The Ten Best Films of 2005
(Plus Ten More)
It
would be too easy to take jabs at 2005 as a year of depressing,
cinematic redundancy. The major studios’ main focus seemed
to always be on the latest slew of pointless remakes of outdated
TV shows (Bewitched, Dukes of Hazzard) and horror
films (The Fog, Dark Water, Saw 2—essentially
a remake of the first film), not to mention videogame adaptations
(Doom), the reviews of which somehow segued into a colossal
online clash between Roger Ebert and gamers over whether or not
videogames should be considered art (and kids, I ain’t touching
that with a ten-foot pole). Not even master craftsman Steven Spielberg
was spared from the mundane; I dubbed his War of the Worlds
update his worst film, hands down, and I stand by that conviction.
At first glance, we have to wonder how films as art stand a chance
against the greedy, moneymaking machine of Hollywood.
But giving 2005 a second glance—the job of any responsible literary critic—I would venture to say that this was actually a great year for the movies. A number of films were insightful, interesting, bold, meditative, and colorful—including several studio films that opened quietly under the flare of overproduced remakes and sequels. It wasn’t hard to find these films if you were looking for them; the trick was not to be discouraged to venture to your theater house because of the duds that the networks spent the majority of their commercials advertising.
More than anything else, 2005 should be considered a triumphant year due to the return of some of our most extraordinary filmmakers, many of whom made comebacks after several years of hiatus. Undisputed masters like Ingmar Bergman, Werner Herzog, Terence Malick, Martin Scorsese, George A. Romero, Woody Allen, Ang Lee, and Steven Spielberg (who recovered with Munich) all presented strong entries that confirmed their status and dignity as filmmakers; others, such as Peter Jackson, Paul Haggis, George Clooney, Bahman Ghobadi, Fernando Meirelles, and Jim Jarmusch made it clear that they are not far behind from making that list. Two other disputed mavericks, David Cronenberg and Paul Schrader, loved by some and hated by others, also directed some of their best work this year and perhaps proved their merit to naysayers once and for all (it is with regret that I cannot include fellow maverick Terry Gilliam on this list, whose The Brothers Grimm failed to live up to his regular, creative standards).
I am getting bored with Top Ten Lists, so this year, stirred by some of the undeniably great films that I have seen in the last twelve months (and miffed that I am so often forced to leave some great recommendations off lists that limit themselves to ten—I’m still peeved that I found no room for Hotel Rwanda on my list last year), I’m offering you the ten best films of the year, plus ten more are worthy of mention. This list just goes to show you that cinematic arena hasn’t turned into a dead horse, and it never will be as long as movie snobs like me continue to have a devil of a time selecting ten movies to rule a year’s entire lineup. In the era of remakes and sequels, here are the sparkling jewels that have kept cinema afloat:
The Ten Best films of 2005.
1. Grizzly Man, directed by Werner Herzog. One of the best documentaries in years marks a moving change of pace for Werner Herzog, who is probably the greatest living filmmaker. Instead of working off his own obsessions with finding new images, he allows the ghost of Timothy Treadwell, a bear activist mauled by his beloved animals in 2003, to speak for himself from beyond the grave with footage that he shot over thirteen summers on Kodiak Island, Alaska, home to most of the country’s grizzly bear population. Herzog edits this footage so that Treadwell’s mystery, charm, and madness remain intact; the director does not apologize for the dead man’s bizarre and often naïve actions, but he does ask us to hear Treadwell’s appeal and to respect his passion. And we do. The result is a mystifying movie, as intriguing and paradoxical as Treadwell himself.
2. Saraband, directed by Ingmar Bergman. Now in his late 80s, Ingmar Bergman has directed what he claims will be his last film. If we can believe him (“Retire? You mean death, right?” Robert Altman once said), then no greater picture could have capped this remarkable career. A sequel to one of Bergman’s most beloved works, 1973’s Scenes from a Marriage, Saraband picks up twenty years after the first film left off, featuring the same cast members struggling to redeem themselves from years of wrong choices and selfishness. A powerful rumination on parenthood and regret, Bergman reaffirms the sadness he has encountered in life and his persevering spirit nevertheless. If this is his last film, then he ends an astonishing body of work with an appropriately haunting reflection on his life and work.
