A funny thing happened on the way to putting together this year's Top 10 list.
Somewhere in the middle of the compilation process, an odd pattern began taking shape. There seemed to be more good films floating around this year, and it soon became apparent that many of these films were curiously connected. The more this list was fiddled with, the more the movies seemed linked by subject matter, style and any number of other factors. The process began to call for grouping pairs of films on this year's list as a series of ties.
Not to get too weird about it, but it was almost as if these tied movies were mirror versions of each other, either version of which might reasonably find a place on a Top 10 list in some alternate dimension existing beyond (or beside) this one. Top 10s from the Twilight Zone.
Rather than do the obvious thing, for once, and simply whittle the list down to the manageable, magic number of 10, we decided to give in to the voices from beyond. What follows, then, amounts to two separate but absolutely equal Top 10 lists, each representative of what we may as well call a parallel filmic universe. If that doesn't work for you, think of this dual list-list as our new year's present to you folks with split personalities out there.
1. Under the Sand/Amelie — The best films of the year were two French imports — one dark and tortured, one sweet and life-affirming — about the crazy things people do in the absence of love. Francois Ozon's delicate but thoroughly devastating Under the Sand features a stellar performance by Charlotte Rampling as a woman dealing with the apparent death of a missing loved one. The film sets us up so that it's never quite clear what actually happened, unfolding like a richly enigmatic update of a Hitchcockian ghost story (say Rebecca or maybe Vertigo), in which we're not quite sure if the ghost is living or dead. A much brighter and more elemental confection is Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amelie, a Looney Tune freak-out brimming with imagination and emotion. Amelie may be a fairy-tale trifle, but it's a trifle gilded with something approaching genius.
2. Amores Perros/Memento — Two ambitious and strangely satisfying films in which the main character is time. Memento, a haunting film about a man who can't trust his own memory, actually tells its story in reverse. The extremely bloody but deeply human Amores Perros (Love is a Bitch) offers up three dovetailing tales in which characters appear and reappear, and time occasionally doubles back upon itself in order to present its prism-like narrative from what frequently appears to be all angles at once. Both films are deeply paranoid but altogether extraordinary head trips, where the real pleasure of the puzzle isn't the solution, but the puzzle itself.
3. In the Mood for Love/Ratcatcher — Poetry in motion from Hong Kong and Scotland, respectively. Wong Kar-wai's ravishing, richly nuanced In the Mood for Love is A Brief Encounter refashioned as an Asian art film, in which two lonely people never quite manage to get together. The film's as much about what doesn't happen as what does, and it demonstrates an enormous affection for its characters, particularly when they're being stubborn or foolish. A different sort of beauty is at work in director Lynne Ramsay's Ratcatcher, a close encounter with Glasgow slum life that's at once grotesque, surreal and strangely sublime. Ratcatcher isn't afraid to slap us around, but neither is it afraid to offer us moments of tenderness that ultimately allows the film to transcend and transform all the ugliness in its world.
4. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring/Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone — Do you believe in magic? The most obvious connection on this list: a pair of rousing, epic fantasies for the child in every grown-up and for the grown-up in every child. You decide which applies to you. Strong scripts, sturdy performances, handsome production design and amazing special effects are only some of the pleasures to be had here.
5. Shrek/Ghost World — The year's best cartoons, live-action and animated. Ghost World is an inexplicably entertaining (and, gasp, ultimately touching!) teenage alienation flick, based on Daniel Clowes' comic about a pair of terminally cynical hipster-geeks clomping through life. Dreamworks' superbly rendered Shrek is a deliciously irreverent bit of make-believe, a classic bedtime story tinkered and toyed with in as tasty a manner as any fractured fairy tale we can recall. The latter movie offers up a charmingly quirky version of a traditional hero's quest while the former's a distinctly pomo anti-quest; both are thoroughly satisfying at what they do.
