Best of the Decade
Just as they did ten years ago, James Quandt and TIFF Cinematheque (née Cinematheque Ontario) have conducted a worldwide poll of film curators, archivists, historians and programmers for best ("most important") films of the decade (scroll down for the compiled list). It's a heady and wonderful list that militates unashamedly and polemically for film as art. There are 54 films on the list, and four of the top 5 are Asian. Here's the top 10:
1. Syndromes and a Century (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand)
2. Platform (Jia Zhang-ke, China)
3. Still Life (Jia Zhang-ke, China)
4. Beau Travail (Claire Denis, France)
5. In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai, Hong Kong, China)
6. Tropical Malady (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand)
7. The Death of Mr. Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu, Romania); and Werckmeister Harmonies (Béla Tarr, Hungary).
8. Éloge de l'amour (Jean-Luc Godard, France)
9. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu)
10. Silent Light (Carlos Reygadas, Mexico)
One of the purposes of such a list is to stimulate conversation and debate. So, let me make a few comments about it; I invite you to do the same.
-- Just 5 of the 54 are women-made films: Beau Travail and L'Intrus (Claire Denis); The Gleaners and I (Agnes Varda); The Headless Woman (Lucretia Martel); and Longing (Valeska Grisebach). Missing women filmmakers include Chantal Akerman, Catherine Breillat, and Jennifer Reeves (among many others).
-- The list privileges narrative, feature-length films. Avant-garde/experimental cinema is almost wholly absent (save Ken Jacobs, and Apichatpong, whose work straddles narrative and avant-garde modes). Thus, for instance: no James Benning, Peter Tscherkassky, Nathaniel Dorsky, Michael Robinson, or (again) Jennifer Reeves. Also: no short films except Guy Maddin's The Heart of the World.
-- The decade was marked by an explosion of the documentary form, which had a profound influence on fiction filmmaking and even made great incursions into the mainstream. But documentaries (except the Varda) go missing on the list.
-- By explicitly advancing the cause of art cinema, a poll such as this automatically marginalizes the aesthetic merits of commercial cinema. So, from Hollwyood to Bollywood, popular cinema barely registers here.
-- A personal aside: My own cinephilia peaked during this time. I attended TIFF throughout the decade, and caught most of the films on the list at the festival. There's exactly one film here that I didn't care for at the time: Roy Andersson's Songs from the Second Floor (2000). Time to give it a second look.
-- I wonder: are all filmmakers represented here by their most worthy work of this decade? There are two Tsai Ming-Liang films on this list but not What Time is it There? (2001), which, to my mind, is a key film in his oeuvre, a kind of summation of his themes and a compendium of his style. I have no quarrel whatsoever with Pedro Costa's Colossal Youth or In Vanda's Room (astounding films, both!) but I miss the inclusion of his Straub/Huillet documentary, Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? Finally, I wonder: is Lucretia Martel's The Headless Woman her best film--better than The Holy Girl or La Cienaga?
Let me conclude by adding a handful of personal choices that are not on the list: La Captive (Chantal Akerman, France), RR (James Benning, USA), Remembrance of Things to Come (Chris Marker, France), Man Without a Past (Aki Kaurismaki, Finland), and Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine (Peter Tscherkassky, Austria).
I'd love to hear your reactions to the Cinematheque list--and your ideas for "best films of the decade" that don't appear on it.
posted by girish @ 6:20 PM
96 Comments:
Many great films; but also many that seem like art in lieu of others that don't, but are.
Also: does the absence of American independent films (other than the one by Ken Jacobs) suggest that they're not being distributed or seen internationally, or that they're just not appreciated?
As I'm sure I'll argue elsewhere, I think _Esther Kahn_ is the film of the decade; or, easily, at the very least, the Desplechin of the decade. And I, too, G, would put _Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie?_ on my own top ten, probably, ahead of the other Costa films; the other one that I'd put near it is _Vanda_.
I don't know: these kinds of projects are always bound to disappoint as they rarely reflect a single vision, or taste. Put otherwise, it's a safe festival-circuit-friendly list. Having said that, I dig plenty of these pictures.
Finally: I know it'll spike traffic and everything, but doesn't anybody else feel it's way too early to do this kind of ranking? What if we just went back and re-did our 90s takes? I think that'd prove more fruitful. I mean, that post you put up a while ago, G, was a lot of fun--and my list is probably changed yet more since _then_!
many : Waking life , There will be blood ,... just to name a few for now
Hi Girish. You've offered some interesting thoughts here, and the caveats are important -- the list does privilege narrative art films over avant-garde and more commercial work, and I think, from one perspective, that might be okay if the original list-makers either had that as their intent or explicitly wanted a list of narrative films. Of course, in any given poll it's possible that there are votes for avant-garde films, commercial cinema, films made by women, films made in the U.S., and so on, but for various reasons they just might not receive enough votes (though, personally, I can't say what the reasons are for this particular list). Either way, I agree with many of the points you raise and also think it's important to raise them.
Another thought -- for me, both The Holy Girl and La Cienaga are greater achievements (and therefore more "important") than The Headless Woman, and so I'm a bit mystified by its inclusion over the others (though I think, by itself, it's a fine film). And I think it's very interesting to find Godard's In Praise of Love in the top ten -- a personal favorite of mine, and I'd say one of the better films of his later career.
Thanks for the article Girish. You've introduced to me to so many new filmmakers and films.
As for the list, I think it is good that it exists, even if it seems reactionary. Otherwise, we would only end up with the redundant lists flooding the net.
As a friend pointed out to me, it's downright bizarre that there are multiple 00s Hou films, but Flight of the Red Balloon is nowhere in sight.
there is also another question:how does this list compares to their 90's list ? , and which decade is richer cinematically speaking ?
http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/Misc/cinemateque-list.htm
by the way , this their 90's list !
As with all lists conducted with consensus in mind, the selection is safe and critic-friendly. I really prefer reading the individual lists (which I hope they put up online). The idiosyncrasies of personal and unpopular choices are far more interesting than this sort of unadventurous critical cache. Not that the films on the list are terrible mind you, just that they come across as repetitive (arising from consensus). I'd be particularly attentive to lists by Brenez, Hasumi, Huber, Jones, Marias, Martin, and Moller.
Personally, in spite of it being extremely unpopular in the critical blogosphere, I would put Lee's Brokeback Mountain in any such list, first and foremost as a deeply personal choice, alongside Eastwood (too mainstream?), Miike (too paracinematic?), and more Miyazaki (in my mind, the greatest filmmaker working today). Plus anything, anything from Africa.
