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Woodend's Year in Film

This screwy world is slow to change. Movieland isn't much better. Our critic reflects.

Dorothy Woodend 11 Jan 2014TheTyee.ca

Dorothy Woodend writes about film every other week for The Tyee. Find her previous articles here.

As old Karl Marx once wrote, "All that is solid melts into air." This can be taken a few ways at the moment. While large sections of Eastern Canada are frozen solid, on the other side of the planet record-breaking heat clobbers Australia. Things change, that is one thing you can be certain of. How much they change is something else.

This was especially evident in the world of film this past year, where the more things changed, the more they stayed the same, it seems. The most recent crop of world-beater films, currently in contention for the big prizes, bear some notable similarities to last year's contenders.

"Awards Season," as it is now known, will consume media pundits and betting folks for the next two months. Even now, film critic associations in every town, village and hamlet have made their top 10 lists, assigned the winners and the losers, organized ceremonies, bitched and bandied and drank themselves legless.

There have been some interesting moments, of late.

In New York, a minor scandal broke out when Steve McQueen was heckled by critic Armond White. The ensuing damage control was one of the more entertaining things to happen in critics' awards lately, but it also had the unfortunate consequence of overshadowing Harry Belafonte's lovely speech.

Even more good stuff occurred in the National Board of Review Awards, where Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson threw down the feminist gloves.

I'm sure that the Oscar Wieners, the Golden Globules and the Wiener's Choice Awards aren't that much different from other critics' awards. The scale might be different, but there are technical mishaps, teleprompters go berserk and spell everything in Uzbek and people occasionally lose their shit. That's okay. Actually, it's when the system breaks down that things get interesting. It's through the cracks that the light gets in. Tell that to Michael Bay, of course, and you might get punched in the face. But still, I like it when things get fucked up -- a certain anarchic joy comes to impish capering life.

The year had its fair share of unholy real-life fuck-ups, which is a useful reminder that all of the larger institutions of society were founded by fallible little humans. Trains derailed, buildings collapsed and the U.S. government was held for ransom a good portion of time. Sometimes it's amazing that things still largely hold together. Until, of course, they don't.

Leaving aside the many looming real disasters, let's return to the film world for a moment, where people go on squabbling and snarling over whether Jared Leto or Bradley Cooper should win Best Supporting Actor. Forgoing the innate questionability of awards in the first place, there is so much jabber about films you might begin to believe that some of it matters -- not just the phallic-shaped awards, but the endless parade of lists, reams of articles on the state of current of cinema ("it was the best of times, it was the worst of times"), and plot recaps. How many warring opinions can one read before screaming "Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!" as loudly as possible? I haven't quite reached that point yet, but I'm definitely in the neighbourhood. Nevertheless, it's a useful time to stop, gulp some air and take stock of the year that just ended.

Winners, losers, wieners

As a film festival programmer, I cannot talk about some of the more interesting films I saw this year. But suffice to say, documentary continues to amaze and astound. There was plenty to be happy about in narrative film, as well. This year's crop of award contenders is a damn sight better than last year, and for that one must be grateful.

Other good stuff happened for films fans in 2013, too.

Amazon Instant Video and Netflix shifted the paradigm. There is no going back, I'm afraid. It's just too easy to see as many things as you can handle, and the bevy of choices is vast. I'm old enough to still be amazed at the ease of access, but the kids take it entirely for granted. The curious thing is what they gravitate to. My son Louis has seemingly developed an obsession with James Garner and The Rockford Files (available on Netflix), so maybe this isn't such a bad thing.

But now the bad news.

Some things appear not to have budged very much. Last year at this time, we were talking about race and the peculiar institution of slavery with the release of Tarantino's Django Unchained, as well as Leonard DiCaprio's loathsome portrayal of a southern white plantation owner. This year, Leo is still playing scummy rich dudes (in fact, that seems to be about all he plays lately), and slavery appears to be still much on the mind of people, if the Screen Actors Guild Awards nominations are any indication. Both 12 Years a Slave and The Butler feature prominently on the lists.

Race is an issue in our culture, even more so than last year. The passing of Nelson Mandela was received like a cartoon canonization, with media types willfully un-remembering the man's history as a genuine radical. Black boys continue to be gunned down with impunity, and the old white dudes remain little interested in divesting themselves of one ounce of the money and power they've accrued.

It was also not a great year for women, in real life or the movies.

The position of women in the film industry was grim last year, and appears even grimmer now. Of the top-grossing films of the year, men directed 49.5 of the top 50. So yep, not a whole lot's changed for the better, sisters! It was deeply depressing to look at films in the theatre and know that there was little there for women. For the most part, it was wall-to-wall stories for boys -- Anchorman 2, The Wolf of Wall Street, or earlier releases like Man of Steel, The Hangover Part III, The Wolverine, Iron Man 3, Thor 2, The Great Gatsby, etc.

Certainly, there were some good parts for women (Katniss Everdeen nocked a few arrows, and Sandra Bullock tumbled ass over teakettle through space), but few women took up positions of genuine power. A few more raised middle fingers, a la Melissa McCarthy in The Heat, which might make women feel a bit better.

End of worlds, innocence, decent indie flicks

Permit me a few more observations, if you will.

This past year, there were many moments that made me wonder whether the human species really deserved to keep on its murderous campaign to eat and destroy everything. The number of films that charted the end of the world was kind of extraordinary. We discovered new and interesting ways of annihilating the population of the planet, from Sharknado to Zombie smorgasbords (World War Z). Subsequent to the Earth being devoured came the idea of a new world. After Earth, Elysium and Oblivion all featured manly dudes -- Will Smith, Tom Cruise and Matt Damon -- fighting for survival. Conspiracy theorists are already yakking up the idea of rich humans decamping for a new planet, so perhaps we're being inured to the idea.

