The Best Films of 2001: The Future of Movies Begins

By John Demetry The song that got me through: "I want to see what people saw / I want to feel like I felt before / I'd like to see the Kingdom come / I want to feel forever young / I want to sing / To sing my song / I want to live in a world where I belong / I want to live / I will survive / And I believe that it won't be very long / If we turn" - Turn from The Man Who by Travis Two tragedies of American life in September 2001 should forever change the way movies are appreciated. On Labor Day, Pauline Kael, possibly America's greatest film critic, passed away. The next week, on September 11, more lives were lost in the terrorist attacks. The cacophony of ignorant responses to both events by American film critics and by Hollywood signaled an irrefutable crisis in the culture. Jude Law stars in Demetry's top pic of 2001: A.I. - Artificial Intelligence - If 9/11 illustrated the preciousness of life, then the death of Kael threatened the demise of that value as a critical tool. The recognition and application of that standard of value practically defines the imagination. Art heightens the imagination so that it can be applied to living. As New York Press film critic Armond White put it best: "[Kael] made it possible for others in the world to understand what matters." Kael defined her aesthetic often enough that most critics' misunderstanding can only be attributed to willful shortsightedness - the same quality those critics apply to both art and politics. So it's necessary to reiterate what Kael made so plain, defining artists in her review of Satyajit Ray's Devi as people that "perceive complexities" and "explore the medium." She sought out an artist's perceptions and explorations in movies - a "distillation of. . . experience" - as evidence of life's vitality and worth. Her epochal 1974 essay "On the Future of Movies" remains applicable to the state of the art today. Just replace Vietnam and Watergate with 9/11 and the presidential election, Dirty Harry and The Sting with, say, the post-September re-release of Moulin Rouge (which is both reactionary and PoMo flippant). Cynical aesthetics still being used to exploit the political confusions of the popular audience. The difference being that now most American critics no longer serve the role of championing works of art buried by studio prerogatives, but are now agents of that prerogative. In that essay, Kael wrote her most profound aesthetic statement. "Perhaps no work of art is possible without belief in the audience - the kind of belief that has nothing to do with facts and figures about what people actually buy or enjoy but comes out of the individual artist's absolute conviction that only the best he can do is fit to be offered to others." She locates the moral imperative faced by artists and critics alike. There's a war being waged all right - with the audience's imagination as the booty. That war didn't begin or end with 9/11. Before September 2001, the crisis was clear. It came into focus with the critical and popular dismissal of Steven Spielberg's A.I. - Artificial Intelligence - a work of art that meant to liberate the popular audience from the clutches of hegemony. That explains why this calamity in film culture is of such import to Queers. Whether they "liked" A.I. or not, critics didn't understand it: The hegemony strikes back. Think I'm paranoid? Evidence A: the best work of film criticism I read this year, Gregory Solman's essay on A.I., went unpublished. Mullholland Drive Still, there's hope. Critics White and Solman struggle against adversity, continuing Kael's mighty example with the fierce individuality and rigor that she prized. They keep the flag of cinema flying and rally voices of dissent. There continues to be movies worth the fight. The movie year 2001 provided abundant opportunity for audiences to, as Kael urged in her Devi review, "respond with feeling." Below are (count 'em) 35 films exhibiting the makers' "belief in the audience." Some come from Hollywood (A.I., Planet of the Apes, Bubble Boy) and get mishandled by the critical-media elite. In limited releases, many are from American "independents" (Mulholland Drive, The Man Who Wasn't There, All Over the Guy) and other countries (In the Mood for Love, Intimacy, Faat Kine). Others, however, did not receive theatrical distribution in the U.S. (Three Businessmen, Physical Pinball, The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein). The money men reject their job - their moral obligation - to make art available to a popular audience. Most critics deny their duty to engage and enlighten. Money men and the critical community no longer believe in the audience - or in the artists. But they dictate the film culture. They have power. The films I rank in the Top 10 all fulfilled Kael's criteria of great, sustained art explicated in "Trash, Art and the Movies": "the subversive gesture carried to the domain of discovery." Experiencing these films in the context of Kael's passing and 9/11, the hope is that audiences will discover renewed faith in the art. If that happens, the current film culture will turn - and a new century and cinema will rise from the ashes. The Top 10 Films of 2001 (Listed Preferentially): 1. A.I. - Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg) http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/entertain/071601en.htm 2. Gosford Park (Robert Altman) http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/entertain/122401en.htm 3. Mulholland Drive (David Lynch) http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/entertain/110501en.htm 4. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai) http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/entertain/022601en.htm 5. Intimacy (Patrice Chereau) http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/entertain/101501en.htm 6. The Man Who Wasn't There (The Coen Brothers) http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/entertain/111201en.htm 7. A Summer's Tale (Eric Rohmer) http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/entertain/060401en.htm 8. Faat Kine (Ousmane Sembene) 9.Vertical Ray of the Sun(Anh Hung Tran) http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/entertain/100101en.htm 10. The Adventures of Felix (Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau) http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/entertain/112601en.htm Runners-Up (Alphabetical): All Over the Guy (Julie Davis) http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/entertain/090301en.htm, Bubble Boy(Blair Hayes), The Day I Became A Woman (Marzieh Meshkini) http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/entertain/102300en.htm, Eureka (Shinji Aoyama), Physical Pinball and A Biography of Barrels (David Gordon Green) http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/entertain/040901en.htm, Planet of the Apes (Tim Burton) http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/entertain/080601en.htm, The Road Home (Zhang Yimou) http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/entertain/073001en.htm, Three Businessmen (Alex Cox) http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/entertain/070201en.htm, Under the Sand (Francois Ozon) http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/entertain/082001en.htm, and Warm Water Under a Red Bridge (Shohei Imamura) http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/entertain/102201en.htm. More (Alphabetical): 3000 Miles To Graceland (Demian Lichtenstein) http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/entertain/031901en.htm, Behind Enemy Lines (John Moore) http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/entertain/121701en.htm, Be My Star (Valeska Grisebach) http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/entertain/100801en.htm, Jurassic Park III (Joe Johnston), The Mad Songs of Fernanda Hussein (John Gianvito) http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/entertain/102201en.htm, Millennium Mambo (Hou Hsiao-hsien) http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/entertain/102201en.htm, The Million Dollar Hotel (Wim Wenders) http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/entertain/052801en.htm, 'R Xmas (Abel Ferrara) http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/entertain/102201en.htm, Rat Race (Jerry Zucker), Sexy Beast (Jonathan Glazer), The Tailor of Panama (John Boorman), Tomcats (Gregory Poirier), Town and Country (Peter Chelsom), and Yi Yi (Edward Yang) http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/entertain/031201en.htm.

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