What's the point of a list like this? If it's a corrective to a blockbuster-populist list, is it even going to reach the same audience? These are all very great films, well acknowledged as such, and for the most part, already canonized in numerous Village Voice/Indiewire film critic polls. They're also incredibly easy to like and respect for anyone still harping on "film as an art," as Richard indicates: for the most part, they foreground elliptical structures, immersive sound and visual design, contemplative rhythms, against, in almost all cases, abstracted genre stories–romances, adventures, family reunions, noirs, melodramas, fairy tales–all told in a base-simple storylines as portraiture.
We wouldn't need a "best of the 60s" list to tell us that Breathless, Playtime, and 2001: A Space Odyssey were important to film experts, and that they merit re-viewing (though contemporary reviewers evidently thought otherwise). But it could be useful to emphasize that Hatari, The Ladies Man, and The Art of Vision can all be discussed just as fruitfully and respectfully.
Basically, this seems for the most part like a list of ideal IFC distribution titles (what would have been New Yorker or Wellspring titles in other decades). I wonder if most of the people here couldn't have anticipated at least half these titles.
Thanks, Girish, for pointing towards absences. On the experimental end, were Dorsky, Klahr, Benning, Beavers–and most of all, Brakhage, who completed some of his very best films this decade–etc. overlooked because the "film experts" really didn't think those films belonged alongside Talk to Her and Pan's Labyrinth, or because they didn't see them? Where's Ferrara? Sokurov? Hansen-Love? Spielberg? Where's Rivette–and am I the only one who thinks he's made his best works this decade this side of the 70s? I am surprised Alonso didn't make the cut. And on the Hollywood end, there seems no room for marvels like Femme Fatale, Red Eye, The Polar Express, or Superbad–not that film experts who saw these films liked them, but that that's all the more reason to make some claims for these sorts of films in 2009, when this list indicates Preston Sturges' influence is just about dead. How was the poll conducted? I'm not sure any of the above titles would have made my, or anyone's, top 10, but letting people nominate more films makes for much more interesting results.
I wonder if individual lists (Quandt's especially) would have been much more interesting for letting in eccentricities that have gotten streamlined by the consensus opinion. Brakhage made enough films this decade that everyone could have chosen one without it making the final list.
But making such a list before 2009 has even reached December also seems a bit eager: no room for 36 vues, Wild Grass, Inglourious Basterds, or Face–which plays like Tsai's summary work for me–or perhaps there was.
But I do think The Headless Woman is Martel's best work–am curious why people think otherwise.
Apichatpong has been popping up on a number of these kinds of lists, which is good to see and well deserved.
Silent Light's presence is both to be expected (given the critical buzz) irritated by. To this day I think that Silent Light was nothing more than a work of 'arthouse genre' film-making : Popular (and admittedly effective) art house techniques cobbled together to create the illusion of profundity. Terrible film.
Having said that, the list is a good deal less absurd that the 90s one. I like Kiarostami just fine but his work didn't dominate the decade that successfully.
I appreciate the appearance of Syndromes at the top, but overall, not a terribly compelling list. On the one hand I have specific gripes about which films by particular filmmakers were chosen - as Michael already noted, the absence of Hou's only great film of the decade, Red Balloon, is particularly shocking given the presence of those other three. I also think Tsai's best are What Time Is It There and Wayward Cloud, not the two that were chosen. Le Silence de Lorna is at least as deserving as the Dardenne films that do appear. And where are Grandrieux, Breillat, Ferrara, Larry Clark, Michael Mann...?
More damning, though, is the predictability of the thing, its clinging allegiance to the art cinema status quo. There ought to be films on this list that I've never heard of, films that I loathe, films that I am not normally expected to regard as 'great'. There is none of this. No doubt it is in the nature of these polled lists that the unorthodox choices get filtered out, but in the end it makes for less interesting reading.
Ryland said: "...doesn't anybody else feel it's way too early to do this kind of ranking? What if we just went back and re-did our 90s takes? I think that'd prove more fruitful. I mean, that post you put up a while ago, G, was a lot of fun--and my list is probably changed yet more since _then_!"
Couldn't agree more. Have any of us who don't jet around the festival circuit year after year actually seen more than a fraction of the films that we'd like to?
Perhaps I'll put off even thinking about a list until I'm able to catch up with more Klahr or Now Showing or Oxhide I + II or Wiseman's The Garden or Crude Oil or whatever. That should seal it for another decade or more!
At least two people have felt it is too early to conduct such a poll. I not only agree, but wonder where is the hurry? Not only most of the voters cannot have seen all the films made in 2009, which has not even ended yet. But it is more serious: the decade will not end until December 31, 2010, more than a year from now, and it did start on January 1, 2001, not in 2000. Maths are maths, calendars are calendars, and we were not born with 1 year of age.
Then, I'm really not that interested in the consensus opinion or the average preferences of many of my colleagues or former colleagues: when (and if) I get to see the individual lists, I'll read with interest some, others I will not even glance at, and from a few I may be prompted to watch, seek out or view again some films I might have missed, overlooked or undervalued. These that interest me will be hopefully free of "Silent Light" and such things, of which kind, mercifully, I do not find too many in the poll final results, which seems healthy. But I find many films missing.
Miguel Marías
Well, maybe it does serve a purpose to have the list now, if only to compare with what the list will look like in ten years time...
And I don't see why we should rage against it: it's nothing more than a launchpad, flaws and all (many of them accurately pointed out by Girish), and it's only if we take it as a definitive statement on the decade, which none of us are forced to (or do, judging from the comments) that it becomes "reactionary".
But agreed, I hope that the individual lists will be made available...
Conall said: "There ought to be films on this list that I've never heard of, films that I loathe, films that I am not normally expected to regard as 'great'. There is none of this. No doubt it is in the nature of these polled lists that the unorthodox choices get filtered out, but in the end it makes for less interesting reading."
Very well-put. That is why access to the individual lists is so important. They contain what is essentially missing in this kind of list for the sake of rigor. It is such a passionless list. Then again, perhaps we need such a thing to incite some passionate responses.
If I dare say, the list is just as staid and boring as a blockbuster-populist round-up.
Regarding the neglect of documentaries, the absence of any Rithy Panh film, be it the immensely important S21, LA MACHINE DE MORT KHMÈRE ROUGE (2003) or my favorite LES ARTISTES DU THÉÂTRE BRÛLÉ (2005), not to mention Wang Bing’s TIE XI QU: WEST OF TRACKS (2003), just shows how these lists mostly throw the baby out with the bath water...