3. Crash, directed by Paul Haggis. The writer of Million Dollar Baby scores again, this time as the director of the most sincere, staggering meditation on racism and prejudice in America since Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989). Haggis weaves this ensemble piece together with ease and authority, exploring in over a dozen major characters both racism’s taproot and, ultimately, its consequences. The film probably contains the most startlingly ironic scene of the year (I’ll leave you to figure out which scene that is), which works as a moving revelation that the goodness within us is often as difficult to define as our evil. We all talk about the problem of evil; what about the problem of heroism?
4. Land
of the Dead, directed by George A. Romero. The ongoing
metaphor in Romero’s previous dead films is that we are
all turning into mindless walking zombies, but Land of the
Dead plays like a wrench thrown into the clockwork as it
asks, with chilling results, what happens when the zombies begin
to turn into us? Romero’s first zombie film in twenty years
is a courageous, gross-out masterpiece, in which the director
utilizes the same powerful social allegory that marked his previous
zombie films—particularly Night of the Living Dead
and the original Dawn of the Dead—as landmarks
in American cinema. This time around, Romero creates a fable that
isn’t afraid to ask serious questions about America’s
role in September 11th and the Iraq Wars, as well as its often
apathetic approach to world poverty. The film eventually demands
that we have to take responsibility for creating our own monsters—an
appeal most Americans will never hear on Fox News or CNN. It’s
nice to have Romero back, and he isn’t afraid to point out
the greatest, saddest paradox of all: Why has it been left to
a horror director to slyly point out our hypocrisies that are
slowly eating away the world?
5. Broken Flowers, directed by Jim Jarmusch. It would be easy to label Broken Flowers as a sequel to Murray’s own Lost in Translation: It features the same jaded, stone-faced Murray as a has-been romantic who is has lost all motivation to pick up the shattered pieces of his life and move on. Also like Lost in Translation, it makes use of Murray’s uncanny ability to reveal utter profoundness in simply looking bored and tired. Comparisons are inevitable, but are probably not necessary: In its own way, Broken Flowers is even more enduring than Translation, as it underplays Murray’s bland character and hints at his depth in ways that Sophia Coppola’s film decided not to keep nearly as subtle. But the subtleness is a virtue here; as we follow Murray on a road trip to locate and identify the mother of his estranged son, the deeper he seems to fall into himself. He grows more detached, and we grow more enchanted by his character and his interactions with his oddball ex-girlfriends. A quiet moment at a tombstone might be Murray’s greatest acting scene, and it would be a shame if he doesn’t get an Oscar nomination for his work here. It’s probably his best film to date.
6. Syriana, directed by Stephen Gaghan. This is George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead, only instead of allegory, Gaghan tells it to us straight, in a film that spans across America and deep into the heart of the Middle East. Syriana is a difficult film to watch and understand, because of both its honest look at difficult topics and the complicated business politics that it displays. But if you can cut through the complicated talk and multiple characters’ often shifting alliances, you are left with a revelation about the link between business policies and world terror, the latter of which is interpreted here less like an act of blind hatred and more of an act of sickening desperation. Much has been made of Tim Blake Nelson’s stirring speech about corruption and greed; some have said it is the best since Michael Douglas’ similar rant in Wall Street. Is it really that good? Yes, it is.
7. The New World, directed by Terence Malick. In the last thirty-two years, Malick has only directed four pictures: Badlands (1973), Days of Heaven (1978), The Thin Red Line (1998), and this year’s The New World. In the last thirty-two years, Malick has also given us four of the best American films ever made—visual poems rich with color, sincerity, bleakness, and honesty. The New World is Malick’s take on the story of Pocahontas and John Smith, and it is a natural progression in his filmography, which seems to be working backwards in time (Badlands took place in the 1950s, Thin Red Line was a World War II epic, Days of Heaven details the lives of farmers in the early 1900s), all the way back to the embryonic stages of America. Like Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York, Malick suggests that America was not born from a postcard-friendly collaboration of willing, selfless spirits, but rather bred from self-indulgence, prejudice, and violence. Malick provides a thoughtful epic that is deeply internal and meditative; like all his films, it requires concentration and commitment from its audience, but they pay off in the end with a very strong reexamination of the roots of our country’s troubled history, and it suggests that these troubles are not merely our own, but are ingrained deep in the story of the world.
