Best Films of 2017

Similar to 2016, global cinema in 2017 kept pace with current events and created works that reflected society. There were multiple films released in 2017 that covered the plight of refugees and the struggles they face (69 Minutes Of 86 Days, Aqerat, More, Human Flow, The Other Side of Hope, Reseba, Taste of Cement) while some films showed the harsh economic realities of our world (Félicité, The Florida Project, The Nothing Factory, Western). This year’s Cannes festival unveiled three timely films set in Russia that gave a glimpse into Russian society (A Gentle Creature, Closeness and Loveless). All three are very different films yet all look at the larger Russian society by highlighting the impact on a family/spouse when a male member is absent. In addition, there were new works from established master directors although Hong Sang-soo outpaced everyone else by releasing three films in one year, which is an accomplishment even by his prolific standards. Of the numerous worthy titles to choose from, this list is restricted to 17 films, all of which are 2017 titles.

1. Zama (Argentina co-production, Lucrecia Martel)

Lucrecia Martel’s long awaited cinematic return is a feast for the senses and brings a fresh perspective to the colonial life. Packed with delightful references to cinematic and literary characters ranging Godot to Kurtz to Aguirre and even the legendary Gabbar Singh. This is filmmaking of the highest order!

2. A Man of Integrity (Iran, Mohammad Rasoulof)

Rasoulof cleverly uses a single man’s struggles to depict larger issues around corruption and politics in society. The film is set in Iran but the story is universal.

3. Western (Germany/Bulgaria, Valeska Grisebach)

A smart variation of a traditional Western film genre that illustrates the east as the promised land for riches instead. The guns may be absent but horses and masculinity aren’t.

4. Life and Nothing More (Spain/USA, Antonio Méndez Esparza)

A remarkable and urgent film that gets at the core problems regarding racism in America. By using a single incident around a playground, the film shows the cycle of fear that leads to a violent reaction and subsequent excessive force by law officials.

5. Cocote (Dominican Republic co-production, Nelson Carlo de Los Santos Arias)

A creative blend of fiction and documentary which effortlessly mixes different film stocks (colour, black and white) and contains different camera styles, including an immersive 360-degree pan. The end result is a scrumptious film that hails the arrival of an exciting new voice in international cinema!

6. A Gentle Creature  (France, Sergei Loznitsa)

Loznitsa brings a sharp documentary eye in depicting the prison system in Russian society while layering the work with Kafkaesque notes, satire and even opera.

7. Closeness (Russia, Kantemir Balagov)

Based on a true story, Balagov nicely uses a 4:3 aspect ratio to box the screen in thereby showing the closeness and tension among different ethnicities in the Caucasus city of Nalchik.

8. Lover for a Day (France, Philippe Garrel)

A lovely mix of French New Wave and contemporary sensibilities.

9. The Nothing Factory (Portugal, Pedro Pinho)

Starts off as an absurd comedy, shifts gears to become a documentary and ends as a musical. The documentary portion of the film is brimming with ideas where the film looks at the end of capitalism and shutting down of factories across Europe. The film poses relevant questions about what work means in modern society.

10. Taste of Cement (Germany/Syria/Lebanon co-production, Ziad Kalthoum)

A poetic documentary that depicts the lives of Syrian workers who are working on high rise towers in Beirut. The documentary smartly interweaves the construction of the buildings in Beirut with the destruction of the workers’ homes back in Syria. The film also features some of the most inventive framing and camera movements of the year, including some dizzying views of Beirut.

Honourable mentions (alphabetical order):

Aqerat (Malaysia, Edmund Yeo)
Faces Places (France, JR/Agnès Varda)
Félicité (Senegal co-production, Alain Gomis)
Newton (India, Amit Masurkar)
On Body and Soul (Hungary, Ildikó Enyedi)
The Other Side of Hope (Finland, Aki Kaurismäki)
Wajib (Palestine co-production, Annemarie Jacir)

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017, UK/Ireland/USA, Yorgos Lanthimos)

There was constant murmur and whispers at many of the scenes during the first hour. Finally, a person behind me gave up the pretense and spoke loudly so that everyone in the cinema could hear: "I don't get this movie". You know what a lot of people don't get? The economy. So let's look at that.

Certain nations, including Greece, were negligent when it came to their economy. Some locals with no experience whispered that things would get bad but the experts and the men in power didn't listen. They continued to drink and make reckless decisions. Slowly, some parts of the economy became paralyzed. Different organs of society started to fail on a regular basis. The experts gathered in rooms, dressed in their suits, and discussed the problem. According to them, nothing was wrong and things would get better on their own. No one wanted to do open heart surgery. Nobody wanted to cut off the limbs, nobody want to start from scratch. So the experiment continued and still continues. It isn't only Greece but all across the world these financial experiments continue.

