Ten from the ‘10s: A decade in cinema — Part 2
In my last piece, I started my attempt at identifying the ten movies that best exemplified the 2010s. Here, I finish the list off by counting down from entries five to one.
Criteria are as follows:
- Objective quality: Goes without saying, for a film to represent an immutable aspect of the period that birthed it, it has to be effective at doing… well, whatever it is it set out to do. In short, the movie’s gotta be good. Overall holistic quality was the primary factor here, but notable accomplishments in particular fields — powerful direction, distinct production design, a noteworthy performance — of course also figured into my judgment.
- Cultural impact: Because quality is never truly objective, especially relative quality, we can never really separate a film’s influence from our assessment of it. As a piece of art, a movie is also not just a product of the society that birthed it, but is supposed to interact and shape that society in turn. So movies that have managed to do this, whether due to marketing, serendipity, or what-have-you, gain a leg up.
- Subject matter: This is a tricky one, because I believe a great movie can be made about anything. To that point, I think a great story can be told about any sort of subject matter or setting. I’ve taken this into account though, because I’m attempting to compile a list of the films that to me have most embodied the past decade. And so, movies whose stories and themes reflect or influenced the zeitgeist came to prominence in my mind.
- Personal interest: Kind of an obvious thing, but bears mentioning because people get really hung up on this kind of thing. This is my list, and so it’s reflective of my experiences and my point of view. Naturally, it’s limited to the movies I saw, and it’s inevitable my personal tastes and inclinations will be reflected in it. I don’t think this is at all a flaw; if anything, it just opens things up to discussions about alternative viewpoints.
With that, let’s get the show back on the road!
5) Call Me By Your Name (2017)
dir. Luca Guadagnino
How you live your life is your business. Just remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once.
Some films have an incredible ability to transport you completely. For Call Me By Your Name, it isn’t to a time or place, but a state of being. The old-world architecture and vivid colors of its small-town, Northern Italian backdrop, captured in all their glory through magnificent cinematography, is the heavyweight behind the movie’s sheer aesthetic appeal. The characters’ wardrobes, comprised of oversized short-sleeved shirts, pastel-colored polos, and very short shorts, emblematic of its ’80s setting whilst being as tasteful as that decade would allow, lend it distinct character. Still, there’s a timelessness to its proceedings that supersedes the specifics of its setting.
It’s perhaps because the movie so effectively captures the essence of youthful summers, of those unique stretches in our existences when time seemed to dissipate into mere concept, when the future was a promise to be looked forward to without actually being thought about, and we were free to spend our days with only our thoughts and whims to dictate them. It’s through the separation from the usual circumstances of our lives that we’re able to achieve this kind of liberation from their concerns.
We meet our protagonist Elio in the midst of one such summer spent in his parents’ Italian villa. Though we open in the midst of this scenario, and the film more or less ends as it comes to a close, that it’s as removed from the realities of Elio’s usual life as it is from ours is what allows our viewing experience that dream-like quality. The film’s depiction of Elio’s summer exploits — reading and lazing by the pool, al fresco breakfasts with his family under the shade of a tree, sipping a cool drink in the town square — play out like memories, an idealized depiction of what it felt like at the equivalent point in our own experience.
The movie shakes up Elio’s idyllic existence and introduces drama by throwing romance into the mix. Its effectiveness in this regard stems from its ability to portray of the experience of growing attraction with such specificity. We see in Elio the confused emotions so emblematic of it: desire conflated with jealousy, resentment stemming from that desire not being realized, and the irrational anger than bubbles up when validation is sought and not obtained. The anxiety over the interpretation of signals and the awkwardness involved in sending them are seldom expressed in fiction as pointedly as they are here. A mid-volleyball game massage administered to Elio by Oliver, the subject of his fascination, stands out curiously, but remains ambiguous until the point it’s directly addressed by the characters. As with many real-life interactions, it’s subtle but in retrospect, obvious.
That the central love affair is between two men is, of course, important to note. In particular, it’s rare that a homosexual relationship be portrayed in mainstream art without all the obstacles that usually come with it. Instead, the issue of social stigma barely figures into things outside an offhanded comment made by Elio himself (which really just serves to illustrate his own denial, rather than comment on any external circumstances). Elio’s parents are revealed to be accepting, even supportive, and none of the randoms they encounter gives them a hard time. This seems more representative of an ideal world in the 2010s, never mind the reality of 1983. Thing is, the story is ultimately less interested in the social realities of such a relationship than it is in the characters’ emotional realities, which are universal. So, while contributing to the important cause of representation, the specific circumstances surrounding the experience don’t act as a barrier against anyone being able to connect to it in a personal way.
