Two thousand eight was not a strong year for film. Of the 150 or so films I saw in 2008, none was a masterpiece -- none even rated a 9 out of 10. There were at least a dozen that rated 8 out of 10 though, and there were quite a few sevens.
It's this crop of sevens and eights that makes 2008 distinctive. There were an unusual number of films that aspired to high artistic ground but fell short of their lofty goals. While their imperfections were disappointing, their aspirations were inspiring. These imperfect, ambitious films are the story of 2008, and most of them did not get the attention they deserved.
Anyone who cares about film should appreciate diamonds in the rough. If we only pay attention to perfect achievements, then we miss most of what's going on in any art form.
Cinema suffers greatly when audiences refuse to nurture serious artists through a bit of misfiring. I am not suggesting that we should flock to terrible films. I am saying that we should be enthusiastic about seeing good but imperfect films that have high artistic ambitions. If we refuse to purchase a ticket to imperfect films, then we make it very difficult for directors to take risks. All we will end up with is prefabricated product made according to corporate formulas.
First let's look at my top 10 films of the year:
1. WALL-E
2. Mister Lonely
3. The Edge of Heaven
4. Synecdoche, New York
5. Snow Angels
6. The Visitor
7. The Dark Knight
8. Changeling
9. Slumdog Millionaire
10. Stop-Loss
Of those, only Dark Knight and Slumdog have gotten the attention they deserved. WALL-E got rave reviews, appeared on many Top 10 lists, and surely will win the Oscar for Best Animated Film. But how many adults have seen it? Only about two percent of my adult friends saw it -- a grievously low number. Disney gave the film a juvenile and mawkish ad campaign, causing adults by and large to avoid it. I almost didn't go see it for that very reason. I was hoping that WALL-E would receive an Oscar nomination as Best Picture, which would have pushed adults to see it. A nomination for Animated Film does not have much impact on adults. In that sense, I would say that even WALL-E is under-rated. Almost no one considers it a must-see, which is heart-breaking. WALL-E should have turned into a mass phenomenon, but it did not. Every adult within the sound of my voice has to rent WALL-E on DVD.
Second on my list is Mister Lonely, directed by underground legend Harmony Korine. When I exited the theater after seeing Mister Lonely, I was sure the film would become a sensation. Instead it disappeared almost immediately. This to me was the most stunning failure of the year. I watched in shock as it happened over the course of two weeks in early May, and then, poof, Mister Lonely was gone. My only hope is that it will become the next Donnie Darko, failing to catch on in theaters but getting discovered on DVD. Any fan of Donnie Darko would surely get a lot out of Mister Lonely. It's elliptical and haunting just like Darko.
The Edge of Heaven, no.3, is from Turko-German newcomer, Faith Akin. This film is far less avant-garde than Mister Lonely but is still in the auteurist tradition. It certainly was not expected to attract an audience in the suburbs, but the fact that it failed in cities was a major disappointment. A chief reason surely was the fact that none of the larger art-house distributers picked it up. Perhaps the film would have found more of an audience if Sony Pictures Classics had gotten behind it. It's an absolute travesty that The Edge of Heaven has been seen by only a few thousand people in the United States.
Synecdoche, New York, which wins my vote for fourth-best film of the year, was seen by a significant number of people. This is gratifying. (The word is pronounced sin-ECK-duh-kee, incidentally.) But the negative reaction to it puzzled me. I can understand someone not loving it -- but hating it venomously? Not many movies generate hatred. It usually indicates that a film pushed people's buttons. Was the brutal realism of its exploration of death too disturbing for folks? Was the film too disconcerting in the way it undermined the concept of identity? But then again, Charlie Kaufman's previous films undermined identity and were almost universally praised.
Were people intimidated by the fact that they couldn't pronounce the title or understand its oblique poetry? I'm certain that less than .00001% of the American population knows what a synecdoche is. I've talked to college-educated folks who thought that Kaufman made up the word. (He did not.) When I set them straight, they seemed humiliated and angry at me, as if I was trying to embarrass them. (I was not. I was simply giving them information.) Americans go into such strange psychological tailspins when they encounter something artistic or literary that they don't understand.
