top two, 2020

It's too, too late for a list, and I'm not even qualified to make one, really; for most of the last year my movies have come through the same screen as my news, my work, my socializing, etc. etc. etc. and a certain amount of weariness has set in as I feel an exhaustion that is, at this point, universal. It is a small thing, indeed, to not have been able to dive into cinema as usual, and a smaller problem, still, in the face of so many others. But it's a facet of what's been lost this year, a calamitous toll that even a modest retrospective like this must acknowledge.

So what I haven't seen outnumbers what I have: FIRST COW, the SMALL AXE series, SOUL, POSSESSOR, MANK (though I've little interest in that one, oddly), and many of the other heralded masterpieces of the year have gone by. In these times of nonstop anxiety and no-small-problems, the pain of not having had the experiences necessary to make any kind of guess as to the state of current cinema just calls attention to the larger issues plaguing all of us. Year-end list-making, in the face of that, seems a trivial indulgence, at best. I can't and won't list my ten favorites of what I saw and call that an educated guess as to what went down on our screens this year.

But two movies mattered deeply to me:

Made in 2018 in the run-up to the ascension of Bolsonaro, the queer Brazilian western BACURAU perfectly captured the mood of this fractious year; its arrival on American screens about a month into lockdown was just the rallying cry many of us needed. The story of a small Brazilian village beset by imperialist forces bent on its eradication struck a blow for the representation of those Bolsonaro would suppress. But its political urgency was matched with a knowing savvy for the thrills of genre cinema; without wanting to be too specific, it was the rare movie that captured the spirit of the work of John Carpenter beyond a shallow name-check. Between the passion of its politics and the effective staging of its suspenseful moments BACURAU emerges as one of the finest, and most galvanizing, action movies of recent memory.

If Kleber Mendonca Filho and Juliano Dornelles captured something universal about 2020, then Gaspar Noe (of all fucking people) cast a spell to create brighter things for 2021. Noe's eight-minute SUMMER OF '21 promotes a forthcoming fashion line from the house of Yves Saint Laurent, so naturally is a feast for the eyes. But fashion houses are, perhaps unsurprisingly, generous in the leeway they give artists to present their work (indeed, a friend reminded me that Moschino observed social distancing by showcasing a 2020 fashion line through an astonishing puppet show). And even as YSL seem to have reined in Noe's more antisocial impulses the powerful cinematic sensibility he's honed over the years - his fluid camera, his breathtaking use of split-screen, his intrinsic grasp of the power of music (here a knowingly-deployed remix by SebastiAn of the Summer/Moroder smash "I Feel Love") - is used to powerful effect here (as is a silent but theatrically-present grande dame performance by Charlotte Rampling). With its fashion mansion in the middle of a dark and Gothic forest the movie feels as occult as SUSPIRIA, and one doubts that its COVID-resonant imagery is accidental (it begins with a heroine alone in a disheveled tower, then fleeing from an unseen menace - we can all surely relate). The models take their places in an audience, distant from one another but present together in their moment, and the image feels like a hopeful telegram from an immediate future. 

May we all remain safe, and eventually re-congregate to share such moments. See you in the dark, eventually.