One of the things I most wanted this section to do is to name films from some directors whose work I've really got in to this year but who have no films in the top 10. This make Mike Leigh's Naked an appropriate choice for two reasons. First, in the last year I've watched nearly every film he's made and Naked stands out as the best without a doubt. Second, it was watching it in January that led me to wanting to watch more of his stuff which was no small feat considering that Mike Leigh is very much an acquired taste and up until that point I was struggling to acquire it. His tv work is largely uninteresting, but almost everything he's made since High Hopes has been great and I'm thankful for Naked leading me to discover this enjoyable and highly idiosyncratic body of work. Naked stands out as an endlessly fascinating film, incredibly bleak (at times feeling like the world is about to end) yet also full of sharp, witty dialogue.
Perhaps one of my bigger regrets as regards this last year's filmwatching was how little experimental and avant-garde cinema I watched. Without a doubt the standout piece from this category has to be Peter Hutton's At Sea which did in fact only just miss out on getting in to my top 10 for the year. As well as being the film that introduced me to his rich and consistently wonderful body of work it also stands as one of the most unique experiences I've had with a film in quite some while as it starts in a South Korean shipyard where a colossal ship is being constructed, follows the ship on its voyages, and finally closes in a maritime grave in Bangladesh. The film is silent for its duration and the only information we're given are the images on screen but these images say so much about the staggering gap between the first world who can afford to have goods shipped over sea on consumable ships for them and the poor in the third world who scrounge beached ships for whatever they can find, or about the our ambition and ability to build such towering monstrosities as the ships in this film which make us look like ants by comparison and how in turn the oceans tower over these ships, or the loneliness of being out on the seas where the water streches for as far as your eyes can see and you sit there with the elements battering the ship for many long days as you travel to your destination.
The last honourable mention that I can directly connect to my exploration of a director's work this year is Vive l'amour, as I've watched a lot of Tsai Ming-liang's films this year and this most definitely stands up there with the best of his work. That's not the main reason it's on this list though. It's on this list principally because of its final scene which I would rank among the greatest scenes ever made and quite possibly the greatest scene I've seen for the first time this year. The film is about a lot of things but in particular just like many of Tsai's films it is largely about urban alienation, the struggle to communicate and the pervasive loneliness and isolation in the modern world. For the most part the film is very well handled, though up until it's ending I probably wouldn't have ranked it among his finest. Then the final scene comes. In it one of the three main characters goes to a park, sits down and bursts in to tears. We see her crying for over five minutes as the camera just sits there and watches. It's an absolutely heartbreaking expression of the pain that these characters are going through internally and in its simplicity has to rank among the most effective things I've seen. This excerpt from an interview perfectly summarises the frustration that caused this film's ending to be as it is and why the ending feels so potent and genuine:
"When I originally wrote the script, I wanted a ray of hope at the end. And so the original ending of the film was, after walking and walking and walking in the park, the woman decides that yes, she would like to extend her hand and ask for love. So she goes back to the apartment and waits for the sleeping man. That was the original ending. Then I waited for the new park to open in Taipei. And when it opened, I saw that it was the same as a few days before, nothing had changed. It was in no shape to open, but it opened. And with that disappointment in my heart, there was no way I could shoot the original ending. And so this is how the ending came about."
Placing Steamboat Bill Jr. on this list feels a bit odd. It's a wonderful film, definitely. It's wonderful in that way that many Buster Keaton films are wonderful, full of charm, humour and this sense of poetry in showing someone persevering against all obstacles in his path even if the odds are inevitably wildly not in his favour. So I enjoyed it very, very much, but nothing about the film itself makes it worthy of this list seeing as it has so much in common with the other great films from Buster Keaton. This film is on this list not just because I very much enjoyed it, but also due to the context under which I very enjoyed it: down in Bath in one of the gardens, sitting on a blanket watching a nighttime outdoors screening of this and One Week among an audience that seemed to be having just as good a time as I was. It was a lovely evening.
Last of all, possibly the film I most look forward to seeing again. Urszula Antoniak's Nothing Personal isn't among my very favourite films of the year, but I did love it quite a bit. The mood of the film is wonderful, you can feel it undulating and pulsating, but the film is also very charming and its look at solitude was something I could really connect with. The more I think about it though the more it grows on me and the more I have the urge to revisit it. I think I've become aware over the last several months about on quite how personal a level this films speaks to some parts of me.
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