Maybe I'm reading too much into it. Perhaps people simply thought Synecdoche was one of the worst films of the decade. That can bring out venom in anyone, including me. If that's the case, then I can only stand back in wonder. I don't consider Synecdoche a masterpiece or even completely original. (I think it's to some degree derivative of the avant-garde work of the 1950s and 60s by filmmakers such as Bergman, Fellini, Godard, and Antonioni.) But there was no question to me that it was a major work of art. For this reason, I consider it under-rated. While it got seen, Synecdoche received a qualitative assessment that I think was vastly below what it deserved. I pray that 10 years down the road this film will be rediscovered.
Snow Angels, the fifth-best film of 2008, is in the same boat as Mister Lonely. For some mysterious reason, no one went to see it. It got very high ratings from about 70% of critics. Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune called it "sublimely moving." But the chorus of praise was not loud enough it seems. The marketing campaign was limited. But you'd think that a film of this quality could rise above that. Snow Angels was certainly bleak in tone. Perhaps 2008 was the year that even art-house audiences turned their backs on bleak subject matter. If that's the case, then I'm a radical outlier. Tragedy as an art form is always in season for me.
Number six, The Visitor, did reasonably well at the box office for an indie film with no major stars. Reviews were excellent, and lead actor Richard Jenkins was even nominated for an Oscar. But it did not become a must-see, and it should have. Ninety-five percent of Americans have not seen it and will not see it. This is gravely disappointing. Occasionally an indie film becomes a break-out hit (e.g. Slumdog Millionaire). The Visitor at least should have come close to that. And where was the Best Picture nomination? The Visitor gets a 90% rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, while The Reader gets 60%. And The Reader gets a Best Picture nom and The Visitor doesn't? How does something like that happen?
Clint Eastwood's Changeling, number eight, had a lot of buzz behind it initially, but the buzz dissipated quickly for reasons that I still don't understand. Angelina Jolie received an Oscar nomination, thank God. But other than that, the film was under-appreciated and did not take off with critics or audiences. Supporting actor Jeffrey Donovan never got the praise he deserved.
Changeling was a bit bloated and needed tighter editing. But one could say that about countless Best Picture nominees in years past. It was melodramatic -- but Slumdog was nothing more than a melodrama, let's be honest. My only explanation for the under-appreciation of Changeling is that it was female driven. If you put equivalent melodramas alongside each other but have one male driven and the other female driven, the male driven one will do a lot better at the box office and among critics, I believe. It could also be that the film's unflinching look at the phenomenon of child murder was too disturbing in a year when anything bleak got shunned by both critics and audiences. It's a shame. Add Changeling to the list of films that need to be rediscovered when this grotesque spasm of escapism has passed. Average Americans of course always tend toward mindless escapism. But when critics and Academy members fall under its spell, it spells (temporary) doom for art.
Finally we come to no.10: Stop-Loss. In 2007, American critics and audiences completely ignored films that bravely wrestled with U.S. foreign policy. Paramount and MTV Films delayed the opening, hoping that audiences would cease being like an ostrich with its head in the ground. But that head stayed firmly in the ground throughout 2008, and Stop-Loss was barely noticed. Maybe in 20 years, cinephiles will realize that Hollywood got brutally punished in 2007-08 for producing terrific cinema that took on the big issues of our time. Movies like Stop-Loss, alongside 2007's Rendition and In the Valley of Elah might then get the audiences they deserve.
There we have eight terribly under-rated films of 2008. But a dozen more films also got cheated by critics and audiences. They were flawed films, but with modest changes could have been great. They were nearly superb and urgently need to be seen by anyone who cares about cinema.
English Language
Ballast
Revolutionary Road
W
Elegy
Frozen River
Body of Lies
The Wackness
Hounddog
Savage Grace
Traitor
Foreign Language
Reprise
Let the Right One In
A Jihad for Love
Yella
Chansons d'Amour
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