Compare & Contrast: The TIFF CINEMATHEQUE Lists
Directors on the 90's list but not the 00's list:
Erice (Dream of Light)
Kaurismaki (Drifting Clouds)
Kitano (Hana-bi / Sonatine)
M. Makhmalbaf (A Moment of Innocence)
Scorsese (Goodfellas)
de Oliveira (Abraham's Valley)
Jarmusch (Dead Man)
Egoyan (The Sweet Hereafter / Exotica)
Eastwood (Unforgiven)
Kore-eda (Maborosi)
Leigh (Naked)
Dumont (La vie de Jesus)
Coen bros. (Fargo)
Tarantino (Pulp Fiction)
Rivette (La Belle Noiseuse)
Pialat (Van Gogh)
Kieslowski (Three Colors: Red)
Marker (The Last Bolshevik)
Moretti (Dear Diary)
Zwigoff (Crumb)
Straub & Huillet (Sicilia)
Directors on the 00's list but not the 90's list:
Apichatpong (Syndromes and a Century / Tropical Malady / Blissfully Yours)
Jia (Platform / Still Life / The World)
Denis (Beau travail / L'Intrus)
Puiu (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu)
Mungiu (4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days)
Reygadas (Silent Light)
Dardenne bros. (Le fils / L'Enfant)
Costa (Colossal Youth / In Vanda's Room)
Varda (The Gleaners and I)
Andersson (Songs from the Second Floor)
Haneke (Cache)
Cronenberg (A History of Violence)
Lynch (Mulholland Dr.)
Desplechin (Rois et reine)
Van Sant (Elephant / Gerry)
Almodovar (Talk to Her)
del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth)
Maddin (The Heart of the World / My Winnipeg)
Jacobs (Star Spangled to Death)
Martel (The Headless Woman)
Bergman (Saraband)
Miyazaki (Spirited Away)
Ceylan (Distant)
Anderson (The Royal Tenenbaums)
Kunuk (Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner)
Grisebach (Longing)
Lee (Secret Sunshine)
Monteiro (Vai e Vem)
Directors in BOTH the 90's and 00's Lists:
Wong (In the Mood for Love / Chungking Express)
Tarr (Werckmeister Harmonies / Satantango)
Godard (Eloge de l'amour / Histoire(s) du cinema ; Nouvelle Vague)
Sokurov (Russian Ark ; Alexandra / Mother and Son)
Malick (The New World / The Thin Red Line)
Hou (Three Times ; Cafe Lumiere ; Millennium Mambo / Flowers of Shanghai ; The Puppetmaster ; Goodbye South Goodbye)
Kiarostami (The Wind Will Carry Us / And Life Goes On... ; Through the Olive Trees ; Close-Up ; Taste of Cherry)
Yang (Yi Yi / A Brighter Summer Day)
Tsai (I Don't Want to Sleep Alone ; Goodbye Dragon Inn / Vive l'amour)
Haynes (I'm Not There ; Far from Heaven / Safe)
von Trier (Dogville / Breaking the Waves)
Assayas (demonlover / L'eau froid)
Clearly, HOU emerges as the greatest director of the past 20 years.
Yea, Hou or Malick, depending on how you look at it. :)
Actually, these lists are nobody's babies, just everybody's putrid bath water!
The total absence of Oliveira is ridiculous, with not even the expected gesture toward I'm Going Home. I can't comprehend that neglect at all as I would put anything from his 00's work against anything on that list. Still, it may be traced to the fact that his aesthetic has become so refined(and here I don't just mean shorn running times)that it is possible it's been mostly misperceived as a disinterested one. However, that assumption of motive is hard to accept given the generally astute nature of the people being polled.
Far as I'm concerned the Hou selections are right on as I have yet to see the great accomplishment of Red Balloon, especially in contrast to those other pictures. Both Silent Light and Headless Woman are insanely overrated. I am certainly one of those who would argue for Martel's earlier work as far superior to this most recent film (its veneration seems attributable to me more as some kind of late blooming recognition of the artist's quality rather than in any sense an earned acknowledgment for the film itself--it's thematically regressive and even aethetically very basic and obvious and overstated so I don't get the love).
And yeah, other absences abound; specifically, Spielberg, Mann, stuff like ivansxtc or Jose Padilha's Elite Squad but absences will always abound I guess.
Some may not see the value of Red Balloon as compared to other Hou films. That's a matter of taste. And while it's necessary to chide the makers of this list for excluding avant-garde film, which, taken as a "movement" (yes, highly problematic...), has had its best single decade since the 1970s, crushing any and all protestations of a-g's "death".
But yes. AFRICA. I know not everyone is as convinced of Sissako's mastery as I am. Fine.
But a compilation of the 30+ greatest achievements of world cinema that doesn't include Moolaade? Exsqueeze me?
(Oh, sorry, the other half of my dependent clause: excluding the avant-garde is regrettable, but very predictable.)
Ryland Walker Knight said: "Yea, Hou or Malick, depending on how you look at it. :)"
Or Karmakar, Verhoeven, Ouedraogo, Kurosawa, Hui, Marker, and so on and so forth.
I agree. The exclusion of Moolaade is appalling. But critics never do take to swan songs for the most part.
How about Alonso Lisandro's "Los Muertos," Llina's "Histrorias Extraordinarias," and Coens' "No Country..."?
Lists like this are always incomplete but, like debating the existence of God, the thoughts and arguments they provoke are far more interesting and useful than any conclusions they could provide.
By the way, FILM COMMENT (which is compiling its own poll on the same decade) has ruled BEAU TRAVAIL as '90s (it premiered Venice '99) and hence ineligible. One less woman's film !!
(Spooky: my word verification is 'canom', just as this canon-talk starts up!!)
Following Adrian's tip, I then proclaim "the best of the decade" to be all from 1999! Take Frederick Wiseman's BELFAST, MAINE, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet's SICILIA! and Nobuhiro Suwa's M/OTHER, for starters...
Also THE WIND WILL CARRY US, another ambiguous entry in such lists !! Tonight I'm gonna party (with André) like it's 1999 !!
Some other candidates for inclusion: José Luis Guerín's In the City of Sylvia, Brillante Mendoza's Foster Child and Slingshot, Jeffrey Jeturian's The Bet Collector, Francisco Vargas's El Violin and Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men.
Pointless and infuriating. It's like those polls conducted by newspaper chains that tell us that Ulysses, In Search of Lost Time, and War and Peace are the greatest novels ever written. You don't say! I never would have thought! And what does a newspaper article telling me this really tell me? Zip.
