Not Oscars

This is not my attempt at predicting who will win Oscars this year but just a list of my favourite films released last year. (This is another way to while away time. It is well past midnight and I can't sleep!).

Cache: The blazingly intelligent art-thriller from the Austrian director Michael Haneke was easily the most intellectually challenging film of last year. It not only raises difficult questions about racism, class, history, problems facing contemporary European societies, psychological guilt, both personal and collective, but also makes you question the basic assumptions of cinema itself by problematising the traditional relationship between the filmmaker and the audience in a way that would keep film-theorists busy for some time. Even a laid back viewer, who has barely heard of people like Delueze and Bazin (and I am one of those), will be asking questions about objectivity, representation of reality, point-of-view, meanings behind images etc after watching the film. This is as if Robert Bresson and Alfred Hitchcock collaborated together on a single project. Can there be a more positive recommendation? I had earlier written about it here.

2046: As sensuous as Cache was intellectual, this was easily the most delirious movie going experience of last year for me. Although the story about romantic masochism and fatalism was, well, a little too romantic for me, the sights, sounds and textures were so evocative that it left me swooning throughout the film. I even completely lost the plot in the middle of the film! Wong Kar-wai takes cinematic sensuousness to new heights here, which might be the best of his career so far. And of course, needless to say, this is one of those films you HAVE to see on big screen. Previous post on the film here.

The Squid and the Whale: The funniest film of the year with just the right amount of pain, heartbreak and bitterness. At few places I was in fact laughing at myself. Just like Walt (the elder son) I have used my half-baked knowledge of Kafka to impress people (with even less successful results!) and just like his father I have often used the word "philistine" as the most preferred form of abuse ("you haven't heard of Flaubert? You philistine!"). The great insight of the film is that intellectual snobbery of this kind is nothing but another form of egotism and it wreaks enormous damage on personal relationships, as perhaps any kind of egotism always does. The writer-director Noah Baumbach reportedly based the film on his own experiences but even if you didn't know this you can make out that the film must be autobiographical -- every character, every scene is so honest, soulful and truthful that it couldn't but be based on a lived experience. Truly remarkable. Link to New York Times review.

Innocence: This extraordinary debut by the French director Lucile Hadzihalilovic was the strangest and the most original film of the year for me. It is one of those films which keeps you captivated from the first scene to the last and yet at the end you ask yourself, what was it that I just saw? Was it real or was I just dreaming? Fantastic, chilling and very rewarding. Previous post here.

The Constant Gardener: The most conventional film on the list. Also an example of how a director with a distinctive style and vision can transform what could have been a regular political thriller into something with considerable emotional force and a potent political outrage. The Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles (his second film after the art house hit of 2001, City of God) not only navigates and criss crosses different timelines effortlessly but also has a weird way of composing and editing shots. This gives a powerful sense of immediacy and intimacy to scenes which become unusually effective. It also contains the best romantic pair of last year -- Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz, who were both outstanding. Also a perfect nightmare for the public relationship department of big pharmaceutical companies. The film claims, rather convincingly I thought, that those multi national companies are "up there with the arm dealers". Though I am personally a little biased towards anti-capitalist propaganda of all kinds, I am sure the film will work for people with all persuasions just because it is honest, truthful and motivated by a genuine sense of purpose. Link to NYT review.

Now that I see, none of the films on my list are nominated for Oscars. What does it say about Oscars? Hmmm.