Best Films of 2019

The usual end of year countdown focusing on films that I saw this year which are on their first release: so some of these were in festivals and have yet to open in the UK including my number 1 which is one of the greatest things I have ever seen. Period. 

I have been slightly perverse by including two films at 9 and 10 to which I actually gave slightly lower scores than a couple of films that don't quite make the cut (The Souvenir and For Sama) but which I felt on reflection had an audacity and a promise that made them worthy of inclusion. Also bubbling under were Booksmart, Can You Ever Forgive Me, The Irishman, The Nightingale and Bait.

So here goes ....

10. Zombi Child : An audacious high wire juxtaposition of physical enslavement and unrequited love, both states of being half alive and half dead, given an additional twist through the intercession of Haitian voodoo and contextualised through colonial power relationships. Oh, and it’s also droll, silly, profound, scary and often quite beautiful.

9. Saint Maud : A psychotic with a saviour syndrome goes wholly rogue. Fascinating and wonderfully performed and directed; it may well have you gasping and dropping to your knees - rather like some of those who experience Saint Maud in action.

8. Her Smell: Expected to hate it but instead was completely absorbed and held in a state between appalled and fascinated by the narcissism on show. The film then did that most unusual thing of becoming quieter as it moved forwards. Another Elisabeth Moss acting masterclass.

7. Beanpole : A close up tragic study of PTSD in bilious green and red hues reminiscent of Edward Hopper's 'Nighthawks' but given a lambent sheen of Instagram 'brilliance'. Ultimately only a delusion can provide purpose for lives that have been shattered by the horror of war and the lack of respite in peace. It may be a little too long but it is undeniably powerful and magnificently shot and performed.

6. Varda By Agnes : "A beach is the opposite of a wall'.

The beach is constantly changing, a combination of the effects of sky, sea and sand, it is open and you can see for miles. The foreground and the middle distance ease into the horizon and the light plays tricks on the viewer.

At a time when there are far too many walls, it is particularly sad that we have lost Agnes and her beaches with her effortless, deeply human and empathetic appreciation of the magic in the ordinary.

The final sequence of swirling sand rising into the air making constantly changing shapes, gradually darkening and then dissipating into the atmosphere is a perfect encapsulation of the final moments of someone who wanted beaches not walls for us all.

5. Border : A rather strange but rather wonderful paean to the outsider. Synaesthesiasts should be wrinkling their noses in anticipation but it also deserves applause for making an unbelievable situation feel wholly, er, organic.

4. High Life : Humans are specks in the universe. Physically we shrink to complete insignificance when faced with the sheer enormity of a black hole. We come from messy bodily processes and sometimes from base instincts. Yet, paradoxically, perhaps being faced with probable extinction actually strengthens the significance of the very human bonds that we make to preserve life - even when that means stepping forward into the unknown. 

Claire Denis as usual imbues the whole film with a sense of the tactile and the physical. It’s as though, akin to Maslow’s hierarchy, we must continue to reproduce but also to have sensory experience in order to have value. As the film says : you can’t break the laws of nature.

3. Transit : Migrants fleeing a fascist takeover in Western Europe. Feels rather like a film from the 40s made after WW2 had ended; but this one is more a premonition of our near future and is far more unsettling for it. Revenants circling their lives and the places they have lived, searching for connection. The living challenged to make decisions and judging whether they can accept the shame on which survival depends.

2. Sunset : Absolutely extraordinary. Decadence and insurrection via extreme millinery in pre-WW1 Budapest. A structuralist examination of class and gender power relationships mediated via a big hat shop; the ultimate signifier of both. The perspective is just behind or just in front of Irisz but never quite her own. Events can never be quite understood let alone controlled. A high wire act for all that's unlikely to end well.

1. Portrait Of A Lady On Fire : An absolutely exquisite study of quiet rebellion, profound intimacy, deep loss, shared memories and the power of art. In 1760s France. The final sequence - which was apparently the genesis of the entire film - is simply breathtaking. Stunning.

The Perfection of GIRI HAJI

The final episode of this extraordinary series included one of the single most audacious and hermetic  pieces of choreography that one could ever hope to see in a tale of violent redemption among the yakuza. 