8. Turtles Can Fly, directed by Bahman Ghobadi. Ghobadi’s third film deals with a crushing account of Kurdish children living in Iraq just before the fall of Saddam Hussein. Much like last year’s Osama, the first film released from Afghanistan after the dissembling of the Taliban, Turtles Can Fly is a startling dose of reality, showcasing the risks that children have to make in a world torn apart by war and poverty. Our own problems in the Western World seemingly diminish under the weight of the conflicts featured here, which includes an armless boy who disarms land mines with his teeth, and a barely-teenage girl forced to take care of an unwanted child after she is raped by an Iraqi soldier. Revealing but never forceful, Turtles Can Fly is the year’s most devastating emotional appeal not to forget the atrocities that take place every day all around the world.
9.
Brokeback
Mountain, directed by Ang Lee. I’m sick and tired
of this film being dubbed the “gay cowboy movie.”
Replace one of the characters with a married woman, and you would
still have the most moving romance of the year. The key word here
is “forbidden,” and the consequences of accepting
what your heart is telling you when your gut screams in protest.
Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger surely deliver the most courageous
performances of 2005 as two ranchers who know that what they’re
doing, this “thing,” isn’t right by their society’s
standards. Their love scenes generate more frustration than passion,
yet neither one of them are willing to stop with this secret affair.
Ang Lee’s personal obsessions seem to include guilt and
secrets—just look at his other films, which reflect those
themes in one way or another: Another forbidden affair in Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon, serious anger-management control problems
in Hulk, the trappings of aristocracy in Sense and
Sensibility. Brokeback Mountain takes his themes
all the way, eschewing metaphor and forcing his characters to
spell out their shame and fears in a way that pushes both their
boundaries and ours.
10. A History of Violence, directed by David Cronenberg. Frank Capra meets Alfred Hitchcock meets Goodfellas. I should almost stop at this description, but it would really only be scratching the surface of the curious way that this film resonates and sinks under our skin. What could have been a routine thriller is given a Freudian slant from Cronenberg, who lets the characters’ suspicions and accusations boil to a maddening point of intensity before he finally knocks us into a full-throttled third act, which releases us from this labyrinth in the same way that we burst for air after being underwater for a long period of time. William Hurt delivers the best performance of the year as a mob boss, but all of the actors are in top form, allowing the script to saturate their characters in a way that would probably drive most performers over the edge. Of course, the point of A History of Violence is going over the edge, and when Cronenberg finally pushes us over, we only thought we saw it coming.
…And Ten More (in alphabetical order):
Capote, directed by Bennett Miller. Biopics were in season this year, and this was the best of them all. More important than the handling of the story, just consider Philip Seymour Hoffman’s performance as the eccentric writer. His mannerisms, personality, and unique voice could have easily slipped into parody, yet Hoffman keeps his portrayal sympathetic and earnest, giving us one of the best performances of the year.
The Constant Gardener, directed by Fernando Meirelles. Meirelles’ follow up to his masterful City of God is equally engaging, as the lover of a murdered nurse tries to put the pieces together of the events surrounding her death, only to fall more deeply in love with her as the truth reveals itself.
Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist, directed by Paul Schrader. The prequel that almost wasn’t, released from development hell after considerable struggle and protest. The struggle was worth it—not only is this the best Exorcist film since the original, but it is also a cerebral, moving examination of faith and evil in its own right. Schrader draws not only from the Friedkin film, but also gathers inspiration from Ford’s The Searchers, and examines themes he helped create in The Last Temptation of Christ and Taxi Driver. This film serves as insightful commentary to all these pictures.
