I said Dickens? When it comes to the world of cinema, 2021 was the best and worst of all time. On the one hand, in terms of the quality of the films themselves, this is the best cinematic year I have remembered in a long time. On the other hand, the Corona has completed the push of cinematic art to the margins. No wonder the mythological critic Meir Schnitzer announced his retirement this year, leaving me with the unwanted ruins that were once known as the “big screen.”
The corona also disrupted the distribution boards, which were messy anyway. For the purpose of this parade I have considered all the films I have watched in the last dozen months, sometimes at various festivals or in the United States. Some have already been screened and / or are available in Israel, some will only hit screens in Israel next year. The films made it to the top ten only after a close struggle – the initial list I filtered out of included no less than 35 films, each of which deserved a place in the parade. It could have been a dream movie year, had it not been a nightmare.
10: “Unlucky Sex or Crazy Porn”
If our grandchildren want to understand what 2021 looked like, we can answer them through the film by Romanian Radu Jado, winner of the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival. This is one of the first films that addressed the reality of the corona, and the characters in it walk around with masks and maintain social distance. In addition, it touches on almost every possible topical issue – art, shaming, openness and sexual puritanism, viral phenomena and herd culture. All this through the story of a teacher whose sex tape leaks into the net, and through countless brilliant cinematic pranks.
- The discussions that deliver the goods and the never-ending drama film Stormy in court
9: “The Fracture”
A lot of films have been lost this year, and one of them is Catherine Corsini’s “Fracture.” He was admitted to the official competition of the Cannes Film Festival, but left without a prize, and then failed at the box office in his homeland without leaving a mark.
As the name implies, the film takes place in the emergency room of a Parisian hospital, where the main characters arrive with various fractures in their limbs. His name also symbolizes the rift in French society, and the protagonists here come from different ends: on the one hand, a bourgeois woman, a definite representative of the French “left caviar”, who needs treatment after slipping during a quarrel with her partner; And on the other hand, a truck driver from the province, who was beaten to death during a demonstration of the “yellow vest protest”.
The result is political cinema, personal, sweeping and supremely made. This is the most French film imaginable, but it also has a universal dimension, and is particularly relevant to Israel.
8: CODA
If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears, did it make a sound? And if a movie goes up on Apple TV Plus and no one watches it, did it really go up?
CODA is an English-speaking adaptation by director Shan Hadar for the French film “The Bleeding Family”, which was a blockbuster around the world and here as well. If the American version had come to cinema, and in the days before the Corona, it would no doubt have filled halls as well, because it is inspiring and uplifting. Even if it had reached Netflix, the new tribal bonfire, it would have happened. But it was purchased for a record amount by Apple TV Plus, a much less popular streaming service, especially in Israel, and therefore did not become a cultural phenomenon.
CODA (Photo: Courtesy of Apple TV)The film is called in English the abbreviation for “Children of Deaf Adults”. Similar to the French original, it also deals with a girl who is the only deaf person in her family, and is revealed to have the voice of a nightingale. The cast includes young Amelia Jones and veteran Marley Matalin, the Oscar winner for “Stepchildren for God,” who is expected to be nominated for her role here as well. In general, the film is expected to garner a slew of nominations for the gilded statuette, and perhaps that will help it get the proper resonance.
7: “The Father”
One of the most amazing cultural moments of the year took place at the Oscars. Its producers moved the lead actor award to the end of the event with the thought that the winner would be the late Chadwick Bozeman, and thus they would end the celebration with its exciting climactic moment. But the members of the academy thought otherwise, and gave the statuette to Anthony Hopkins, who, owing to Corona’s limitations, did not come at all to take the statuette, and at the same time slept peacefully in his residence in Wales.
In retrospect, it will be remembered as an embarrassing curiosity and tragedy for Bozeman’s family, but the truth is that Hopkins honestly earned the award. Sounds cheeky to say this about an actor with a resume like his, but “The Father” is probably the role of his life.
The father (Photo: United King)The film, it will be recalled, is an adaptation by Florian Zeller of his successful play of the same name. Hopkins plays a man with dementia, and the “father” accompanies him in his regression, until he completes the cycle and becomes helpless like a newborn baby.
At the end of its screening, the woman sitting next to me, who I had never seen or talked to before, turned to me and said, “What a sad movie, eh?”. Indeed, it is such a touching film, that it will make you make human contact with the first person to happen on your way after watching it.
6: “Spider-Man: No Way Home”
Watching “The Father” was an unforgettable collective experience, and the same is true of “Spider-Man: There’s No Way Home,” whose screenings are equivalent to a church Mass or a World Cup final. It has been a long time since we heard the audience raging and roaring like this in the film, and there is no knowing when it will happen again, if at all.
Spider-Man The Road Home (Photo: Film Forum)It is important to emphasize that even in itself, detached from the reactions to it, “Spider-Man: There’s No Way Home” is a great movie – one of the best comic books ever, and one of the most delightful Hollywood blockbusters of the 21st century.