Even when the affair comes to and end, the movie portrays this less as a tragedy borne of the society’s intolerance as it does an inevitable, but logical, endpoint. Their affair is, like the summer itself, transient; its separateness from the realities of their lives is what gave it its pleasure, but the very thing that meant it couldn’t last. And though it depicts the grief Elio suffers at its fallout, the message we’re left with is not one of warning, but of encouragement.
I had called the relationship one between two men; that Elio could be called a man at the outset is arguable, but I’d wager he certainly is by the end of the film. In addition to everything else, Call Me By Your Name is a coming-of-age story. It ends where it does because it marks the end of Elio’s childhood, a major transition point in his life brought about by the fundamentally human experience of falling in love. That the relationships borne from such love can be finite is irrelevant, because those experiences themselves have intrinsic value independent of their outcome. They’re what make life worth living.
4) La La Land (2016)
dir. Damien Chazelle
She captured a feeling: sky with no ceiling, a sunset inside a frame. She lived in her liquor, and died with a flicker. I’ll always remember the flame.
Back in high school English class, we were told to always commence our essays with a declaration of its thesis, a concise summary of whatever it is you were trying to say. While not immediately apparent upon first viewing, La La Land does precisely that with the cold open of the first of many spectacularly produced musical numbers. “I think about that day,” sings the unnamed woman who never figures into the primary storyline, “I left him at a Greyhound station west of Santa Fe. We were seventeen but he was sweet, and it was true. Still I did what I had to do.”
La La Land drew a lot of comparisons to James Cameron’s colossal smash Titanic in the lead-up to the 2017 Oscars, in part because it tied its record for number of nominations in a single year (shared with All About Eve), and because they were both big crowd-pleasers featuring a love story at their center. For my money, it’s an apt comparison in three ways.
The first is that while neither movie is an outright romance, the love story in each works for the same reason: it’s fundamentally woven into the characters’ narrative arcs. Just as Jack’s joie de vivre and optimism in the face of difficult circumstances reignite Rose’s passion for life and spur her to take charge of her own destiny in Cameron’s epic, it’s through meeting one another and deepening their relationship that our protagonists, jazz pianist Sebastian and aspiring playwright-actress Mia, are able to address their deficiencies as people, and move closer to attaining fulfillment. It’s out of a sense of responsibility to Mia that Sebastian learns to temper his idealistic stubbornness with a measure of pragmatism. When the compromises cause him to lose his faith in the music-playing that used to give him so much joy, it’s she who reminds him about what he used to love about it in the first place. Likewise, when successive failures wear Mia down and lead her to question her direction, Sebastian’s belief in her ability empowers her to persist. In many films, the romance subplot feels shoehorned-in, superfluous to the central conflict; here, it’s instrumental to its resolution.
Like Cameron, Chazelle is able to sell his vision in large part through sheer technical virtuosity. As befits a film so clearly in love with the idea of film, La La Land is a cinematic tour de force. A recurring issue with movie musicals, especially those adapted from successful stage shows, is that they aren’t optimized for the silver screen, often content with recreating the staging and choreography of the latter, and shooting them with static wide shots that mimic a view of the stage, but without the immediacy of live performance and the tactile depth of being in the same room. Not so here. Chazelle stages massive tableaus of activity across complex, multi-layered settings — the aforementioned highway, a party that spans multiple rooms and a pool-equipped yard, a surreal trip across multiple backdrops separated by time and distance — as the camera weaves from subject to subject in unbroken takes. Frames close in on the actors’ faces in moments of intimate emotion, and pull out to place them in context within the immaculately designed sets. Light is used to make the shapes and colors of the props and costumes pop, and taken away to create emphasis through negative space and generate atmosphere. Simply put, it’s a wonder to behold, but crucially, all that craft is used in service of the film’s emotional throughline.
The final factor is a one of tone. Despite the potential hokeyness of an old-fashioned romance and a story about pursuing one’s dreams, the movie works because of the earnestness with which it handles its subject matter. As evidenced by its title, La La Land is a movie about a city, in this case the home of Hollywood and center of the American entertainment industry. It is, ultimately, a tribute to a particular group of people who call the city home: the starry-eyed dreamers and would-be artists drawn in by its promise, who’re willing to stake it all on the line for the chance to make it. It doesn’t quite romanticize their plight, portraying the sobering realities of their situation and the obstacles that beset them. Still, through its depiction of their passion, ambition, and commitment to their cause, it highlights the nobility in their struggle. When Mia and Sebastian decide to part ways and give up a future together, we understand why. When we see all they could have had, it’s with the knowledge that it was only ever possible in an ideal world that hands you your dreams at no cost, and that the cost was worth it. They knew what they had to do.
