Bowie Knife

The first scene of Nagisa Oshima's 'Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence' (new on DVD and Blu-Ray from Criterion) is occupied with the horror of a soldier being forced to cut his intestines open as a punishment for being in love with another man.  The last image of the film is the smiling face of a soldier the night before his execution, beaming a greeting of filial affection to a former enemy.  We're in a POW camp run under the auspices of the Japanese military, where Allied soldiers are half-subjected to, and half-ignored by an honor code that proposes self-disembowelment as the response, it appears, to just about any infraction.  In between the attempted seppuku and the smiling greeting, the adorable Tom Conti reflects poetically on the mutually assured idiocy of war, Ryuichi Sakamoto gets angry, and then gets healed while his fascinating and eventually ubiquitous score overplays but not so much that it bothers, and gorgeous burnt light provides a mystical hue to what is ultimately a nightmare that becomes a dream and then finally a reality the audience always wanted: reconciliation between people who were otherwise ready to kill each other.

But not before David Bowie saves the world.

This is probably the least actorly of Bowie's screen appearances; his portrayal of callow/shallow and ultimately penitent youth is all the more resonant because he seems out of place in the movie: we know him to be something other than either the rigid Japanese or the sentimental English colonel; his off-screen status as chameleon works because he's more like us than anyone else in the movie.  He wanders through a context in which violence is sexualised, men are murdered for loving each other, and everyone is fantasising about being somewhere else.  It's probably the most erotic war movie ever made; it's a perfect companion piece to the thematically similar 'Bridge on the River Kwai', whose British Colonel is the antecedent for Sakamoto's character here: both men obsessed with honor over humanity, both undone at the last possible moment, both the points of deepest frustration for the audience.  The formal beauty of the compositions could overwhelm the point of the film: a kind of insider's apology for, or at least critique of, his nation's particular brand of nationalistic idiocy, which here is probably best summed up by the institutional nonsense of lying about killing.  Not far off my homeland's own nonsense, nor that of the day I'm posting this, when a holiday is observed in the US, marking the arrival of a genocidal maniac who no doubt believed God and his queen had told him to love the natives by burning some of them alive.  Oshima and co-screenwriter Paul Mayersberg evoke Columbus and any number of other pioneers of the sacralising of violence, by having Conti's character exclaim, 'Damn your gods.  It's your gods who have made you who you are,' at the point where he realises that he is to be killed to preserve a sense of order that was psychotic to begin with.  And it's in the confrontation of the madness of the scapegoat mechanism where 'Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence' takes on the deepest core of the human tendency to spiral downward into mutually assured destruction.  Regret for the past is why men war with themselves today; an unthinking assumption that someone must be punished is why we kill each other; and the film locates such regret and assumptions in nothing more complex than the cruelty of boys who become men without changing.

But it neither labors nor over-philosophises its point; Oshima trusts us to get it - the first scene is so memorable precisely because it starts half way through where you'd expect.  We're right there - in an attempted imposed ritual suicide; there's no introduction, no preparation, no consolation for those of us who want our war films to pretend that war isn't murder.

At the end, I'm left reflecting on three things (beyond the easy admiration for the remarkable career of producer Jeremy Thomas, who in the splendid interview series on the Criterion disc seems to prove that he hasn't lost any thirst for making films that are both aesthetically compelling and politically humane): How childhood trauma can both cause us to dysfunction within adult relationships, but might also provoke us to live differently; to avoid the suffering we caused others, or was caused to us when we thought we didn't know any better.  On the role of sexual repression as a foundation for violence; and how a well-placed kiss could end conflict between people.  And finally, as Thomas says, how certainty is often the enemy of peace, for in war, 'we are victims of men who think they are right'.  'Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence' sounds, at first glance, like a humorous title; but it's not, and it could not just as easily have been 'Happy 4th of July'.  It's a film that begins with a man being forced to torture himself to death, and ends with the anunciation of what, for Rene Girard, perhaps the thinker most capable of explaining why scapegoating kills us all, would consider nothing less than the axis of history.  Along the way there's blue light, Bowie's blond locks, Conti's smile, Takeshi's ambivalence, Sakamoto's rage.  And a war film that sometimes feels like science fiction, sometimes like romance, sometimes like nothing you've ever seen before.

Tyler Clementi and Me. And You.

Of course I never knew Tyler Clementi, the young Rutgers student who took his own life last month in a tragedy so unfathomably horrific that it doesn’t permit adequate attempts at description.  The story that has emerged so far is that Tyler was enjoying a romantic moment with another guy, while his roommate secretly streamed the encounter live on the internet.  Shortly after Tyler found out, he jumped off a bridge. Of course I never knew him, but his story demands a deeper listening than has yet been promoted or presented by our culture’s spokespeople.  This is not just a story about one man and two acquaintances whose idiotic prank appears to have caused such fear of exposure that Tyler felt he had to kill himself.  It’s a story about all of us.  And we all need to listen to it.

On the basis of what we know thus far, I think we can guess this: Tyler Clementi died as a direct result of a culture of sexual shame in which institutionalized religion is the major investor.  I am angry, and I am going to say something harsh and direct, but I am willing to take responsibility for it.  Please feel free to respond if you wish.

