I realized some time in June that I had just forgotten to make this post. I was too busy until now to actually finish it. Anyway, there are other movies I watched last year that were as good as these, but I either already wrote about them somewhere or I couldn't write about them briefly. Still, several of these are among the best movies I've seen, period.
Devil in a Blue Dress (1995)
One of the most perfectly constructed neo-noirs I've seen, both in how its plot unfolds and in how we hope the genre will make us feel. It follows through on almost every story beat in a way that is surprising at first but looks inevitable in retrospect. Denzel Washington's character, Easy, is as capable and hard-boiled as any noir lead, but his experiences of loss, frustration, and menace are palpable. Like in many noirs, the world of this film is largely ruled by property and violence, but there are moments when it seems like the characters can aspire for more than that. It places this anxious hope against a background of strategies people use to pursue it that existed in the black community of Los Angeles in the 1940s.
The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On (1987)
This film is a documentary about Kenzo Okuzaki, a former soldier turned anti-monarchist, to expose war crimes of the Imperial Japanese Army in World War II. Frankly, it's kind of surreal that Okuzaki is a real person. The actions Okuzaki takes to coax the truth out of the parties involved makes this one of the most ethically dubious documentaries I've ever seen. He tricks them, threatens them, refuses to let them leave, but remains polite and straightforward, insisting that all he wants is the truth and that his quarries will feel better once they confess. He doesn't even care when they call the cops on him.
We learn of Okuzaki's other actions from before the film was made, attacking Emperor Hirohito with a slingshot and distributing pornographic cartoons of him. The film depicts him as an outsider from the beginning as he holds up traffic with his car, which is covered with propagandistic banners. Everyone else goes on with their lives, paying him little attention. But his shirking of authority, including his more alarming measures for getting people to talk, raises the question of why people listen to begin with. The film doesn't get too close to Okuzaki, but neither does it recoil from the suggestion that in the modern world, efforts to unearth the truth may appear to be madness—may in fact be madness. And there's something to be said of the fact that the people he confronts are reluctant to admit what they did even when they know they won't face any consequences if they do.
Eyes of the Spider (1998)
Another great film Kiyoshi Kurosawa made in 1998, Serpent's Path, is about a character played by Show Aikawa executing an elaborate revenge scheme. Eyes of the Spider introduces us to an almost identical character, also played by Show Aikawa. But his plan to get revenge for his daughter's murder is over within the first few minutes of the film. He captures and kills the perpetrator, but he finds the whole thing passes too quickly.
Eyes of the Spider consists mostly of his life after this, a life of routine. The main character starts out as a salaryman and becomes a hitman. Either way, he does the same things every day. The film depicts this life with ellipsis, and Aikawa's deadpan performance suggests it's because it simply isn't very interesting. Sometimes we get dryly comic scenes of male bonding between criminals that superficially resemble Kitano's Sonatine. But there is something poignant about Sonatine's scenes like this, something illustrates that play is nobler than work. In this film, they're empty, like corporate team-building exercises.
By making assassination a regular old day job, the film illustrates the absurdity of trying to pretend your life is normal after the confrontation with the horrific. But what else are you supposed to do day-in, day-out? What else can you do? In Charisma, Pulse, and Serpent's Path Kurosawa evoked a fear that the 21st century would unearth dangerous histories and truths that were previously buried. Eyes of the Spider shows the inadequacy of life at the turn of the millennium for dealing with the rise of such horrific things, and for providing palliatives and direction.
Nahapet (1977)
This film, apparently seen by very few people, is about a small, rural community's effort to survive and recover after the Armenian genocide. An old man named Nahapet lives there. He is beloved by the townspeople, but he says and does little. He lost his family, and spends most of his time in quiet sadness. The film implies the number of lives lost with metaphorical cutaways to hundreds of apples falling from trees all at once, making us appreciate the scale of loss without overwhelming the story of how individuals personally experience it.
After watching this film, a friend of mine mentioned Ignatiy Vishnevetsky's article about Alain Resnais's Hiroshima Mon Amour and its description of the visual language used to signal flashbacks. He noted that in Nahapet, there is a scene in which we get a close-up of Nahapet, followed by a brief flashback, followed by a close-up of someone else, and that it suggests a psychic connection between them. By persistently interacting with Nahapet, the people who love him manage to slowly bring him back to social life, but only because they bear the weight of loss together. It culminates in the film's brilliant final shot, which explains, through subtle attention to detail, why everyone who knew Nahapet cared for him so much.