In a year of allegories in cinema, Yorgos Lanthimos has signed his entry.

Blade Runner 2049

Blade Runner 2049 (2017, Denis Villeneuve)

Few quick thoughts.

1. Similar to SICARIO, the landscape shots in Villeneuve's film are their own narrative. This time, Roger Deakins' camera explores landscape with the eye of Edward Burtynsky. As a result, the ruins echo an older communist era with the words of 'Ozymandias' hovering over it.

2. The entire work is also garnished with touches of Tarkovsky and K's journey is akin to going through the desolate Zone. The communist ruins connect the dots further.

3. Nicely illustrates limits of our technology, from glitches in transmission to problems syncing up. Connections fail, images can't be rendered fast enough, data stores can be wiped. The reference to paper surviving isn't a coincidence.

4. Memories. Real vs Implanted. Manages to draw a line towards the dreams in Philip K. Dick's original book.

Mother!

MOTHER! (2017,   Darren Aronofsky)

I looked at my watch and counted down the seconds because I knew what was coming. The TIFF press screening of Darren Aronofsky's MOTHER! was just over and I expected the usual tweets. Sure enough, right on cue, came tweets dismissing the film and calling it garbage. A few more angry tweets appeared. I waited and then as expected, a tweet praising the film. Less than 30 minutes later, a tweet came out referencing where the director called the movie about "climate change". Then another, "hey guys, there are Biblical references. Does that change things?".

In less than an hour, the whole range of reactions had taken place regarding the film. I smiled and headed off to my next screening. These reactions were normal for any Aronofsky movie and I was glad to see that nothing had changed.

The film references the Bible and even climate change but the scope is much bigger than that. The scope is the entire history of our planet, from creation to evolution to destruction, and then like a loop, starting all over again. The movie is about what we humans do to our planet, how we use religion to divide and fight, how wars take place, both world wars and civil ones, how organized gangs take out humans, how government organized disappearances take place, how we blindly believe in someone's words, how we end up consuming and destroying the very thing we claim to love.

Of course, such scope and the manner with which it is presented opens the door for plenty of ridicule and negative reaction. Yet, there are moments which make it hard to dismiss the work. For example, the segment of the unfolding of our planet's history is a roller coaster ride where the camera goes from room to room and documents all the horrors of our society in unflinching detail.

The film is all about allegories so here's another one.

A famous soccer player steps up to the penalty spot. The crowd is expecting a goal yet the player blasts the ball over the crossbar. Silence. Complete shock that how such a player could have blasted the ball so high and far from the goal. Years later, fans don't remember the goals that were scored but still talk about that one player who blasted the ball over. That miss ends up being more spectacular than the goals scored.

Cinema of Cool

Baby Driver (2017,  Edgar Wright)

Black Shades. Music. Fast cars. Heist. Cool gangsters. Smooth talkers. Attitude. More music. Extremely intelligent sounding dialogues. Money. A girl, always a girl. For a change, some coffee.

xXx: Return of Xander Cage (2017, D.J. Caruso)

Neymar. Cool stunt, all for a soccer game. Extremely intelligent sounding dialogues. More cool stunts. Money. Lots of weapons. Exotic locales. For a change, an international cast, featuring Deepika Padukone, Donnie Yen and Tony Jaa. Of course, the father of coolness, Mr. Samuel L. Jackson is there as well.

The Fate of the Furious (2017,  F. Gary Gray)

Bigger cast, increasing with each film. Of course, fast cars. Exotic locales. Weapons. Loud explosions. Women and Men with attitude. Like last few films, all about a family.

John Wick 2 (2017,  Chad Stahelski)

Quality suits. Tailored expensive fabric. Cool lighting. Atmosphere. Weapons. Bullets, lot of bullets. Blood. Attitude. Money. Expensive tastes. Characters made to appear extremely intelligent. For extreme coolness, the presence of Morpheus to exchange some witty dialogue with Neo. For a change, it is Neo who offers the choice to Morpheus.


Four completely different movies yet all united by their ability to claim ample room in a multiplex. Of course, these four have to pounce on whatever space remains after the Super hero movies have come and gone.

All four vary in their quality. Baby Driver is the most refined of this group and has the acclaim of many critics while John Wick has its fans. The Fast and Furious movies have their admirers as well.

Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk is also a refined film, albeit a video game/war movie hybrid.