If you have ever affirmed homophobia by not intervening to challenge the snide remarks that all of us have heard, you may be part of the reason that Tyler Clementi is dead.  And most of the time, I myself have not intervened.

If you have ever used ‘us’ and ‘them’ language to divide sets of people into ‘normative’ heterosexual cultures, and ‘others’, you may be part of the reason Tyler Clementi is dead.  I spoke of ‘us’ and ‘them’ for most of my life until a friend challenged me; I still find myself slipping into old rhetorical habits, for our culture is so deeply wedded to the myth that our identities depend on dividing and conquering.

If you have ever disrespected, dehumanized, or belittled a person because of their sexuality, you may be part of the reason Tyler Clementi is dead.

I think I am part of the reason that Tyler Clementi is dead.

We often say in ‘progressive’ religious circles that we want to ensure that we have a ‘conversation’ about sexuality, that we want to create a situation where everyone feels ‘included’; and for sure, this is a noble endeavor.  But too often the premise is that those of us who are straight are merely opening a space for those of us who are gay (or LBTQQI - but more of that later) to be told that ‘they’ are just as good as ‘we’ are.  This is not enough.  It does not allow for people who identify as LGBTQQI people to be seen as good in their (and our) own right; it does not permit a true exchange of gifts between different people; it suggests that LGBTQQI people are welcome despite their (and our) differences, not that they (and we) are just as much alive with gift, made in the image of God, and legitimate as the rest of us (and them).  At its best, this kind of conversation may lead to a better one; at worst, it is just another way of dressing up homophobia as reconciliation.

It emerges also in the context of a culture with a split persona: a religious one that almost always problematizes sex, and a secular one that almost always celebrates hedonism.  Churches often talk about sex and sexuality as challenges to be overcome; while the wider culture doesn’t seem to know what to do with sex except put it on TMZ.

Well, I am tired of the excuses we make for our prejudice, and the disguises we put on our repression.

I am tired of saying ‘we need to have a conversation’, and then not having it.

I am tired of sexuality being reduced in religious practice to shibboleths about homosexuality and adultery.

I am tired of pretending that our bodies are not part of the selves we talk about when we seek to become more human through opening to God.

I am tired of the misplaced shame I feel sometimes when I think about my own sexuality, my desires, my mistakes, my brokenness, the memories I have of humiliation in adolescence and beyond.

I am tired of not feeling free to discuss sexuality in church as anything other than a problem.  I want to celebrate it for what it has become for me: an astonishing gift from God, the space in which love between human beings, made a little lower than the angels has the potential to find its most elegant and connected expression.  The space where we may come closest to mirroring the divine relationship with the human.  The space that can produce such profound happiness, and is so powerful that it leave you feeling as if you've been ripped  apart.

The story of Tyler Clementi is not just about a young man and his roommates' stupid prank.  It is a story about cruelty, and dehumanization, and fear, and the lack of an understanding of how human relationships can promote the common good instead of individualistic gratification.

It is a story about the role that bad religion - most of it Christian - has played in creating a culture of shame around sex and sexual identity in America, and the distortions of human happiness that pass for healthy religious practice.

It is a story about our complicity in this bad religion, and in these distortions.

It’s a story about the end of privacy in the internet age: which could be a good thing, because we may now finally be compelled to tell the truth about ourselves: that we are broken and beautiful at the same time, and that none of us is fully who we claim to be.  We are stumbling pilgrims trying to figure out what it means to be human.  And if I tell you the truth about me, then maybe you might feel safer to tell me the truth about you.

And so, what will we do with the story of Tyler Clementi?

I’d suggest a handful of signposts.

Focus your judgment in the right direction. We should recognize that desire is confusing at the best of times; perhaps especially during the transition from adolescence into adulthood.  The same goes for learning how to behave with maturity in relation to others.  So while what Tyler’s roommates are alleged to have done was stupid and cruel, we should not direct our anger only at the two who apparently put the video of Tyler on line.  They are a symptom of a dehumanizing and childish culture.  They are not its cause.  And if we only concentrate on them, we will repeat the typical mistake of scapegoating, and never face the issues within ourselves that contributed to them thinking nothing of their actions.

It Gets Better If you find personal resonance with the fear of sexual humiliation, check out Dan Savage’s It Gets Better campaign here.

Come Out, Whoever You Are The semantic gymnastics that have been one of the gifts of the sexual rights movement are so changeable that I’m never quite sure how many letters I need to type to be sure I’m not excluding anyone.

L(esbian)G(ay)B(isexual)T(rans)Q(ueer)Q(uestioning)I(ntersex) is a pretty good start; but another category has been privileged to join: A(lly): which, although its status is ambiguous in the cohort to which it wishes to orient itself, to my mind means anyone who cares enough to commit themselves to be educated about the structures of injustice faced by people whom the dominant culture defines as sexual minorities.  Ally can be a patronizing concept, of course; but I think that the more people who don’t identity themselves (or ourselves) as LGBTQQI consider the A label, the sooner we will experience conversation about sexuality as something that is good for us all, rather than merely stigmatizing socially constructed minorities.