It’s interesting to note that many of this year’s most prominent Hollywood fantasy / action films were actually comedies or romantic dramas with effects. This is true of “The Matrix: The Resurrection” and of “Venom 2,” and is especially true of the new episode of the “Spider-Man” series, which is more reminiscent of “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” than previous episodes of the series. He is beautiful, exciting and deserves every penny out of the billion dollars he has already garnered.
5: “Cow”
Andrea Arnold’s documentary follows cows during their short and miserable lives, until their deaths by human hands, and the British director photographs them with compassion and intimacy that further emphasizes the humanity that exists in them in the first place. I would have used a silly pun and declared it a “wow” perfect movie, had it not been so sad and shaky.
Cow (Photo: bbc)So shaky, that it is impossible to see the film and go on as usual. Of course, the number of spectators is not even a drop in the ocean of spilled milk, but those who will watch will think twice before consuming milk again.
4: “Belfast”
When Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat won the Nobel Peace Prize, Golda Meir said: “They do not deserve a Nobel, but an Oscar.” On the “Belfast” by Kenneth Branagh, the opposite can be said: he does not deserve an Oscar, although he will probably be nominated for many figurines, but a Nobel Peace Prize. Based on his childhood in the city after which the film is named, which became a battlefield between Protestants and Catholics, the filmmaker creates a song of praise here for his addict, his family, his childhood, cinema and of course peace.
Belfast (Photo: Universal Pictures, Jay Maidment.Hulu.Universal Television.MGM)The late director Howard Hawks once said that what a great movie needs is zero bad scenes and three good scenes. Belfast has no bad scenes, but there are at least six wonderful scenes, so according to this equation it is not just a great movie, but a great movie from life.
3: “Mr. Yosuke’s Drive” (Drive My Car)
The Oscar-winning “Parasites” and the huge success of “The Squid Game” finally illustrated that there is no longer room for artificial separation between Asian and Western culture. Gone are the days when the summaries of the year were pushing Asian films into the ghetto of “the best film in a foreign language” and so on. Nowadays, they are judged on an absolute scale, as they deserve.
Mariosuka’s leadership (Photo: Lev Cinema)And so, the glorious creation of Japanese Ryosuka the Gucci was chosen by the Los Angeles and New York Critics’ Associations as the best film of the year – not the best foreign film of the year, but the best film of the year, period. Barack Obama also chose him as his film of the year.
Sometimes it’s better to be right than to be original. “Mr. Yosuke’s Leadership” is indeed a phenomenal film. Based on the writings of Murakami and Chekhov, the Japanese filmmaker presents here the story of a newly widowed theater man and leadership attached to him, and of course it is a story about much more than that – about life and death, the long road that awaits us all, and the light at the end The tunnel.
2: “The Power of the Dog”
Jane Campion’s film was screened as part of the official competition of the Venice Film Festival, made a short tour of the cinemas and went up on Netflix, and later this winter is expected to prove to be the big winner of the Oscars.
The power of the dog (Photo: Netflix)Throughout his journey, it is customary to talk about him as a western, but if I had to match him in a double show with another film, it was actually with the German drama “Goodbye, Lenin”. Like her, “The Power of the Dog” is revealed as a story about a young man who is willing to do anything, but anything, for his beloved mother.
It takes more than one viewing to understand the true meaning of the film – it took me three. It’s also better to do it on a big screen to properly appreciate Campion and photographer Ari Wagner’s use of the stars and stars of the film – the face of Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Cody Smith-McPhee and the celestial landscapes, whose sheer beauty contrasts with the darkness of human figures.
1: “Spencer”
The filmmaker of the year is undoubtedly Johnny Greenwood, whose music dictates the atmosphere in “The Power of the Dog” and so does “Spencer,” which deals with Princess Diana and is named after her original family name.
The photographer of the year is undoubtedly Claire Mathon of France, who was responsible for the mesmerizing images in Celine Shiama’s “Little Mother” as well as those here. This time she collaborated with Chilean director Pablo Larin, one of the most talented and diverse today. In “No,” one of the films of the previous decade, he deliberately used murky video footage. Here he presents a stunning aesthetic reminiscent of masters like Andrei Tarkovsky.
Spencer (Photo: Lev Cinema)Actress of the Year is without a doubt Kristen Stewart, who will most likely win an Oscar for her performance as Diana, and this will likely be recorded as the film’s only achievement, which at least according to its performance at the United States and UK box office, is another one of 2021’s unfortunate commercial failures.
Important to clarify: Despite what one might assume, “Spencer” is not at all similar to the “Crown” series. Not in content and certainly not in style. In general, more than cinema, it is a work of art suitable for a museum, and here lies the tragedy of contemporary cinema in one sentence. The museum was until recently considered an elitist, detached and dying institution, but as Yaiwi Kusama’s exhibition now proves, it has been revived as more popular and relevant than ever. So the museum is still going to see works of art, but who would go to the cinema these days to see art films like “Spencer”?
The writer is the film critic of “Walla!”
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