we’re thinking about cinema nearly a century after its inception.
And now, with the Great Recession and the 21st century as backdrop, the best films of 2010, the New Queer Cinema…
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10. Winter’s Bone
Think of “Winter’s Bone” as this mythologized “Real America” we keep hearing so much about these days. Here, however, as Jennifer Lawrence’s young Ree Dolly traverses the Ozark Mountains through rural Southwestern Missouri in search of her missing father (known locally for his impeccable methamphetamine cooking skills), she encounters a world removed from the law, one removed from the national political landscape, and even industry. Charged with discovering her father’s whereabouts (and with the care of her two younger siblings and her mentally ill mother, as well with preventing her family’s house from falling into foreclosure), Ree sets off through the looking glass and into the darkness, encountering archetypal figures from the rural that feel ripped from the tales of Greek mythology and the like.
“Winter’s Bone” is as harsh a reality check as it is a beautifully filmed story. That it feels uniquely American should surprise no one, given its subject matter and setting (a rural American landscape devastated by meth production and addiction, the loss of employment opportunities otherwise).
Director Debra Granik’s “Winter’s Bone” feels like the film the Coen brothers wanted to make with their recent “True Grit” remake this year, another film about a young woman venturing into the uncivilized seeking retribution and answers, only better.
"Winter's Bone"
9. Inside Job
With his 2007 directorial debut, “No End in Sight,” documentary filmmaker Charles Ferguson offered an unflinching assessment of the decisions and events that led to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. There, he complied interviews with the who’s who of U.S. foreign policy makers, U.S. intelligence figures, and many of the key architects behind the decision to go to war. Best of all, that documentary provided a coherent narrative of the events surrounding that war, pushing interviewees on specific points of contention where few others have dared and actually getting some uncomfortable answers to some difficult questions.
Ferguson’s new documentary “Inside Job” surely now puts the director in league with noted documentary filmmakers like Errol Morris (“The Thin Blue Line”). Arresting, informative, and never boring, “Inside Job” is a devastating examination of the events leading up to the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. That Ferguson manages to wrangle the interviews that he does is a testament to his talents as a gifted filmmaker and an insightful polemic. That he manages to cohere into a narrative the insanity that brought America face to face with the abyss is quite the accomplishment and one certainly worth seeing.
"Inside Job"
8. I Love You, Philip Morris
Read interviews with the imprisoned Steven Russell, the real-life conman currently serving a 144-year life sentence in the Michael Unit correctional facility of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and take notes. One particular interview in The Guardian with Russell, who spends 23 hours of his day locked in solitary confinement, is especially revealing and helpful in understanding the nuance of comedian Jim Carrey’s lovely performance as Russell in “I Love You, Philip Morris.”
Having passed himself off as a lawyer, a judge, a dying AIDS patient, an FBI agent, a doctor, a bar student, Russell explains in the interview, “Most of the time I make it up, it’s just bullshit.
“It’s kind of like acting.”
And, acting is kind of what Jim Carrey does in “I Love You, Philip Morris,” a fantastic and playful film based on the life and times of Mr. Russell (particularly the many times he escaped from jail and his mad, mad, mad love affair with fellow inmate, Philip Morris (a delightful Ewan McGregor).
The first ten minutes of the film offers insight into just how Steven Russell was able to fool so many people so many different times. Here, his performance as a straight, God-fearing, happily married man surely sets the stage for the subsequent roles he’ll assume (“kind of like acting”). In his best role since “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” Mr. Carrey seems to really understand this about the role and his real-life counterpart.
Equal parts love story and tragic irony, “I Love You, Philip Morris” surely deserves further consideration.
"I Love You, Philip Morris"
7. Let Me In
To debate the particulars of whether “Cloverfield” director Matt Reeves’ American remake of the 2008 Swedish vampire film “Let the Right One In” is “better or not” is to miss in the film all the subtlety of Mr. Reeves’ exquisite directing, to ignore the lushness and fullness of his images, to forget about the wonderful performances from the film’s two young lead actors (Kodi Smit-Mcphee and Chloë Grace Moretz). Stark, honest, and weirdly beautiful, “Let Me In” dances around in American mythology and notions of evil (early in the film, President Reagan sets the tone when he appears on a television screen, caustic in his ruminations on the concept of “evil” and America’s role in the matter).
Easily the best horror film of the year, “Let Me In” suggests quite a bit about evil and monstrosity but it suggests even more about the exciting career ahead of young Mr. Reeves.