Beyond that, I’d like to suggest a new category.  After A comes E, because E(veryone) is affected by our sex-negative culture.  We may all have been stigmatized because of our sexuality; especially those of us raised in the church.  We are not sure how to make sexuality ‘fit’ with spirituality.  And so we live in a constant state of struggle or denial.  Those of us who are straight could learn from those of us who are gay.  Those of us who are straight might indeed yearn to be invited into a world where sexuality has been such a source of struggle that its stewards have had to learn to transform it from an invitation to suffering into a source of strength.  E(veryone) belongs here.

Like I said, I am angry today, and so I apologize if I have gone too far.  Or, actually, perhaps I’m not sorry at all.  Maybe I’m going to get angrier.  Maybe I need to.  I certainly need not to forget Tyler Clementi, a young man who died because our culture made him ashamed.

I’m sorry, Tyler.  I wish I’d known you.  I’m sorry that I have been part of the reason you were humiliated.  I am sorry that I have been so divided within myself that even though I know what it’s like to experience sexual humiliation, I held onto my own homophobia because it felt safer and more known.  I owe something to you.  I owe it to you to be honest about myself, to stop dehumanizing others, and to do everything I can to make sure that your place in history is simple and clear: that you would be the last.

'Revanche': The Film I've Been Waiting For

I knew nothing about 'Revanche', other than it was the kind of film people tell you you’re supposed to like, but they say it so often, and the acclaim is so overwhelming that it makes you wonder if it’s going to be a rehearsal of the time you didn’t get to see ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ on its first release but it seemed as if every four paces you took in town or every third hyperlink you clicked on you’d bump into someone telling you that ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ was not only the Greatest Film Ever Made™ but would make a supermodel fall in love with you and have you develop a six-pack within a matter of days after watching and so by the time you finally did go to see ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ it couldn’t possibly measure up to the standard that had been set for it and anyway the cinema you saw it in was forced to LEAVE ITS LIGHTS ON DURING THE MOVIE because of an absurd local government health and safety injunction ordering it to get new dimmer switches despite the fact that in thirty-five years of operating NO ONE had ever fallen over and sued or lost their soul or even stubbed a toe so it was difficult to engage with ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ cos it’s kinda hard at the best of times to suspend disbelief when watching a fantasy film even moreso WHEN THE LIGHTS IN THE CINEMA HAVE BEEN LEFT ON but it didn’t really matter because...

Pan's Labyrinth: Not as Good as 'Revanche', even with the lights off

‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ turned out a) to be less imaginative or engaging than Guillermo del Toro’s previous films (check out ‘The Devil’s Backbone’ – perhaps the most moving horror film I’ve ever seen); b) to not really have much of a labyrinth anyway and c) to remind me why it’s a good idea, in the words of a wiser man than I, to, shall we say, not pay much attention to the propaganda.

So, I try, perhaps not as hard as my genial co-host, but nonetheless with sincere intent, to not believe the hype.  And so, if you are like me, then don’t pay any attention to what you’re about to read.

I knew nothing about ‘Revanche’.  But, and I mean every word of this: it’s the film I’ve been waiting for.  The Austrian film by Gotz Spielman, released this week on DVD by Criterion opens like a Tarkovsky film, with a near-static image of trees reflected in water, setting a mood of something sinister happening amidst the beauty of nature.  It takes its time, the opening lines left untranslated, the location revealing itself as one of the all-time awful cinematic brothels, in Vienna, where women trafficked from Eastern Europe are abused, fat men in silver suits make themselves comfortable off the backs of the people they are breaking, and an ex-con slops out the building, trying to assert some dignity for himself in a profession that could not be said to have benefits.

Johannes Krisch and Joanna Strauss in 'Revanche'

And so, there we are.  What happens next is so compelling that I’ll leave it spoiler-free.  It might suffice to say that ‘Revanche’ becomes something like ‘Heat’ remade by Krzysztof Kieslowski.  It’s about men loving women and women loving men; the dehumanization of certain kinds of work; the meaning of the human body; sex as both an expression of need and a commodity too.  The lead actor Johannes Krisch has more than a touch of Colin Farrell’s older brother about him; and the connection with one Michael Mann’s recent films doesn’t end with ‘Miami Vice’ and ‘Heat’;

Jamie Foxx’s character in ‘Collateral’ is the better dressed, less grumpy corollary to Krisch’s in ‘Revanche’, a re-imagining of the cinematic archetype we know and love as the ‘guy who just wants to get out of where he is if only he could find the cash’.  But there’s nothing clichéd about it’s telling here.  Sure, there’s a couple of shots of a crucifix, and some elegant cuts – from a firing range to a forest, to suggest just one example, sure there’s intimations of power and its corruption, and the existential crisis of being out of place is evoked not least by Ukrainian accents in Austrian locations and a character telling another literally ‘You don’t really belong.  That is your problem.’  But the language – verbal and visual – seem entirely in keeping with a vision of the real world.  You wouldn’t want to belong in the place where this guy is at home – a place where men are actualized only through violence.

