Yet, a man has to start someday.
V for Vendetta (Director: James McTeigue): This crazy fission of innumerable ideas produces so huge an energy, the brilliance of its flame almost makes us write an essay, rather essays riddled in political overture. A stunning product of intelligence, the source of the film’s multi-faceted depth is its seeming indecisiveness what it wants to be – an action film or a post-apocalyptic sci-fi or a superhero film – and somehow, it ends being all of them and much more. V is the masked vigilante who has taken the onus on himself to wipe the country of ill sitting in power. Hero or anti-hero, moral or amoral, but there’s no doubt that this anarchist does have one hell of a style. I his Dramatis Persona lives in each one of us. Images, words and movements seldom gravitate so much political significance. This film is probably the reason why I love films.
Pan’s Labyrinth (Director: Guillermo Del Toro): Fantastical monsters will never be as horrifying as the mechanics of real world, but the young girl is unfortunate enough to face the perils of both of them. Only that her innocence can overcome the parallel world of fantasy, but the evils of the real world might just be too incomprehensible for her, or for anyone for that matter. This is a fable, a fantasy, for the ages, yet its real world is brutal beyond words. I might never come to successfully describe this masterpiece, but I can surely declare that the Mexican cinema has well and truly arrived.
The Prestige (Director: Christopher Nolan): Thriller-mechanics matter relatively less in a Nolan film. Not that they’re brilliant, but Nolan, through his intricately designed films weaves characters that linger in your mind for a long time. Revenge is one of the most basic of human traits, but it takes a person only so far before losing steam. This gem of a thriller blurs the line when revenge ends and when hubris, that most dreaded of traits, takes over as two illusionists square off against each other. Time is a dimension of little essence in Nolan’s world and he freely traverses in there to show us cause-and-effect. It isn’t a gimmick and as opposed to many who consider his films complex for this reason, Nolan rather simplifies the process for us to understand the psychology of his films by doing away with the barrier of time.
Babel (Director: Alejandro Gonzalez-Inarritu): Do we really need words to understand each other? Or do they just increase the confusion? This multi-narrative masterpiece from Inarritu, the final film of his death trilogy, examines the relationships between us citizens of this world and the barrier that has taken us so far away from each other. His background as a disc jockey probably helps Inarritu weave such compelling narratives, but his handling of the medium is god-gifted.
The Queen (Director: Stephen Frears): With all the grace the royalty would be proud of, it narrates the time period when Tony Blair enters 10, Downing Street and when Princess Diana met with that fateful accident. Making engaging, entertaining dramas out of real-life figures and their situations demands the brightest of filmmaking and this film has it in abundance. If I was asked to describe last year in terms of performances I would require spelling only two names – Helen Mirren, Ulrich Mühe (Gerd Wiesler, The Lives of Others) and Ivana Baquero (Ofelia, Pan’s Labyrinth).
The Lives of Others (Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck): This film captures, with a great deal of objective genius, the most difficult part of the transformation of a character. Set in 1984 East Germany, it is about a German Stasi officer who’s put in-charge of a surveillance mission of a playwright and his girlfriend. Ulrich Mühe gives us one of the greatest character studies of modern times in one of the best performances of this decade.
The Wind that Shakes the Barley (Director: Ken Loach): What stands out in this intensely political tale of the Irish revolution during the 1920s is its honesty. The tale is of brothers ending on different ends of the same face of the coin, but at its heart is that eternal truth – an eye for an eye will only make the world blind. But, is there a way out. Brilliantly photographed, and equally well-acted, this is an emotional experience that shows Loach in top flight.
Rang De Basanti (Director: Rakesh Omprakash Mehra): Is it coincidence that three films on this list are based on revolutions, or is it just our times? They say the future lay in the hands of the youth; I believe the coming-of-age of youth has seldom been so revolutionary. Weaving its tale of ‘changing the system’ around a group of disillusioned youngsters, the film takes the bull by horns with a tone tailor-made for youngsters. When has a proper intellectual debate stirred the cup? And rightfully, the film has none. It rather believes in the practical – emotional storm can blow the cup away.
The Departed (Director: Martin Scorsese): Cops and criminals never had it better. The classic Scorsese irony, put to great effect, brings his best entertainer since Goodfellas (1990). This fantastically paced mirror places two survivors-in-life, who’re on the opposite ends of the moral spectrum, in alien labyrinthine situations asking them to do what they do best, survive. Ask as only Marty can. The two of them are supposed to be impostors. Well, aren’t we all?
Flandres (Director: Bruno Dumont): This film, right at the bottom, puts me in the most interesting of predicaments – how can I recommend a film when I myself am not sure whether I like it or hate it. Dumont is a challenging filmmaker enough with his sparse use of actors’ expressions; here he piles on it a hopelessly depressing tale of romance in the time of war – the depression not because of the sadness of the tale but its seeming lack of any such categorization. This landscape is bleak, in a way, speaking about the characters. I’m not sure I recommend such cinema, but I could hardly shrug this film, its effect. Does that count for something?
Honorable Mention
Alfonso Cuarón’s Children of Men, Pedro Almodóvar Volver, Davis Guggenheim & Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, Gore Verbinski’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Paul Greengrass’ United 93
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