Brokeback Mountain: This film is viewed as either a piece of art or a punchline, a masterpiece or blasphemy, depending on who looks at it. I think it's one of the most beautiful films ever made (and I'm straight by the way). I was a bit put off by the pacing the first time I saw it, but in the years that have gone by, I've been able to appreciate the beauty, not just of the landscape and the music, but of the characters (and I haven't been able to watch this film without crying since Heath Ledger died). This film was a big deal when it first came out, because as far as I know, it was the first film that told a love story between two men. Yes, gay characters had been portrayed on screen before, but most of the time as stereotypes or funny sidekicks or understanding characters. Very few films had focused on a love story between two men, and Ang Lee did something even more daring by applying that to the macho stereotype of the American cowboy (something that I think outraged the Hollywood old-timers, which may have been one reason it lost the Oscar for Best Picture). Or maybe the one who was daring was Annie Proulx for writing the short story in the first place. Anyway, either admired or infamous, people still talk about this film, and despite the inevitable label it has earned as the "gay cowboy" movie, well, that label just proves that the film struck a chord in people and has challenged them to explore their own views on homophobia. As a movie, on its own, I believe it is simply beautiful (and the chemistry between Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal is still unmatched).
Capote: Philip Seymour Hoffman won a well-deserved Oscar for playing this brilliant writer. He's very flaumboyant, with a somewhat annoying voice, but there's a subtle genius in every word he says. You're uncomfortable around him, but he still draws you in to the story of his own self-destruction while trying to finish what he believes to be the best book he's ever written (I think this man could've used with some modesty, honestly). The film explores Capote as he forms a relationship with Perry Smith, one of two men who murdered a family out in Holcomb, Kansas and is now on Death Row. Capote writes a book about the murders, focusing on the two killers, and the film deals with Capote lengthy conversations with Perry Smith (chillingly played by Clifton Collins Jr.) as he learns more about him and creates the character for his book, and he wants to help him, but he also wants him to die already so he can finish the book and get it published (something that led him to drinking and never finishing a book again). The film explores this moral question of whether a book is worth someone dying over it, and it takes us into the mind of a man who is every bit as smart as Capote, every bit as articulate, but ended up on the wrong path and is now on Death Row. This film is not really a critique on Death Row, but how many people want to see a bright young man hung in the gallows, even if he did kill a family. Killing a killer doesn't make us anything other than murderers. It's not really justice, it's vengeance (a film explored in other movies in 2005, as well as the 1995 film Dead Man Walking). Do we really have the moral high-ground to choose who gets killed, and who doesn't. Perry Smith and his partner Richard Hicock did kill that family, and they had to pay a price for it, but Death is not a price. It's just an earlier entry to the world that everyone ends up in (how do we know that the killers won't end up in Heaven, while the people in government end up in Hell, or whatever comes up after this life?). The film doesn't explore these questions (since it's really a character study of one man and the way he uses a life for literature), but it raised the questions in me. It's one of the reasons I think it's an amazing film.
Crash: Just about every faculty in my department hates this film. They view it as a film that just hits you over the head about racism being bad. There may be some truth to that, because in all of my repeat viewing, I've noticed scenes that are just so heavy-handed they make me cringe, but there is an underlying theme to the movie. It's not about racism, it's about people. It's about the way people interact with each other, judge each other, have an inevitable reaction to each other due to race or socio-economic position. The film is about facing yourself. It is filled with characters who pretend to stand so high on a moral pedestal that they believe they can judge everybody else. These characters include Officer Tommy Hansen (Ryan Phillipe) who judges his partner on his racist tendencies before he realizes that he himself is prejudice against people as well, or Anthony (Ludacris) has a conspiracy theory against everybody around him, thinking he is the only good person in the world, until he is forced to look at himself. "You think you know who you are? You have no idea" or "You embarrass me. You embarrass yourself" are lines that explore this theme. There's also Sgt. Graham Waters who believes he is moral enough to say that he shouldn't frame a potentially innocent man, but he runs away from his real responsibilities which include his mother and his criminal brother. The film is heavy-handed and some scenes did need a lot of work, but there are also scenes of brilliance in the film, including the car explosion where Matt Dillon saves Thandie Newton character, or that moving scene where the locksmith tells his daughter about the invisible cloak. These are all people, and the message comes in the way these people interact and the racism comes out of that. No one is perfect. It's all just a matter of recognizing it in yourself, and seeing yourself as a flawed human being, and then you can judge others. This film won the OScar for Best Picture as a major spoiler, which adds to people's hatred of it unfortunately, but I still think it's a fascinating, if flawed, study of human interactions.
