THERE WILL BE DARKNESS THE YEAR’S BEST FILMS
by Jason Blair
R
anking fi lms is like ranking
your friends: It’s imprecise,
indefensible and bound to stir
up trouble. It’s a bewildering,
even juvenile activity, this ordering of
favorites — does anyone over 20 ever talk
about their favorite color? — which may
explain, when applied to movies, why we
take such universal pleasure in doing so. But
for all their selectivity, their air of authority,
these “Best Of” lists do serve one worthy
purpose, which is, if Anthony Lane is to be
believed, also the chief aim of a fi lm critic:
Simply put, to start an argument.
We rank fi lms throughout the year on how
well they accomplish what they’re trying to
accomplish — at least, to the extent we can
determine either — not how well, say, an
astronaut documentary measures up against a
Coen brothers caper. Sorting out the best fi lms
of 2007 isn’t so diffi cult; like your friends,
the variety is overwhelming, but you know
unmistakably who the keepers are, if only
by your instinct. But grading their relative
worth is something else. Look anywhere up
and down these lists, and you’ll note how
interchangeable, how fl uid these fi lms are
in terms of their positions. We don’t pretend
our opinions are sacred. We’re simply more
organized in how we present them.
It was a slow year, 2007. Then it wasn’t.
Then it was slow once again. The fi rst fi lm
worthy of top-tier consideration, apart from
Once and The Lives of Others, didn’t release
here until July (La Vie en Rose). Then, for
the most part, other than Ratatouille and
Hairspray, nothing astonished us until
the fall. In what I can only describe as an
avalanche of quality fi lms, the fi nal weeks
of the year buried fi lmgoers with worthwhile
options of which only the most dedicated
could stay abreast. I’m not ashamed to say
that I’ve only just fi nished reviewing the last
few inches of this mass, the results of which
are summarized below. But don’t take our
word for it. See them for yourself.
1. La Vie en Rose
move or speak. Flooded with regret, this
former playboy undertakes a memoir by
using eye-blinks to communicate with
his speech therapist. In director Julian
Schnabel’s hands, we feel the fatigue, the
imprisonment, even if Bauby cannot. Based
on a true story, the fi lm asks, What makes
a life? Where is our true nature to be
found: in our success or in our response to
adversity? The Diving Bell and the Butterfl y
is a powerful, beautiful and funny fi lm that
must be seen to be believed. (1/24/08)
No Country for Old Men
6. Once
every register of emotional experience
imaginable, including fear, tenderness, joy,
defi ance and — ultimately, ever so briefl y
— regret. To those who say the performance
overwhelms the fi lm, I would say you can’t
have a train wreck without the train. Piaf’s
self-destruction, so fi nely communicated by
Cotillard, is given full expression by every
aspect of the production, which folds multiple
and fractured storylines into a single elegant
narrative. (Reviewed 7/19/07)
2. The Lives of Others
Set during the resurgence of Stalinism,
The Lives of Others depicts the covert world
of the Stasi, the highly repressive East
German secret police. At the center of the
fi lm is Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe), the methodical
and deeply committed Stasi agent assigned
to monitor a prominent playwright. It’s a
straightforward surveillance operation, but
the results are anything but: When his boss
turns out to be shallow and self-interested,
Wiesler, feeling betrayed, indulges himself
in some of the playwright’s simple
pleasures, such as music, a Brecht book and
sex. The more human he becomes, the more
he intervenes in the life of the playwright,
putting everyone, but especially himself,
at great risk. A sinister, shattering fi lm
that is nearly faultless in every way, with
a magnifi cent performance by Mühe, a
German actor whose wife, in a terrible irony,
informed on him to the Stasi throughout
their marriage. (3/8/07)
and extraordinary experience. Paul Dano,
wiry and self-possessed, holds his own as
a transparently false prophet. His baptism
of Day-Lewis is a battle of wills for the
ages. We’ll never know what Day-Lewis
whispers to Dano afterward, but based on
what happens later it isn’t hard to speculate:
There will be blood. (1/31/08)
4. No Country for Old Men
Old-timers get their comeuppance
in this electrifying adaptation of the
Cormac McCarthy novel, a story about the
diversifi cation of evil in a small west Texas
town. As a sheriff who doesn’t know the
score until it’s too late, Tommy Lee Jones
seems composed of Texas topsoil itself,
so perfectly at home does he seem in this
landscape. Vocally and physically, he’s in
absolute control, delivering a performance
to be measured against the very best of the
year, including his Oscar-nominated role
as a grieving father in In the Valley of Elah.