Hannes Thanheiser with Krisch and Strauss

Where ‘Revanche’ ultimately takes us to is the notion that belonging accrues through relationships whose parties devote enough time to allow a shared history to develop – the 'regular-type life' that de Niro/Pacino in ‘Heat’ refer to as ‘barbecues and ballgames’, a binding practice explicitly referenced in ‘Revanche’.

Barbecues and Ballgames

Such belonging is better placed, as far as Spielman is concerned, with a view to the outside – otherwise we become members of cliques or cults or private armies, serving only to perpetuate their self-perception and exclusivity.  Spielman often frames his characters just inside or on the edge of doors, looking out; ‘Revanche’ is about the groans of a world that bears the costs of selfishness, but doesn’t quite know how to renew the bonds of community.  It’s a film that grips you and twists you and breaks your heart; and yet for all the cinematic depth it plumbs and archetypes it references, it never feels less than realistic: when a character does something ridiculous that characters in thrillers always do, you believe that this is nothing less than exactly how he would behave in the real world.

I’ve seen a lot of movie depictions of violence against the backdrop of a recognizably ‘ordinary’ world lately; and I’ve got tired of self-consciously ‘knowing’ attempts at saying something about the fragility of life/the human capacity for evil/the sins of colonialism (delete as appropriate).  But ‘Revanche’ is something else: ethically, it’s like a miniaturized ‘Macbeth’ or Greek myth; philosophically it can stand comparison to Kieslowski and the recent work of Michael Haneke (and, for that matter, Sean Penn’s extraordinary ‘The Crossing Guard’); psychologically, if you’re like me, it will speak to your sense that the fear of death must be transcended if you want to be happy in this life, and allow for the hope that you might not harm others in this pursuit.

'The Crossing Guard' and the Pursuit of Happiness

An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind; the taste of a piece of fruit from your grandfather equates to humankindness; and one extra piece of information can change everything.  ‘Revanche’ is made to remind us that easy violence and sentimental redemption narratives cost too much, because they reinforce the dehumanization that characterizes The Way Things Are.  This film wants to take people seriously; to take our struggle to get by, to do right, to live gracefully within the limits of what we can control.  Spielman says in the interview on the Criterion Blu-Ray, which looks gorgeous as usual, that he didn’t so much set out to make a film, but to get to know a world, and the people who inhabit it.  After watching ‘Revanche’ I felt like I knew myself better.

The Last Week

First Day of Shooting Above: We're Nearly There...

And so...it begins...Week Five of shooting.  By Friday evening, we'll be done, the actors can come out of character, the director can have a gin & tonic, the director of photography can confirm if what he calls 'all the information' has been collected, and the writer can sit back with a sense of satisfaction at seeing a story that began with chance encounters on the streets of Ponsonby almost twenty years ago turned into the raw material for a film that, we hope, will entertain, inspire, question, and move audiences when the images and sounds that have been crafted here over the past month are shaped by editing and repeatedly finely tuned into something we call 'The Insatiable Moon'.

But before Friday we'll visit several locations, costumes will be changed, makeup will be made, coffee will be slurped, and traffic noise will be contended with.  (On that note can I respectfully ask those delightful Auckland drivers who insist on honking their horns when they see us shooting on location to PLEASE STOP DOING THAT.  We know you're excited to see a real live movie, but we're trying to work.  Thank you.)  At this point, with 80% of the film shot, it's easy for folk to feel tired; little tensions rise and fall; and sometimes we must ask if this thing is ever going to be finished.  I'm sure it's like this on every film set.  The endeavour of making a movie is a crazy thing - gathering a group of people, some of whom are strangers, some of whom are married, to take moving photographs and record sounds of other strangers pretending to be someone else; to create a story by recording these images and sounds in the wrong order; to rely on the skies to rain when you want them to and to shine when you need it; to hope that the heartbeat that began with an idea in a solitary writer's head might find the flesh of actors growing around it, connect through the sinews of cinematography, be encased in the delicate-boned structure of editing, colour-grading, dance to the elegant soundscape that musicians are composing as we speak, and then be set free to make its case in a multiplex marketplace which, we aspire, is ripe for this moon.  Like I said, making a film is a crazy thing.

But we've reached the last week, and the finish line is in sight.  With that in mind, I thought I'd look for films with the word 'last' in the title that might evoke some of what we're trying to do here in New Zealand.  Any more lasts?  Feel free to comment below...

The Last Temptation of Christ: Guy thinks he's God.  People throw stones.

Last Night: People believe the end of the world is coming, some use it as an excuse to have a party.

Last Tango in Paris: Guy and girl try to find the sacred through sex.

Last of the Mohicans: Guy with amazing hair tries to save the world.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: Guy searches for eternal life.

The Last Samurai: Guy who stands out teaches people to be nicer to each other.

The Last Tycoon: Guy tells stories, but has unfinished business.

The Last Emperor: Little guy thinks he's important.  He may be right.The l

81 Films of the Decade

In the year 2000 I was 25 and single, finishing up a Ph.D., stressed out of my tree, working with a small NGO on peace and non-violence issues, trying figure out what it was that I wanted to be when I grew up.

