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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 23, 2012)
BEGINNERS A S E PA R AT I O N HUGO T H E D E S C E N D A N TS TA K E S H E LT E R AT TA C K T H E B L O C K I saw that.) Some of these families were traditional, like the parents and child of Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation, an Oscar nominee for Best Foreign Language fi lm that fi nds a compelling, painful story in the small, terrible dramas of the everyday. Parents argue. Their 11-year-old daughter gets stuck in the middle, both parents asking her to make an adult’s decisions. Arguments escalate, leading to oddly personal trials. Everyone is right in this Iranian fi lm, and everyone is wrong, and the stakes are both high and completely average. The fi lm’s verité style, the natural, assertive performances, the pacing — everything about A Separation seems ordinary, though the result is anything but. The brother and sister in Cold Weather; the father and daughters in Alexander Payne’s surprisingly sympathetic The Descendants; the family ties that streak through Steven Soderberg’s anxious (and semi-apocalyptic) Contagion; the family bubble and the beginning of the universe (I think?) in The Tree of Life — these are the things that balance the coming darkness, at least in last year’s fi lms. My favorite family was easily that conjured up by Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer in Mike Mills’ assured, lovely Beginners. Full of art and life and MOLLY’S TOP TEN MOVIES OF 2011: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) Melancholia Beginners A Separation Attack the Block Hugo loneliness, and lasting pain, Beginners concerns itself with the people we are and the people we might have been, an inescapable tangle of memory and truth. History and memory inform Martin Scorsese’s wonderful, buoyant Hugo, which loves movies as much as its director, and which offers a sweet but never cloying reminder that a family is not always made up of the people you’re related to. Plenty of fi lm lovers clearly love to fi nd trends and commonalities in a year’s offerings — just think of how delighted people have been to point out that two Best Picture nominees, Hugo and the overrated The Artist, look back to the history of movies — but not everything will fi t neatly into thematic boxes. Pina, Wim Wenders’ Oscar-nominated documentary about choreographer Pina Bausch, is a beautiful, nebulous fi lm in which Bausch’s story is seen as much as heard. Members of Bausch’s company speak about her infl uence and her art in voiceovers that play as the speakers, faces still, look directly into the camera. These scenes are intercut with pieces from Bausch’s work, staged in a theater (where the camera sometimes sits like a member of the audience), in a park, on a street median. I know RUNNERS-UP (I N A L PH A BETI CA L OR DER ): 6) 7) 8) 9) 10) Certified Copy Meek’s Cutoff Bellflower Pina The Tree of Life Bridesmaids Contagion Cold Weather The Descendants Drive How to Die in Oregon Take Shelter Young Adult PINA WWW.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM • BLOGS.EUGENEWEEKLY.COM EUGENE WEEKLY FEBRUARY 23, 2012 13
