Best Films of the 2010s: The Great Beauty

Lists are beautiful. Films are beautiful. Opinions are subjective. Some films that we see now- some made for kids, some made in other languages, some made in 'trashy' genres- will one day become classics. Which ones? Here's my entirely subjective gaze into the crystal ball with my picks of the best films of the 2010s...

The Great Beauty

 

After the tranquil Italian countryside of Call Me By Your Name, the flamboyant Rome of Paolo Sorrentino’s film: a world to get lost in. Toni Servillo’s journalist Jep is an urbane and mocking commentator on the art scene of the city. And what a scene! An ‘artist’ with the Soviet hammer and sickle shaved into their pubic hair, runs naked into a wall and then screams repeatedly ‘I don’t love you’ (literally on the rebound). A young girl essentially has a big screaming hissy-fit covered in paint, but the resulting canvas is admittedly gorgeous. Such impressionistic snapshots dominate for a while, but the banquet of delights do converge into a satisfying meal.

     Satire of modern art gets some easy laughs but tearing down the airy bullshit of others will only get you so far unless you have a solid alternative to offer, and Sorrentino does through his focus on the wonderful Servillo’s Jep. He is a big-hearted and funny man who is ageing and riven by grief and worse meaninglessness, but certainly does not go gentle into that good night, partying hard, searching for people who aren’t phony and making sure to let them know when they are. The film boasts a perfect soundtrack that glides from the devotional to the dancehall, and gorgeous cinematography, but my favourite thing about it is its tone of loving mockery. What makes these characters ridiculous is what makes them human. This movie taught me the italian word cazzuto, badass, and it fits the bill. If for nothing else, watch it for the mysterious elephant!

Next Time: less pasta, more tomatoes.

Best Films of the 2010s: Call Me by Your Name

Lists are beautiful. Films are beautiful. Opinions are subjective. Some films that we see now- some made for kids, some made in other languages, some made in 'trashy' genres- will one day become classics. Which ones? Here's my entirely subjective gaze into the crystal ball with my picks of the best films of the 2010s...

Call Me By Your Name

  

 Could there be a more perfect combination of elements than Italy, Sufjan Stevens music, classical statuary, Arnie Hammer and Timothy Chalamet? This film dances (like a dad of course) on the fine line between artful and pretentious. The story is intended to make us as viewers fall in love with its lounging, lazy middle-class aesthetic- reclining by the pool is only interrupted by trilingual conversations-  as much as the characters and their emotions. In adapting his source material, though, director Luca Guadagnino makes one excellent decision after another, scrapping a wanky poetry reading from the book and giving characters that aren’t Elio more of a 3D reality outside of his intense perspective. Chalamet’s Elio is elfin and half-formed, seething too much inside to be graceful. He makes expansive movements that still have a awkward, jerky quality. For all his intelligence he is simple: an open book, who handily even writes his thoughts down on Post-it notes and abortive messages to Oliver. Oliver on the other hand is elusive. The whole film is an exercise in trying to know Oliver. Hammer outwardly is statuesque and placid but this is the result of his character’s inner walls and barriers (the screenplay hints at a repressive upbringing in the US). The moments of freedom he allows himself with Elio seem to spark a boyish joy in him, despite the undertow of fear.

    Some things are oft-mentioned when discussing this film, for instance, the brave ending of Chalamet staring into the fire. The score, too, is remarkable, and so much more than Sufjan (though this is peak, sensitive, plinky plinky Sufjan). I challenge you not to have Hallelujah Junction and Love My Way in your head for days after watching this. It is testament to the film’s greatness, though, that every rewatch draws out new details. Here are some that leap out at me. Elio is reading Heart of Darkness just before the famous peach moment (a seminal moment in the films of the decade, in every sense) , a ridiculous contrast that speaks so well to melodramatic teenage emotions. The first plangent chords of Sufjan’s Visions of Gideon,  which finishes the movie, play even the first time Elio enters Oliver’s room to make love; the film always has one eye on the end. Like the opening crawl of the Imperial Star Destroyer in A New Hope, the camera makes the train on which Oliver eventually departs seem to extend forever. 

    I can talk about the objective qualities of this film forever but for me (like any other honest critic) those are only part of the story. Imagine watching such a beautiful gay romance unfold while attending a secondary school where gay is a joke word. Imagine watching the scene where Elio’s father talks to him about love with your own father, at the end of a year when your parents’ divorce has uprooted your home life. The truthfulness of this film has meant that people see themselves there. Some have argued that this is the 'straight people's gay film' because in the scene where gay sex takes place the camera pans away (to a tree, and not even the sexiest of trees). But as an LGBTQ person I never saw it this way. Most of the physical romantic interaction in the film is portrayed as charming but clunkily awkward. This pan away allows the viewer's own imagination to supply a metaphysical perfection that physical reality cannot attain. And in a film that has been used to sell countless holidays, here is something not being marketed.

Next Time: less piano, more fire-spewing electric guitar.