Best of 2011 -->> eleven through fifteen

#15 Another Year (dir. Mike Leigh):

The small victories of an aging English couple are contrasted against the miserable lives of their friends.  It isn't that Tom (Jim Broadbent) and Gerri (Ruth Sheen) have everything; their successes are modest: occupations that feed them intellectually and spiritually, the emotional support of each other, and a adult son whose company they enjoy.  But placed against Mary's (Lesley Manville) complete inability to navigate the daily grind, theirs are lives that work.

A true actor's piece where everyone completely inhabits their roles.  This may be my favorite Mike Leigh film since Life is Sweet.

#14 Tabloid (dir. Errol Morris):

Errol Morris returns to the valley of the freaks with this one.  The film relays the exploits of Joyce McKinney, a woman who, after being dumped, assumed her boyfriend had been brainwashed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  So, what's a girl to do?  Allegedly, Joyce's solution was to kidnap, drug and rape the man out of his religious convictions.
Morris is a master documentary filmmaker; one of our best.  Here he plays both sides of the story, letting Joyce, her accusers and those caught in the fray the opportunity to tell their version of the truth. 

#13 Into the Abyss (dir. Werner Herzog):

An admission: during first 15 minutes or so, I was disappointed that this film features none of Herzog's characteristically downcast narration. This, however, was before I understood what he was trying to craft here.  Simply put, this documentary is Herzog's most mature work to date.  Accordingly,  he keeps himself (mostly) out of the picture, choosing instead to focus on the story of a triple homicide and the people involved.

Herzog's version of Texas is one where everyone has experienced loss, often violently, leading us to believe that the central crime of the narrative is just a more heightened version of business as usual. Of course, post-screening, one must square the facts presented with Herzog's own notion of ecstatic truth, at which point the portrait of Texas does become questionable, as does the sequence where Herzog shows us the bullet-ridden cars that "testify" to various acts of violence. But the impact of the film remains.

#12 Senna (dir. Asif Kapadia):


The simultaneously thrilling and tragic tale of Aryton Senna, the best Formula One racing driver of his generation, is told almost entirely through frenetically-charged, archival materials. As such, it is a documentary of pure immediacy, a historical portrait that plays out in the present tense most of the time. A tension-filled masterpiece capable of captivating even viewers who know nothing (or care nothing) of the sport that its subject dominated.

#11 Meek's Cutoff (dir. Kelly Reichardt):

Kelly Reichardt's third collaboration with screenwriter Jon Raymond finds the duo moving even further away from explanatory exposition than in their previous films. Meek's Cutoff is more about what is left unspoken.
Hit the link to read what I had to say about it in March.
 

 

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MEEK'S CUTOFF: THE PROBLEMS OF TODAY, DRESSED UP IN YESTERDAY'S CLOTHES

A cocksure false prophet leads a band of unfortunates through a dry and desolate wasteland.  A child reads aloud from the Old Testament.  And the one person with the potential to serve as a messianic figure is hogtied and treated to the constant suspicions of his captors.  Welcome to the western as reconceived by Kelly Reichardt, whose previous efforts earned her a seat at the head of A.O. Scott's "neo-neo realists" of American cinema table.

In her latest film, Meek's Cutoff, the director brings her now familiar strategies to bear upon the Oregon trail and the historic failure that was Stephen Meek (Bruce Greenwood), a trail guide whose bad advice leaves those travelers foolish enough to follow him stranded without water as they move across the desert landscape of eastern Oregon.  Whereas the objectively pitched camerawork in Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy and Old Joy often lent those films a sense that we were intimately accessing the singular consciousness of each film's protagonist, here we're placed at a distance from each member of the group, helplessly watching as the terrible yet oddly muted events transpire.

If there's any one character to hang our sympathies upon, it's Emily (Michelle Williams) who, despite being equally as miserable as her fellow travelers, at least defines herself through a selfless act of humanity, performed at the lowest point in their journey.  Beyond that moment, we're denied insight into these characters, asked instead as an audience to observe and consider our own responses to such circumstances while dwelling upon what behaviors have changed over time and which of those have remained doggedly present in the culture of today.

Whether it's the insanity of groupthink, the tendency to devalue natural resources until they reach the point of scarcity or the assumptions caught up in patriarchal dominance, the problems facing these characters are not unlike the ones we face during our day to day lives.  Which makes total sense, since period pieces are more often than not positioned to speak to contemporary issues, rather than poised purely as a means of reflecting upon the past.  Reichardt has proven herself over the course of just a few films to be a director deeply interested in the undercurrents of her stories, favoring the cultivation of subtext rather than a routine focus on plot points.  Old Joy, for instance, is just as much about the rise of partisanship during the post-9-11 Bush era as it is, on a surface level, about a friendship strained by differing ideologies.

As the characters in Meek's Cutoff move aimlessly through the Oregon wilderness, it's difficult not to view the landscape as a metaphorical space in which a perennial struggle is being reenacted.  And, yes, sometimes a wagon train is just a wagon train.  But, in the case of Meek's Cutoff, I'll hazard a guess that there's something deeper lurking right below the surface of this tale.

Meek's Cutoff opens in mid-April in select cities.  Given it's home-grown heritage, expect it to play locally at that time in PDX.



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A day in support of arts funding + MEEK'S CUTOFF

Just a quick run-down of a couple events happening today:

There's a local film community pow-wow going down this afternoon in Salem on the steps of the capitol building.  The Oregon Media Production Association (OMPA) has organized the 4pm event  in support of HB 2167, which, if ratified, would increase film incentives to production companies seeking to make films in Oregon.

Following the afternoon's activities, there's a special pre-release screening of Kelly Reichardt's (Old Joy) newest feature, Meek's Cutoff.  Shot entirely in Oregon, the film reunites Reichardt with Wendy & Lucy star Michelle Williams.  As was the case with Reichardt's last two films, the film was written by Portland author Jon Raymond ("Livability").  The latter event takes place at the Elsinore Theatre in Salem at 7pm and benefit the Oregon Cultural Trust's efforts in statewide arts funding.

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Feed, links and more added to THE RAIN FALLS DOWN ON PORTLANDTOWN

I'm still fairly new to this blogging stuff, so the site is still somewhat under construction.  Just wanted to point out a few new additions to the page:

#1  I've added the ability for readers to subscribe to a feed for the blog.  If you find what's going on here interesting, go ahead and take advantage of that feature (found in the upper right hand corner of the page).  It's the easiest way to get new posts as soon as they're published.

#2 There's a short list of links for other blogs that I enjoy reading, including local blogger Anne Richardson's great Tall True Tales: Oregon Film A to Z site.  One of her more exciting recent posts?  An announcement that the Oregon Film Commission will be hosting a pre-release screening of Kelly Reichardt's (Wendy & Lucy, Old Joy) Meek's Cutoff (starring Michelle Williams) at the Elsinore Theater in Salem, Oregon.  Check out Anne's site for more info!

#3 I've added the ability to share via Facebook & Twitter, as well as the ability to perform a Google search through the posts.  Now you can share and search to your heart's content, people!

Hope these changes make it easier to enjoy the blog.  Keep an eye out for future posts...or subscribe to the feed and you won't even have to pay that close of attention!