Javier Bardem, as a philosophical sociopath,
is a similar revelation. Watch his face as he
strangles the deputy: He’s somewhere else
completely. Josh Brolin concludes a busy
year with a lean, resolute portrayal of a
man whose conscience will be his undoing.
For the dialogue alone, No Country is a
considerable achievement. Great sound.
Great photography. Classic fi lm. (11/29/07)
5. The Diving Bell
and the Butterfl y
3. There Will Be Blood
This is the only unqualifi ed masterpiece of
2007, a feat largely, but not only, due to the
performance of Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf.
Playing a role that would have shattered a lesser
actress, so physically and psychologically
demanding was Piaf’s life, Cotillard instead
gives a dazzling performance, occupying
The story of a great and terrible man,
There Will Be Blood is a giant leap forward for
Paul Thomas Anderson, the director behind
the ambitious but imperfect Magnolia. With
There Will Be Blood, he’s close to perfection,
due in large part to two collaborators: Jonny
Greenwood of Radiohead, who provides
the original score, and Daniel Day-Lewis,
arguably the best male actor working today.
Greenwood’s tense, wrenching score sounds
like a violin being ripped apart, reinforcing
the destructive tendencies of Day-Lewis’
Daniel Plainview, an oilman who gains a
fortune but loses his mind. He’s a wretched
man, but the performance is so precise that
There Will Be Blood becomes a bracing
It begins simply, behind eyelids opening
and closing like butterfl y wings, at which
point we recognize that we’re trapped
inside a hospital patient. Images come into
focus and voices begin to register, but in The
Diving Bell and the Butterfl y, the protagonist
can’t reciprocate: We are looking through
the eyes of Jean-Dominique Bauby, a stroke
victim who emerges without the ability to
A truly modern musical, Once features
musicians Glen Hansard and Marketa
Irglova as two soulful but broken-hearted
musicians in Dublin. (John Carney, an old
bandmate of Hansard’s, directs.) Over the
course of one week, they become friends,
create some unforgettable music and — to
me, the great joy of the fi lm — heal their
busted hearts through song. Once breaks
records for naturalism, given that the
actors perform their own music, wear their
own clothes and incorporate background
elements into the fi lm (note the kids on
scooters as Irglova sings “If You Want Me”).
Thus Once has the improvised feel of a
documentary but the composure of a classic
drama. It’s a new direction for musicals.
To watch Once is to hope desperately for
a happy ending for the couple, so strong
is their in-fi lm chemistry. But Once gives
us something better, something bold,
unexpected and true. (7/26/07)
7. I’m Not There
Loose in structure but extravagant in
imagination, I’m Not There, to me, is a new
kind of movie. Director Todd Haynes (Far
From Heaven) offers us not one Bob Dylan,
but three Bob Dylans — folkie, intellectual,
misfi t — plus three fi gures Dylan absorbed
into his persona: Arthur Rimbaud, Woody
Guthrie and Billy the Kid. Haynes presses
each layer of Dylan against the others, each
one distinct yet inescapably part of the whole
of this most prismatic artist. No biopic has
ever captured so many echoes of its subject
or come closer to the true multiplicity
of one fi gure. The structure alone is
breathtaking, using a circles-within-circles
approach to examine the same event, in one
case bumping two Dylans into each other.
The fi lm starts to crawl when it settles on
Cate Blanchett (intellectual Dylan) for long
stretches, but to my mind, the fi lm deserves
universal praise for bringing to life a tiny
C O N T IN U E D O N P. 1 6
14 FEBRUARY 21, 2008 EUGENE WEEKLY
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