February 28, 2018
Page 15
‘Get Out” Best Film of 2017
C ontinueD From p age 5
films about people facing ethical
and moral questions at moments
of crisis or loss. This is their best
work yet, in my view, a suspense-
ful story about a young doctor,
Jenny, coming face to face -- in a
way that most of us avoid -- with
the importance of facing the truth
of one’s actions.
Early in the film, Jenny is rid-
ing her intern hard about being
too soft; she is feeling her power,
about leave her practice working
with struggling working-class
people in order to accept an ap-
pointment in a prestigious prac-
tice. One night, just after office
hours have ended, someone rings
the bell of the office, and seems
frantic; the intern moves to open
the door but Jenny stops him, as-
serting harshly that the caller is
too late. A few days later police
inform her that a young woman
was found dead near her office,
and it turns out from the security
tape that it was the woman ringing
the bell.
Jenny immediately feels re-
sponsible for not letting the wom-
an in and wonders if she may have
contributed to her death. Her at-
tempts to talk to the intern fail; she
finds that he is about to quit med-
ical school, giving Jenny another
reason to feel terrible. She eventu-
ally admits, to him and to herself,
that she too wanted to open the
door that night and that she had
prevented him from doing so only
to get the upper hand. This is the
kind of self-assessment most of us
avoid.
Jenny decides not to take the
prestigious job and, for the rest
of the film, goes to great and fre-
quently dangerous lengths to find
out what happened to the dead
girl. She encounters a succession
of people who did things they are
ashamed of that may well have
contributed to the girl’s death,
and most of them are experienc-
ing some kind of health problem
– back pain, stomach pain, infec-
tions. It’s subtle but clear. Many
are angry with Jenny for asking
questions, and she puts herself in
some real danger. But she is com-
pelled to pursue the truth; she can’t
get the woman out of her head.
The film is exceedingly wise
about how people work, and about
systemic injustice.
3. “The Florida Project” is the
work of writer-director Sean Bak-
er, whose “Tangerine” was on my
guts and quick flashes of anger,
and their life together is achingly
precarious. Yet Moonee feels (and
is) loved (or what passes for it in
Hailey’s conception), and slams
through her world with the utmost
ballsy confidence, armed with
Hailey’s lessons in hustling, grab-
bing what she wants and leaving
carnage in her wake.
As he did in “Tangerine,” Bak-
er helps us to linger inside a world
of the marginalized that most of
with a 10-foot pole; I left wrecked,
and grateful.
4. “Whose Streets?” deserves
much more attention that it has
yet achieved. Its smart director,
Sabaah Folayan (a black wom-
an), and her co-director, Damon
Davis, clearly fought like hell to
tell the story of the protests in Fer-
guson, Mo. in the aftermath of the
police shooting of Michael Brown
from the perspective of the black
citizens who sought to challenge
what had happened. The contrast
to the narrative that carried the
day in the mainstream media is so
The 2017 documentary “Whose Streets” looks at how the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown in
Ferguson, Mo. inspired a community to fight back and sparked a global movement.
list of the best films of 2015. Here
again, his compassionate focus
is the underclass of people who
live on the edge of destitution,
next door to la la land -- in this
case, Disney World. Six-year-old
Moonee (played by the irrepress-
ible Brooklynn Prince) lives with
her mother Hailey (still a child
herself) in a week-to-week budget
motel painted in bright pastels and
sporting discount fairytale trap-
pings, originally built to house
park visitors and now housing
the virtually homeless. Hailey is
a profoundly neglectful parent,
plainly having experienced only
neglect herself; she manages her
untenable circumstances with
us would avoid, and avoids the
temptation to romanticize or solve
its unsolvable problems. Here he
also imparts a picture of childhood
that is parked on a precarious and
thrilling edge; by filming largely
from Moonee’s viewpoint, Baker
allows us to experience her child-
hood both as she does and as we
would from a safer adult vantage
point, a view largely embodied by
Willem Dafoe as the longsuffer-
ing and resignedly compassion-
ate caretaker of the motel. It all
builds to a final scene that is as
devastating as any I can remember
seeing. Baker knows how to lead
audiences to wrestle with truth
they normally would not touch
telling; this film is a master class
in allowing the marginalized to
speak their own truth. My second
viewing occurred shortly after
seeing Kathryn Bigelow’s film
“Detroit,” about the 1967 upris-
ing, and I was struck by what a
better film this documentary is.
“Detroit” depicts the suffering
of black people, but never shows
them acting with agency, and its
director and writer miss complete-
ly how problematic it is for white
people to control how that story is
told. “Whose Streets?” is directed
by a black woman who under-
stands the importance of depict-
ing not only the suffering of black
people but also of showing them
acting with agency. We need more
of that kind of filmmaking.
5. “Coco” is the most joy-
ful film on my list, and this most
Mexican of stories is inspiring as
an example of how even a ma-
jor studio can honor a communi-
ty outside the dominant culture
from a place of curiosity and ad-
miration, and without centering
whiteness. I imagine lots of mis-
takes were made in the production
process -- I’ve read about some of
them, including that Disney made
an early effort to trademark “Day
of the Dead” -- but the studio ev-
idently righted itself enough to
enlist some of its most vocal Mex-
ican-American critics as advisors,
prioritized Latinx voices in the
cast and crew, and emerged with
a beautifully realized celebration
of Mexican culture. They even re-
leased it in Mexico first, where it
quickly became the highest-gross-
ing film in Mexican history. What
a joy for Mexicans to see Holly-
wood-level resources devoted to
presenting a feast of color and
story and in-jokes that first speak
to what is theirs -- and what a joy
for me and other Mexican-Amer-
icans and Latinx people here in
the U.S. to see pieces of our cul-
ture legacy celebrated with such
joy and dignity. We exist! We are
gorgeous! And there is music, and
spiritual wisdom, and a brilliantly
imagined world of the dead here
to thrill and teach and entertain
anyone ready to enjoy them. This
is for all of us.
6. “Abacus: Small Enough
to Jail” does an excellent job of
breaking down a particularly clear
example of structural bias, even
if director Steve James (“Hoop
Dreams”) doesn’t completely un-
derstand what that is. He and a
terrific production team put their
storytelling talents to good use
in laying bare the complicated
story of the one bank that was
prosecuted as a result of the 2008
global financial crisis: a small
family-owned bank that serves an
underserved community of Chi-
C ontinueD on p age 16
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