Now as 2010 approaches, I’m a month away from being 35 and married, I haven’t published the Ph.D., but am less stressed, working as a writer and doing some other things, and trying to figure out what it is that I want to be when I grow up.  The consolations of life this past decade have been the same all along – the richness of friendships old and new, the life-force that is sparked when I look at natural beauty – of mountains or oceanscapes or my lover’s face, the enlightenment or delight that is present when I read a well-calibrated sentence or hear astonishing music, turning over to go to sleep, and the feeling of potential that I still hope for every time the lights go down when I’m at the movies.

This has been a tough decade for many of the people that I presume read this blog – we’ve been confronted by the unintended side-effects of globalization, and taught to see life as a way to be daily afraid; we've experienced an economic tightening that came as a shock; we’ve all been angered by this politician or that; some of us have even lost a great deal in the wars that are still being fought.  At the same time, of course, some of us have seen peace come to places no one ever believed were ripe for such change.

I may be naïve – in fact, I know I am – but, whether I'm experiencing life as what Ignatian spirituality calls desolation or consolation,  I still mark my time in movies.  I’m writing this from a café in Ponsonby, New Zealand, where I’m visiting friends who are making a movie from a script I read five years ago, and a novel I read when Bill Clinton was still in office.  Things come dropping slow, says Yeats; things come dropping slow.  Things like the first time I was wet-eyed at the climax of ‘Together/Tilsammans’, and had confirmed to me the possibility that we might eventually learn to get along with each other, even in what appears to be our species' infancy; the first time I saw the little boy read his thoughts about how old he feels to his grandmother in her coffin at the end of ‘Yi-Yi’; the first time I saw Hugh Jackman decide that his girl was right to ask him to stop working and just love her instead of looking for the Fountain of youth; the first time I saw Bryce Dallas Howard choose the possibility of death outside the Village for the sake of keeping her love alive; the first time I watched the android David pray to the blue fairy to be reunited with his mother;  well, these times were a long time ago.  Much happened to me in the past ten years; some of it amazing, some of it difficult enough to wonder if I’d get through it.  But I did.  I imagine it's the same for you.  And the movies marked my time.  And for these, I’m grateful.

As for today, well, my indulgent week of attempting a comprehensive retrospective of the films of the decade is drawing to a close.  These posts have been so long that I feel the need to post edited highlights - that's a task for the weekend.  For now, my final list: The Best Films of the Decade

A couple of caveats before we proceed.  I write as a working film critic (part-time), who receives little or no direct financial compensation due to the collapse of traditional models for resourcing film journalism.  I lived most of the decade in Belfast, northern Ireland, and have for the past 16 months been resident in the US American South.  My opportunities to see films have been circumscribed therefore by the 'regional' status of my home towns, and by whatever was on offer in the places I've been privileged to travel to, until, latterly Netflix has opened up a world previously inaccessible to those of us who did not live in NYC or LA or London, or get paid to go to film festivals.  You may therefore look at my list and wonder why this or that film didn't make it; and while I hope that it's because I had the chance to see and evaluate it for myself (in which case you may find it on one of my earlier lists of under- and over-rated films, and some that I think deserve a second look but which I didn't feel should be on this list), but it's also possible that I just haven't had the opportunity.  So I'd be very happy to hear from anyone your recommendations of films you hold dear from the past decade that don't appear on this list; I'll be glad to watch those that I'm able.

Second, I want to make a point about the lens through which we consider films 'great', 'favourite', 'important' or 'best'.  The latter is easy - it's not a competition, and although it is of course possible to evaluate one piece of art relative to another, I'd much rather let each speak for itself; or at least be judged on the merits of what it's trying to do.  In that regard, 'La vie en Rose' and 'Dreamgirls' or 'Inglourious Basterds' and 'The Matrix Revolutions' are perhaps more easily comparable than '2012' and 'Goodbye Solo' or 'Japon' and 'Lost in Translation'.  Each of these films does a more or less excellent job of what it's attempting (yes, even 2012: listen to our podcast here and join the debate if you like); I happen to like one of them more than the others.  But the category of 'best' doesn't seem to have any point to it when I'd like to encourage you to watch all of them.

Similarly, I'd like to comment on how it has become fashionable to equate critical maturity with downgrading the value of comedy and romance; and that the harder a film is to penetrate, the better it must be.  I'm grateful to people like Richard Brody (who has the courage to rate 'Knocked Up' alongside 'Eloge de l'amour' on his list); but still, an openness to films that are usually reduced to being called 'heart-warming' is too often apparently seen as something embarrassing, to be hidden if one wants to be taken seriously as a critic.  Now, of course, I want to be taken seriously, or at least I want to be read - otherwise why would I write this post? - but I don't write and talk about films in order to prove myself a 'better' critic than anyone else.  That route may appeal to some, but I would suggest there's a reason why the near-superhuman art critic character in Coppola's 'Tetro' is called 'Alone'.  I write about movies because they move me.  And I want to tell people about it, so that they might be moved too.  And this telling is a privilege; for who am I to tell anyone anything? Well, here's a little of who I am:

