Music & Films for
Common People
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10
MOMMY
Dir. Xavier Dolan
Canada, 2014
The enfant terrible of the decade, with four movies under his belt at the age of 25, went a step further to shake contemporary cinema in his masterpiece fifth film about the problematic relationship between an immature single mother and her deranged violent teenage son, in a film that would be the joy for a psychologist specialized in mental disorders.
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It is formidable how in such a short time, the director has developed a very clear style of his own, and in Mommy he reaches the maturity not only in his narrative themes, but also in his trademark visual style of unusual camera angles, extreme close-ups and music montages. But the most memorable asset is the usage of aspect ratio as a narrative device, modifying the size of the frame (in a meta way, even) to convey meaning.
9
MELANCHOLIA
Dir. Lars Von Trier
Denmark, 2011
Melancholia makes Lars Von Trier break every single rule of his Dogma manifesto that celebrated hyper-naturalism in film, starting with an opening montage that is aestheticized to the point of resembling moving paintings. The cinematography work is exquisite, not only in that glorious opening scene, but throughout the whole film, and the use of Wagner's opera just adds to the monumentality of what we contemplate.
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Melancholia treats science-fiction in the same way that Tarkovsky did, focusing in the emotional and psychological side of the apocalypse rather in the action sequences. It is one of the most sober and focused films of Von Trier, the provocations are necessary and not mere whims of his ego, and the result is a nihilist yet hypnotic film that offers several iconic moments of obscure beauty and pure cinematic artistry.
8
BLACK SWAN
Dir. Darren Aronofsky
United States, 2010
Black Swan closes a streak for Darren Aronofsky of five fantastic films that verse about the obsessions that drive one person into madness, all of them incredibly different from each other. But in this film it was clear that the auteur had mastered his craft and was able to potentiate all his narrative and stylistic assets: the editing as a way to create rhythm, the unusual camera angles, the use of altered states of consciousness. All of these traits are used to intensify the sensations aroused by this descent to hell.
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Although it's on the accesible side of his spectrum (or accessible enough to propulse Natalie Portman to a well deserved Oscar), it still shows the audacity and creativity of one of the most interesting directors from the time. Aided by Matthew Libatique as the cinematographer, there's a fantastic use of camera movement to create a visual dance.
7
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN
Dir. Lynne Ramsay
United Kingdom, 2011
Without being a horror film, We Need To Talk About Kevin manages to provoke a sense of fear and terror that not so many films can achieve, but most importantly, it does so at a psychological level, creeping in your mind and making you question if evil is something that comes from birth or is learned through one person's life.
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Tilda Swinton offers the performance of a lifetime, subtle but incredibly complex in her portrayal of a wide range of emotions like guilt, fear, exhaustion and doubt. Then newcomer Ezra Miller also gets kudos for being one of the creepiest teens in the history of cinema. Ramsay is brilliant in her use of filmic language, not only playing with linearity to hide and reveal on a perfect tense timing, but also with haunting images as symbols (the floating drapes, the red color in everything) in her story of the horrors of motherhood.
6
GISAENCHUNG
(Parasite) Dir. Bong Joon-Ho
South Korea, 2019
Not only a film that bends cinema genres and twists the plot several times defying all our expectations on what this story is about, Gisaengchung makes an important point on one of the key topics of the end of the decade: the huge distance between social classes.
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If Joon-Ho has been very critical of class division in his previous films, he has never been as effective and merciless in his social analysis as now. The subtle ways in which he analyses the bubble privilege of the rich and the cunning strategies of the poor to get a better life lead to dangerous consequences that once are set into motion won't stop unfurling in this mad screenplay that keeps shocking you with each turn in takes. Visually, it is a masterclass in the use of composition to convey meaning, with every aspect of the mise-en-scéne and cinematography carefully though to emphasize the social disparity.
5
LA VIE D'ADÈLE
(Blue is the Warmest Color) Dir. Abdellatif Kechiche
France, 2013
One of the most daring coming-of-age films ever made, La Vie D'Adele is highly controversial in its portrayal of a young woman finding homosexual love, not only for its lengthy and explicit sex scenes, but also because of the emotional boundaries that tears apart with ferocious audacity. Kechiche achieves a delicate balance between harsh realism and elaborated aesthetic style thanks to his use of light and close-up framing of the two main actresses, who manage to convey at its fullest the emotional turmoil of their intense love story.
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It will be hard to think of another film this decade that explores the whole complexities of love as well as La Vie d'Adèle, taking you in an emotional trip that reveals that love will be, at the same time, the best and the worst thing that could happen to anyone.
4
ROMA
Dir. Alfonso Cuarón
Mexico, 2018
Written, directed, produced, photographed and edited by Cuarón himself, it might be one of the most extreme examples of an auteur film, not only because of his intense involvement in every aspect of the film, but also by the personal trademark that he was able to imprint in it and the closeness of the story to his personal life.
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An interesting exploration of class relations in Latin America, and a reliable (yet, slightly romanticized) testament of the lifestyle, manners and events of a specific time and place. The beautiful cinematography on black and white knows how to best capture the great research done to bring back to life a city from the recent past from the production and costumes design. Every single shot is so carefully designed to find infinite beauty even in the most insignificant and common acts, like washing the floor of a garage.
3
THE TREE OF LIFE
Dir. Terrence Malick
United States, 2011
The cinema of Terrence Malick has always been more a visual experience rather than a narrative one, but he stepped his game up to craft one of the most beautifully shot films in the entire history of cinema. He and his cinematographer, Emmanuel Lubezki, shooting using only natural light, manage to achieve such perfection in their use of light, framing, movement and color that each frame could very well be hanged in an art museum.
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The unconventional narrative structure is as ambitious as the visual side, taking temporal jumps (going even to the Big Bang and the jurassic era) and inserts of dreams in between brief impressions of a man's life It is monumental because it shows, at the same time, how infinitely small we are in the universe, and how infinitely immense we are as individuals with unique stories.
2
JODAEIYE NADER AZ SIMIN
(A Separation) Dir. Ashar Farhadi
Iran, 2011
An elegant and efficient mise-en-scéne, a great use of film language to enhance the tension, a perfect sense of narrative rhythm, and great performances that nail the realistic tone the film needed. Jodaeiye Nader Az Simin posses all of those virtues, but above all, this film is a master class on perfect screenwriting. Farhadi threads all the details of his story in such a clever way that the film keeps constantly evolving with unexpected plot twists that are entirely organic and justified.
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The construction of characters among these two families confronted after a work negligence and a physical rebuke, is an incredibly realistic portray of how human beings behave and react in the most irrational ways when facing conflict. Farhadi could easily be named the best storyteller of this decade.
1
AMOUR
Dir. Michael Haneke
Austria, 2012
Michael Haneke is the Quentin Tarantino of psychological violence, so when it was announced that his next project would be the story of a happily-married aged couple, many eyebrows were raised. But if Amour is indeed a sweet and tender love story at times (take those words on the context of what Haneke understands as tenderness), it is also the harshest and most devastating film that the director has ever made.
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Haneke's rhythm allows a humanist and sincere approach to a love story; there's elegance in the framing and the camera use, but the biggest glory is the trio of huge performances that Emmanuelle Riva, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Isabelle Huppert offer, undisputedly three of the most important actors in the whole history of French cinema.
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A philosophical story about existence, it's a deep exploration of old age, degradation, death, compassion and, of course, love. A perfect film where every single element is crafted with such delicacy and put together as a solid whole where there's not a single frame that is out of place. What Haneke, master of violence, seems to try to tell us with Amour is that the two most violent acts you'll experience in your life are those that escape our control: to love and to grow old.