No Regrets for Our Youth (1946)
This film is openly critical of nationalism and militarism, and one of its heroes is based on a real-life figure who opposed fascism and betrayed Imperial Japan. It was originally intended to have more teeth than it does, but studio intervention required the filmmakers to mitigate some of the more inflammatory elements. Setsuko Hara plays Yukie, the main character of the film who finds herself increasingly out of step with the prevailing political opinions in Japan as she falls in love with the anti-militarist Ryukichi.
Ryukichi is based on Hotsumi Ozaki, a socialist journalist and opponent of Japanese racism against the Chinese and Koreans during World War 2. Ozaki was executed in 1944 for being a Soviet informant. His prison letters were published the same year this film released. It's worth noting that Satoshi Kon's great film Millennium Actress is about a character based on Setsuko Hara, who in her childhood encounters a character also based on Ozaki. This was probably a reference to No Regrets for Our Youth.
That said, the film is not primarily about Ryukichi's politics, but about Yukie's conviction. During the war, she works tirelessly to take care of Ryukichi's family when they are heavily stigmatized by militarists and patriots due to Ryukichi's opposition to the war effort. This is a major shift from her previously affluent lifestyle. However, the film posits some connection between them in a match cut from a flashback of her hands playing the piano to her placing her hands, fingers outstretched, in a stream after a day of farmwork. It's a film that tries to give us a sense of continuity between the difficult, dirty act of creation and the beauty of what is created—more importantly, it does this in the context of rebuilding after war, in resistance to nationalism.
Platform (2000)
This film follows a group of people in a theater troupe from a remote northern town in China. The period of history it covers is that of China's transition to privatization and economic liberalization. The effects these changes have on the main characters are subtle, but they matter for reasons that tie in to how the film portrays humanity as a whole.
Fashion and pop music are used in this film to indicate time periods, but there's more to them than that. They demonstrate the capacity of people to share their feelings with each other. In one scene, the characters' car breaks down in the middle of a mountainous landscape. Their small group is dwarfed by the surrounding slopes until they make it to another large, impressive structure: an elevated railroad. Against the whole scope of the world, any person appears insignificant, but they each embody a potential for connected action whose effects are immense and difficult to grasp. Even in the remotest regions, where the film takes place, people can catch on to new desires and methods of expression from elsewhere in the world.
The sweep of history in Platform attests both to the scale of change that our collective humanity is capable of and how unpredictable it is. And near the end of the film, it starts to look at the other side of fashion and pop music: how buying things becomes a replacement for personal expression, and identity becomes separate from interpersonal interaction. The film's unassuming final shot becomes a picture of humanity's considerable powers put to sleep.
Sambizanga (1973)
In this film, just before the Angolan War of Independence—which ended the year after this film's release—a political leader, Domingos Xavier, is taken by the police and imprisoned. His wife, Maria, sets out to find him. Before she leaves, someone tells her to bring their infant child, as carrying a baby may make her more convincing. Music plays as she walks and boards the bus. She arrives at her destination and bureaucrats tell her to go elsewhere. She sets off again, and the music starts again. The problem she faces is tedious and repetitive, and it starts from birth.
But it's not just her problem. She has the support of the movement, and supports them in turn. One of the film's most moving scenes comes when Maria arrives at the home of an ally after a leg of her journey. It's the first time in a while that she sees a friendly face, and she cries when she finally gets the time and space to process what has happened. Meanwhile, Domingos never ceases to be a leader while in prison. He talks up other inmates, smiling at them, and he never gives in to torture.
Director Sarah Maldoror was committed to avoiding miserabilism when dealing with this grim subject matter. She wanted to show the scope of what colonized people could do, something colonizers don't capture in their art. This film depicts terrible acts of violence, but also a group of people who are committed to a movement, who act with hospitality, and who have formed a system in which they can act. Against all odds, there's something uplifting about it.
Sparrow (2008)
Last year I decided to watch Johnnie To's films. Among the others I saw were Throw Down, Sparrow, Fat Choi Spirit, and Don't Go Breaking My Heart. I've said before about these films that they feel utopian, not because everything goes well, but because they depict worlds where the things that matter most are the things the characters care most about. Sparrow was my favorite of them all, and alongside To's 2009 film Vengeance, the most stylish movie I've ever seen.
Sparrow contains sequences of choreography that are obviously artificial, but so elaborate and carefully performed that one can't help but be immersed. The idea that such feats are possible becomes part of the film's utopianism. The level of mastery to which the characters have developed their craft carries across how important it is, enough that a single error is enough to bring a tear to your eye.
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