Good Night and Good Luck: I just recently re-watched this one in a class on political films, and it was probably my best viewing of it. It's the true story of Edward R. Murrow, the host of See It Now (an old news show on CBS) and his legendary battle with Junior Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy over his communist witch hunt. The film is co-written and directed by George Clooney, an actor who is known for being actively liberal, and he explores this story of a very courageous man, one who puts all current news anchors to shame with his willingness to expose what is wrong with the world and question it, despite the many warnings he gets from his fellow reporters. Even though the film is set in 1954, when television was still in black-and-white, I think it was very relevant for the audience of 2005, because we were at the beginning of Bush's second term of presidency, and his administration was taking many of the same actions that McCarthy and the HUAC took back then when convicting people based on rumors and heresay. Terrorism these days, as well as communism back then, are two very difficult things to prosecute and defend against because anybody could be either one of them, but I still believe that to arrest and convict someone, evidence and due process of law are still necessary. Laws were made to protect people from being unfairly sentenced. In this country, you are innocent until proven otherwise. No one has the right to exploit a state of fear and paranoia. The film also says a lot about television and the role it's taken in our society these days. I think television can be a wonderful tool if we only knew how to use it right, rather than just to entertain us and insulate us. Television can teach, it can broaden your minds, it can promote debate, it can challenge our perceptions of the world. The problem is, networks only care about making money, and people simply want to be entertained, so television only caters to the lowest common denominator, and even in network news, we are never challenged and we have even grown to distrust what we hear. I think that if we had more people out there like Edward R. Murrow (and amazing performance by David Strathairn), parents wouldn't be telling their children that television is bad for you. I think good, intelligent shows should be given more of a chance to gain an audience before the plug is pulled from them.
Munich: I haven't seen this film in a really long time, but I remember how impressed I was with it when I first saw it. It's long and tough to sit through, but Steven Spielberg brings one of the greatest rivalries in the world to the forefront, and that is the one between the Palestineans and the Israelis. However, what I admire most about Spielberg is that he doesn't give anyone in this film a free pass. It's a film about violence and terrorism. It's a never-ending cycle. As soon as somebody is bombed, the other side retaliates with a similar demonstration and so on. I spoke to some of my friends from the Jewish community in Mexico after watching this film (I'm Jewish myself, so Israel is kind of a part of my life), they told me they didn't like the fact that the Israeli government was portrayed in such a negative light. I think that may have been the point. Not to really color any one person in a negative light, but to color their deeds, their actions, their way of dealing with the terrorism in a negative light. The people they bomb in the retaliation from the massacre at the Munich Olympics seem like perfectly nice people when we see them, and we later find out that they were also involved in other terrorist attacks. Terrorism is never going to end if we all believe in this ideology of "an eye for an eye". Those who are involved with the government begin to live in fear of who might kill them next, because once you attack someone, someone else is coming out to get you, and if you kill a leader, someone else will be found to replace them and retaliate. As for the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestineans, and all the other conflicts that are present right now in the world, well, it's going to be hard to find a solution when children are still taught to hate one another, and people's minds are difficult to change as well. I don't think Spielberg ever thought about looking for a solution to this problem, but the problem persists. Violence is clearly not working. Non-violence worked for Gandhi, but that's another figure of whom there may be no other.
Those are the five Best Picture nominees, and as you can see, I spoke less about the films and more about the questions or discussions that can be drawn from those films, which I think is a good thing, because it means these films can spark up some debate, and it's one thing I think is very strong about that line-up (and a reason I may be underestimating 2005 as a film year). 2005 also saw the political thrillers Syriana and The Constant Gardener. I remember I seriously disliked Syriana when I first saw it because I couldn't make sense out of it, but I just recently saw it a second time, and realized the film, while still very complicated, is actually really good. It explores our global need for oil and what some countries do in order to get to that oil, but it also speaks to the game America plays with the Middle East, keeping those countries in trouble while they profit from their resources. Alexander Siddig plays Prince Nassir Al-Subaai, the successor to the Emir who has plans to make his country into a democracy, something the Emir doesn't want, since he appoints Nassir's idiot younger brother to the throne, and he is happy to continue reigning as his father did, and America is happy to keep the status quo they have, but in order to do that and to prevent a military coup by Prince Nasir, they must assassinate him, so they send CIA agent Bob Barnes (George Clooney, in an Oscar-winning performance) out to assassinate him. It goes wrong, however, and Barnes, after being the subject of an investigation, goes on a race against time to warn Nassir. Another plot consists of Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon), an energy analyst stationed in Geneva trying to cut a deal with the emir, which he only gets after his son is accidentally electrocuted in a pool, and Jeffrey Wright plays Bennett Holiday, a lawyer looking into the shady dealings of a merger between two oil companies. The film is complicated, but the basic story is that every one of these characters are trying to do their jobs and keep their sides of the world healthy. Nobody is innocent or guilty, nobody is good or bad, they are all just trying to survive in this world where resources are low, and we all need to get to them.
