The State of the Race: A Storm's Coming

When we look back on the movies of 2011, what will we remember? Will we remember the giant genre movies that took a bite out of the box office? Will we remember the animated sequels that worked the first time, then worked the second time and sometimes even worked the third time. Will we remember the movies that helped ease the pain? The ones that made us laugh and cry? Or will we remember the Cinema of Unease that has crept into American film?

These are dark days in America. We thought it was bad when Bush was in office but we couldn’t see Wall Street coming. There is fundamental distrust of our government, a revolving circus of Republican clowns, and a President who is out of town just as the Wall Street protests begin to erupt violently. We’re a man short.

The fear and despair has been expressed brilliantly by films that will likely never see the light of day, Oscar-wise. The growing unease is something noted passionately by film critics, and might perhaps earn some productions a few critics awards, but we know that the public, ergo the voting Academy, need more sugar in their cup of tea.

Those that shine a light on the way out of this mess we’re in will be rewarded both at the box office and on stage at the Kodak. We cling to them, flail towards them in the dark, in hopes that we can, momentarily, leave behind the grotesque, unanswerable world we’ve built for ourselves.

So we cling to stories about love, family, winning. We cling to the films that hold the flashlight and we hope that those other movies, you know, the ones that echo back to us our cries in the night, can sit safely over at Netflix where we can access them at our leisure, you know, some time later.

But when I think about the most stirring experiences that might end up defining this year, a whole different picture emerges – movies like Contagion, Take Shelter, Shame, Melancholia, Rampart, The Ides of March, Margin Call, Martha Marcy May Marlene, and of course, The Rise of the Planet of the Apes which, in its own genre-y way, spoke of a kind of need for release of the ties that bind.

Sometimes I wonder why Americans have stopped been able to tell rich and valuable stories anymore. And this thought always leads me to last year, when it took a film by British filmmakers, made outside the Hollywood studio system, to win Best Picture of the year, beating American productions like True Grit, Black Swan, The Fighter and The Social Network, all three very American stories, made by American filmmakers. I guess I’ll never understand the why of last year, even if it such a simple explanation: they liked this one better than that one. It is in my nature, and the nature of this website, to look deeper than that.

So my thoughts turn to this year, where once again a movie like The Artist has swept through the film season as one of the best films of the year. There is no fear of storytelling there. There is no need to make a film that will make money, that will attract the 13-year-old boy demographic, the need for violence and the obliteration of sex. Michel Hazanavicius was telling a good story and that is all. It’s original, too. Last year’s winner was also an original screenplay, while Social Network, True Grit and the Fighter were not. The only other original was Black Swan. And we all know that was “too weird” to ever have won.

The Artist, a film about American cinema made by a French director, is one of the best stories told this year and it has absolutely nothing to do with that growing anxiety, that storm Michael Shannon kept talking about in Take Shelter.

The film Take Shelter is by far one of the best films of this year. That’s a sentence worth repeating. The chances of it being named Best Picture are slim to none. What an original, breathtaking idea it is. The acting, the writing, the execution — but more than that, it scratches that irritating itch about what we’re all feeling right now, or many of us anyway. Maybe if you’re unplugged to what’s going on, and you’re watching Dancing with the Stars and really getting involved in those stories instead, you will see Take Shelter as a movie about a man maybe going insane. But it is hard not to see it as one of defining films of this year, particularly where American film is concerned.

The pervasive signs of distress of are seen on Michael Shannon’s face; his inner world vibrates with knowing, while his outer world falls apart with doubt. He has one exceptional scene where he explodes in a cafeteria – and if that doesn’t become of the most memorable scenes of this year I will eat my hat. I am also haunted by Elizabeth Olsen’s face, panicked and confused while trying to remain composed in Martha Marcy May Marlene. The two female leads in Melancholia have also caught the same virus. And then there’s Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, which is a more mainstream version of this contagion of anxiety ripping through this country right now in so many ways. Contagion made just $70 million or so, right around where Moneyball will end up, unless it starts winning awards. It had good word of mouth but somehow it ended up in the pile of movies that weren’t being considered for Oscar. It’s that fear thing, probably. It’s that fear thing all the way.

Although we might put Alexander Payne’s film, The Descendants, in the category of a “feel good” band-aid. A second viewing of that movie reminded me that it is about more than just a family coming apart and pulling itself back together: it is about America, in many respects. We are *all* the descendants–caretakers of this land, our rights, our future. The story is told about a white family in the land of natives — the taking of the land was maybe immoral, maybe illegal. The impulse is to cash in, because isn’t that what rich fat cats do in this country? We take and then we take some more. But in The Descendants is a gentle reminder of this stolen ownership, this huge responsibility. The Descendants shows us another way.

Addressing our plight from the underdog angle is Bennett Miller’s Moneyball, still the most successful and well reviewed film of the year (not counting Harry Potter). This is a film about making something out of nothing, taking a swing and maybe missing, but like The Descendants, caretaking family and the team becomes, in the end, more important than winning the game. It’s another way out. Vivid, memorable, bittersweet. There are no easy answers in Moneyball because, as we know, the dynamic it created is still debated today. What we can take away with confidence is Billy Beane’s story and maybe his story feels like our story.

Three remaining movies we await will either separate or unite us. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, along with War Horse, are movies meant to redeem us from what ails us. They won’t offer easy answers but they can offer comfort. And then there’s the Prince of Darkness and his upcoming The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, which remains my personal most anticipated film of the year, as it pours hot wax all over the party pieces, bringing us all the things we shouldn’t want, but somehow do. David Fincher, sure to deliver among the most visually stirring films of the year – and probably one that will stand apart from all of the others. Whether that difference will amount to Oscar nomination or not is still a mystery.

But as we head out of the heat of the season and into the critics awards, with National Board of Review and New York Film Critics announcing soon, those groups will have had to see these movies to know whether to vote on them or not. It’s likely that we will hear word from them first before any of us actually sees War Horse or Dragon Tattoo. If either of these films is left off those lists — the National Board of Review will name ten, the New York Film Critics will vote for one winner for Best Picture, it will be reflective, most likely, of the year we already know, not the year we don’t.

But I feel certain that 2011 will be remembered more for the films that weren’t in the race than the ones that ultimately will be. We are in a position to be embracing films that offer us a way out of the mess, shelter from the storm. And those that remind us what’s coming next are those that will have to remain buried treasures to be unearthed later, after things have calmed down.

There will be, I suspect, something very reassuring about the 84th Academy Awards. Familiar host, conventional Best Picture nominees, star-driven vehicles, old Hollywood resurrected. As I made my way up those beautiful steps at the Academy theater on Wilshire for the Descendants premiere last night, I was surrounded by Academy members. You never realize who these people are until you see them in the flesh, sit among them, listen to their murmurings. I imagine that crowd watching The Social Network or Take Shelter and I can imagine the confusion — not because they’re “old and out of touch” so much but because, after all of the time spent on this planet, having careers ascend and sometimes watching them fade, having children and watching them grow up and out, living through so much that they want their movies to provide something beyond the gnawing questions we grapple with every day. They must provide, god willing, relief. And the Descendants did that. The long, long applause at the end of it proved it. It’s a great film. Alexander Payne’s best. It’s also a light, a beacon, shimmering off in the distance, illuminating the path to a better life.