The Films of the Decade

(As appeared in the Sunday Tribune, 27.12.09)

The lifting of Russell Crowe’s iron mask in Gladiator with the words: “My name is Maximus Desmus Meridius, Commander of the Army of the North…”; the exhilaration of the passengers charging the hijackers in United 93; Sacha Baron Cohen’s naked hotel wrestle in Borat; the rabid sneer on the lips of Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight; Daniel Day Lewis’ Daniel Plainview sucking on his metaphorical milkshake in There Will Be Blood; Maggie Cheung’s sensual, slow-motion sashay during In The Mood For Love; Paul Giamatti and Virginia Madsen’s conversation about pinot on the back porch in Sideways; Michael Fassbender and Liam Cunningham’s verbal volleying amid a halo of smoke in Hunger; Naomi Watts’ audition for a movie part that turns into a smouldering sex scene in Mulholland Drive; that grab-you-by-the throat moment in the swimming pool in Let The Right One In; that ending in Hidden; that beginning that was the ending in Memento; and that moment of sorrow on Tommy Lee Jones’ face in the last scene of No Country for Old Men.
The past decade is a trove of cinematic treasure. But how to choose its 50 best films from the thousands that graced the screens? For every list of 50 films, there is another list with an alternative 50 titles. There will be groaning and grumping. (Yes, Amelie is not on the list. Neither are any Bourne films, enjoyable as they are.) Everybody has their favourites. But to round up the best from a decade’s worth of movies requires something extra. These, then, are the films that raise the bar for filmmakers to come. These are the films that are the most beautiful and the most original, films that bristle with that exciting element of strangeness yet have the ability to connect deeply with audiences. These films speak volumes about who we are and the times we live in, yet will hold up and be watched by future generations, films you can watch again and again. So here are the top 10 films of the decade, in order only of year of production, followed by the next best 40...

Top 10 Greatest Films of the Decade

In the Mood for Love (Wong Kar-Wai, 2000)
One of the great unconsummated love stories in the movies. Wong Kar-Wai’s poetic masterpiece (photographed by Chris Doyle) takes a moment in time between two spurned lovers – Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung in Hong Kong in the 1960s – and fills it with an aching, mute sadness and the regret of missed opportunity. It shimmers beautifully on the screen, while Cheung and Leung look and behave the way real movie stars should but rarely do.

Together (Lukas Moodysson, 2000)
Bergman called him a “young master”. Lukas Moodysson has since gone wayward, but with Together, his second film, he hit a level of humanist filmmaking worthy almost of the great work of Jean Renoir. A touching, hilarious and life-affirming tale of a hippy commune in 1970s Sweden to the soundtrack of Abba, all of life is held within Moodysson’s expert yet tender grasp.

Mulholland Drive (David Lynch, 2001)
Film noir, fever dream, Hollywood homage and movie hedonism, David Lynch’s mellifluous mindbender shows a master of the cinematic medium at full power. It also contains one of the great performances of the decade – the then unknown Naomi Watts changing dramatic register as if she were in five different movies at once.

Far from Heaven (Todd Haynes, 2002)
This story about a 1950s housewife made something very modern of something very old – Haynes’ salutation to the 1950s melodramas of Sirk and Ophuls. Headily expressive with divine compositions and craft – this is a cineaste’s dream. It is also Julianne Moore’s finest moment on screen.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Michel Gondry, 2004)
A film that makes a symphony of the small moments in our lives. Gondry’s film overcomes its patent absurdity to make a genuinely moving statement about the way we can’t live with relationships yet can’t live without them. Unsentimental but deeply romantic, like all great movies it connects with you in the gut, on a level you just can’t quite explain.

Sideways (Alexander Payne, 2004)
This road movie about two wine-sloshed mid-life slackers is Payne’s finest moment: a satire full of gently observed detail and log-fire warmth. Payne hangs the flaws of his characters on screen like dirty laundry but makes us love them anyway. Sideways is not just one of the golden comedies of the decade and a great piece of compassionate filmmaking, it was also so influential, it put a cork in worldwide sales of Merlot.

Hidden (Caché) (Michael Haneke, 2005)
Daniel Auteuil lies down on his bed from the sheer weight of remorse and the rest of us could hardly move out of our seats such was our awe. Haneke packed arthouses with Hidden – a searing, slow-burning examination of historical and personal guilt and a whodunnit that leaves a vital piece of the puzzle deliberately missing.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel, 2007)
Breathtakingly sad, unsentimental and uplifting, Julian Schnabel’s transformational film about life and death has a spiritual charge that pulses through you, transporting you to the kind of height that leaves you exhilarated and appreciative for your own ordinary life. It is staggeringly inventive with a profound moral sense.