For those lamenting the absence of Spielberg, you can take solace in the knowledge that for the American Film Institute's centenary of cinema poll on the best American films ever, he was the only American director to place five films in the top 100.
As several people have commented, the TIFF poll is supposedly some sort of corrective to Hollywood-centered polls, and then commits crimes of its own. In addition to all those mentioned, what really gets me is the complete lack of context of such exercises, the lumping together of all sorts of different films from different times and places under the single, completely meaningless category "best." And it's clear that this single word "best," for this demographic (because all these things are ever about is defining and asserting one's taste as a consumer, not about film as a cultural or heaven forbid social product), can be summed up by another simple and simplistic concept, "style." Or an excess of style: Wong Kar-wai places in the top ten; Oliveira is nowhere to be seen. Pul-eeze.
Thank you, all, for sharing your thoughts!
A couple of remarks:
-- The TIFF Cinematheque survey is not a critics' poll but instead a poll of curators, archivists, historians and programmers (save the few, like Kent Jones, who switch-hit as critics). I wonder: how might this have inflected the findings? To hazard a guess: the list errs strongly away from popular cinema (and in this broad category we can safely include, for example, English-language independent cinema) in favor of films that might need their chances of access and preservation boosted in the years and decades to come.
-- In the essay accompanying the 1990's poll, Quandt wrote that the individual ballots were strikingly varied. He mentioned specifically that at least two voters (Nicole Brenez, and Dave Barber of the Manitoba Cinematheque) passionately advocated for groups of lesser-known films, not a single one of which ended up appearing in the 60 or so films that made up the final poll list--an instance, as David put it earlier, of unusual choices that are streamlined out by consensus opinion.
-- Yes, I would also love to be able to see the individual ballots! I'll drop the Cinematheque a line requesting them to put them online. The cost to them would be minimal, I suspect.
-- Jonathan, thanks for posting the link to Adrian's interview--another in a great and ongoing series! It deserves a post all its own.
The rundown of directors that appear on the 90s list vs the 00s list doesn't consider the fact that many of the 00 directors (Martel, Ceylan, Weerasethakul) didn't make feature films until this decade (I know shorts are eligible, but only 1 made the '00 list) and several of the 90s directors (Pialat, Kieslowski) made their final films within those 10 years.
As for Martel, I find it strange that there's a separation between those who love The Headless Woman and those who prefer her first two films. All three are such incredible works that I find trouble picking a favorite.
The key word is "important" - this list is full of films that wear their importance on their sleeves. I didn't think I'd ever hear myself saying this when it came to film lists like this but - here goes - this seems like a pretty pretentious, self-congratulatory assortment to me, and, despite the inclusion of the entire world, ends up convincing me that that world is, at least when it comes to its film community, a narrow, airless place. Gerry? Elephant? The World, Still Life, AND Platform? Was The New World really that great? Don't get me wrong, I like a lot of the films on the list too, but why then, looking at them all together like this, do I wish there were fewer "important" films and a few more like Miami Vice?
Joe, David, Michael, and others -- I didn't mean to sound skeptical of The Headless Woman (I haven't seen it yet!), just a little puzzled and curious about the slightly mixed reaction to it on the Internet.
Delightful to find the list from Cinematheque global, with most cinematic regions represented. However, I would love it if Independencia (raya martin) and works of Lav Diaz (Evolution of a Filipino Family, etc) would be included, but it seems that this voting method reflects that most of Lav Diaz's works are still suffering from distribution limitations. Hmmm... This decade is surely one of the most exciting decade in Philippine cinema, or more importantly this past few months!
Hollywood, where art thou?
Ciao!
Why isn't there a single James Gray film?
The absence of any films by Lisandro Alonso was surprising; even if it's too soon for Liverpool to have entered the collective curatorial consciousness (if you will), La Libertad's influence across the entire decade is considerable.
But I'm inclined to focus on the good here: audiences in Toronto are going to get to see some excellent films, many of which have not screened in the city in some time (and even then, only once or twice). And I would agree with the anonymous commenter who suggested that the arguments inspired by this kind of list are more productive than the list itself. In the days since it was published, I've had a number of discussions with friends and colleagues about individual titles, the function of consensus and the politics of inclusion/exclusion.
Still: I am disappointed at the lack of Anchorman.
Yes, I agree with Adam: to reiterate my own remarks from the post above, I think the most valuable and productive purpose of a list such as this is to spark conversation and debate!
Surely there are more interesting debates and conversations to be had than "Why isn't X on the list?" "What is Y doing there?" I can't say I've seen much more than that in the comments above.
Anonymous, care to bring up some interesting points yourself? You know you're welcome to.
Girish, I'm sorry, but I'm of the view that a list such as this affords no interesting topic of discussion.
Anon, I disagree with you. Such a list isn't merely a casual inventory of movies, a trivial exercise: it's a public and visible move in the political/cultural wars around exactly what cinema is worth taking seriously and why. For anyone seriously interested in cinema, this is an important subject.
Girish, certainly the question of what is remembered and what is forgotten is important. But all this poll does is tell us what some people have remembered and forgotten (or never knew about or cared about in the first place). Not a lot of conclusions can be drawn from it, though, beginning with the fact that we don't know what they've forgotten and what they never knew about in the first place. We don't even know who the individuals were or what their individual choices were - what is this, the Nobel? And, in my opinion, it hasn't generated any more than quibbling over individual inclusions and exclusions as far as discussion goes.
So now we know that all these sophisticated curators and historians (!), as a group, don't think documentary or avant-garde films matter, don't think that women are making interesting films, and don't think that interesting films are being made outside of Western Europe and Southeast Asia (ah, the herd mentality lives in every social group). Just like the Academy loves films about disabled people who overcome great odds to succeed - they hand out Oscars to these films like candy. Every group has its orthodoxies.
What might interesting is if some of the people polled, and some who weren't, instead of waiting to be polled by Tiff and Film Comment, got together and crafted, through discussion and mutual education and compromise, a list of films that reflected the best film art of the past ten years which included a variety of formats and styles - short films, documentary films, commercial films, etc. - and got someone other than Tiff to program them. A kind of critical co-op. Maybe Fipresci could do this with its members or something, I don't know. 'Jury' members could rotate every couple or three years. Heck, they could award prizes - DVD box sets donated by Criterion or something, just a token gesture. The Best of International Cinema. In which documentarists, women, short-film and avant-garde filmmakers, and filmmakers in South America and elsewhere would be included, not excluded.