The corruption of children continued unabated. No-pants Miley may have been at the centre of the firestorm, but the theme of innocence undone was everywhere, from Spring Breakers to Bad Grandpa. There are still more films rolling out that concern adults behaving like children, and children aping adults. The general coarsening of the culture just kept on rolling, and no one appeared all that worried about it.

But the kids are fighting back. Some of my favourite films concerned the innate defiance of children, despite all the efforts of parents, teachers and authorities of all stripes to break their spirits. One film I found especially heartening concerned the exploits of the most defiant kid I have ever seen on camera. In Shen Jie's film, Little Proletarian, a Chinese teenager gets beaten by her father (with a chair) and never backs down. Tough-nut kids are popping up all over the globe, in Syria, Iran and China, but not so much in indie films.

The limpness of indie fare, from Drinking Buddies to Short Term 12 to The Kings of Summer, was curious. Every film seemed to feature a scene with a girl riding a bicycle through darkened streets, wondering about the nature of relationships. These aren't terrible films individually, but viewed collectively there is something missing, some key bit of energy or spark that makes some of it matter. Add to this a certain level of self-satisfaction, perhaps even narcissism. I'm not exactly sure what to call it, but it all makes for singularly dismal cinema. Manohla Dargis sums it all up in a recent piece about the explosion of indies in the New York Times.

'Wolf', too ridic to hate

After too many tepid moments of film watching, one starts to yearn for some instances of genuine hatred. True hate is a little like true love; it sparks the same sense of losing control. Emotions rise up and overtake the rational mind. Reason goes leaping out the window. It happens by accident. You enter the theatre, a wide-eyed, trusting soul looking for some measure of entertainment. You come out the other end a crazed lunatic, with sharpened teeth and a desire to eviscerate.

There weren't too many films that occasioned real loathing this past year. Most were simply too sad, too 'ridic' as the kids say, to warrant much more than a gently-farted raspberry. I hate to say it, but a fair number of these were Canadian films. I'm sorry, but it's true.

Even a film as divisive as The Wolf of Wall Street, which separated critical opinion into two armed camps -- let's call them the Penii versus the Vaginites, for clarity's sake -- seemed a little forced. The argument over whether the film implicitly sanctioned Wall Street debauchery, or even more obliquely critiqued it, matters not -- although the fact that the film has found favour with moneymen who howl along as Jordan Belfort, the film's crooked banker lead, struts and frets like an Iron John wilderness seminar, should say something.

I will say one more thing about Wolf. In the last section of the film, a reformed Belfort is depicted offering sales seminars to doltish Kiwis in New Zealand. The real-life Jordan Belfort introduces his movie star stand-in Leonardo DiCaprio, who strides onto the stage, willowy and golden, with only the faintest pucker beneath his eyes to indicate some accumulated age and distance from the sordid events of his past. Call it the triumph of the real over art, or maybe reality has the last laugh. In that split section of action, the genuine Belfort's shit-eating grin virtually screams, "I will lick your everything; I just want some of that glamour to rub off." But who's conning whom, the sleazy scammer or the actor? Which one is which again?

DiCaprio had been nursing the project for years, and Wolf was his chance to bring it to life. Naturally, he goes full-tilt boogie, breaking out all the thespian flourishes and full-throated pyrotechnics. Certainly, it is something to behold, but so what? The void at the centre of the story will not be budged. It is hard to care about Belfort's life falling to pieces when he is so loathsome from beginning to end. We watch his downfall with all the emotion of seeing a bug get squashed.

Despite Wolf director Martin Scorsese's (oddly timed) open letter to his teenage daughter about the glory of cinema, a missive in which he cannot seem to think of a single female filmmaker that might inspire a young girl, the film will find a home -- a slot alongside Scarface and The Big Lebowski in the basements of the nation, where zitty boys can pop a chubby (to resurrect an '80s phrase) over the antics of Wall Street dickheads.

Class war, 2013 style

After that mega-meta-badness, sometimes plain old junk has a certain sweetness to it. For everyone who thought James Franco was a modern day Renaissance dude, I offer up Homefront. I had no intention of seeing this film. It was one of those, "I dunno... what do you want to see?" "Well, this one has James Franco in it."

Penned by Sly Stallone, it features the talents of Jason ("Give the Man a Lozenge") Statham, Winona Ryder and our man Franco, who wanders in sad of eye and sapped of energy. The dude is about as limp as an old dishrag. He probably smells like one too. If you watched the trailer, you've essentially seen the film, but you missed the nuances -- the particular flavour of the thing, like Kraft Dinner and meth. The film is chock full of howlingly bad dialogue and Franco's villainous Southern drug lord, who ambles about, shoots his sister and is undone by a feisty tween. When he gets socked in the gut by Statham and folds in half like a puppet with its strings cut, you feel kinda sorry for the little fella.

Homefront will slink away, collect its few shekels and end up sleeping on a piece of cardboard over a grate. But it is most interesting for its note-by-note depiction of poor folks as largely criminal and amoral. Viewed alongside films about rich folks, it provides an interesting counterpoint to the war on poverty debate that grips the U.S. at the moment.

And so we come back to Marx, who wrote, "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." Films may come and go, but class war is forever, it seems.

For a while now, I've felt like something is about to shift in our culture -- that we've reached some fatalist point when people will begin to stand in front of tanks, or blow up pipelines, or even take a hatchet to Stephen Harper's glossy plastic hair. Wishful thinking, maybe, since most evolution happens in slow increments. Sudden lurching change is rare.

But maybe the circle has come back around again, and it is time that we melt into air.  [Tyee]

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