I am rapt in admiration for 'Andrei Rublev' and 'Solaris' and 'The Sacrifice'; and 'Fanny and Alexander'; and 'Novocento'; and 'Ikiru'.  But those ones are easy - you're supposed to think Tarkovsky and Bergman and Bertolucci and Kurosawa are Something.  What's harder, in a critical culture which equates cynicism with maturity, is to admit to yourself that you also were thrilled by 'Wall-E' and that you think that 'The Dark Knight' is philosophically profound, and that there's more going on in 'Back to the Future' than fun with DeLoreans and plutonium.  So, here's what I want to invite you to: My list of the 81 films of the past decade that really made an impact on me, that I admired deeply, that, if I was forced to admit it, some part of me thinks really are 'the best'.  I didn't write it to make anyone else feel left out - so please don't get angry if your choices aren't here: write your own list, put it in the comments section, and let's talk.  Not so that we can persuade each other where we're wrong, but so that we might, together, shed a little more light.

So, to the list:

Adaptation: Makes the nightmarish process of writing anything (From initial inspiration to Who the hell am I to be writing this?  Why will anyone care?  I’m a complete failure.  Help me.  Aha, here’s a new idea…) seem a little less lonely.

All or Nothing: Mike Leigh’s film about a taxi driver trying to hold it together gives Timothy Spall the chance to have one of the most powerful breakdowns in cinema; thoughtful portrayals of masculinity got a good run at the movies in the past ten years, and his is one of the most memorable.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford: The birth of American celebrity as the end of innocence; and Andrew Dominik as the next Terrence Malick.

The Barbarian Invasions: Denys Arcand follows up ‘The Decline of the American Empire’ 16 years later, looking at the same French-Canadian intellectuals we sneered at in the late 80s, and manages to create an utterly compelling film of otherwise boring people talking about, and experiencing death; leaving me wanting to take my own life more seriously.

Cache: Georges goes to sleep instead of facing his culpability in genocide; Haneke’s films confront the audience with what it means to be a citizen of an interdependent world.  There are no laughs, yet.

Children of Men: So many recent films sought to deal with how human beings would behave in the face of catastrophe; Clive Owen stands for the possibility

A Christmas Tale: As rich a stew as Fanny and Alexander, family as it’s meant to be seen: all over the place, falling apart, and the answer to everything.

Collateral: The post-modern jazz-loving serial assassin’s ‘Goodbye Solo’.

The Corporation: Smartest documentary of the decade: not merely a polemic, but a genuine intellectual exploration.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Spectacular vision; more powerful than ‘Atonement’ in its revelation of how a person can compensate for their own destructiveness.

The Dancer Upstairs: John Malkovich not only directed the best use of Nina Simone’s music in a film, but made an honest story about the moral complexity of political revolution.

Downfall: One of two portrayals of Hitler this decade with real substance (the other is Noah Taylor in 'Max'): if he wasn't a human being like the rest of us, how can he be understood?

The Dreamers: Gorgeous evocation of Paris 1968; Bertolucci has a habit of making one great movie a decade, and this was it.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind:  Chases its tail without eating it.

Etre et Avoir: A documentary that felt like watching new life being born.

Far from Heaven: As if Todd Haynes had made a secret film on a Douglas Sirk set; hidden in a time capsule, and only now available for us mere mortals to watch.  One of several films that revealed the surprise of Dennis Quaid as a compelling screen presence.

The Fog of War: An utterly necessary film when it was released; now too.

Goodbye Solo: Bahrani frames real life and shoots it; a film whose characters are so realistic that their suffering compelled me to flee the cinema for some fresh air.   And that’s a compliment.

Gran Torino: Clint takes Dirty Harry to the fairest conclusion: a recognition that the only way violence works is when you absorb it on behalf of others.

Hero: See Gran Torino

I Heart Huckabees: You need a philosophy Ph.D. to understand it, but not to enjoy it.

Inglourious Basterds: A film buff’s love letter to cinema, a star is born in Christoph Waltz, and a magnificent subversion of the myth of redemptive violence.

In the Loop: The best political satire since ‘Dr Strangelove’ – a film so smart and on the money about the venality of the run-up to the war in Iraq that it stops being funny after the first ten minutes.

Into Great Silence: A feature length meditation.  But not in the same way that film critics usually mean when we say 'meditation'.

It’s All Gone Pete Tong:  Brings beauty out of hell.

Jump Tomorrow: The most beguiling love story of the decade.

Letters From Iwo Jima: Clint Eastwood wouldn't want to be known as a liberal, one presumes; but if 'liberal' means, as my former colleague David Tombs would say, 'someone who believes the possibilities of truth have not been exhausted', then Clint's a liberal: his courageous film allows Japanese soldiers to speak for themselves, and stands as an astonishing example of the promotion of re-humanisation in times of war.

The Life Aquatic: Bill Murray’s encounter with the shark that killed his friend may be the greatest love scene in Wes Anderson’s work.

The Man Who Wasn’t There: Magnificent exploration of the paranoid style in American culture; one of the best alien invasion dramas I’ve ever seen.

Mary and Max: A compelling, vastly entertaining stop motion animated film that treats Asperger’s syndrome with greater honesty than you’d expect.