6. Va Savoir/Together — Wry, whimsical and uncommonly wise, both of these international ensemble pieces benefit from the sort of endearing, enduring humanism that has us rooting for absolutely everyone, including those characters we might normally find annoying or even flat-out unlikable. Va Savoir (see Outtakes) is the latest film from venerable French director Jacques Rivette, and shows the old master in fine form examining the glories and grand illusions of romance. Together hails from Sweden, takes place in the mid-'70s, and is just about as funny and finely drawn a portrait of the failed Hippie Dream as you'll find on screen.
7. Our Lady of the Assassins/L.I.E. — The Chicken Hawk Duo. Michael Cuesta's L.I.E. unfolds like a more humane version of Larry Clark's Kids, veering between hyper reality and stylized dream state, between loopy humor and horror story, eventually coming home to roost as a controversial story of redemption for a sexual predator. Barbet Scroeder's love-story-set-in-Hell, Our Lady of the Assassins offers, if anything, an even more extreme mix of humor and compassion with bursts of cruel and casually brutal violence. The tale of a jaded, middle-aged writer's relationship with a cold-blooded but strangely angelic street kid, Schroeder's remarkable film unfolds as a Latino take on Death in Venice redone as the sort of buddy picture that might have done Jean Genet, Pasolini or even Bunuel proud.
8. Hedwig and the Angry Inch/Spy Kids — The Kids are Alright, parts one and two. Hedwig is as pure a dose of rock theater as you'll find, an endlessly bizarre and extremely entertaining glam-rock extravaganza that tells its story in the form of flashbacks, fantasies, extended monologues and zippy stylistic devices. Most of all, the movie narrates its tale through song, since, for all its daring, multileveled gender ambiguity, Hedwig is really an old fashioned musical at heart, albeit one that's been outfitted in rabbit fur, rhinestones and Spandex. A project aimed primarily at a slightly younger crowd, Robert Rodriguez's latest romp is just as clever, flashy and wildly energetic as Hedwig, even if it's all just for fun. Rodriguez mixes in a little Harry Potter, a lot of James Bond, Tim Burton, Willy Wonka, Dr. Seuss' The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T and apparently just about everything else the director's ever absorbed, all bubbling away just under the movie's shiny surface.
9. The Deep End/In the Bedroom — A pair of small, character-driven mysteries, and each of them less a whodunit than a whydunit. Both films are anchored by outstanding performances from their female leads (Tilda Swinton in Deep End and Sissy Spacek in Bedroom) and each does an excellent job of staying at least one step ahead of the audience's expectations. What's particularly fascinating about each of these films is how skillfully they manage to milk maximum suspense and impact by slyly hinting at and then gradually revealing the dark and sometimes awful things lurking just beneath even the brightest and most ordinary of surfaces.
10. The Man Who Wasn't There/The Others — Two good old-fashioned spook stories for modern moviegoers. Much like the original 1963 The Haunting, The Innocents and the other classic psychological ghost stories it echoes, The Others is seductive, steadily creepy and quietly menacing in an elegant, understated fashion that hardly ever finds its way into horror movies any more. A ghost story of a different stripe, the Coen Brothers' elegant but oddly contoured screwball noir The Man Who Wasn't There, stars Billy Bob Thornton as the title phantom, a milquetoast of a man trapped in a rut to end all ruts and totally invisible to everyone around him. Both movies are beautifully shot, densely atmospheric affairs that, by the final frames, put us squarely in the corner of the ghosts.
Oh, and just by the way: For those of you wondering why Apocalypse Now Redux and the remarkable Japanese thriller Cure are nowhere to be found on this mega-list, we should point out that both films were originally released prior to 2001, which makes them ineligible. Finally, even with the equivalent of two whole lists at our disposal, there were lots of excellent films that spilled over and didn't quite make either cut. Among the ones that got away were the stylistically fabulous Moulin Rouge, The Royal Tenenbaums (opening this week), Monster's Ball and No Man's Land (opening soon, hopefully), Sexy Beast, Time and Tide, and The Vertical Ray of the Sun. Long may they run.
Lance Goldenberg can be reached at lance.goldenberg@weeklyplanet.com or 813-248-8888, ext. 157.
This article appears in Jan 3-9, 2002.