All these films drip with style yet are hollow in their core. Once the layers of style are removed, there isn't any substance.

This is cinema now. It sure ain’t dead but these movies are certainly trying very hard to kill it.

The rich strange doctor

Doctor Strange (2016,  Scott Derrickson)
 
An arrogant rich man lives selfishly and feels he is invincible. One day, his reckless driving causes him to get into an accident. This accident does not cause him to do any soul-searching. Instead, he blames everyone else around him for not helping him. He has enough money to pay for his treatment but when his money runs out, he blames the health system. Then, he learns that he can be cured by Asian medicine. So he travels to exotic Nepal. There, he finds others like him. He never associates with the locals, nor eats with them. He is cured and in turn he learns how to travel around the world for free. He learns how to travel without going through airport security or sitting in an airplane. He also learns how to steal books from libraries.

He is given a gift for being selfish. Then, he is given a chance at redemption, to erase his entire selfish life by one act of goodness. He saves the world and is made an instant hero.

How does he repay the world? Does he help the poor and needy? Does he start a company to offer health services to those who need it?

Of course not! He opens a private service to help rich privileged super heroes like himself. His first job is to act as a mediator in a family despite between Thor and his brother.

Dunkirk

Dunkirk (70 mm, of course): deserted town. No civilians. Just soldiers. Why? Because a war is being fought. Money and resources poured into saving the land from the other. And then, more money to get soldiers back home and to feed them.

The film is an immersive experience that places the viewer in the chaos and noise of war but there are some moments which quietly highlight the logistics around war that are not as apparent in other war movies. These moments are the best aspect of the film as they emphasize that when WWII took place, nations and cities shut down. Daily lives were disrupted and resources were diverted towards the all consuming war. Regular industries were converted into making gears for war. However, these quiet moments won’t be praised. Instead, the accolades will be directed at the thrill ride that has been made, complete with a video game perspective, a ticking clock embedded in the soundtrack with a few edits meant to heighten the experience. Real lives were lost but now it is entertainment. In the IMAX cinema screening, people stuffed their face with popcorn, drank pop and took it all in.

Have we learned anything from history? Of course, not. And on it goes. Real wars continue, more horrific than the past. War movies get made. Their technical qualities improve, their point of view gets refined but no one actually cares for the lessons that lay between the cuts. No large scale war has taken place since WWII but many small scale wars have taken place and are continuing to do so. The machines that were put in place in WWII were never shut down but grew into different segments.

Golaso

For the most part, it was a lackluster European season. There were limited moments of beautiful fluid football provided by players of Monaco and Dortmund. Then there was the emerging talent of Dybala who weaved around the pitch as if opponents didn't exist. With these exceptions, everything was as normal. Season after season, it has been all the same.

Then yesterday something extraordinary happened. Mario Mandžukić scored a goal for the ages. Not Ronaldo, not Messi. Mandžukić initially appeared to have blocked himself into a corner, with no angle to shoot at. Then he produced a moment of magic. His goal made it 1-1, opened the game up and led to a thrilling first half.

Mandžukić's goal is being called one of the greatest in the Champions League. It is being compared to that brilliant 2002 volley but it does fall short of that 2002 goal, which was scored by Zinedine Zidane. Yesterday, Zidane the manager, not the player, led Madrid to victory.

Not much is said about Zidane the manager. That is because he doesn't say much. He lets the players shine and quietly stands on the side. In a way, it is refreshing to see that from a soccer manager. Many other managers have made the game about themselves yet Zidane quietly leads his team to success.

Sid Lowe’s article sums up Zidane’s achievements nicely.

A New Dictator

History has shown that many dictators followed a similar pattern regardless of which country they lived in. The dictators were once seen revolutionaries and hailed as heroes. These revolutionaries promised to usher in a new bright future. However, after they were in power for a period of time, things began to change. The revolutionaries did not like any opposing voices and did their best to quieten any dissent by whatever means possible. Then, they slowly started consolidating power and eventually turned into ruthless dictators who did anything to ensure they could rule for as long as possible.