I know one person who voted in this poll, and oddly, his list was the kind of thing Anonymous is calling for. It was about half avant-garde shorts and half mainstream English-language films. The funny thing is, I don't think a single film he voted for made the final top 54. As with the SIGHT & SOUND poll, I suspect the consensus is blander than individual ballots.
Tiff Cinematheque's Best of the Decade Poll: Year by Year
(Info taken from imdb.com)
1999 (2)
Beau travail
The Wind Will Carry Us
2000 (8)
Platform
In the Mood for Love
Werckmeister Harmonies
The Gleaners and I
In Vanda's Room
Songs from the Second Floor
Yi Yi
The Heart of the World
2001 (6)
Eloge de l'amour
Mulholland Dr.
Millennium Mambo
Spirited Away
The Royal Tenenbaums
Atanarjuat, the Fast Runner
2002 (8)
Russian Ark
Blissfully Yours
Le fils
Talk to Her
Gerry
Distant
demonlover
Far From Heaven
2003 (6)
Elephant
Cafe Lumiere
Saraband
Dogville
Goodbye, Dragon Inn
Vai e Vem
2004 (5)
Tropical Malady
Rois et reine
Star Spangled to Death
The World
L'Intrus
2005 (6)
The Death of Mr. Lazarescu
The New World
Cache
A History of Violence
Three Times
L'Enfant
2006 (6)
Syndromes and a Century
Still Life
Colossal Youth
Pan's Labyrinth
I Don't Want to Sleep Alone
Longing
2007 (6)
4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days
Silent Light
My Winnipeg
I'm Not There
Alexandra
Secret Sunshine
2008 (1)
The Headless Woman
2009 (0)
None
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Thank you JOE for pointing out the oversights I made in the Comparative List posted earlier.
It strikes me, since the voters are supposed to be curators and historians, how fashion-sensitive they seem to have become. Or have they all been replaced in ten years by very different sort of persons? I see some patterns emerge which I find disquieting. Last decade, the winners were Erice (1st place) & Kiarostami (several movies on top), now vanished (and they should not, at least Kiarostami, who made several great features). No trace of Straub, Wang Bing, Ruiz, Marker, Akerman, Brisseau, Grandrieux, Guerín, Eugène Green, Raya Martin, Lav Diaz, Comolli, Rodrigues, Dwoskin, though I may have skipped one of them. Did I see any Garrel, Eastwood, Rivette, James Gray, Ioseliani, Aparna Sen, Robert Duvall, Bellocchio, Bonitzer, Kitano, Hong Sang-soo, Piavoli, Vincent Gallo, Jonas Mekas, Im Kwon-taek, Suwa, Kawase, Resnais, Oliveira, Pascale Ferran, Gitai, Patrick Tam, Carax, Wiseman, Woody Allen, Kaurismäki, Doillon, Rohmer, Vecchiali, Ferrara, Yoshida, Beauvois, Chabrol, Olmi, Nasrallah, Klotz, Mike O'Hara, Peries? And please do forget the dead, the casualties of the decade, of course (from Cherd Songsri, Pollet, Sembène, Monteiro, Sissako, Biette to Jordà, Van der Keuken, Morais, John Flynn), which seem to count no more. That really worries me, because film archive curators should remember, have long term vision and value films with an historical perspective.
Miguel Marías
Miguel--It would be impossible for all of your list of directors to make a list of 10 films selected by 60 people. If the list extended to a top 100, I'm sure many of them would show up.
Kiarostami did show up --THE WIND WILL CARRY US, made in 1999, is on the list. Also, Carax hasn't made a feature film in the past 10 years.
cecile fontaine
david gatten
phil solomon
ben russell
ben rivers
julie murray
jennifer reeves
rose lowder
sandra gibson/luis recoder
vincent grenier
kyle canterbury
fred worden
luther price
martha colburn
I am compelled to comment, not to destruct the idea of making lists, but to examine the idea of the list itself. We first begin with an arbitrary number of slots, (likely a number who's multiple is one of human digits)then the films are randomly pulled from memory and placed within those slots. Then they are reordered. No matter who makes the list (even me) the list itself will be found wanting.
So... where can we go from here?
I challenge anyone, to make me a mixtape of films. The number is unimportant. The films themselves are no longer quantified with arbitrary and knowingly fallable numbers. What is most important is the order in which they are placed, with each film segueing into the next. This is a chance to say something MORE about your list buy subjectifying the random placement of things. This is a chance to say something about yourself in addition to mere identification with singular objective works. I want a meta-narrative. I want a myth.
The cinematheque has just sent me a list of the individual participants, but not of their individual contributions, which is a shame. One thing is clear from the list though, from which countries the contributors are:
China, Singapore, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Mexico, Italy, Belgium, Portugal: 1
Netherlands, Austria, Germany: 2
Japan: 3
UK, France: 4
Canada: 7
USA: 27
A few belonged to two countries so I counted them in whatever country had the least entries (or else China and Portugal would have had none!).
So whatever made it to the art/festival circuit in North America had de facto better chances than anything that didn't, simply due to the huge demographic bias of the list (and yes, many of the USA people polled probably did travel to a fair amount of festivals outside the US, but still...)
And a few words from Quandt make the omission of individual lists all the more regrettable:
"Two specialists offered all Asian lists. Another went the radical route of proffering an all Old Masters list, “feeling with some confidence that the Jias and Reygadases and Tsais and Apichatpongs of the world will find themselves comfortably positioned in the final balance” (which proved to be true). Many attached thoughtful, passionate commentaries on specific films, the decade, or the state of cinema. (Look for some of these on our website.)"
maybe it would just be better (more profound?) to talk about the movies itself and forget about the directors for a while.
or maybe it would be better to make poetry. paideuma like pound said (nec spe nec metu).
i live in fortaleza, very far away from any cinemateque, but at the same time i have seen lots of films that have been mentioned here. apichatpong isn't worth two cents here, except for me and 10 friends. everything is relative in this kind of list.
but just to put more relativity and banality: people talk about absence of inumerous filmmakers. i ask: what about rogerio sganzerla? ozualdo candeias? brazilian filmmakers from previous decades that have been ignored from the canon and i can say for myself that they have made master-pieces comparable to whatever.
ricardo pretti
Steevee - Neither Carax nor Erice made features, but film archive curators should not mind the length. Many shorts are better than many features. And to go two years before the decade in search of a Kiarostami, with "Shirin", "Ten", "Five", "10 on Ten", "ABC Africa" to pick...
In the end, where the majority came from explains most. (I was unaware there were so many film archives in the U.S.).
