Preamble:
I have a Best Movie of 2022 in mind already. This list is still not 100% concrete in my mind, a lot of things might rise and fall in stock as I begin to write about them. But absolutely there is a No. 1 and I have not doubted that it would be No. 1 for the entire year since I've seen that flick. (You can probably guess what it is - it isn't hard - the movie in question is very obviously A Thing I Would Love.) However, whatever I pick is largely irrelevant, because I am just me, a ting bubble of sea of greater film discourse. There already are a couple true Movies of the Year which are beyond little ol' me and my little ol' opinions. Much larger forces have crowned the winners, and before I write my part, let me confront the other winners.
If I were to be democratic about this, the definitive winning Movie of 2022 would be either Avatar: The Way of Water or Top Gun: Maverick, which together made over three billion dollars worldwide. Those are simply unfathomable numbers for us mortals for whom $10,000 is a life-changing about of money. Interestingly, both were long-awaited sequels to legacy properties, sequels to movies coming from the recklessly jingoistic Reagan era or in response to the recklessly jingoistic War on Terror. (There's a lot of money to be made from irresponsible imperialism, on either side, turns out.) They're both passion projects born from the egos of supermen. Top Gun 2 was pushed by Tom Cruise, one of the last remaining true movie stars, a person whose name alone still has bankable marquee value. Avatar 2 was created by James Cameron, the greatest of the auteur blockbuster creators, and one of the few left that can bully film studios, rather than the other way around.
What do Tom Cruise and James Cameron have in common? They're both dinosaurs, already instinct. There are no replacements waiting in the wings for either of them. Do you think Miles Teller will ever be the next Tom Cruise? Sounds unlikely to me. Do you think any director will be able to tell the MCU not to pollute their films with cameos for god knows what? No. If you're not Jim Cameron, you do what you're told.
Personally I saw both Avatar 2 and Top Gun 2 on their opening weekends, in the biggest theaters I could find, with all the various bells and whistles and extra dimensions and frame rates and whatever else. They are the rare kind of movie I can find a crowd to go with and make an "event". That just doesn't happen very often anymore. I contributed about $100 to that over three billion box office (and rising!) figure, do not question my patriotism when it comes to the blockbuster experience. So what did I think of either one of them?
Well... um... They're fine. They're okay. I guess... Spoilers: neither are making the Top 15.
For both of them, I have about a sentence to actually say: "It's the same movie as the first one, just older." I'm not uninteresting in the experience, I love loud, artistically non-complex things, I like roller coasters. But what am I supposed to do with either of them? They're total rehashes, nostalgic for things I was not terribly nostalgic for to begin with. I'm glad Tom Cruise can still market a movie by promising a bonkers stunt. "I'm Tommy Cruisville and this is big-ass cliff motorcycle jump!!" I'm happy James Cameron gets to swim around with his crab mechs and sexy mermaid aliens. I do not begrudge either of them. Also, this is not sustainable, either financially or emotionally.
Meanwhile, on the other extreme, a new Greatest Movie of All Time just dropped. BFI's Sight and Sound Top 100 list updated itself for this decade, and the new No. 1, replacing previous "best movies ever", Vertigo and Citizen Kane, is Chantal Akerman's 1975 film, Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. Which obviously is not a 2022 movie, and thus will not make the list. But I find it is an interesting comparison point. Sight and Sound polled filmmakers, critics, writers, academics, and their idea of the greatest movie possible was an extremely slow, extremely quiet, almost plotless art film. Meanwhile, audiences in 2022 wanted the loudest, fastest, most spectacular, most violent experiences possible.
Now, admittedly, this methodology has flaws. Do audiences really think Big Movie No. 2 is the greatest time to be had at the movies or are they simply choosing from a limited menu? You just voted a few months ago, how many of you are really happy with your Congressmen you chose? Many audiences do not have access to anything like Jeanne Dielman and are emotionally incapable of processing what that movie is doing. They simply do not have the tools to access that movie's grammar, and I am not claiming any superiority here. I watched Jeanne Dielman this fall after the Sight and Sound list dropped. It was one of the most unpleasant film experiences I've ever had. It was three hours of a woman doing chores in disturbing solitude and quiet, depicting an unimaginably oppressive lifestyle. I got freaked out when this woman kept turning the lights off in every room, how can you live like that?? I don't even make my bed in the morning.
There is, however, something of a strategic choice being made here. In response to the increasing fantastical carnage in pop culture, critics and filmmakers have picked something mundane and real in direct opposition. There will never be a race of space aliens fighting extractive capitalism with sea dragons, but there probably were women in your life doing tons of labor quietly and as expected by society, selflessly, as in having no self. Jeanne Dielman is not a character in her movie which we, the audience, have access to, she's a body that performs tasks. It's a blunt, miserable truth, in stark juxtaposition to dreams of men flying out to space or San Diego to finally be appreciated for their manliness.
However, the critics and filmmakers represent an industry that has profited deeply from training audiences to want more explosions and more baroque nonsense. Sure, on an "objective" scale, a film showing a handsome man bombing Iran in a jet plane is a more "fun" or "interesting" experience than your daily routine of making coffee. But also, "fun" and "interesting" are themselves marketing terms which represent trained behavior and limited access to thought. Are you sure you're the one who decided what was "cool"?
Sadly, I find myself in early 2023 as the miserable centrist. I never want to see Jeanne Dielman again, it is a movie I can respect and ponder, it is a fascinating work of art, but I'd rather chores at home because I at least I can play some music or listen to the podcast. Concentrating that hard on a nice lady shining her boy's shows gave me a headache. But also, I'm not out here starving for Avatar 3 either. All that silliness just did not bring up many interesting questions - and the 3D frame rate business gave me a big headache.
However, maybe there's a place in between. Maybe there's a movie that be both one of the most incredible experiences on screen in terms of output of raw wonder and imagination, but can also speak truthfully of the neglected and exploited labor that makes society run? Can we be both incredibly loud and incredibly honest?
Maybe such a movie is going to be my Movie of the Year. Who knows? But that's spoiler talk. For now, the links to the Top 15 are below, will be updated daily.
Some Notes:
I'm going to be releasing these reviews day by day instead of in one
huge lump. I'm pretty far behind on the schedules I leave for myself
(had a family emergency which stole a week), so one short review a day
is more practical than killing myself to write thousands of words in one
sloppy, unwieldy mass. But more importantly, these End of
the Year recaps keep growing in scale and ambition. I fear at some point
I'll spend an entire year just recapping the previous year. So making it a more manageable operation is better, I feel.
So
for the rest of January, it's Movie of the Year stuff. And running
concurrently, there will be Game of the Year stuff, which will get its
own Master Post and its own naval gazing intro.
In order to qualify for this list, the movie in question must have been released to wide audiences, either theatrically or streaming, in the United States sometime in the year 2022. So you might see a movie from many critics' 2021 lists, you might see films that will make other people's 2023 lists. Access is not universal. I did see about 70 movies in 2022, so I did not see everything, but I think I saw everything I needed to. Feel free to be furious that I skipped The Fabelmans.
One other programming note: I am returning to a Top 15 for this list. No more Top 20s, maybe ever. This also helps because 2022 had fewer movies I felt were truly great. I flirted with shortening this down to a Top 10 but that did not feel honest. I am not sure what that means about the overall state of the industry and what was released. I do not think 2022 was a considerably worse year than 2023, but also everything still feels weird in the film-world. Just weird in new ways every year.
Anyway, I am going quite long again, so let's get into it... starting tomorrow:
15. Cyrano, dir. Joe Wright
No comments:
Post a Comment