"Let Me In"
6. Toy Story 3
You’d be forgiven if thoughts of “The Land Before Time III: The Time of the Great Giving” or “Aladdin and the King of Thieves” (or heck, even “Return of the Jedi”) have led you to believe that great things do not, in fact, come in threes, particularly when it comes to animated fare or big budget extravaganzas.
As I mentioned in my review of the film, if for no other reason than citing past precedent, “Toy Story 3” and Pixar deserve a special scratch-and-sniff sticker for pulling off what few film franchises rarely accomplish: delivering a third film worthy of its predecessors. Better still, “Toy Story 3″ comes across as a playful yet awfully contemplative meditation on modern life, childhood, and the self (yeah, that’s right, “Toy Story 3″ wraps itself and its characters in existential dilemma).
Oh, and it’s wicked funny and lovely to stare at, even through watery eyes.
"Toy Story 3"
5. Inception
A terrific and thoroughly satisfying summer blockbuster, director Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” is about a lot of things. But, at its core, “Inception” is about watching films, about the constructing of a world on a screen in front of us when we sit down to take in a movie, about the symbiotic relationship between the architect of those images and the culture immersing and losing itself in those very images.
Like the best avant-garde filmmaking, “Inception” plays at the level of allegory and, just as its characters must differentiate between what is real and what is not, what is dream and what is not, what are their subconscious projections and what isn’t, so, too, must viewers. ”Inception,” while not quite the masterpiece Internet bloggers and people in parking lots claim it to be, it is an utterly mesmerizing experience and not to be forgotten.
"Inception"
4. Blue Valentine
A protege of avant-garde legends Stan Brakhage and Phil Solomon, director Derek Cianfrance has delivered not only one of the year’s best films, but a fascinating (and, of course, devastating) tale of falling in love, falling out of love, of passionate lovemaking, and of dreams abandoned and lost. Beautifully directed and wonderfully acted (Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling are impossible to forget here), “Blue Valentine” recalls the best of director John Cassevettes (“A Woman Under the Influence”) and certainly the work of Brakhage and Solomon. I can think of fewer higher compliments…
"Blue Valentine"
3. The Kids Are All Right
As it turns out, Annette Bening’s sole task now is to show up once at the end of a decade to offer thoughtful and biting commentary on the state of the American family.
That Nic (Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) are lesbians is rather besides the point in “The Kids Are All Right.” Their struggles feel universal even if the particulars of them might not. That’s an important point to make about a film as intelligent as this one. That Nic and Jules are lesbians should not be set aside; the film does not do this and nor should critics. The film never panders to any audience and is smart enough not to condescend to its characters.
Yet, director Lisa Cholodenko’s film and writer Stuart Blumberg’s script seem more concerned with the particulars of the modern American family, the ins and outs, the nitty gritty as it were. Either way, Cholodenko’s delivered one of the best written and best directed examinations on the current state of the American family.
We’ll see you in another ten years, Ms. Bening…
"The Kids Are All Right"
2. Black Swan
With “Black Swan,” Darren Aronofsky gives us the year’s best directed film. The relationship here between Mr. Aronofsky and Natalie Portman recalls Hitchock’s work with Janet Leigh in “Psycho” or Tippi Hedren in “The Birds” or even director Josef Von Sternberg’s work with Marlene Dietrich in 1932′s “Blonde Venus.” The film crescendos, building and building to its final moments, something only made possible by the collaboration between Ms. Portman’s performance, Mr. Aronosky’s borderline Grand Guignol/operatic directing, Clint Mansell’s mesmerizing score, Andrew Weisblum’s editing, and Matthew Libatique’s cinematography.
A bizarre and gorgeous ode to ballet (from film with love, I suppose), “Black Swan” is, to steal the words of its leading actress in the film’s final moments, damn near “perfect.”
"Black Swan"
1. The Social Network
Aaron Sorkin’s script here is relentless. From frame one, words spoken matter, all at the service of contextualizing arrival of the 21st century’s social network, the Facebook.
As I noted in my review of the film earlier this year, the gothic haunts David Fincher’s “The Social Network,” a strange yet appropriate aesthetic for a film dealing with a postmodern society mediated by images and the story of the man responsible for the creation of yet another one of its spectacles. And, make no mistake, “The Social Network” is absolutely playing at that level. The film washes over you as few films do and it is only late into the film that you’re watching as close to a masterpiece as this decade has yet to offer.
"The Social Network"