This is how dictators have been known to exist in the political world. The sporting world has been run differently, especially with regards to football/soccer managers. It has often been said that being a manager of a soccer team is one of the most stressful jobs there is. The Hungarian coach Béla Guttmann once famously said “the third season is fatal”. His words have proven true on so many occasions where diverse managers like Arrigo Sacchi, Pep Guardiola and Jose Mourinho have not stayed at a club beyond 3-4 years. Sacchi transformed AC Milan but left after 4 years. Guardiola stayed at Barcelona for 4 years and left Bayern Munich after 3 seasons. José Mourinho may have an incredible winning record but the strain on his face has been apparent after 3 seasons at most clubs. In his first stay at Chelsea, he lasted just a few months into his 4th season while in his second stay at Chelsea, he never finished the third season. Mourinho stayed at Madrid for 3 seasons while 2 each at Inter Milan and Porto. There are a few examples of managers who stayed for decades at one club such as Guy Roux who stayed at Auxerre for a staggering 44 years and oversaw the development of many young players. Then there is Alex Ferguson who famously stayed at Manchester United for 27 years and ensured his team were always winning a trophy. There surely won’t be any managers like Roux and Ferguson in the game anymore as the high pressures of the modern game ensures managers are never far from being fired from their job. It does feel like managers are just a few games from being fired and can’t ever get into a position where they wield complete control and get into a position of absolute power.

As always, there are exceptions. In North London, history is being written where the game’s first modern dictator has emerged. Arsène Wenger has now been manager of Arsenal for 21 years and he shows no sign of wanting to leave. He is one of the highest paid managers in the world for a club that charges some of the highest ticket prices (if not the highest) in Europe. Wenger has never won any European trophy (he has overseen defeats in the finals of Champions League, Cup Winner’s Cup, UEFA Cup) and has not won a league title in 13 years. On top of that, he has overseen humiliating defeats to Bayern Munich (5-1, 5-1, 5-1 for 3 straight games), Manchester United (8-2, 6-1, 4-0), Chelsea (6-0), Barcelona, AC Milan (4-0) to name just a few. Yet, there is no one in the Arsenal board, including the owner, who wants him to leave allowing Wenger to have absolute power. Any fans who oppose the manager are told to shut up and “support the team”. Articles are published which keep repeating that Wenger is the best person for Arsenal and that there isn’t any other manager who can do a job like Wenger. There is a clear split in the fan base where some fans are loyal to Wenger and others who want him gone. The situation at Arsenal resembles what happens in a nation ruled by a dictator where media publishes propaganda singing praises of their dictator, where opposing views to the dictator are shut down and loyalists of the dictator blindly support whatever decision the dictator makes. Of course, in a political dictatorship, the opponents are imprisoned or tortured or made to disappear. This doesn’t happen in the case of the soccer club where opponents are free to return to their homes or walk away from supporting their team. However, it is not easy to walk away from a team that supporters have cheered for decades.

There is on end in sight of Wenger’s dictatorship. All signs point to him staying even beyond the two year contract he has signed until 2019.

Allan Fish Online Film Festival

Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures (2005, Brazil, Marcelo Gomes)

Allan Fish was a pure cinephile who spent countless hours hunting down precious films from all corners of the world. He wrote about many such discoveries at The Fish Obscuro section on Wonders in the Dark. Of the many titles he covered, one that sticks to my mind is the 1964 Brazilian film Noite Vazia by Walter Hugo Khouri. This is a remarkable film whose discovery I owe solely to Allan. The film is unlike any of the other Brazilian films of the Cinema Novo that I have seen and is far from the rugged Brazilian landscapes of Glauber Rocha’s cinema. In fact, Noite Vazia feels closer to the sentiment of Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni.

In order to pay tribute to Allan’s review of Noite Vazia, I opted for Marcelo Gomes’ Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures. This selection brings Brazil, Italy and England together from my perspective. Marcelo Gomes’ thoughtful Brazilian road film reminded me of Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Tornatore. As for the English connection, I discovered this film at the BFI London Film Festival which was the first international film festival I travelled to. The film and the BFI London festival kickstarted my love for global cinema and film festivals, a path that eventually led me to find the Wonders in the Dark website and get to know Sam and Allan.

The road film has a special place in cinema and over the decades we have seen some stellar films all set on the road where the main character takes a journey in their car or a motorcycle. The act of taking the journey on a long road leads to a transformation and a change in the character. Sometimes the character goes looking for change in order to escape from their current life. This aspect certainly applies to Johann (Peter Ketnath) in Marcelo Gomes’ film. Johann is a German who has moved to Brazil to escape the conflict back home. He makes a living by driving across the vast Brazilian countryside selling Aspirin, a new medicine as per the film's setting in 1942. It would have been difficult for Johann to sell aspirin to people used to rejecting change but he comes up with a clever sales tactic of using the alluring cinematic medium to make his sales. This is where Cinema, Aspirins and Vultures has shades of Giuseppe Tornatore’s The Star Maker albeit with a slight variation. In The Star Maker, the salesman is a cheat but in Gomes' film, Johann is not a cheat even though his methods portray him as a mercenary. Along the way, Johann picks up a local (Ranulpho played by João Miguel) who wishes to leave his village life behind and head to Rio. The two become good friends and Ranulpho travels along with Johann by working as his assistant. But then the War that Johann escaped from finds its way to Brazil and Johann has a difficult choice to make – to return to Europe or continue his free spirited way. The movie shows how different people’s idea of freedom varies and what makes one person happy can be torture for another.

