Obama as Empire-Builder: Important Words from John Dear

From John Dear: Last week at West Point, President Obama cited his reasons for sending more troops to Afghanistan.  Obama spoke eloquently.  He insisted our cause is just.  It is necessary, it is crucial.  Killing Afghanis is the way to peace.  The oxymorons rolled off his tongue.  Apparently, it does not matter that wars are bankrupting us. Or sending our young to die. Or leaving them psychologically impaired. Or degrading the environment. Or, bitterest of ironies, breeding a new generation of terrorists.

It doesn’t seem to matter that most Americans want the war to stop, that most Afghanis want us out. It doesn’t even matter that only a hundred Al Qaeda members remain in Afghanistan. The rest have taken refuge in Pakistan. Our new war president says the war must continue.

“You would think that we don’t have enough to do here at home,” Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich said this week.

You would think that we don’t have 47 million Americans who go to bed hungry, 47 million Americans who don’t have any health care, 15 million Americans who are out of work, another 10 million Americans whose homes are threatened with foreclosure, people going bankrupt, and business failures. All these things are happening in our country and we’re acting like a latter-day version of the Roman Empire, reaching for empire while inside we rot. We have to challenge this because our future as a nation is at stake. If we continue to militarize, we lose our civil liberties, we lose our capacity to meet our needs here at home.

We have money for Wall Street and money for war, but we don’t have money for work. We have money for Wall Street and money for war, but we don’t have money for health care. We have to start asking ourselves, why is it that war is a priority, but the basic needs of the people of this country are not? And how are we getting the money to pay for the war? We’re borrowing it. We’re going deeper into debt. We’re mortgaging our future. We’re creating conditions where we will become less democratic because we can’t meet the most essential needs of our people. This needs to be challenged. And it needs to be challenged in a forthright way. The issue is the war; the issue is America’s reach for empire. The issue is our inability to meet the needs of people here at home.

Obama and his generals are dead wrong -- this I insist with so many others. The war is illegal, immoral, impractical and plain foolish. It will further divide us. It will lead us into debt beyond our means. It will sow the seeds of terrorist attacks to come.

And one thing more, for the record. We are engaging here in mortal sin. I say this with confidence. War is not the will of God. Bombing sisters and brothers is not the way of the Gospel. This, despite our president and his generals, is not the method of Christ the peacemaker. His way? “Love your enemies. Do not violently resist those who do evil. Put down the sword. Blessed are the peacemakers.” Jesus would have us pursue nonviolent methods of resolving conflict.

“The way forward is for the U.S. to press for all party negotiations within Afghanistan to create a new Afghan social contract,” Joseph Gerson of American Friends Service Committee wrote this week.

This would need to be reinforced by an international conference and actions on the part of all major states involved in the war to help build and support that social contract. This, of course, also means dealing with the source of Indian-Pakistani tensions, and the geostrategic ambitions of the major powers who have insisted on playing, and losing, the ‘Great Game.’

In this holy season of Advent, let me offer a few points. First, we have to stop making an idol out of Obama. He is not a messiah; he is not, as Cindy Sheehan jokes, “The Pope of Hope.” He, like every president before him, is the spokesperson for the empire. He’s increased our military budget beyond that of George W. Bush. No, our hope lies elsewhere. We have a messiah already -- one who is nonpartisan, non-ideological, and most important, decidedly nonviolent. To follow this nonviolent messiah, we must be more than liberals, (or conservatives). We need to be mature disciples. We must place our hope in the nonviolent Jesus and practice his way of nonviolent resistance.

Second, we must direct our resistance toward our nation’s imperial aspirations. When Obama spoke of “protecting our national interests,” he spoke like the Bushes and Reagan, like Johnson and Truman. It’s the age-old logic of empire -- mass murder to protect the powerful elite. This is what we must name and resist: the anti-war of empire.

Third, we have to be suspect of “top-down” thinking. We must reclaim instead “bottom-up” grassroots movement building. Empires require their populations to be docile and obedient, to worship their leaders, to surrender their money and to kill for their elite. They instill in the masses a sense of powerlessness, a sense that nothing can be done. It’s a dream come true when millions upon millions shrug and give up and shake their heads. Or better yet, buy into the myths of empire for their own aggrandizement.