We, as a society, need Mia and Sebastian, people willing to make sacrifices, endure hardship, and face disappointment in the name of producing art that is authentic and sincere, because they care about it and believe in its importance. After all, it’s through art that humankind is able to express and communicate what we value as a culture. It shapes our aspirations and codifies how we live our lives. It’s how we pass on our ideals, to one another, and for posterity. So here’s to the ones who dream.
3) Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
dir. Denis Villeneuve
You newer models are happy scraping the shit… because you’ve never seen a miracle.
The decade was odd in that it gave us more than one sequel to a beloved sci-fi property whose last entry came out in the 80s (Max Max: Fury Road just barely missed this list). 2017 in particular gave us two such follow-ups whose originals starred Harrison Ford, of which this is the second to appear in this list. Very odd indeed.
Speaking of patterns, Blade Runner 2049 follows in the footsteps of James Cameron’s* Aliens in that it’s a sequel to a near-perfect Ridley Scott science-fiction classic that against all odds distinguishes itself as a masterpiece in its own right. Cameron’s film did this by using story elements like a greedy, unethical conglomerate and a band of cocky, hyper-macho space marines to fill in the map Scott’s film had painted with period-relevant social context, expanding the world and enabling real-life parallels to be drawn. Oh, and by cranking the action up to eleven.
Likewise, Villeneuve maintains the contemplative cyber-noir atmosphere that was perhaps Blade Runner’s greatest strength with similarly magnificent production design and score, and bolsters it with some impeccably directed set pieces, crafted with the same eye for design and engineered to drive the story forward in addition to getting the blood pumping. It’s a more visceral and immediate movie than Scott’s, but what’s amazing is that it manages to be just as thoughtful and poignant.
Blade Runner’s central conceit, as with the Philip K. Dick novella that inspired it, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, is the question of what defines a human being. It presented this question to us as we followed protagonist Rick Deckard hunt down a renegade band of replicants as we learned that these artificial beings all possessed thoughts, emotions, and aspirations, just as we all do. Unsurprising for a film made at the dawn of what we’d now consider artificial intelligence, its engagement with its theme is existential, rooted in concept.
2049 likewise mirrors the preoccupation with social awareness of the era that birthed it in that it places greater emphasis on the social implications of the concept. It does this by placing a replicant, “K”, front-and-center as the audience surrogate, enabling an exploration of the world in a way that wasn’t possible with Deckard. (NB: Just to get it out there, this film does not directly address the conundrum of whether or not he’s a replicant, which to be honest is thematically unimportant to both movies anyway.) We see K grapple with prejudice, not the overt “terminate with extreme…” variety, but in the various forms it can pervade day-to-day life: It comes overtly hostile, and as unintentional; from his peers, as well as the randoms he encounters. A blade runner (i.e. replicant-hunter) himself, we see the dissonance such a profession would wreak on his psyche, and in having him encounter and confront renegades, we get a glimpse into some of the attitudes replicants can have towards those of their kind with conflicting ideologies and at times, physical differences in composition, even when they are fundamentally similar. He curbs his loneliness through an artificial intelligence called Joi, in what is surely a known parallel to real-life incidents of people forming romantic attachments to digital simulations, and their relationship invites further questions about what human experiences qualify as “authentic”.
Ironically, though perhaps completely intendedly, K ends up a more immediate protagonist than the ostensibly human Deckard. Where Deckard was cool, distant, and a bit of a cypher, we’re granted an intimate look into the inner workings of K’s mind. When he completes his hero’s journey, it all the more cathartic.
Blade Runner 2049 isn’t just that rare sequel that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with its predecessor, it’s a visionary piece of science-fiction filmmaking from one of the most talented directors of his generation, one that utilizes the full power of its genre to provoke and inspire.
*Funny how he keeps popping up. I should write more about his work, but all things in their own time…
2) Roma (2018)
dir. Alfonso Cuarón
Estamos solas. No importa lo qué te dicen, siempre estamos solas.
(We are alone. No matter what they tell you, we [women] are always alone.)
