The great art of humanism is alive and well. Of course it is, Abbas Kiarostami is still making movies. But this year, for once, it's not an Iranian film that I thought was the most humanist but rather this entry from the late Taiwanese director, Edward Yang.
Yi Yi for me has the depth of character of the great Dreyer and Ozu films but a little less austerity and a little more warmth. It's nothing flashy at all just committed, engaged cinema that wants us to look at ourselves and come away with a little more understanding.
Yang has a very natural, unobtrusive style that's rigorous without being cold. He is neither as formal as Takeshi Kitano, Tsai Ming-liang, or Wong Kar-wai nor as demanding as Hou Hsiao-hsien, Jia Zhangke, or Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Yi Yi is a wonderfully accessible film with unusual depth, patience, and heart.
Other contenders for 2000: From this year, I still have some things to see. These include: Agnes Varda's Les glaneurs et la glaneuse, Jiang Wen's Devils on the Doorstep, Kinji Fukasaku's Battle Royale, Arnaud Deplechin's Esther Kahn, Terrence Davies' The House of Mirth, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Mysterious Object at Noon, and Hong Sang Soo's The Virgin Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors. At some point I need to revisit Steven Soderbergh's Traffic, Lars von Trier's Dancer in the Dark, and Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as I struggled a little the first time I saw them. But from this year I really like David Gordon Green's George Washington, Robert Zemeckis' Cast Away, and Gus Van Sant's Finding Forrester. I love Bahman Ghobadi's A Time for Drunken Horses and Jim McKay's Our Song. And my closest runner-up is Francois Ozon's Under the Sand.
11/27/16 I watched Chantal Akerman's La Captive. A terribly dysfunctional relationship is at the core of Akerman's film. Although she conceives and executes at an extremely high level, the suffocating nature of the film's thematic might make it tough to support and digest.
11/18/19 I rewatched Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love which I haven't seen since its premiere at LACMA. I had forgotten how remarkably beautiful it is. Specific mention for Cheung and her dresses, very well the most stunning wardrobe in the history of the medium. Wong's style is frustrating here but is it a choice he has made to frustrate us with repetition, with grounded beauty, to mirror the lives of the two main characters. It is a challenging film, one that never provides the buoyancy it suggests it might offer, and one that feels like this very special recipe of Nouvelle Vague mixed with Bertolucci's The Conformist.
12/24/19 I watched Miguel Gomes' Christmas Inventory. Interesting to see this early film by a Portuguese filmmaker I greatly admire. If nothing else, his sense of the relationship between sound and image is already well developed at an early stage in his career.
6/19/20 I watched Samira Makhmalbaf's Blackboards. A film with lots of humanism and undercurrents of Iranian political issues that never fully grabbed me. Although I was impressed by its actors and its symbolism.
11/27/16 I watched Chantal Akerman's La Captive. A terribly dysfunctional relationship is at the core of Akerman's film. Although she conceives and executes at an extremely high level, the suffocating nature of the film's thematic might make it tough to support and digest.
11/18/19 I rewatched Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love which I haven't seen since its premiere at LACMA. I had forgotten how remarkably beautiful it is. Specific mention for Cheung and her dresses, very well the most stunning wardrobe in the history of the medium. Wong's style is frustrating here but is it a choice he has made to frustrate us with repetition, with grounded beauty, to mirror the lives of the two main characters. It is a challenging film, one that never provides the buoyancy it suggests it might offer, and one that feels like this very special recipe of Nouvelle Vague mixed with Bertolucci's The Conformist.
12/24/19 I watched Miguel Gomes' Christmas Inventory. Interesting to see this early film by a Portuguese filmmaker I greatly admire. If nothing else, his sense of the relationship between sound and image is already well developed at an early stage in his career.
6/19/20 I watched Samira Makhmalbaf's Blackboards. A film with lots of humanism and undercurrents of Iranian political issues that never fully grabbed me. Although I was impressed by its actors and its symbolism.
3/14/21 I watched Agnes Varda's The Gleaners and I. Only the fourth Varda film I have ever seen. What impresses most is Varda's lightness of touch, her openness to life and the experiences she finds along the way. Her films have some of the analytical weight of the great Nouvelle Vague works but she also infuses them with as much of the characteristic New Wave playfulness as any of her peers. Along with Demy, Varda stikes me as perhaps the most humanist of all of the Nouvelle Vague filmmakers.
10/30/21 I watched James Gray's The Yards. Gray's second film has much to recommend. But it is so measured that it rarely gets to you and lacks the visceral impact of the films of Coppola that he so clearly admires.
12/26/22 I watched Jia Zhangke's Platform. Only the second film I've seen from Zhangke. So far, I can say that his cinema veers close to Hou Hsiao-hsien in its rigor and slowness. This one felt particularly pessimistic compared to Still Life and suggested a China of very little exposure, hope or opportunity.
