A Few Decent Films

On a quiet night I pause to consider a few of the year's most celebrated films. Among my favorites are

The Two Popes. Once again, Anthony Hopkins plays a somewhat dastardly individual—Pope Benedict—but at lease he doesn't eat anybody. And Jonathan Pryce, as the soon-to-be Pope Francis, stands as a perfect foil to Benedict's world-weary nihilism. Excellent settings and dialog throughout.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. The most emotional film of the year focuses not on Mr. Rogers but on the man who has been assigned to interview him. The interactions, once again, are choice.

The Wild Pear Tree. My favorite film of the year, this Turkish gem runs to more than three hours but the pacing is exquisite, and at no point did I find myself thinking, I wonder when this will be over. The film recounts the life of a young man names Sinan, fresh out of college, who returns from the city to the small town where he was raised. He plans to be a teacher though he hasn’t yet taken the exam. He’s also written a book and has high hopes of arranging to get it published. Trouble is, the book is a fictionalize memoir of his adolescence, and it paints an unflattering picture of his relatives, neighbors, and friends.

He chats at length with the mayor, who declines to help him, though if it had been a tourist guide he would have had no difficulty providing a subsidy. The mayor sends him to the man who runs the local gravel pit. Another lengthy and futile conversation ensues. Back in the city to take his exam, Sinan runs into a locally famous author in a bookstore and corners the poor man for quite a while to discuss his manuscript, the current state of literature, and so on.

Interspersed with these lengthy but discordant and futile exchanges are encounters involving Sinan's old high school flame, two imams stealing apples from a tree, and Sinan’s own parents. His home life has long since come unglued thanks to his good-natured father’s gambling addiction, and he often visits his grandparents on their rustic farm in the hills near town.

Director Nuri Bilge Ceylan is one of the world's heavyweights. He won the Palme 'd Or at Cannes a few years ago, and his recent film Once Upon a Time in Anatolia was dark but stunning. Here he has given us a complete multi-generational package. Call it art. Call it life.

Little Women. The time shifts are confusing, and those who know the book well (I don't) might quibble with aspects of the screenplay, but director Greta Gerwig succeeds in animating almost every frame of this film with razzmatazz energy and emotion.

Parasite. Often humorous and filled with unexpected twists, there is never a dull moment in this zany film, though it never gives us a good reason to care about the protagonists, a family of clever near-do-wells who ingratiate themselves with  a wealthy household while dutiful, long-term employees get cast aside without a qualm. To assuage those pangs of conscience, try Shoplifters, a  recent Japanese film with similar class-consciousness.

Knives Out. Daniel Craig's Southern accent takes some getting used to, but this is otherwise an engaging whodunit.

Before the Frost. This Danish film set in the mid-nineteenth century, focuses on a farm family that’s struggling to keep food on the table. In the opening scene, Jens, the old man, sells a cow he can ill afford to lose to support his lovely but malnourished daughter and the two nephews he’s raising now that his sister has died. Soon afterward a wealthy Swedish farmer who’s moved south to be with his mother in her old age offers to buy a patch of Jens’s land—land that Jens needs to grow fodder for his two remaining cows. These are desperate and dreary times, but Jens finally works out a deal, giving up his entire farm along with its livestock, in exchange for a pension. After all, the farm is insured, so if it burns down ... ? There is one condition: the Swede will have to marry his daughter.

It’s a nightmare scenario—Jens and his daughter don’t fit in amid these sophisticated foreigners, not to mention the two nephews—but the situation unravels with stunning artistry, with new and ever more grim moral quandaries at every turn of the path.

The Farewell. This Asian family drama isn't red-hot, but it's plenty of fun, as various relatives gather to say goodbye to the family matriarch before she succumbs to the illness that no one has told her about.

Less interesting were—

Marriage Story. This well-made but inconclusive film left me with no one to root for or admire. It's much shorter and slicker than Ingmar Bergman's landmark Scenes from a Marriage, which is a plus. But I preferred Chef. Or why not Noah Birnbaum's excellent previous effort, The Meyerowitz Stories.

The Irishman. Why should we care about a man who steals thousands of dollars of merchandise from his employers without a qualm before we've even gotten to know him? I turned it off before the jerk did anything really disturbing.