There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007)
Its greatness gnaws at you, long after you’ve seen it. Paul Thomas Anderson’s juggernaut is about oil and it is about America and it is one of the most cynical films about human nature ever made. It also added a great character to the film canon – Daniel Plainview, a perversely hilarious and monstrously amoral oilman unforgettably played by Daniel Day Lewis.

The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke, 2009)
With his second entry in the top 10, Austrian Michael Haneke is the pre-eminent European film master at work. The White Ribbon – his most beautiful, complex and dazzling film – is a work of psychological brilliance. With a previously unseen tenderness and a vice-like grip, Haneke explores the tyranny of religious purity and the origins of Nazism in a small town with novelistic detail.

The Next Best 40

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Ang Lee, 2000)
The martial arts movie is reborn. Ang Lee’s balletic Asian western fused magic realism with martial arts to form this electrifyingly romantic epic.

Memento (Christopher Nolan, 2000)
Christopher Nolan’s dazzling debut has a beginning that is the end and an end that is the beginning. Oh, how we struggled to put the pieces together.

Amores Perros (Alejandro González Iñárritu, 2000)
These three slices of life in modern-day Mexico City in Iñárritu’s powder-keg debut made the world sit up and take notice.

Gladiator (Ridley Scott, 2000)
Russell Crowe came, he saw and he conquered, while Ridley Scott reset the bar for what old-fashioned epics could do in the noughties – a strident swords-and-sandals swashbuckler.

Y Tu Mamá También (Alfonso Cuarón, 2001)
Cuarón’s vibrant road movie threw social commentary and eroticism into the mix and helped spur on the Mexican cinema revolution.

Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)
This exotic, exquisitely-drawn flight of fancy from Japanese animation maestro Miyazaki is both a masterpiece and a children’s favourite.

Donnie Darko (Richard Kelly, 2001)
It began as a sleeper hit but became a cult favourite. Kelly’s genre-bending, sci-fi puzzler found the perfect balance between revelation and restraint. It bent the space-time continuum and pleasingly warped our minds too.

The Lord of the Rings trilogy (Peter Jackson, 2001, 2003, 2005)
They said it couldn’t be done. But the three films were better, bolder and more beautiful than anyone could have imagined. It showed Peter Jackson running rings around other Hollywood directors.

Talk to Her (Pedro Almodóvar, 2002)
Almodovar had a glorious decade. This tale of obsession, loneliness and unexpected friendship shows the Spanish director at his most restrained yet poetic-passionate best.

Adaptation (Spike Jonze, 2002)
Screenwriter Charlie Kaufman sends up the movies with this post-modern skit on movie writing. Hilarious, irreverent and clever-clever.

City of God (Fernando Meirelles, 2002)
The danger, the heat, the bravado. And they were just kids. Brazil thrust itself upon the world with this flamboyant and flagrant gangster epic and the world lapped it up.

Russian Ark (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2002)
Russian master Sokurov did the unthinkable by shooting an entire film in one take – a 96-minute steadycam shot. The result is a ghostly, mysterious and captivating ride through 300 years of Russian culture.

Bowling for Columbine (Michael Moore, 2002)
If the cinema is clogged full of documentaries, then this is the film to blame: Michael Moore’s rifle blast to the face about gun culture in America. Who can forget that Charlton Heston interview?

Distant (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2002)
Ceylan’s films graft the poetic neo-realism of Abbas Kiarostami with the emotional isolation of Michelangelo Antonioni. This stirring, profound work examines a man entombed in his own isolation and depression. It also helped set the agenda for a new breed of Turkish filmmaking.

Lost in Translation (Sofia Coppola, 2003)
What did Bill Murray whisper into the ear of Scarlett Johansson? Does it matter? Coppola’s dreamy, sensual love story set in neon-lit Tokyo seized a moment of shared tenderness amidst cultural and relationship alienation.

American Splendor (Robert Pulcini & Shari Springer Berman, 2003)
Live action and comic-book art mingle in this hilarious and highly innovative biopic about blue-collar cartoonist Harvey Pekar.

Oldboy (Chan-wook Park, 2003)
Chan-wook Park fuses madness and mayhem with the operatic and the baroque to produce this ultra-stylish revenge fantasy – the pinnacle of the burgeoning Korean film movement.

Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, 2004)
Classical Hollywood storytelling at its best. But the real champion was Eastwood who, despite being in his 70s, produced knock-out film after knock-out film throughout the decade.

A History of Violence (David Cronenberg, 2005)
Cronenberg takes a family revenge drama, injects it with hints of perversion and explosive violence, and scrapes the veneer off civilization to poke underneath at our more unsavoury evolutionary instincts.

