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
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EUGENE WEEKLY FEBRUARY 23, 2012 13