The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions: I know saying this puts my reputation at stake (if I even have one by now): but these sequels were deeply misunderstood.  Evidence?  Can you name another big budget action film series that ends with the opposing parties being reconciled through a non-violent negotiation?  Doesn't this make The Matrix trilogy one that at least has a compelling central idea, and vast imagination compared with its reputation?

The Messenger: Sparse and painful, the postscript to the Iraq war film arc: what happens when the guys don’t come home?

Miami Vice: See Jett's post.  It helped me understand what I was thinking.

Monsoon Wedding: Exuberant and realistic, Mira Nair’s film envelopes the audience in the complications of family gatherings; a perfect marriage of Bollywood and New York sensibilities.

My Life without Me: Isabel Coixet makes delicately observed, powerfully emotional films about women facing awful truths; Sara Polley here takes a character arc that could have been cheesy, and makes it into a deeply moving representation of realistic trauma and gift.  She and Coixet did the same in The Secret Life of Words.

No Country for Old Men: The only film I can think of that climaxes with a serial killer giving up violence without being forced to do so by a gun or handcuffs.

O Brother Where Art Thou: A work of satiric and heartfelt genius; which recognises in its treatment of racism that the best defence against horror is to mock it.

Old Joy: A bittersweet exploration of the ebb and flow of friendship.

Rabbit-Proof Fence: It’s a polemic, but totally compelling, and beautifully put together.

Shine a Light: The reason I say at the start of every episode of The Film Talk that ‘Fanny and Alexander’ and ‘Shine a Light’ are the same film is simple: they’re both about the way men fail to understand women.  Scorsese makes better use of his cameras here than in ‘The Aviator’ or ‘The Departed’, Keith and Ronnie look like they’re teenage boys sneaking a smoke behind the bike sheds, Mick looks like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, and Albert Maysles keeps on working.

Solaris: Steven Soderbergh called this a new version of the Stanislaw Lem book rather than a remake of Tarkovsky's film; but he ended up making something unique in recent cinema (at least as I remember it): a Westernised version of an Eastern story that helps interpret the original so well that I can't think about either of them without thinking of both.

Superbad: The nuances of adolescent male friendship never were so delicately handled.  Nor gross.  Nor funny.  Nor tender.

Synecdoche New York: I have a feeling this film will only become more like a friend as I watch and re-watch; nothing less than an attempt at conveying in cinema the experience of one person building a whole life.

Tarnation: Jonathan Caouette's magnificent, searing documentary is his own synecdoche.

Ten Canoes: Stunning light shines in this perfectly realized tale of our common mythic origins; shot as if the crew had traveled back in time and hidden their cameras.

Ten Minutes Older: The Cello/One Moment: Along with Sean Penn/Ernest Borgnine's piece in '11.09.01', the best short film of the decade: footage of Rudof Hrusinsky, an actor unknown to audiences outside the Czech Republic culled together from his 57 year long career; we see him looking more beautiful than the young Brad Pitt, and older than the Skeksis in ‘The Dark Crystal’; a whole life unfolds in ten minutes.

Tetro: Coppola's light-bearing family drama; a film which he told us marked the early stages of the 'second half' of his career; he makes Klaus Maria Brandauer look like Brando, gets Vincent Gallo to calm down for the camera, and creates something utterly compelling.

There Will Be Blood: A story about oil and greed that isn’t a metaphor for anything.  It’s just a story about oil and greed.

U2 3-D: A concert film that becomes an experience of immersive religion: the Bono-ego may be easy to criticize, but when he sings to his Buenos Aires audience of his hope that we might all ‘wake up in the dream’ of Dr King, he’s standing in a tradition of prophetic utterance that reaches very far back, and is ore vitally necessary today perhaps than ever, simply because it is so undervalued.

The Visitor: The troubles of immigration and grief meet over a djembe in a vision of New York that looks far more inviting than it has since the days when Woody Allen made it seem like heaven on earth.

And finally....Films that edged their way into my top ten.  As I am both a) a film critic with a big heart, and b) undisciplined, there are 28 films on this list.

28: The Dark Knight: George W Bush’s retirement tribute video; the best-looking critique of the ancient scapegoat myth that ever made a billion dollars.

27: The Triplets of Belleville: Extraordinary animation mingles Josephine Baker, the French mafia, and pro-cycling to create a delirious story of familial love.

26: A Serious Man: The Coen Brothers retell the story of Job as a middle-class tragedy in late 60s Minnesota; a wise evocation of the strengths and failings of good and bad religion.

25: Junebug: A most delicately observed story of culture clash; the nice surprise is that the conservative family folks end up being the most attractive of all.

24: Wall-E: The first forty minutes have a sense of place comparable to Blade Runner and Lawrence of Arabia; the second half is a coruscating satire of consumerism; the whole thing is a masterpiece.

23: The Road: The end of the world is so plausible they don’t have to explain it; the fact that virtue outlasts hopelessness even moreso.

22: Once: Like a home-movie musical; utterly convincing story of a love that had to be requited through friendship alone.

21: Man on Wire: A film about a man living totally free; which makes walking on a tightrope two feet off the ground in his garden look spectacular.