Miguel Marías
I don't think ABC AFRICA, FIVE or Carax's short come anywhere near being among the 10 best films of the decade. I'll grant you that TEN should be in the place of THE WIND WILL CARRY US. I haven't seen SHIRIN or TEN ON 10.
The problem with the list of omissions you proposed is that, for the most part, it's a list of directors who have made pretty good films. But decade-defining masterpieces? Has Chabrol, to pick one example, made a major film since LA CEREMONIE?
Well, Steevee, one can think like you or not, and I'm not claiming ANY film is a "decade-defining masterpiece", but I certainly find those films I mentioned much better than about two fifths of the Ontario list, which includes for me quite a cupful (about a tenth) of rubbish or pretentious banality. As for Chabrol, I think (but of course, you may not agree) that several of his later films are much better than "La Céremonie", in particular "La Fleur du Mal" and "Bellamy".
Miguel Marías
My impression of this list is that it is international but not personal. It represents the cultural institutions not the cinematic frontiers. And the omissions are a bit scandalous, i.e.
I did not see LEONARD COHEN: I'M YOUR MAN on this list! :)
I found myself desperately scanning the list for anything by Bong Joon-Ho, especially "Memories of Murder."
yes , i particularly surprised not to see Peter Watkins "La Commune " , "Waking Life" ,"Morven callar" , no Grandrieux ,no Wang Bing , no Nathaniel Dorsky , .......
in conclusion :the Ontario list is not as insightful nor adventurous as they may think it to be
I second Miguel Marías take on the “cupful (about a tenth) of rubbish or pretentious banality”. I'm just unsure and curious of what films would he fill his cup with. It would be a lot more telling to do a list on the overrated of the decade, kind of emperor's new clothes approach.
Prediction: that the Canada list will instantly cause an reactive backlash in the SIGHT AND SOUND list (forthcoming) against (alas) Apichatpong and Jia ! And towards mainstream/independent American films and other stuff.
To my mind, the shift you're predicting, Adrian, will at least benefit some American filmmakers I would have loved to see on this list. Specifically, my personal cause celebre Michael Mann (for any of the films he's made this decade, except perhaps COLLATERAL), but also perhaps Fincher (for ZODIAC, or BB), Eastwood (for CHANGELING or MILLION DOLLAR BABY or LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA), and Gray (for TWO LOVERS or WE OWN THE NIGHT).
The inclusion of Todd Haynes boggles my mind, especially for I'M NOT THERE, which for all its post-structuralist flash, struck me as a fairly routine biopic in the last analysis. Still has an uplifting climax! I am also sort of 'meh' about GERRY.
I like so many films on that list, and yet it leaves a sour taste in my mouth. There are only a handful of films here that I don't think belong, and yet whole list seems completely wrongheaded -- voted and compiled, it seems, as if the whole decade didn't happen. Mann, Gray, Ferrara, Jarmusch, Eastwood, Esther Kahn and Zodiac are understandable omissions considering the sort of people who voted here (the exclusion of Grandrieux, West of the Tracks, recent Kiarostami, de Oliveira, Guerin, Resnais, Rohmer, Hong, James Lee, Lav Diaz, Sembene, Green and Rivette is much stranger) but they're also indicative ones. They make the whole thing seem oddly irrelevant. I think the first comment here, Richard Brody's one-sentence pronouncement, sums it up pretty well.
There is something defeatist about this list, as if certain types of cinema no longer matter and it's no longer necessary to watch, say, Hollywood films. That, of course, isn't true at all, but I'm sure there are many people out there who find such an idea comforting.
And, to the list of omissions, let's add Johnnie To. If there are any three directors whose work best exemplifies cinema as it currently stands, the cinema of the 21st century, it's Denis, Mann and To (though Jia can be argued a spot, and Godard, as representative of "cinema-at-present," is a given, since he always positions himself at the end of whatever cinema exists). That only one of them has any films on this list (and that her highest placed one is from the 1990s) is a real shame.
My favorites not on this list are Before Sunset, There Will Be Blood, and In the City of Sylvia.
That said I do think this list is great and there are far too many people complaining about it, who frankly come off as a little petty. It seems like some think this list was the result of a hive-mind, or a round table discussion on what films best represent each facet of film culture this decade.
Some of the people complaining are naming more omissions than they themselves could include on their own ballots had they participated in the poll. Could all the complainers even agree with each other on what the specific movies missing from this poll are? (or even what the best Oliveira of the past 10 years is?)
It's not like everyone who sees this poll is going to be intimately familiar with nearly all these films. If some fledgling film buff was looking to move beyond Pan's Labyrinth and Let the Right One In to see what World Cinema has to offer, this list would be damn good place to start.
Joe Swanberg!
To answer André Dias, although, I'm afraid, to infuriate almost everybody else, I should say that of the 54 films I find rubbish or pretentious banality (or both) "Silent Light", "Dogville", "Royal Tenenbaums", "Far from Heaven", "Pan's Labyrinth" and even, after re-watching them, I think "I'm Not There", "Elephant" and "Talk to Her" are at best mediocre and overblown... I find other Almodóvar films quite good, and several other Van Sant (such as "Gerry") as well, but not these.
Miguel Marías
Miguel, thank you! I've felt so alone on Pan's Labyrinth...
The greatest omission for me that hasn't been mentioned yet would be the two feature films John Gianvito made this decade, who stand as sort of twin pillars of what ethics can mean in cinema. Even his short made in honor of Alexis Tiosesco was excellent.
If I may, I'm pleased regarding the inclusion of a film from the current German movement: Valeska Grisebach’s Longing. While I would have preferred, say, Christian Petzold's Ghosts or Maria Speth's Madonnas or Maren Ade's The Forest for the Trees, I think it's a step in the right direction.
Wow, didn`t realize we were already in poll season for the decade`s finest, thanks for posting this.
Not to get all ''conspiracy theorist'' on the proceedings, but seriously, doesn't it seem like these contributors, being cinematheque curators, are deliberately excluding Hollywood films? There is no doubt that this decade was the worst on record for American cinema in general, but not one Hollywood film in the top ten seems farfetched to me.
Also, though it may seem a small point to some, I think it's wrong to take such liberties with the years of a film's release for these polls. ''Beau Travaille'' by Claire Denis is a 90s film (1999), not of this decade. Once the floodgates are opened, where does it end? Could I start putting late 90s masterpieces on my last like Time Regained, Eyes Wide Shut, and The Insider? It seems like cheating to me.
I think the explanation for including those 2 films from the 90s in the 00s list is that they were released after the 90s poll was conducted. I can understand their wishing to give the films their "chance", but I don't think this is an excuse for bending the rules. Problematic situations like this one could be avoided by waiting until the year and decade has actually ended. I know people (including me) are anxious to see lists like these, but rushing things only causes more anxiety in the end.
