My Movie Decade
By Brett Beach
December 31, 2010
La Commune (2002)
La Commune, from director Peter Watkins, is at heart a "mockumentary" but it's not borrowing from the Christopher Guest playbook. Using a cast of nonprofessionals and shooting in one location (a large warehouse) for under three weeks, Watkins recreates a time and a place (Paris, 1871) just after the people have revolted against the government and are attempting to hold on to what little power they have snatched. He does this using only the bare minimum of props and costuming. Watkins' conceit is to imagine the presence of the media back then via state-run news updates and guerrilla camera crews conducting man-on-the-street interviews. Mixed in with this are thoughts from the actors, in their costumes, and what they are learning about their own country's history from participating in the film. If I make it sound pretentious, I have failed. It is alive and vibrant and engrossing and remains so even as it acknowledges its own artifice. I watched this on my laptop over three evenings in Vegas (because that's how I roll in Sin City)
Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003)
Los Angeles Plays Itself is a documentary that consists entirely of several hundred film clips and voiceover narrations, structured and presented like the most in-depth film lecture you’ve ever attended. Directed and scripted by Thom Andersen, a Professor of Film Studies in Los Angeles, it is a look at how his hometown has (or has not as the case may be) been portrayed in film and television over the decades. A consideration on how much of our perception of places comes from media and a tribute to the lost histories of an often over-simplified city.
Before Sunset (2004)
Richard Linklater, Kim Krazen, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy bring us once more into the orbit of Jesse and Celine and in only 75 minutes distill the essence of a night of young love and a decade in its aftermath of wondering what-if. I was doubtful if I wanted to "tarnish" my love for Before Sunrise with finding out "what happened next" but now I hope sometime this decade will bring a third installment, when we will all be a little older and a little wiser (heh, heh).
Marie Antoinette (2006)
I admire all three of Sofia Coppola's features this decade but I think Marie Antoinette trumps both Lost in Translation and The Virgin Suicides. Coppola sees this woman child as clearly as the family of teen girls in Eugenides' tale and the young bride in LIT. Her grandest achievement is to make history come dazzlingly and dizzyingly alive with new wave music on the soundtrack and Lance Acord's exquisite cinematography. A stellar ensemble cast delights but Dunst shines. Between this and Wimbledon the same year, I thought she was ready to break through into the next stage of her career. We'll see…
Silent Light (2009)
Set in a Mennonite community in Mexico and focusing on a love triangle, Silent Light is about faith, redemption, spirituality, sin, miracles and the glory of an eight-minute push-in shot with no cuts. For those like me who treat cinema as a church, Silent Light is a film worth assuming an attitude of prayer for. Director Carlos Reygadas’ previous film, Battle in Heaven, featured the most hardcore sex I have ever seen outside of a XXX feature. Silent Light, with its pastoral ruminations and search for a deeper understanding, feels like it heralds from the cinema of Malick .
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