Grizzly Man (Werner Herzog, 2005)
Herzog sculpts found footage from Timothy Treadwell – a foolish, monkish outcast who lived with grizzly bears in Alaska only to be eaten by them – into a masterly documentary about his classic theme, that fine line between witless man and indifferent nature.

Old Joy (Kelly Reichardt, 2005)
A poignant film about a broken friendship. The film’s static camera captures time like vital moments being lost forever. It then hinges into a moment of transcendence. Hypnotic and profound.

Brokeback Mountain (Ang Lee, 2005)
Ennis del Mar puts his hand on the empty shirt of Jack Twist and audiences gasped. Ang Lee’s groundbreaking film – a tragic story of love and loss between two gay cowboys – was delicately handled yet had the power to smash through a near-century of Hollywood prejudice.

United 93 (Paul Greengrass, 2006)
Paul Greengrass addressed the demons of 9/11 head-on by putting us inside that ‘fourth plane’. His breathtaking simulator-style cinema left out sensationalism and sentimentality right until that last harrowing blackout.

Syndromes and a Century (Weerasethakul Apichatpong, 2006)
Mysterious, beautiful, hypnotic, and utterly unique, a beguiling hybrid of installation art and Lynchian strangeness.

Pan’s Labyrinth (Guillermo del Toro, 2006)
Guillermo del Toro’s anti-fascist parable exorcises Spanish civil war ghosts and blends brutal reality with fairytale fantasy in a marvellous and moving way.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (Larry Charles, 2006)
Sasha Baron Cohen as the mustachioed, fizzy-haired Borat takes shock comedy to new heights, dismantles political correctness, and lampoons shallow seriousness. The funniest film of the decade.

The Lives of Others (Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006)
A beautiful, haunting picture about a nation under surveillance and the final, crumbling years behind the German iron curtain – a clambering frenzy of paranoia and forced treachery.

Knocked Up (Judd Apatow, 2007)
A high-voltage screwball, but Knocked Up transcends its comedy to become an affecting story in which the slacker generation finally grows up. It also unleashed the Apatow comedic genre on the world.

No Country for Old Men (Joel and Ethan Coen, 2007)
The Coen Brothers refashion Cormac McCarthy’s flinty, spare prose into images of spiritual simplicity – a serio-comic neo-western that is a lament for modern times. Beautifully shot, acted and edited, it is the Coens’ masterpiece.

4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu, 2007)
The pinnacle of the Romanian new wave, Cristian Mungiu’s film is a harrowing drama about totalitarianism and a stunning thriller about one student’s plight while trying to help her roommate get an abortion.

Couscous (Abdel Kechiche, 2007)
Abdel Kechiche invisibly and very beautifully knits a complex social portrait of a French-Tunisian community – a stunning reimagining of neo-realism.
I’m Not There (Todd Haynes, 2007)
Bob Dylan turns eclectic. This biopic is a unique response to the problem of pinning down a man who refuses to be pinned – a cinematical tour-de-force that explores the many faces of Dylan.

Paranoid Park (Gus Van Sant, 2007)
What’s the matter with kids today? Van Sant empathises with troubled teens in this lo-fi experiment about the affectlessness of youth. It almost climbs inside the mind of its teenage protagonist such is its subjective, dreamy, disconnected camera work.

WALL-E (Andrew Stanton, 2008)
A masterwork of visual, almost silent, poetry and a gentle love story between two robots set on earth and in space. And it does all this within the constraints of the family movie. The Citizen Kane of animation.

The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2007)
“This town deserves a better class of criminal,” says Heath Ledger’s The Joker. He did just that, while Christopher Nolan took the superhero movie to untrammeled new heights.

Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)
This Swedish vampire chiller leaves Hollywood for dead. A coming-of-age story told with the kind of atmosphere that ices your breath. The great horror film of the decade.

Hunger (Steve McQueen, 2008)
Michael Fassbender is unforgettable as Bobby Sands. A work of stunning originality and dazzling cinematic expression. A visceral thump to the senses.

Il Divo (Paolo Sorrentino, 2008)
A political biopic that spills hot all over the screen with a flaming, bravura audacity. Imagine Tarantino and Fellini listening to techno.

The Class (Laurent Cantet, 2008)
Cantet’s film about a Parisian classroom poses major questions about multi-culturalism. It’s so naturalistic, you could be watching a documentary. Neo-realism evolving into extreme-realism.

Slumdog Millionaire (Danny Boyle, 2009)
Danny Boyle’s Bombay mix. An exhilarating epic and a triumphant, swooning fantasy about the rise of a slum kid in Calcutta, it juggles a handful of genres into something unique.

Close but no cigar...

Downfall (Oliver Hirschbiegel), Inland Empire (David Lynch), The Death of Mr Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu), Still Life (Jia ZangKe), Gosford Park (Robert Altman).