As for The Constant Gardener, I haven't seen the film in a long time, and what I remember more vividly is the love story and the outstanding performances from Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz (who won the Oscar for it), but I do remember that there was a conspiracy against pharmaceutical companies that exploted sick children in Africa to bring out a drug, and Rachel Weisz plays activist Tessa Quayle, who is murdered for knowing too much about it. I'll have to watch the movie again, but I do remember it being quite thrilling, and the scenes with the two leads make it come alive even further.
There was also some social and political commentary in summer blockbusters Batman Begins and War of the Worlds. That's right, Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds. Say what you want about the father/son angle, or Tom Cruise, or the ridiculous ending, but there's one thing that can't be denied. War of the Worlds succeeds in creating paranoia and showing how society can collapse when under attack. It's one of the few alien invasion films that actually felt dangerous. Very much like Jaws, War of the Worlds keeps the nature of the aliens as a mystery to the audience, so we're forced to watch how humans react to the invasion with the limited information we all have. All we know is they are killing people, and we could be next, so we use our basic instincts to fight for our survival. Where the film falters, in my opinion, is that it's hard to care for Tom Cruise's character (he comes off arrogant in the worst of ways) and some of the more manipulative moments are cringe-worthy, but the fear is there, and in my opinion, the film works because it manages to convey a true sense of fear. As for Batman Begins, that film explores the themes of justice and vengeance (which I discussed in Capote). Batman is a vigilante, a man who takes justice into his own hands because the government and the police in Gotham City are not acting in the name of justice. He's a man who sees the city collapsing around him, and he wants to do something about it. In the film, the League of Shadows (the group that trained Bruce Wayne to become Batman) believed that Gotham is a city that needs to be destroyed because it's tearing itself apart. That's a good question to ponder on. When something is not working anymore, including a society or a country, so we destroy it and try to build something new, or do we do something different? Do we stick to our old ways or do we try to fix it? It's one of the many things I admire about Batman Begins (other that the concept of bringing Batman into a world that is more like our own), the fact that it raises questions on justice and whether people have the moral high ground to go above the law in the name of the people, or to choose which societies should be destroyed. Can we really decide? Thenagain, in most countries, we do put our trust in one man whom we elect, so in a way, there are people who put themselves at the mercy of everyone in their countries, and we choose whether we can trust them with that moral high ground to make that decision, but what about those we don't elect and don't know about (like Batman, or in the real world, Al-Qaeida terrorists)?
Just to be clear, not every film in 2005 that I saw and enjoyed had a political or social agenda. There are three films I loved from 2005 that I love just for the sheer entertainment value and the love story (and two of them are based on true stories. One of them is Cinderella Man, the story of boxer Jim Braddock (an outstanding-as-always Russell Crowe), who made a comeback after the Great Depression and beat Max Baer to become the heavyweight champion of the world. I know I told you the ending, but really, it's no surprise. This is a classic sports movie about an underdog who has all the odds stacked against him and succeeds despite those odds being stacked against him, but the film is so uplifting and so powerful that it's hard to resist it (and it doesn't hurt that Paul Giamatti gives an energetic performance as Braddock's manager Joe Gould). The other one is Walk the Line, the story of country singer Johnny Cash (played by Joaquin Phoenix) and the love of his life, fellow country singer whom he keeps chasing, June Carter (the lovely Reese Witherspoon). What draws me in about this film is mainly the music and the chemistry of the two leads, and even though the film is a bit over-the-top at parts (the sink-breaking scene was way too much), it's so endearing. I love to see the relationship developing between two people who are part of that same world of country music, and while one is slowly sinking into the realm of drug addiction and depression brought on by this world, the other is strong enough to keep herself afloat, and even pull up a friend on the way.
The other film I wanted to mention was Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Now, this film doesn't display any political messages or try to say anything important. It's just plain fun. It's got such a lively humor, both for children and adults, such colorful characters, a clever plot, some ingenious inventions, a lot of vegetables, a few furry animals, and of course, cheese. Before I saw this film, I hadn't seen any of the shorts, but since then, I've gotten better acquainted with Wallace and Gromit and enjoyed some of their adventures. I particularly recommend The Wrong Trousers.
Anyway, that's 2005, a very peculiar year for cinema. Do you people have any other films you wish to discuss? Anything you'd like to add?
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