Or indeed in most other contexts.

At the climactic point at which multiple plot strands have plaited together, including through a butterfly effect from the other side of the world, in perfect union on a London rooftop with a motley array of hardened types facing off and a teenager poised - literally - between life and death one might legitimately expect either another blood soaked confrontation or a deus ex machina intervention. 

Instead what takes place would not have been out of place in high opera or ballet. 

The scene fades slightly to monochrome, the movement becomes formalised, more characters appear and everyone becomes quite literally a choreographed version of themselves. They  move together and apart, they cling for a moment, they face each other. Their movement is both of their own volition and that of the others. The threads between them are visible through the dance.

It has become relatively commonplace to talk about balletic violence usually meaning little more than  that the speed of the frames has been slowed down or that shards and fragments of glass provide a kaleidoscopic background as one more person is added to the body count.

What happens in Giri Haji is of quite a different order. 

Not only is there no violence this is a kinetic resolution of moral dilemmas. The movement comes from the inside of each character but its expression is the means of reaching a conclusion, on deciding what must happen, on what matters most. 

Reflecting interiority with such intensity has the same emotional heightening as an aria or a pas de deux. It teeters on the brink of absurdity but clings on because what is being represented is genuine and recognisable to all even if we rarely bring such a profound level of feeling to the surface.

The series and this sequence in particular has received high praise, and near adulation in some quarters, and it feels entirely merited. A mixed media world in which the artefacts of two quite different cultures are brought to bear and universal moral dilemmas are played out at the interface between them.

Dating Under the Dictatorship

As the UK enters a period of political dictatorship and the gradual abrogation of democracy for at least the next month - but frankly who knows with the crew we have in power now, in a month they'll probably have decided to do away with elections too - what are we mere playthings of the latter day Sun Tzu to do?

In that regard, it may be instructive to consider the reaction of at least some citizens of the former Eastern Bloc countries to their dangerous and repressive governments which they simultaneously regarded as profoundly ridiculous and incompetent. The Czech New Wave film makers in particular developed a delightful sense of absurdity in the face of authoritarianism with lengthy, often rambling dialogue, dark humour and non-professional actors frequently focused on the rather haphazard and not entirely successful love lives of their protagonists. 

So, particularly given that we need more young people to outvote the elderly bigots, perhaps our reaction should be get on with some high volume dating. It may be a long term solution to the ridding ourselves of the tories but it could be fun. Not that I'm going to contribute to the procreation of more young people. 

However, when it comes to dating at a time of political crisis it can all go horribly wrong. For example, if your date suddenly mentions Andrea Leadsom in an outbreak of Tourette's, the likelihood of an enjoyable evening is significantly reduced. Indeed the need for ten minutes in the gents is profound. 

There's also the risk that your dating site profile ends up reading like a political manifesto: I'm a mixture of Green, Left-Leaning and Liberal all under the umbrella of being profoundly REMAIN doesn't leave a lot of room for your favourite colour (since you ask, anything but blue or whatever that revolting colour the farage lot use). 

And if you voted Leave, don't even bother looking at my profile.

A degree of tension can also get in the way. Apparently flippant but open questions such as 'what is the novel that you're going to finish when you retire going to be about?' may elicit the response: 'the murder of my great grandparents'. FULL STOP. Something of the passion killer. 

Then there are dangers the other way. You see a potential soul mate both politically and in other ways and dive straight in but without necessarily thinking through whether you might be in danger of overkill.

I was particularly struck by one woman with the site name 'I, Claudius' which I thought was both hilarious and intriguing particularly since it was followed by a description about fighting back against some well defined fuckers. This was definitely my kind of woman. 

"Hi I! I love that profile. As a member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty you will clearly be aware of just how far we in contemporary little Britain have already lived through Tiberius who has now gone off for his shed bound equivalent of Corfu in a hissy fit and are currently experiencing the manifold madnesses of a Caligula-lite wannabe. I feel that we may have slightly bent time's arrow by having already had our equivalent of Nero who certainly spent a lot of time fiddling around to no great end whilst the entire edifice was burning down all around. So we badly need a bit of Claudian stability. 

