The co-directors travel across rural France, interviewing farmers and townsfolk about their neighbors, family, and personal lives. And with Faces Places, Varda goes one step further with help from the visual artist JR, who specializes in putting up large-scale photo-portraits of people, animals, and objects on buildings and large-scale vehicles, like how billboards are put up. Decades ago, she traced the quotidian lives of the shop owners and tradesman on her street in the tremendously influential Daguerreotypes, and The Gleaners and I, her 2001 ode to those who live off the discarded food of others in France, highlighted the usefulness of what becomes food waste in helping working-class people and the poor survive. While watching mother! for the first time, the feeling is of panic, terror, unease, and disbelief, and it's utterly spellbinding in its outlandishness.Īgnes Varda has always had a soft spot for workers. That’s not what’s memorable in the moment though. He uses close-ups to stirring effect but also allows long shots, dim lighting, and his hand-held aesthetic to convey near-constant uncertainty.
For his part, Aronofsky creates a dazzling, scary, and beguiling tapestry out of a singular setting.
Lawrence, playing an unnamed wife of an unnamed author ( Javier Bardem) whose life becomes a living hell when a stranger ( Ed Harris) arrives at their bucolic country home, goes all in on a treacherous performance and comes out thoroughly on top, seemingly unaffected by the risks of looking absurd or making light of her profession. It’s also a rather lacerating study of the director-actress relationship, compounded by the fact that the film’s director, Darren Aronofsky, and star, Jennifer Lawrence, were in a relationship around the time the film was being made. One of the best films ever made about stardom, specifically when that star happens to be a woman.
Four movies into what I hope is a very lengthy and prolific career, Lowery has already assured himself a place in film history with this miraculous movie, even if all of his and our work may not live long after Amidst the ghost’s cosmic travels, he finds a house party where a grizzly middle-aged man ( Will Oldham) gives a rousing and hypnotic speech about the end times, suggesting that after the sun goes supernova, even if we’ve found another planet to inhabit and are able to save all our information from destruction, inevitably not only you but humankind will be forgotten. Rather than focus on his ability to scare solely, Lowery, who also wrote the movie, plays with concepts of time, loss, and the liberating certainty of not just one’s death but of the death of Earth on the whole.
There is a similar wonder to this, his fourth feature, in which Casey Affleck’s distant yet caring musician and husband to Rooney Mara’s homekeeper becomes a ghost who haunts his home as life rapidly goes on around him. 11Īn inexplicable and essential experience from David Lowery, who clearly didn’t lower his ambitions after working with Disney on his wonderful remake of Pete’s Dragon. Emerging from Wiseman’s three-hour-plus film, I felt rejuvenated and realigned, stunned and fully aware of what could be if the government was run by dedicated, fairly paid individuals with stake in the country rather than a legion of white old men looking to one-up each other and let children die for money.Īs you may have picked up, the feeling I had after Ex Libris didn’t keep me warm into the winter, but the importance of ideas and emotional insight that the very best movies offer was never more clear than it was this year. In detailing the life of New York’s legendary library system, and those who utilize the myriad locations or use the space for lectures, interviews, and classes, Wiseman ingeniously highlighted the vast ocean of opportunities and knowledge that can be gained through state and governmental projects, while also studying how such a intricate institute functions day in and day out. Another documentary, Frederick Wiseman’s majestic Ex Libris, more directly confronted and rebuked Trump’s baseless attacks on government institutions and the good of public works.
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