Jesus, on the other hand, calls us into citizenship of the reign of God -- and to resist, nonviolently, every tradition and polity that opposes it. The change comes from the bottom up, as the Gospels show us. And Advent is a time to learn the lesson again.

Too many of us think that Obama will bring the change we want. He won’t, he can’t. Ours is a time of empire, addicted to injustice, violence and war. He hasn’t the power to rein in entrenched bureaucracies, corporate interests, warlike traditions. What might a leader of an empire have to do with Jesus’ campaign of nonviolent resistance? All he can offer is lip service.

That leaves change in the hands of the rest of us, those building the movement of nonviolence from the bottom. Recall how small it all started, in a crib, in what amounted to a homeless shelter. And from there the movement grows, in the hinterlands of Galilee, gathering steam as it approached the great warlike city. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem. If you had only known what makes for peace.”

There, in the warlike city, he dies. The movement is crushed. But then, against all odds, it rises and begins again. This is how change happens, and that’s what we need to remember and reclaim and relive.

And so, fourth, we need to keep rebuilding a grass-roots movement to end the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We need to speak out locally, help our parishes to discuss the questions, and organize public vigils against the war. We need to study and practice the methods of nonviolent resistance.

As my friend David Hartsough, a long time movement activist, told me this week: “We are on the brink of global transformation, of a true global movement of nonviolence, which means, every one of us has to be Rosa Parks. We are all Rosa Parks. We all have to take a stand for peace and justice, resist the wars and build a peace movement."

This will be a long-term project, perhaps many, many years, perhaps the rest of our lives. So we have to be rooted in prayer, patience, and love. We will need to use the three tools of every social movement: education, lobbying, public witness. But we need to base all our public work for peace in God, in the Gospels, in the Holy Spirit.

Fifth, we need to take care of ourselves. And one another. We need to say our prayers, love one another, be merciful toward ourselves, practice interpersonal nonviolence, and quietly intercede on behalf of the world’s poor for the coming of God’s reign of justice and peace.

We must be careful not to engage in the language of results, effectiveness or success. This is not the way of the Gospel. This is the language of empire. We heard it last week. “We have had some success,” Obama said, “killing some Al Qaeda officials.”

In one way or another, success is tied to violence. We are not to speak in this way or think in those terms. We are not to abide by the rules of the imperial game. Ours is a long-haul project of nonviolent resistance that recognizes the ends within the means we use. We will face defeat and appear to the world as failures. But pressing on brings nonviolent transformation.

Finally, let’s put our hopes in the nonviolent Jesus, not on Obama. In these holy Advent days summon images of God’s nonviolent reign, of our nonviolent messiah, of his great speeches. Let’s prepare ourselves anew to become Jesus’ campaigners of nonviolence. As we pray for “peace on earth,” let us lament the latest push that leads to “death to Afghanis,” and do what we can to welcome that greatest of Christmas gifts.

****

John Dear’s latest books, Daniel Berrigan: Essential Writings; A Persistent Peace; Put Down the Sword, and Patricia Normile’s John Dear On Peace, are available from www.amazon.com. For information, or to schedule a speaking event, visit: www.johndear.org.

Anger

I moved a table at a sidewalk cafe in Cambridge, NZ, the other day.  A man growled at me.  It was his table.  I didn't know this.  He growled at me again.  I got angry.  He was already angry*.  We parted, and I remembered the Bertrand Russell quotation that I had seen a week earlier, taken from 'The Free Man's Worship', and quoted in Frank Schaeffer's wonderful book 'Patience with God'.  Maybe this is patronising (I don't intend it as such); maybe it's too melodramatic (unless you see all of life as sacred, in which case all of life can be dramatic too); maybe it's just an excuse for a blog post.  But here it is: “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. The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long. One by one, as they march, our comrades vanish from our sight, seized by the silent orders of omnipotent Death. Very brief is the time in which we can help them, in which their happiness or misery is decided. Be it ours to shed sunshine on their path, to lighten their sorrows by the balm of sympathy, to give them the pure joy of a never-tiring affection, to strengthen failing courage, to instil faith in hours of despair. Let us not weigh in grudging scales their merits and demerits, but let us think only of their need, of the sorrows, the difficulties, perhaps the blindnesses, that make the misery of their lives; let us remember that they are fellow-sufferers in the same darkness, actors in the same tragedy with ourselves.”