I'm also highly appreciative of the very useful term 'fuckers'. I find myself uttering that a lot and it's particularly helpful in being firmly gender neutral and a term that can also be spat out with considerable venom, generously peppered amidst the wider cascade of contumely. I find it goes well with a distinctly lower case version of farage with a heavy emphasis on a short vowel sound.

So, Salve! And all power to your efforts to fight the aforementioned fuckers”.

Well apparently she wasn't my kind of woman or had already decided to move onto being Claudius the God because there was absolutely no response whatsoever from her, Jove or indeed Claudius. 

There are also problems about just keeping your deep ire about the 'government' under control. Flying off the handle at the drop of a hat to vent at length and volume about the latest outrage may not be showing ones best side, albeit it may be a truer reflection than some chin stroking, a slight shake of the head, a phlegmatic sigh and a lengthy stare into the middle distance.

Then there is the demand for photographic evidence. In normal times one might think that the request for more photos merely reflects a desire to make sure that you really do look good in lycra. But in these troubled days one has to think that there is a more to it than that. Facial recognition technology can be very good for identifying the troublemakers and making sure they end up in the re-education camps to which we are doubtless headed. So your conviction that blurry capture of the side of your face from behind which may have been taken several years ago really doesn't need to supplemented may be particularly well advised. 

So I think the trick has to be to go with the absurdity. It worked for the Czechs and it can damn well work for us. I mean it didn't always work well for the Czechs and everything tends to look better in  Prague but let's try it for now. 

The first rule is probably to treat the dictatorship as ridiculous. These arrogant, pompous, entitled, stupid, malevolent, pernicious ... well that didn't go too well, let's have another go. 

According to my text book to get in the right mood you have to able to subvert the dominant social-realist genre. 

That may require a slight paradigm shift since our current dictators probably don't have a profound grounding in social-realist film. Rather more a complete misunderstanding of Ealing comedy, endless reshowing of The Dambusters coupled with an automatic genuflection in the direction of anything about Winston and The War, the Blitz spirit and the charming regional types who carried on regardless.

So perhaps the first rule and indeed the only rule is to take what subversion of the dominant social-realist genre was really about:

- a reflection of genuine yearning amid social constraints and arbitrary political decisions;

- tragi-comedy and wry wit and observation;

- some understated and indeed unrecognised heroism in the face of authoritarianism;  

- a deeply humanistic concern with the individual -  not the collective. 

Because when you're dating under the dictatorship you're not concerned with the will of the people (even if such a thing existed) you are concerned with the value of the individual. And that's really why as the UK teeters on the brink of being a failed state with its worst ever government, we can do much worse than get out there and date away and, so to speak, stick it to the fuckers.

Tres iubentium!

Radical Optimism

"Things can only get better

Can only get better if we see it through

That means me and I mean you too

So teach me now that things can only get better

They can only get, they only get, take it on from here

You know I know that things can only get better"

Was 1997 as good as it gets for us?

That was the question posed at dinner a few evenings back to a group of self-identifying left leaning progressives deeply unhappy at the recent coup and the new 'government' comprised almost entirely of people so alien as to be barely recognisable as members of the same species. 

That kind of conversation tends to oscillate, sometimes at speed, back and forth along the spectrum from demoralised to utterly incandescent.  

For many of us there is a sense of profound pessimism. Increasingly people openly discuss emigrating; seeking dual nationality or an Irish passport or moving to Scotland and hoping that it might become independent. In a word fleeing a version of England which seems less and less to have anything positive to offer.

Yet the new government trumpets an obsession with optimism. Which made me think not only about whether 1997 was truly the highpoint in my lifetime but also about the uses and abuses of optimism in politics and political discourse.

In 1997 optimism too was the touchstone. Things could only get better. After 18 years in government, the tories had been trounced and seemed likely to be out of power for at least a generation. The threat of nuclear annihilation had dissipated. Arms control was being strengthened. Europe was reunited following the collapse of the Soviet Union. A Democratic President was re-elected in the US.  This was a world at least in Europe in which liberal democracy seemed to have clearly won the day; a Europe of Vaclav Havel not Viktor Orban (at least not in his current guise).

Many of these hopes were ultimately frustrated. In particular, many of us ended up on huge marches and demonstrations against war in Iraq.

