It is the cinema which chronicles the passions, nightmares and dreams of an era. To look back at the movies of any given decade is to peer into the very fabric of an age’s consciousness. We are currently living through a period of historical transition, a moment Gramsci would recognize as a moment when an old world is beginning to die and what will come forth we do not yet know. Paris is burning, new parties worship the cult of blood and land. This helps explain why much of the year’s defining cinema obsesses itself with the past, the present and an aching uncertainty over what is to come. Yet some movies were also full of hope and tenderness, wisdom and the reverie of romance. I spent much of this year in darkened screening rooms all over Los Angeles. Whether in a hidden corner of Rodeo Drive or in some distant multiplex in Burbank, I found myself moved, exhilarated or challenged with despair. Here are ten offerings which defined the year in film, and crystalize our place in this current passage of time. [Read more…]
The Farce of Imperial Pageantry In Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite
We begin with an evening walking through the artificial cities of the Fox Studios lot, accompanied by a Turk who can read a star map, graced with a name that has a royal origin. She inevitably helps us find our way among the maze of this place. It is but a day after the republic has cast its vote in another election embodying well these mad times. We walk through the false New York streets of the lot, nestled within the west side of Los Angeles. Like power, the city within this city is but an illusion. Such are the perfect conditions to enter the world of The Favourite, the new film by Greek enfant terrible Yorgos Lanthimos. Like his ancestors, Luis Bunuel, Tristan Tzara and other practitioners of the surreal arts, Lanthimos captures this era in civilization better than almost any other director. This new work reaches back into the past, yet has a timeless force in its dissection and sheer mocking of the pageantry of empire. [Read more…]
Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite Is Ferociously Funny And Delightfully Subversive
With The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, director Yorgos Lanthimos has chiseled out a reputation for crafting comedies out of the darkest corners of human experience. Loneliness, jealousy, betrayal and death are his pathways to startling hilarity. Thus, the laughs he earns burst forth as shocked guffaws and obscene barks, as if our joy in the face of such misery is a rude jolt to even ourselves. Admirers of Lanthimos’ twisted humor have new reason to revel. With his most captivating cast yet, he’s created The Favourite, a deranged look at sex and politics within the court of Queen Anne. [Read more…]