* I have just been asked by a resident of Cambridge to state unequivocally that 'we're not all like that' and 'it was probably someone from Auckland visiting for the day'.  Happy to oblige.

Frugal Film-making on Jervois Road

Director Rose Riddell and D.O.P. Tom Burstyn on set

I'm in New Zealand writing the production blog for 'The Insatiable Moon', a movie based on the 1997 novel by Mike Riddell - a magic realist story of mental health and miracles among marginalised people in Auckland.  I'll re-post some of the journey here too - you can follow the whole story here.

There was a time when the term ‘independent film’ was a near-guarantee of quality or at least interest – making a film like ‘sex lies and videotape’ or ‘Reservoir Dogs’ required so much superhuman effort that it was a miracle if they were even finished. Distributors, alas, needed an economic reason to invest, rather than merely their aesthetic sense, and if your small film with no stars didn't happen to be lucky enough to attract the attention of a wealthy gatekeeper, it wasn’t likely to be released.

It was easier for big-budget special effects-laden extravaganzas to get seen simply because audiences can be trusted to flock to them simply because we all want to see ever more spectacular ways of destroying New York, or to the latest film starring whoever happens to be really famous at the moment merely on account of the fact that they're in it. Without the stars, or a decapitated Statue of Liberty for much of the audience, there is no show. Or so the superficial received wisdom goes...

Independent film-making eventually adopted major stars, and you’re now as likely to see a marquee name in an independent film as you are to see a well-known character actor from the 1970s in a Roland Emmerich disaster movie. The lines have become blurred – indie has become cool, and of course, indie has become far more accessible than ever. The equipment has never been as cheap, the opportunities to learn from the internet never more available. Everybody wants to make a movie. And sometimes remarkable things occur when people put the resources of time and talent and money to the service of a human story. Tom Burstyn, Director of Photography on ‘The Insatiable Moon’ has been on both sides of the indie/corporate canyon, having shot more than 70 movies, and worked with actors including Oprah Winfrey, Matt Dillon, Jessica Tandy; he shot Paul Newman’s late classic ‘Where the Money Is’, a vastly underrated, smart little film, and has worked on massive mini series such as a recent endeavour to represent the life of Marco Polo on screen.

Why, then, do we find him in a small Baptist church on Jervois Road in Ponsonby, shooting with a hand-held Fig Rig, only using two lights, and with a crew small enough to fit in my living room?

One obvious thing about Tom is his love of the local, so when we sat down for some food to talk about his philosophy of cinema, it was for the most amazing bowl of Vietnamese chicken noodle soup I’ve ever had. He had some mint spring rolls, but they sat quietly on the plate while he talked at length about what he calls 'frugal film-making'.

Tom’s critique of the status quo could be summed up as his view that ‘Producers are too often obsessed with gimmickry rather than being interested in expressing an idea’ – so fifteen lights and computer generated graphics and an exploding suspension bridge take precedence over the way the breeze is bending flowers and the look in a character’s eye. ‘The system of film-making is fear based,’ he says, with the ultimate fear being that the film being made won’t turn a massive profit for whatever bank owns it. Of course, the possibility of profit is partly determined by how much is being spent on the movie in the first place; and fear, you might imagine, and creativity do not happy bedfellows make.

Hence Tom’s passion for frugal film-making; a manifesto rooted in the notion that, as he puts it, once you have ‘a good script, a good director, and a good cast…artistry is taking things out, not adding them’. (You can read more about frugal film-making here.) Tom’s made two films with a crew of two; so ‘The Insatiable Moon’ must feel like a riot; but as I’ve observed him work over the past few days, it’s clear that his unruffled demeanour pays dividends among the rest of the crew. Too often film sets and other creative endeavours are full of anxiety; writers will perhaps contend that you need this – that a creative foment can occur when you take a work seriously enough to be anxious about it. Fair enough – but I think us writers would also say that, for the most part, it’s up to us to feel the anxiety and turn it into words before we arrive on set.

The principles of frugal film-making being applied to ‘The Insatiable Moon’ certainly make it a set not driven by fear; but it doesn’t diminish the quality of the work either – the actors are given room to breathe because they’re not worried about being in the right position vis a vis an invisible Godzilla that will be painted in later; and they’re not worn out by unnecessary multiple takes. The people embodying the characters of the people on Jervois Road go in, incarnate their lines, and the crew collect the information. Tom Burstyn once wrote a document called ‘Kamikaze Film-making: A Sociopolitical Manifesto on the Enlightenment of a Film-Set’; I’m not sure what the ‘kamikaze’ was referring to, because I think he’s slaying myths about the way movies are supposed to be made, rather than shooting himself (or anyone else) in the foot.