Yet the version of optimism on offer in 1997 was genuine. It had identified, progressive ambitions, a version of the future that was genuinely different to the past, and a set of programmes to achieve it.

There was also positive political valency; despite the rhetoric of 'what matters is what works', there was still enough of a sense that the broad inclination of the government would generally be in a progressive direction whatever the vicissitudes of policy. There was a clear belief in the active power of the state to change lives for the better, whatever the ensuing madness of new public management theory and the associated obsessions with targetry.

So when it comes to optimism the 1997 version had distinct characteristics: a sense of direction,  goals which aimed to secure change from the past, a rational engagement with real world issues which needed to be understood in order for a practical programme of change to be put in place. In other words the rhetoric had a reality and there was broad congruence between them. Lived experience at least in large part reflected political ambition.

Whilst reflecting on all of this I happened to listen to the latest Such Stuff podcast which was intriguingly titled 'Radical Optimism' and focused on A Midsummer Night's Dream. This optimism is radical in that it indeed suggests the positive power of living in a dream state for a period as a collective experience in which the focus is on our similarities rather than our differences and in which we get to know each other in the same way as the characters change as a result of their experiences whilst dreaming. The collective experience of the groundlings in the Jacobean theatre is to be distanced from everyday life, taken out of ourselves and allowed to reflect the on the possible. Given a different perspective; not manipulated or instructed but empowered. Athens is different at the end of the play because of what happens in the dream.

This version of optimism envisages changing both the people and the world by virtue of the people reflecting on the world they wish to see.

Art in the possible.

Contrast that with the 2019 version of 'optimism'. 

Rather than A Midsummer Night's Dream the book that springs to mind is 1984.

What we are now experiencing is what might be termed the political project of optimism. Its characteristics are majoritarian and authoritarian. It demands belief in the same way as a cult. If the dream state radical optimism of the groundlings is a profoundly democratic concept; the political project of optimism is one that is associated with monarchs and demagogues - it requires acquiescence to an imposed belief system.

True optimism does not remove rationality or scepticism; it co-exists with and channels them. Authoritarian optimism treats both as bogus. Naturally, any  questioning is by definition not optimistic.

This optimism is majoritarian not collective. It does not seek to allow us to understand our differences and our possibilities. It does not want a collectively owned and developed sense of the future achieved through deliberation. It needs an 'other'. It  needs enemies who would betray it.

This version of optimism has no congruence with the real world or with lived experience. Far from using a limited dream state to think differently and change the world, the political project wants to put the world into a permanent dream state of delusion.

Fundamentally, the political project of optimism is actually not even about optimism.  It is not about thinking differently to change the world. It is not about thinking at all, simply believing or at least securing a wilful suspension of disbelief. 

So the 2019 version of optimism is profoundly pessimistic. It is a classic example of doublespeak. On the surface the UK variant may seem at odds with that practiced by the bedfellows on the other side of the Atlantic who quite explicitly base their authoritarianism on fear. Fear of losing status; making something great once again. Yet clearly both of these political projects are firmly and deliberately rooted in the past. There is no coherent sense of what the future might comprise, just high profile gestures that suggest that some aspect of the past will be reintroduced or reimposed.  

The future with which the political project of optimism actually seeks to connect is a more specific version of the past: it is nationalistic but it is also neoliberal. It seeks the absence of things. In particular the absence of regulation and of taxes. The absence of control on the powerful. This optimism is a version of nostalgia designed to usher in a turbo-charged version of the late 19th century.

It is a fraud being perpetrated on a grand scale with demonisation of anyone or anything that has the temerity to question it.  New Labour may have been criticised for stealth taxes. The political project of optimism has an entire stealth agenda to be secured through brainwashing.

But for a moment back to a more positive version of optimism. The radical optimism of the groundlings is still vibrant. We can see it in Extinction Rebellion. The most frightening and truly pessimistic aspect of our times is that not content with destroying the habitats of the animals with which we share the earth we are intent on destroying the whole planet and ushering ourselves towards extinction. The only way we can combat this is through a version of radical optimism in which we think ourselves coherently into a different future and have the strength and the bravery to take the steps required. It means facing the unpalatable head on and it requires change from us all on an almost unimaginable scale.

