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 By Peter T. Chattaway
YOU’D BE hard-pressed to find many people who
thought 2008 was a particularly good year at the multiplex. But as
disappointed as film buffs were to begin with, they found a whole new set
of reasons to complain when the Oscar nominees were announced January 22.
Leading the pack, with 13 nominations, was The Curious Case of Benjamin Button – an oddly sterile movie about a man who is born with
all the symptoms of old age, and then gets progressively younger over the
next 80 years.
The concept behind the film is certainly interesting,
and I would be lying if I said the final half-hour didn’t move me on
a deeper level than any movie I have seen in years, as its prolonged
meditation on mortality drew toward its climax.
But the first two hours were, in a word, dull. Benjamin
Button, as played by Brad Pitt and a bunch of special effects, barely
exists as a person; and the dialogue, by Eric Roth (Forrest Gump), is full of lines that are
more pseudo than profound. No matter how moving the ending might be, the
film as a whole just isn’t that good.
Runner-up, with 10 nominations in nine categories, was Slumdog Millionaire, about a
Muslim orphan who grows up to become a successful contestant on the Indian
version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Many people think this film is the odds-on favourite to win
Best Picture.
I don’t quite get the hype around this film.
It’s entertaining enough, but more diverting than engaging. I think
my colleague Jeffrey Overstreet has a point when he complains that the
film’s mix of brutal social realism and quasi-uplifting romantic
make-believe doesn’t work all that well.
As for the rest: Milk is a very well performed but utterly conventional biopic,
that is far more ‘agenda’ driven than Brokeback Mountain ever was; Frost/Nixon is a competent but
historically questionable adaptation of the Peter Morgan play; and The Reader will only confirm
the cynicism of those who say the Academy is far, far too impressed by
movies with lots of nudity or Nazis – or, in this case, both.
Conspicuously absent from the list of Best Picture
nominees were the enormously successful superhero movie, The Dark Knight; and the robots-in-love
cartoon WALL-E, which
has developed an incredibly passionate following.
The fanboys do have some reasons to celebrate: The Dark Knight was nominated for
eight awards, including such important categories as acting, cinematography
and editing, while WALL-E was nominated for six, including original screenplay. No
other superhero movie or animated film has ever done so well, as far as I
can tell.
But some people were hoping for an even bigger
breakthrough, one that would bring those films within reach of the top
prize – and alas, it failed to materialize.
As for me, if I had to name the 10 films released in
Vancouver last year that intrigued, enchanted and confounded me the most,
here is what I would pick – with the caveat that this list could
easily change if you asked me on another day.
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1. Silent Light (dir. Carlos Reygadas). Sexual temptation and spiritual
transcendence meet mysteriously in this bold, audacious film set among
Mexican Mennonites.
2. Man on Wire (dir. James Marsh). A brilliant reconstruction of
Philippe Petit’s daring high-wire act between the World Trade Centre
towers in 1974.
3. Happy-Go-Lucky (dir. Mike Leigh). The woman at the centre of this film
may seem irrepressibly flighty and upbeat, but she turns out to be a bit
more than that.
4. The Dark Knight (dir. Chris Nolan). Superhero movies will never be the
same after this morally complex – possibly too complex – study
of social order and chaos.
5. Doubt (dir. John Patrick Shanley). Viewers are challenged to
rethink their political and social assumptions in this fascinating play set
during Vatican II.
6. Dr. Seuss’ Horton
Hears a Who! (dir. Jimmy Hayward, Steve
Martino). A striking number of moral, even theological, lessons surface in
this fun family flick.
7. Rachel Getting Married (dir. Jonathan Demme). Wealthy, culturally superficial
hipsters deal with real pain, real grief and the possibility of real
forgiveness at a wedding.
8. Encounters at the End of
the World (dir. Werner Herzog). Only Herzog
could go to the Antarctic and ask if penguins ever go insane. Extraordinary
underwater cinematography.
9. WALL-E (dir. Andrew Stanton). The film has some noteworthy flaws,
but the title character is utterly charming, and there are moments of pure
beauty here.
10. Cloverfield (dir. Matt Reeves). Well, why not? As a monster movie,
it’s so-so; but as a comment on memories preserved and suppressed in
the YouTube age, it rocks.
* * *
Fireproof, a low-budget
box-office hit about a marriage on the rocks – produced by the same
church in Albany, Georgia that made Facing the
Giants two years ago – never came to
Canadian theatres; but it is now available on DVD.
The disc includes many of the usual bonus features
(deleted scenes, a video journal, an audio commentary), as well as some
more unique elements that play up the movie’s intended purpose
– as a ministry tool for married couples.
– filmchatblog.blogspot.com
February 2009
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