I think someone metioned John Giavitto's name here, i think its nathan. Anyway, i highly admire PROFIT MOTIVE and THE WHISPERING WIND, i watched it several times when out university here in the philippines paid tribute to Alexis tioseco. It is a non-narrative ( i thick a rhetorical art form) piece of cinema, something that i rarely see amidst our intense devotion to narrative films (which, to me, certainly dominated the list).
As to LAV DIAZ's films, i wonder why they aren't there at all...
chris lynn
robert robertson
stan brakhage
jonas mekas
hong sang soo
claire denis
so yong kim
just to name a few
I would like to add some hopefully infuriating nominations (against the stench of unanimity) to Miguel Marías way too mild for my taste exclusion list ;) I find these directors’ work (for some, just their most recent) terribly overrated (by order of appearence): Claire Denis, Wong Kar-wai, Béla Tarr, Cristian Mungiu, Carlos Reygadas, Alexander Sokurov, Terrence Malick, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Michael Haneke, Arnaud Desplechin, Guy Maddin, Lars von Trier, Todd Haynes.
Note to Anonymous, in re: comment of 12/1.
Abderrahmane Sissako is not dead.
In a shit year, one thing for which we can be thankful!
Raymond Durgnat's enlightening piece on Vincente Minnelli's "Bells are ringing": http://notesoncinematograph.blogspot.com/2009/12/raymond-durgnat-on-bells-are-ringing.html
Michael, I read that Sissako had died precisely in the course of the yet present year. If he's alive, and in good health, I'll be happier for him and as filmgoer. I hope your source is better than imdb's not mentioning a date of death, because its not-American and not-standard information is so full of holes...
André, one thing is overrated (usually not the filmmaker's fault)and quite another being a fraud (for which he or she would be rather guilty). And I have not seen "White Material" but "35 Rhums" seems to me rather UNDER-rated when not deliberately misunderstood.
Miguel Marías
"The stench of unanimity": I love it. Too true.
Miguel, personally I find it hard to use your apparently sound distinction between “overrated” and “fraud”. That would be to emphasize too much on the director’s intentions. Films are overall and mysteriously “consistent”, they “hold up”, so to say... or they don’t! And this happens, it seems, regardless of authorship. We should perhaps start with the belief that directors are always doing the best they can. Of course, most of the time when films by these “stylized” directors don’t hold up it’s precisely because they’ve started forcing their own cinematic gestures, as if suddenly trying to imitate themselves (overrating themselves... Tarr tracking-shooting himsef ;).
I can only use the word “fraud” when dealing with films and directors who are explicitly manipulating the spectator in order to dwell on abjection (Von Trier, Haneke, Siedl, Campos, McQueen, etc.).
If anyone can post the personal decade list of James Quandt from the last issue of Artforum(not on the on-line issue) ,we would all certainly be grateful !
But André, I think the distinction is operative. For me, a fraud is a filmmaker who makes films purposefully in order to be overrated, supposedly "dealing" with important "current headlines social issues" and with a "style" striking enough to call attention to itself (usually, a mixture of glossy photographic effects and chronologically altered structure, only to disguise how little original and how commonplace are the stories they tell, which would be obvious if told orderly). Which happens not so seldom nowadays. From Iñarritu and Reygadas, Amenábar and León de Aranoa, Von Trier to Dumont, Rosales to... well, I can find a lot of frauds, more than anytime before I can remember. Others indulge in a bit of the same, but only sometimes - Almodóvar, Haneke, Van Sant, Ozon, Malick, Tarr, Scorsese, Coppola, Campion, the Dardennes, Noé, the Coens - and these I don't consider as frauds, imposters, fakes or counterfeiters. They are only understandably tempted to profit as well from the attention the others are usually paid. And no one is "guilty" (but rather happy, if perhaps surprised) of being overrated: the frauds do never think they are "overrated", you only have to read their interviews to see how glad they are of having met themselves and how great they believe they are.
Miguel Marías
Miguel, I’ve found your psychological analysis of both some director’s propensity for fraud and others mere fall into temptation absolutely delicious! And a director I’ve recently interviewed actually mentioned, ironically I suppose, that critics could indeed operate as the director’s psychoanalysts. But I, for one, would like to pass on such a particularly dirty job... Nevertheless, perhaps the abjection I’ve mentioned before, since it’s indeed a cynical duplication of purpose, might after all not be so far away from the vicious cinematic processes you accuse fraud filmmakers of. Again, delicious!
Some people always seem to accuse Trier and Reygadas of being pretentious, or fraud or whatever. But they are merely self-conscious filmmakers in a (post-)postmodern age. To particular type of self-conscious artist it's almost impossible in this day and age to be "sincere" and "pure", in that way that was possible a few decades ago, without seeming naive. Maybe directors like James Cameron and Michael Bay are innocent in their cinematic fantasies, and then there's these poets like Kiarostami that seemingly can do the trick. (And I don't think Trier/Reygadas/Haneke are much more manipulative than Hitchcock or Spielberg.)
You cannot expect someone like David Foster Wallace to write a Steinbeck novel. But there's sincerety and honesty amidst of all that self-conscious postmodern wankery if you are open to it.
I find Reygadas' Japón to be very beautiful, even though it has self-conscious references to almost every Tarkovsky film and a provocative (to some) sex scene (I think those are the reasons that some people hate the film, thinking it's pretentious), while Silent Light seems to have "fooled" most of the art house crowd with it's "simple purity".
And there's a lot more self-irony in Dogville and Antichrist than people seem to realize.
And Miguel: "fraud is a filmmaker who makes films purposefully in order to be overrated, supposedly 'dealing' with important 'current headlines social issues' and with a 'style' striking enough to call attention to itself (usually, a mixture of glossy photographic effects and chronologically altered structure, only to disguise how little original and how commonplace are the stories they tell, which would be obvious if told orderly" -- I find only one filmmaker in your list that this description fits to: Iñárritu (21 grams).
Miguel, I was taking a shower and I've noticed what I take to be a little flaw on your "fraud theory". It seems you take directors, at least those who have some talent, to be naturally original and - only eventually - to fall into the temptation of those clichés effects. Unoriginally, I take the process to be quite the opposite; every director is forced to tremendous effort to oppose clichés lying there already awaiting...
nestori, there's no self-irony in the world that could turn ANTICHRIST into a good film! Actually, that's already one of various awful things of that damned picture, not worth the stock it was printed on.