Not bromides and bollocks and just 'believing'. Rather, hard, rational, practical, sweeping changes that have the prospect of alleviating the worst.

Optimism may kill us but we can't live without it.

The profound question for our species and our planet is whether the political project of optimism or radical optimism emerges triumphant.

Heritage, History, Historiography ... and Hauntology

One of the most pernicious aspects of contemporary political discourse is the obsession with an imagined past which is defined in specific ways to support current prejudices. 

Along with outright xenophobia, nationalism (and in some cases a hefty sprinkling of neo-liberalism), the current wave of authoritarian populists play heavily on nostalgia, producing a weapons grade, moonshine version which they hope is powerful enough to strip away rational engagement and overwhelm scepticism. Sadly, for far too many it does.

Nostalgia for the individual can be comforting; a way of reflecting on good times with added sunshine. Yet just like the absurd idea that held good for far too long that the state should budget like a corner shop or a household, community level nostalgia is a dangerous notion that necessarily privileges one view of the past over all others. 

Worse, it is deliberately uncritical engagement. Things were so much better when - there were fewer people who didn't look or sound different, less frequent engagement with other cultures, a class based hierarchical society in which posh men in tweed knew what was what and in which there were fewer constraints on chauvinism and bigotry.  

Nostalgia is closely linked to the only slightly less pernicious notion of heritage. I utterly loathe the 'heritage industry' in its promotion of a single, sanctified view of the past which can be commodified and sold. It glories in pageantry, costume and tradition - all of it surface gloss on what was often a much more uncomfortable set of underpinnings reflecting wholesale exploitation and servitude. Our country houses owe much to the wealth produced by the slave trade and the sugar plantations as well as children working down coal mines and men and women losing limbs in badly regulated factories.

I spend a lot of time wandering around old buildings. I unashamedly love looking at the architecture and the fine arts on display. I may find them curious, sometimes ridiculous but often stunningly impressive. But they should be considered in their historical context: the product of extreme privilege and ostentatious luxury. 

We should engage with both: the historical context and the wonders of human ingenuity and creativity.

That's where history comes in. One can debate endlessly the precise methodological approach but, whatever else it is, the study of history should be warts and all; it should consider structural issues as well as individual genius. The mole hill only mattered  because posh people rode around on horses. 

We see far too much heritage and understand far too little history. 

However, if I could change one thing it would be to introduce a mandatory requirement for schools to teach historiography alongside history. 

Historiography in simple terms is why people thought the things that they did about the past and how those views have changed so much over time. Changed not just because of better evidence or a clearer understanding; but changed because the reasons why people wanted to believe certain things have altered.

We currently want to glorify the Second World War as a time when plucky Britain stood strong against overwhelming odds. One can believe that or one can also believe that alongside the undoubted heroism Britain only survived because Russia lost millions and millions of civilians and soldiers fighting one of the most horrific campaigns in history against Germany on the eastern front. We choose to talk about one. We don't generally choose to talk about the other. Certainly not when its inconvenient. 

We also choose not to talk about the way that British lawyers wrote much of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights which was then translated into the European Convention on Human Rights. Some of us might say that in fact this was one of the greatest legacies of the UK to the world and to a stable Europe determined not to repeat the horrors of the past.  

That brings us to hauntology, a difficult concept perhaps best considered as 'nostalgia for lost futures'. So whilst it is also about loss, unlike nostalgia it does not glory in a particular view of how things were; it reflects concern that we seem stuck at the end of history and haunted by its spectres. That we have no future.

Twenty-first century English culture is at risk of being more concerned with co-opting the past than embracing the future.

Hauntologists often like old analogue synths or vinyl. In musical terms the crackle and hiss on the analogue recording are valuable for the sense they convey that these artefacts were never pristine; they always contained the seeds of their own decay. 

We might beneficially ponder whether the wider sonic range of the analogue recording has merit as a better way to explore the full intentions of the composer and the performer whilst also reflecting that the modern obsession to smooth has lost not just that wider range - but also the interference and imperfections.

A clearer eyed view of the past gives us more chance of having a future which is informed by its failings rather than being in hock to its prejudices.