20: Gaia: One possible future for cinema: $28000 to shoot a treatment (no script), using natural light, live locations,  non-professional actors, and an unpaid crew letting the spirit guide them to put their love on screen.

19: Sexy Beast: Existential gangsterism for anyone who ever wanted to retire to Spain; Jonathan Glazer’s visual style makes a perfect marriage with a script that doesn’t care about what the audience expects.

18: The Hours: An unfilmable novel became an undefinable film – a central character abandons her family and we’re not sure whether or not we’re supposed to like her; Meryl Streep gets the only decent role she’s had in years (with the exception of her having enormous fun in ‘Mamma Mia’ – a film that is only not enjoyable if you don’t know how to laugh at silly exuberance); and Philip Glass writes his best score since ‘Koyaanisqatsi’.  Two characters take their own lives, and one is at least indirectly responsible for the death of another, but you emerge from watching ‘The Hours’ full of gratitude for being alive.

17: Talk to Her: Almodovar wants us to see majesty in small things, and possibility in what look like dead ends (a long term coma produces new life; a near-paralysis leads to the birth of love; a prison suicide sets its victim free).

16: The New World: When Colin Farrell’s Captain John Smith first sees America, it’s framed through the cinema-screen shaped wooden window of his boat prison; Malick is showing us our first vision of the new world as if America always has been a movie.  In his three previous features love was ungraspable – always either out of reach or confused with passion.  In ‘The New World’, Pocahontas narrates her realization – and Malick’s contention – that love is nothing less than the meaning of everything.

15: Lawless Heart: A little-seen masterpiece of British drama, ‘Rashomon’-style; several different takes on the same story reveal the layers of complexity in every human relationship, the consequences of grief, and the way we are driven to seek the numinous in the everyday.

14: Amores Perros: I’m beginning to realise that all the films I like the most are about the same thing: the redemption of otherwise broken men.  Except when they're about robots.

13: Lantana: Brilliant little Australian drama, evocative of Altman’s ‘Short Cuts’ – there’s a murder mystery and a love story and a lot of regret, but mostly a desire for truth and love.

12: Stranger than Fiction: Will Ferrell can act; Dustin Hoffman can teach literature; Emma Thompson can write books; Queen Latifah (apologies to Mo'nique for the earlier confusion) can edit them; Marc Forster is the most versatile director working in Hollywood today; and this film is the best revelation of the power of art to change a person’s perspective, and the risk of death that every publicly creative act is.

11: La Question Humaine/Heartbeat Detector: An elegant, overwhelming psychological drama about the legacy of when commerce leverages humanity.

10: The Royal Tenenbaums: The Magnificent Ambersons, finished.  (Calm down, Jett, it's only a list ;-))

9: The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada: The best depiction of friendship, and loyalty between men, not to mention immigration, racism, and the yearning for meaning that characterises this generation.

8: Japon: The aftermath of Carlos Reygadas’ film has the distinction of being one of the very few that I have felt compelled (as a non-smoker, most of the time) to have a cigarette.  Reygadas may be the natural heir to Tarkovsky, for his lush images of humans in nature always collide with their yearning for God.  The last scene of ‘Japon’ may be the most pessimistic thing you’ll see on screen this side of the 2004 Bush-Kerry election results.

7: Into the Wild: The tragedy of a man who realized that happiness is made most real when it’s shared once it was too late for him to save himself; the adventure of a man who decided to actually do something with his life.

6: The Consequences of Love: Sorrentino’s and Toni Servillo’s other incredible collaboration of the decade: a mafia revenge drama that ends up being about regret for lost opportunity, and the joy of childhood friendship.

5: The Village: Perhaps the most misunderstood film on this list; a deeply thoughtful, serious questioning of how to respond when everything is terrifying; featuring one of the most heroic acts in cinema, leading to one of the most realistic happy-but-ambivalent endings I’ve ever seen.  Trust me.

4: Together: Presents the notion that human community, the sharing of resources, the bearing of each other’s burdens, and real forgiveness might actually be possible.  (And does it far more realistically than ‘Chocolat’.)

3: The Fountain: The most divisive film on the show, as you know.  I probably can’t persuade the naysayers; and those of you that love it know why.  But if you haven’t seen it yet, just give it a chance, will ya?

2: Yi-Yi: Edward Yang made this masterpiece about family life and its collision with commerce his last film.  It made me want to be a better person.

1: AI Artificial Intelligence: A film which ends with the protagonist having his dream come true, and then dying is not a film with a happy ending.  But if it’s Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Stanley Kubrick’s vision of Brian Aldiss’ short story ‘Super Toys Last All Summer Long’, it’s a visually astonishing, profoundly spiritual movie about (along with the de-humanisiang effects of technology, the emptiness of lives unthinkingly circumscribed by privatised capitalism, and the difference between dependent and interdependent families) how the meaning of life is found at least partly in how we deal with its inevitable end.  It may not be stretching a point to say that 'AI' made me think of what Bertrand Russell might have been talking about when he said: ‘United with his fellow men by the strongest of all ties, the tie of a common doom, the free man finds that a new vision is with him always, shedding over every daily task the light of love.’