Some works of art are triumphs of visionary imagination; others come from an artist’s personal experiences, byproducts of the lives they’ve lived. Roma feels like an apotheosis of the latter, a film so vivid, so intimate, and so intrinsically tied to its creator that in getting to understand the world the story inhabits, you feel like you understand an intrinsic aspect of him.
It achieves this through painstaking set design, meticulous choice of musical accompaniment, and breathtaking black-and-white cinematography that imbues each image with a deep sense of nostalgia; like memories, clear in the mind’s eye, but somehow incomplete. However, this specificity extends to the scenarios depicted, which together capture the nuanced, perhaps self-contradicting dynamic that exists between a domestic helper and the family that employs her.
One of the great narratives of the decade is that of oft-neglected sectors of society gaining a voice and a seat at the table where the larger conversation is being had. Poor, female, uneducated, and from a culture distinctly different from the majority, both within her own country and especially in the world at large, protagonist Cleo possesses a story that seems least likely to be the subject of cinema. But Cuarón makes it clear that people like Cleo played enormous roles in his formation as a person, and so they occupy a place of prestige in his work as an artist.
It’s by depicting the minutiae of these episodes from Cleo’s life, scenarios he’s able to envision with such loving detail because of his closeness to the subject matter, that he’s able to capture the unique, nebulous dynamic between a domestic helper and her employer-family. In one instance, Cleo snuggles up against one of her young charges, as the family watches TV. He puts his arm around Cleo’s shoulders; he welcomes her and the warmth between them is apparent. After a few moments, Sofía, the children’s mother, asks Cleo for a cup of tea, and we’re reminded that despite it all, she’s at work and she has to get up. In another scene, grandmother Teresa frantically attempts to check Cleo into the hospital. She answers the administrator’s inquiries in a panic, genuinely concerned about Cleo’s wellbeing, but realizes more with each question how little she really knows about this person she shares a roof with.
This is something that’s often difficult to understand for those without firsthand experience of it, but in grounding his anecdotes in universal human emotions, he makes his subject matter accessible and ultimately, relatable. And for those of us for whom the topic is more immediate, the film serves to help reach realizations about own context that may not have been immediately apparent. Seeing scenarios that mirror those in our own lives depicted in art imparts objectivity and perspective, not unlike having a friend point out an intrinsic fact about yourself you’d not been consciously aware of. To have Cuarón turn his lens to such a specific, overlooked, but deeply influential experience, and to do so with such craft and mastery, is incredibly validating.
I don’t know whether I should be surprised or not at the parallels between the Mexico City in the 1970s depicted by the film and my own experiences in Manila in the 1990s. But if there’s one message Roma imparts to us through its depictions of Cleo and Sofía’s lives, it’s that it’s our similarities, not our differences, that define us.
1) Lady Bird (2017)
dir. Greta Gerwig
I wish I could live through something.
At the risk of being reductive, if there’s a single overarching theme to the decade that’s just passed, it’s one of identity. From the wider discourses around social politics that first gained mainstream traction in the last ten years, to the rise of the individual’s importance even in such soulless corporate mechanisms as consumer marketing, the advancement of people’s right and ability to define themselves is the grand coup of the 2010s. It’s fitting then that one of the decade’s most remarkable movies centers on a single young woman at a major crossroads of her life, and her journey of self-discovery. It’s the simplest of stories, and the most important.
Protagonist Lady Bird/Christine is emblematic of her generation, those commonly dubbed millennials, whether proudly or scathingly. She’s possessed of powerful convictions and a distinct sense of self, but often feels powerless to shape the course of her life, subjected to forces and systems beyond her control and outside of her choosing. She’s got a strong sense of self and isn’t afraid to go against the grain, but isn’t immune to yearning for her peers’ acceptance.
It’s through her interactions with the people around her that she goes through the process of reconciling these conflicting facets of herself, each character a representative of the forces that shape a person’s life. That these characters are brought to vivid life as believable individuals is Lady Bird’s greatest strength. It enables us to recognize the people and forces in our own lives that have stood for the same thing, and thus draw parallels with our experiences. Its specificity, perhaps unintuitively, is the key to its breadth, and why it feels like such an intimate experience. In watching Lady Bird coming to grips with her feelings for Sacramento, the hometown she’d long sought to escape, and appreciating the role it’s played into shaping her into who she is, we see our own experiences and realizations reflected back at us.
Lady Bird captures what it’s like to be a young person at the turn of the millennium with warmth, pathos, and humor. In representing our experiences, our struggles and ordeals, as well as our joys and victories, it celebrates them. And I don’t think anything represents the 2010s better than this: a celebration of us.