One of the most striking aspects of the film is the cinematography. Gomes and cinematographer Mauro Pinheiro Jr. overexposed the 35mm film reels thereby creating a bleached look to the film. Watching the film in a movie theatre conveyed the heat and brutality of the scorching Brazilian countryside. Unfortunately, this striking aspect of the visuals doesn’t come across in the online version of the film as the colours are muted and not as sharp as they were in the cinema. Still, it is a film worth viewing in any manner whatsoever.

Film Link

English Subtitles: The original English subtitles are not present with the film but you can select the Auto-translate subtitles feature by clicking on the Settings Icon. This does mean that the auto-translated English subtitles are not as good as the official released version.

Cross-published on Wonders in the Dark.

The Border Crossing

Desierto (2015, Mexico/France,  Jonás Cuarón)
Signs Preceding the End of the World, written by Yuri Herrera

For the last year, much of the news has been around illegal border crossings. This has not only been about borders in North America but around the world. However, the North American borders have gotten more attention due to the talk of building a wall costing billions of $$$. Buildings walls doesn’t come close to addressing the question for why people illegally cross the border in the first place. If the nations on both sides of the border were equal in every aspect, then there would no need for people to make illegal border crossings. Walls don’t highlight the financial burden people impose on their family to make such an illegal border crossing not to mention the physical and mental hardships associated with such a journey. Each border crossing is a gamble, a throw of the dice not knowing the outcome.

Jonás Cuarón’s Desierto depicts the dangers that come with such an illegal border crossing and what he has shown makes for grim viewing. The film gives ittle to no backstory about each character but it is evident that each person has their own reason for making the dangerous journey. Once the characters cross the border, the characters become prey to a man who drives a truck with a confederation flag. The man doesn’t believe in law and order and considers it his job to protect his nation’s border by killing as many border crossers as possible. The film was released back in 2015 but it is easy to know in real life which candidate this man would have voted for in 2016.

Desierto is a hunter-prey film with little dialogue and its most significant moments come when the camera pulls back to depict the vastness of the border, the vastness of the rugged landscape that is enough to defeat a person without any human intervention. It is in these moments of the border’s visual depiction that the film forms a bridge to the poetic depiction of the border crossing in Mexican author Yuri Herrera’s remarkable book Signs Preceding the End of the World. Herrera’s book is just over a hundred pages and moves at a fast breathless pace. The plot is creative and delightful but the book’s genius is how it abstracts elements related to the border crossing, both to the people making the journey and the objects they carry. In a few words, the book highlights the importance each person has with the objects they take:

“Rucksacks. What do people whose life stops here take with them? Makina could see their rucksacks crammed with time. Amulets, letters, sometimes a huapango violin, sometimes a jaranera harp. Jackets. People who left took jackets because they’d been told that if there was one thing they could be sure of over there, it was the freezing cold, even if it was desert all the way. They hid what little money they had in their underwear and stuck a knife in their back pocket. Photos, photos, photos. They carried photos like promises but by the time they came back they were in tatters.”

Desierto depicts this as well when Gael García Bernal’s character takes a teddy bear with him on his border crossing because it was something given to him by his son.
 

Herrera’s book also addresses how the border crossers are perceived. The following words are universal and could apply to countless people who make their dangerous journey across the border in search of a better life:

“We are to blame for this destruction, we who don’t speak your tongue and don’t know how to keep quiet either. We who didn’t come by boat, who dirty up your doorsteps with our dust, who break your barbed wire. We who came to take your jobs, who dream of wiping your shit, who long to work all hours. We who fill your shiny clean streets with the smell of food, who brought you violence you’d never known, who deliver your dope, who deserve to be chained by neck and feet. We who are happy to die for you, what else could we do? We, the ones who are waiting for who knows what. We, the dark, the short, the greasy, the shifty, the fat, the anemic. We the barbarians.”

Maybe one day people will figure it out. One day, people might understand why people illegally cross the border and work on a solution that eliminates the need for people to make that journey. This is not only a North American problem, but one that is found all over South America, Africa, Europe and Asia. Any place where one nation is economically better than its neighbour will lead to illegal border crossings.