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.