Good Night, and Good Luck., directed by George Clooney. The story of Broadcast journalist Edward Murrow, who, loaded with his television network, a few terrified allies, and a mighty pair of balls, helped to take down Senator Joseph McCarthy and his paranoid witch hunt against would-be American Communists. The stark black-and-white creates a nostalgic quality that serves the film well as a period piece; what’s more surprising is how well Clooney, who directs with a tight control, is able to make the piece resonate in our own time as well as its own.
King Kong, directed by Peter Jackson. This might be the Raiders of the Lost Ark of our times. I say “might” because only time and prosperity could validate such a claim, but I can’t think of a film that so delightfully held me on the edge of my seat so consistently since the last Indiana Jones picture. This is the fourth version of King Kong, not counting rip-offs, sequels, animated TV shows, and spoofs (the original came out in 1933; Kong returned in a 1963 Toho retelling that pitted him against Godzilla, and a poorly-received 1976 adaptation in which Jessica Lange was his main squeeze), and it leaves just about every other film of its kind (including Jurassic Park) in the dust. This is a three-hour thrill ride, yet we are never bored or tired. With this film, even more than with the Lord of the Rings pictures, Jackson establishes himself as not only a masterful storyteller, but also an emotionally powerful one—the theater won’t have a dry eye when Kong finally meets his fate atop the Empire State Building.
Match Point, directed by Woody Allen. Allen returns, and it’s been a long time coming! After a few promising but ultimately unsuccessful comedies (Curse of the Jade Scorpion, Anything Else, Melinda and Melinda), Allen goes for a British thriller, and this frankly bizarre change of pace somehow manages to become one of his most interesting films. Like all his best films, the dialogue and characterizations remain tight and focused, as the talented young actors spin their web of seduction and play on one another’s helpless lusts. For the first time in years, we walk away with the feeling that Allen’s old bag of tricks still has what it takes.
Munich, directed by Steven Spielberg. There has been a movement this year, especially in the films by Gaghan, Romero, and Haggis, not to demonize evildoers, but to rather attempt to understand what would fuel them to create acts of terror. Spielberg accomplishes this as well, by mixing real footage with a fictional speculation on the assassins who attempted revenge for the deaths of Israeli Olympians in 1972. Revealing the motivations of these characters with grace and sympathy, but never justification, Spielberg redeems himself after the disappointing War of the Worlds with a film that will surely be ranked among his most moving dramas (less than Schindler’s List, of course, but probably on equal ground with Saving Private Ryan).
No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, directed by Martin Scorsese. The deeper this exploration of Bob Dylan’s life and legacy gets, the more of an enigma Dylan becomes. Scorsese reveals that this mystical quality is what first and foremost attracts us to Dylan and his music. The director peers as deeply over the edge of Dylan’s abyss that anyone ever could, yet what we see on the other side remains as impenetrable as it ever has been. This enduring documentary ranks among both Scorsese and Dylan’s best work.
The Squid and the Whale, directed by Noah Baumbach. The science of family dysfunction, delivered in plain English as if it were a 101 class. A coming-of-age comedy that plays like the darker brother of A Christmas Story; it’s actually quite funny and illuminating. We want this family to be okay; they probably will be, but not before fate delivers a few curve balls, including their parents’ divorce and their father’s subsequent affair with one of his students (the father and his student are played by Jeff Daniels and Anna Paquin, who also played father and daughter in Fly Away Home. Yes, it is difficult not to think about that when watching this movie).
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, directed by Tommy Lee Jones. A modern-day Western, inspired by a true story, demonstrates Jones in surprising control over a parable about redemption and kept promises. Great performances all around in a complex, very poignant story about two friends caught in conflicting idealisms, and the tragic resolution to their inevitable confrontation with the truth. In some societies, to some people, only bullets can talk reason. Very sad, but very true.
…Etc.
And just because I’m such a nice guy, here are some other films from 2005 that didn’t quite make the “best” cut, but are still well worth checking out:
Batman
Begins, Caché,
The Chronicles
of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Downfall,
Duma,
Junebug,
Last
Days, The
March of the Penguins, Me
and You and Everyone We Know, Millions,
Murderball,
Sin
City, Walk
the Line, Wallace
& Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Wal-Mart:
The High Cost of Low Price, The
White Diamond.