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.’

Where Are My Cigarettes?

Ponsonby Road

For the next couple of weeks I'll be in New Zealand, using part of a vacation to hang out with my friends Mike and Rosemary Riddell.  I'll be writing a blog dedicated to the revelation of how 'The Insatiable Moon' went from being an idea in Mike Riddell's head, to a novel, to a screenplay, and especially a film.  Hope you don't mind, but I'll cross-post some stuff here from that site.  We'd love the blog and facebook page to be places for conversation and anticipation about the rising Moon, so please do feel free to comment here or there. I'm delighted to be able to use some of my vacation in New Zealand to drop in on set and will do my best to keep you posted about what's happening in and around the making of the film.

This morning, my second observing the set of ‘The Insatiable Moon’, I was walking up Ponsonby Road on the way to the church where one of the pivotal scenes was being shot. Walking through mild rain and high humidity, to the emotional soundtrack of mild annoyance at being highly lost, having taken a wrong turn from the Production Office.Had a bag of strawberries in one hand – one of the pleasures of being here from the US/UK is the fact that I’m experiencing my first December summer, and therefore get to eat fruit that went out of season where I live a couple of months ago, and my MacBook bag in the other, looking forward to what would unfold in the church as one of our beloved characters makes a speech that we hope will be something audiences remember for a long time after seeing the movie.

But it wasn’t meant to be – I was stopped in my tracks by a bloke wearing a long black leather coat, also carrying two bags, eyes hidden behind massive dark glasses. As he passed me, he let out an agitated scream: ‘WHERE ARE MY CIGARETTES’.The surprise made me jump, feel a little uncomfortable, and it was a few seconds before I could focus my thoughts. Who was this man? Why was he screaming? Screaming for the location of his smokes, on a wet Ponsonby afternoon? People sat at the sidewalk cafes looked up at him, and then at me; some tried to conceal a smile – let’s face it, a bloke shouting on the street is funny in the way that someone tripping on a pavement is funny.It’s a natural reaction to the misfortune of others. But it’s also unfair. What was strange to me was the fact that the pity of the crowd seemed reserved for me, rather than the poor guy who’d lost his Pall Malls.

I remember first reading the novel ‘The Insatiable Moon’ twelve years ago – it was the Clinton era, the year the Paul Thomas Anderson’s first feature ‘Hard Eight’ was released and had to compete with ‘Men in Black’ for an audience; the year Princess Diana and Mother Teresa died; and a time when the New Zealand film industry was yet to receive global attention in the form of a shot in the arm from J RR Tolkien. One of the motifs to which the book returns again and again is the place of marginalized people in our society, in the story, on Ponsonby Road. Blokes who walk up and down the high street screaming for their cigarettes, part of them trapped inside the complex labyrinth of mental health difficulties and God knows what else.The film being made here in Ponsonby is part love story, part drama, part postmodern religious epic, and part whatever you want it to be; but one of the most beautiful things about it is the fact that it focuses on people that usually get sidelined by the stories that often get told at the movies. It’s about the occurrence of magic in everyday life; it’s about the sacred and profane meeting each other, and being mixed into something new that becomes far more than the sum of its parts.

The ostensibly innocuous moment when I was confronted by a guy shouting for his cigarettes collided with my need to get to the set to see what was happening next. And on the way, I remembered something that one of my favourite actors used to say. The sadly late, and undeniably very great Jack Lemmon used to close his eyes just before the cameras rolled, and repeat a mantra that got him in the right zone to perform, to create on screen the heightened vision of reality that always occurs when movies work. His two words could serve as the motto for what’s happening here, as a motley crew of people dedicated to very-hard-working the vision to fruition, in the hope that together they may make a film that entertains, compels, challenges, inspires, makes the audience feel grateful to be alive and maybe just a little more ready to see each other for what we are; in short, to turn a story of ordinary people on Ponsonby Road into something that transcends our sense of just what is ordinary. I think Jack Lemmon might be right at home here. His two words?  Magic Time.