The Magic Lantern Shines Brighter Still

 

With trembling hand this optimistic blogger returns after over a year of silence with the hope that there’s still a reader out there willing to take a chance on me again. 

 We act as if we didn’t believe the history of this injured world because with such sweet naiveté we think we can’t repeat what was. Racism? Fascism? Deadly pandemic that kills millions around the world? Nah. Things of the past. Lesson learned: they are very much not. During the time since my post about End Game, we not only lived through even darker moments than I wrote back then in this fragile democracy which is the United States of America, but we also confronted and confront a pandemic, which only in the U.S. and on the date I write this post has infected more than 27 million Americans and killed more than 460,000. Worldwide, 2.35 million people have died from COVID-19.

 I think a more conclusive rationale for my extended silence is hard to find.

 

Anya Taylor-Joy in Emma

I saw great movies during my intermission! More than ever I am cemented in my conviction that I survive whatever troubled times I face through this beautiful art that is film. The last time I went to a movie theater was March 6, 2020. It was to see Autum de Wilde’s Emma which, as the fan I am of movies based on Jane Austen novels, I enjoyed and recommend above all for its gorgeous photography, set and costume design. I miss the theater experience more than I can convey, and lament the toll the pandemic has taken on theaters, which even makes their sustainability uncertain. However, I subscribed to the many at-home movie viewing options and it was more soothing than ever to watch good and even great films. There were even movie history-in-the-making moments where I out right jumped for joy in celebration, such as when Bong Joon-ho’s masterpiece Parasite won multiple Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

 I could write post after post about the movies I saw in 2019 and 2020, but we’ll never catch up that way so I’ll just skate through my favorites, highlighting what I liked most. (Parasite certainly tops them all).

 

Jimmie Fails, Johnathan Major and Danny Glover in The Last Black Man in San Francisco

The movies seemed to absorb the complexity of the times and incrementally got better as 2019 ticked into the bizarre year that was 2020. Joe Talbot’s refreshingly creative direction in The Last Black Man in San Francisco was the treasure to see in 2019; a movie that says so much about race relations in America in such a profound and rather poetic fashion (it even has a Greek chorus-like group of young black men!). Jordan Peele’s US gave us the horror genre approach on race; good but I still much prefer his so-far grand opus Get Out. Some movies were gems for their acting. The unembellished alienation so majestically brought to screen by Joaquin Phoenix stood out in Joker, Todd Phillip’s psychological thriller which was part comic book backstory and part social inequality protest film. And there were other, less art house films, but still quite enjoyable ones such as the whodunit Knives Out in the mystery comedy genre, directed by Rian Johnson. And, of course, for the Marvel fan that I am, Spiderman: Far From Home more than satisfied.

 With all the good things that can be said about the films released in 2019, 2020 was really the great movie year. Maybe because of the surreal times we’ve been living, maybe because there’s a whole new generation of filmmakers out there being more creative than ever, 2020 has been a year full of excitingly good movies, and that’s that I’ve yet to see some of the critic’s favorites soon to be released, such as Lee Isaac Chung’s Minari, Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland, Shaka King’s Judas and the Black Messiah, Florian Zeller’s The Father, out this month.

 

Dennis Bovell and Saffron Coomber in Lovers Rock

Among the wonderful movies I have seen, Steve McQueen’s anthology, made up of five movies released on Prime under the series name Small Axe, include my favorites: Lovers Rock and Mangrove. Even though Mangrove, along with Red White and Blue, Alex Wheatle and Education, are London based and present the real-life experiences of black immigrants terrorized by racism in London’s West Indian community, in the year of the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in America, these films are most certainly part of the global call for change and the movement that is Black Lives Matter! McQueen, who directed the Academy Award Best Picture 12 Years a Slave (2013), is a master at presenting the infamy of racism and the urgent need to end this scourge.

 Eliza Hittman’s movie Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always does something similar for the issue of women’s rights, our bodies and the situations we are forced to face, in the most subtle, simple yet profound way ever. It is also a beautiful movie about the solidarity among women. A gem of a movie.

 

Daniel García in Ya No Estoy Aquí

Two movies from Latin America touch on the force of community in confronting strong issues of poverty and inequality, Fernando Fria’s Ya No Estoy Aqui (I Am No Longer Here), from Mexico, and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Bacurau, from Brazil. Latin American is not only growing its film industry substantially but presenting the world with fresh styles that reflect the very broad cultural spectrum that exists in our countries, which defy how we’re many times treated as if we had a single, monolithically homogeneous culture.  Another foreign language film which, while less  dramatic than the two mentioned, also looks into a most curious aspect of a culture, this time in Denmark, is Thomas Vinterberg’s Another Round, with the always fabulous (I’m a fan) Mads Mikkelsen.

 

Dick Johnson in Dick Johnson is Dead

I’m realizing I’ll lose the reader if I make this post too much longer, but I can’t leave it without mentioning the documentaries in 2020. I confess that I’ve not been as into documentaries as I should have been (in books I also prefer fiction) but this may change after this year in which some of the best movies I’ve seen have been documentaries. Dick Johnson is Dead by Dick Johnson’s daughter Kirsten Johnson, is probably one of the best movies about the love between a parent and a child that I’ve seen, the making of the movie itself is a testament to this. David Byrne’s American Utopia by Spike Lee is an energizing, hopeful, fun and great movie for progressive music loving fans, whether you are a Talking Heads fan or not.  There are others, including some I’ve yet to see, which are the social commentary documentaries, some hard to watch but amazing as films and testaments to the craziness of our lives and world: Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution by Nicole Newham and Jim LeBrecth, All In: The Fight for Democracy by Lisa Cortés and Liz Garbus, City Hall by Frederick Wiseman, Mayor by David Osit, The Social Dilemma by Jeff Orloski. 

 

Spike Lee's American Utopia

Something big happened starting the elections of November 2020, cemented by Georgia’s Senate runoff election in January this year: millions of people in the United States said ENOUGH! We voted to get off the dark road on which the country was travelling, which affected the whole world. Many millions of Americans said that we want to live in the 21^st Century and we want it to be a century of inclusion, of diversity, of science, respect, human dignity, and kindness. We want to live in a world that needs to come together to face this and any other pandemic that arises, to face the existential threat that is inequality, climate change, or any other menace that impacts human beings negatively. This big change in the direction of the country has helped me take up the pen again and share with the reader my love of film. I thank the artists that make movies for keeping the magic lantern shining, for keeping me going during those darkest of times, which I am hopeful we will all be determined to leave behind for good. Lessons learned.