Sacha Gervasi's Anvil! The Story of Anvil

It’s that time of year again – Not only a dwindling number of shopping days till Christmas, but floods of annual “Best of…” lists sprouting up all over Facebook, specialist film websites, and the rest of the print and broadcast media, as well as a couple of solicitations for my own favourites. Anyway, the appearance last week of my top five films of 2009, published alongside numerous other international critics in the January issue of Sight & Sound (which for some reason has me based simultaneously in France and Japan – the reality of my actual existence in Southeast London is rather less exotic!), got me thinking a bit.

Henry Selick's Coraline

One thing I want to say about 2009 is that I saw a hell of a lot more films than I have for quite some time. Another thing I would add is that in general, the quality and diversity of what I managed to see was far higher than 2008, not only Japanese films but also those from other parts of the world, including mainstream Hollywood. Trying to whittle down the best into a mere five titles was quite problematic. For example, the rennaissance of the 3D format can be considered one of the most significant developments of the year, but while I was blown away by Pixar’s Up, I was only marginally less impressed by Coraline, a darker, smaller film, but also one which made great use of the aesthetic possibilities of working with an extra dimension to the screen (and I haven’t even had the chance to see James Cameron’s Avatar yet!) So, do I put both films in my top 5, or should I also recognise that there were some great works of an entirely different nature – hard-hitting documentaries such as Afghan Star or The Cove; edgy offerings from the farther flung reaches of world cinema, like Chile’s quite unforgettable Tony Manero, Russia’s Morphia or Egypt’s Heliopolis; noble arthouse titles like Michael Winterbottom’s Genova or Jane Campion’s Bright Star; genre fair like Nacho Vigalondo’s Time Crimes, Ben Wheatley’s Down Terrace or Buddy Giovinazzo’s Life is Hot in Cracktown; my top Japanese tips like Hirokazu Kore’eda’s Air Doll or Hajime Kadoi’s Vacation; punch-the-air Hollywood rollercoasters like District 9 or Drag Me to Hell; and what about the strong tide of Oscar hopefuls from earlier in the year that included Gus Van Sant’s Milk or Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire? Yes, there certainly were a lot of films out there in 2009.

Havana Marking's Afghan Star

There’s a few points I want to make about this. Firstly, as I’ve said, five films isn’t really enough to cover all the corners I’d like to have, so in my final Sight and Sound list several worthy titles got nudged aside to make room for others of a similar genre or tone. Secondly, there were a couple of titles which impressed me on an initial viewing, but I had the chance to catch a second time and were less impressed by. Thirdly, the atmosphere one catches a film in is pretty critical – if you’re surrounded by all the hubbub of a film festival, you’ll probably have a different view of a film than if you’re sitting in a near deserted press screening or watching a DVD screener for review purposes or, heaven forbid, you’ve actually paid to see it. Fourthly, I haven’t had a chance to see a lot of the more critically-lauded titles myself yet, like Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet, Lucrecia Martel’s The Headless Woman or Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker. Fifthly, do I recommend films that others might have seen or will at least get a chance to see, or do I try and point people to more obscure titles? Who’s reading the list anyway? If I checklist an obscure Chinese indie like Panda Candy, will there be a distributor out there who’ll prick up their ears and look to see if it’s worth acquiring? Probably not… Will the average reader be able to track it down? Hmmm…. And finally, related to this, is the question of release dates. To take but one example, I saw Tomas Alfredson’s Let the Right One In last year and already included it in 2008’s list, but it was only released in the UK this Spring. It was the same story with Laurent Cantet’s The Class, though I didn’t see it at a festival, but on DVD after its UK release this year, so included it in 2009’s list. Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Tokyo Sonata I caught during a press screening at the end of last year, though it was released in January, so by the time it came to the end of this year, it was almost a dim and distant memory, while Hirokazu Kore’eda’s Still Walking was released in Japan last year, when it also played London Film Festival, but is only getting a release next year in the UK – ditto for Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo on the Cliff. If I saw them last year, should I include them this year, or make room for more recent films and wait until next? For other more obscure titles, do I wait on the off-chance they get a broader release in the UK, or just include them anyway?

Hirokazu Kore'eda's Still Walking

You’ll have to buy Sight & Sound to see what I finally did plump for, or wait a few months to see my round-up of the year along with the other contributors for Midnight Eye – for the reasons I’ve given above, the lists will probably be fairly different. I’ve seen a lot of good titles since I originally submitted my Sight & Sound list in mid-November, including a whole pile at Thessaloniki, and perhaps by the end of the year I’ll have a different perspective on what was hot and what was not. All I will say is that I’m not going to confuse matters by adding a third list here on this website.

Nacho Vigalondo's Time Crimes

But the final point I would make is the same one that was made in the article accompanying the Sight & Sound list – there’s a vast amount of really good stuff out there at the moment, and individual critics can only go by what they saw, as well as being influenced by their own tastes and areas of expertise. The whole film market has changed vastly over the past ten years. There’s a lot more choice out there, and many titles come and go so quickly that by the time you’ve made up your mind to see them in the cinema, you’ve probably missed them, while converselty, within 6 months of the hype of the Oscars or Cannes, the bigger titles of the year might already be available for a fiver at HMV. It’s almost tragic.

Pablo Larrain's Tony Manero

In such an environment, the role of the professional film critic looks increasingly precarious. What should a major newspaper’s film editor choose to focus on when there’s upwards of ten films released every week and only space to cover a handful? The latest Harry Potter or Twilight film or an obscure Eastern European, Asian or South American title that probably won’t play outside of a single-screen in London? I can think of three Japanese films that got great reviews this year in the UK popular press – Tokyo Sonata, Departures and Love Exposure – but each got a very small release window, rarely more than a week and usually on only a handful of screens.

So in this context, the whole concept of an annual Top Ten has changed. Rather than representing a canon of titles that might be seen as classics in the future, they merely give a glimpse of what’s out there, and leave it to viewers to follow the advice of the critics they tend to agree with. It’s all a matter of personal taste after all. And best thing now out there is that you do have the chance to see these on imported DVDs, film festivals, Video on Demand sites etc. Critics now must serve a different role of instead of telling you what’s the best from a given week’s selection, to point you in the direction of what’s of interest in the swirling sea of images being produced all over the world.

Hajime Kadoi's Vacation

On a related note, I’m sure no one has failed to notice that we’re approaching the end of the first decade of the 21^st century. Mark Schilling has already published his fascinating survey of the Japanese industry’s fortunes in the Japan Times , which demonstrate a number of trends equally applicable to the UK market. I’ll probably be posting my own highlights of the past decade, Japanese and non-Japanese, both here and elsewhere. But, I think I’ll wait till the year’s out first, and I’ve had time to gain a bit more perspective on what the really significant trends of the noughties really were.

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