I agree with you, Miguel, that some of Dumont's pronouncements can be silly and pretentious, but his new film (have you see it yet?) is, in fact, very good ! And a lot richer than what he says about it - which is true of many filmmakers, of course.
Robin Wood has passed away. He was one of the most remarkable and influential film critics of the last fifty years. He will be greatly missed.
James Quandt himself says that "most egregious in his absence from the finalists is Korean director Hong Sang-soo". He also recognizes the unfortunate absence of films from Africa (he names MOOLAADE, BAMAKO and WAITING FOR HAPPINESS as masterpeices) as well as the under-representation of avant-garde and documentary films.
(Taken from the recently published TIFF Cinematheque Programme Guide for the Winter 2010 Season. Text also on the Cinematheque's website)
No Lav Diaz. No Raya Martin. No John Torres. No Mario O'Hara (he only did two, but one I value very highly). No Brillante Mendoza, tho I appreciate his and Diaz's mention on this comment page. Big big blind spot.
As one of the 'sophisticated' (your use of sarcasm, not mine!) programmers who contributed to this poll, I must confess I am surprised by the vitriolic discussion this poll has aroused. Also, of course when the polls are collated, the oddities on individual lists are going to lose out to the more widely popular (or as many of you say, blander) titles. But I imagine that most of the contributors proffered lists that were quite varied, mixing North American titles with Asian, European or whatever. Shorts, documentaries, animation and experimental fare would probably have suffered both because one inevitably thinks first of features, and because these sorts of titles would also inevitably be among the 'oddities' in individual lists. And do remember: ten is a very small number to be asked to nominate.
I cannot speak for the other contributors, of course, but since many of you seem curious about individual lists, I here append what I sent to the poll - primarily because I think it may illustrate how any list probably comprises both 'obvious, bland' titles and a few that are a little less 'obvious' or 'bland'. And some of mine were not feature-length.
In no order
Top 10:
The Wind Will Carry Us – Abbas Kiarostami
La Morte Rouge – Víctor Erice
10 – Abbas Kiarostami
Saraband – Ingmar Bergman
Triple Agent – Eric Rohmer
The White Ribbon – Michael Haneke
The New World – Terrence Malick
Million Dollar Baby – Clint Eastwood
Retour en Normandie – Nicolas Philibert
Yi-Yi (A One and a Two) - Edward Yang
Runners-up (10)
The Company – Robert Altman
The House of Mirth – Terence Davies
My Winnipeg – Guy Maddin
Beau Travail – Claire Denis
Talk to Her (Hable con ella) – Pedro Almodóvar
Sehnsucht (Longing) – Valeska Grisebach
Climates – Nuri Bilge Ceylan
Le Fils – Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
The Death of Mr Lazarescu – Cristi Puiu
Routes – Alex Reuben
Thank you, Mr. Andrew!
Now it's just a question of getting the other 60 or so to contribute theirs... :-)
Miguel, a comprehensive list of critic-traps would be much useful for youngsters like me trying to avoid being caught. Perhaps you feel able to share it with us. Your views on the Bressonic plague were so enlightening :)
I seem to be completely alone in missing Andre Wajda's Katyn, the best film of the decade that noone seems to have seen , the last great flowering of the Polish film school, and a definitive putting-to-rights of a terrible wrong. It renewed my sense of film's capacity to have the last word. Anyone else ?
After a few weeks processing TIFF's list and Film Comment's rundown, I'm a little surprised at the Japanese films which have been singled out, specifically PULSE and Koreeda's work are on FC's list. They are decent films but it's surprising that they got mentioned above ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU CHOU, which I think is one of the best Japanese films of an otherwise mediocre decade for Japanese film.
Girish, great post! - and you have catalyzed some very interesting discussion here.
I'm not sure whether you surmised that there is an absence of Hollywood-Bollywood/populist flicks as a positive or negative feature of the list. We can agree to agree if you meant it as a positive, because a list like this - fiftyish films culled from a huge number over the past ten years - could cover a wide range of legitimate thematic directions and it would be appropriate to cut out of consideration whole areas of theme or origin or cultural import. You could aim to compose a more comprehensive list, but you do so at the peril of losing a thread running through the selections. The title of this curation, 'The Best of the Decade: An Alternative View', suggests that major sources would not have been consulted. Ostensibly, the intent is to present a list of films usually confined to arthouse/indie/fest-circuit theatre venues, and this is something to be applauded given what Cinematheque in our neighbourhood.
I like that some people are posting their own top-10-of-the-decade lists here lately, and I intend to at the end of my haunting of Jackman Hall over the next month - there is a fair few on the list I haven't seen. I have some knee-jerk reaction for now-
A top 50 of the aughts without 'City of God'? I've been convinced on multiple viewings that this was a groundbreaking film, it pulled no punches. von Trier's 'Dancer in the Dark' and 'Dogville' are ones to consider if the list is meant to cover off the transcendent films of the decade. 'Synecdoche, New York' was an astonishing accomplishment, imo, and while I mention that one, I might throw 'Eternal Sunshine ftsm' into a list of the top 50ish of the last 10 years.
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Hello & congrats with your wonderful blog. I've just added this post of yours to my blog
http://snaporaz.posterous.com/best-films-of-the-past-decade
My top ten:
01. Les glaneurs et la glaneuse + Deux ans après (Agnès Varda, 2000 + 2002)
02. Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2001)
03. Hundstage (Ulrich Seidl, 2001)
04. Spring, summer, fall, winter ... and spring (Ki-Duk Kim, 2003)
05. Luz silenciosa (Carlos Reygadas, 2005)
06. La stanza del figlio (Nanni Moretti, 2001)
07. Tricks (Andrzej Jakimowski, 2007)
08. The blessing bell (Hiroyuki Tanaka aka Sabu, 2002)
09. Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (Chan-Wook Park, 2005)
10. Grizzly man (Werner Herzog, 2005)
Brian said "Some of the people complaining are naming more omissions than they themselves could include on their own ballots had they participated in the poll."
I agree with Brian. It's just a collection of lists. No more no less. If one sees a pattern or trend or even omission, all the better and isn't that the purpose of lists like that - of course in the context of where the contributors are from, in this case mostly curators and archivists? Just enjoy it.
On a personal note, I deeply believe the one great film by Hou Hsiao-Hsien in the decade is FLIGHT OF THE RED BALLOON, it's his least ambitious but it's also his freest and forward looking film, it's compact and simple and complex at the same time. His other films are great too but BALLOON is the summit of what he's trying to do over the decade and also the beginning of the future. Good stuff!
-Ben
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