While Jia Zhangke grounds Unknown Pleasures in a grim reality dominated by derelict architecture and television sets, his young adult characters try to find some comfort in the philosophy to “do what feels good”, even if these ancient words are little more than a despairing assertion of meek independence in the face of a constrained, globalised Chinese culture.
One woman’s quest to determine the source of a mysterious sonic boom only she can hear is rendered through effervescent soundscapes and long, static shots in Memoria, as Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s enigmatic, magical realist style lifts us away from the progress and constructions of the material world and drops us into an enigmatic, serene sea of memory.
Whenever some force of political cynicism comes along to threaten the sweet innocence of Monsieur Hulot’s Holiday, Jacques Tati may bite back with good humour, but his focus never strays from the sweet, childlike love of beaches, dress-up parties, ice cream, fire crackers, and summer vacations, effectively turning his film into the cinematic equivalent of a postcard.
Casting aside those moments where Chloe Zhao gives up her artistic voice to the will of Marvel Studios, Eternals may be the franchise’s most narratively and stylistically ambitious film yet, constructing entire civilisations from the sorts of natural landscapes and golden hour lighting that the Oscar-winning director has well and truly mastered capturing.
Even though comparisons might be drawn between Instagram aesthetics and Mommy’s poppy style, Xavier Dolan’s film is far more artistically rich than anything one might find scrolling through social media feeds, as he finds both profound joy and grief in the strained relationship between a mother and son who can’t quite attain the long-lasting happiness they once believed was possible.
The strength of Wes Craven’s fresh approach to horror filmmaking in A Nightmare on Elm Street still stands almost forty years later, playing into the genre’s conventional corruption of innocence by directly attacking deeper, more vulnerable areas of the human subconscious than so many other films before or after its time.
It takes a director as known for his sophisticated “touch” as Ernst Lubitsch to smoothly integrate Greta Garbo’s brilliantly blunt deadpan into such an elegantly blossoming romance, thereby creating one of the great comedic characters of the 1930s in Ninotchka.
Medieval English folklore finds fresh life in The Green Knight as David Lowery relishes the poetic fantasy and dreamlike imagery of this enchanting setting, and very gradually surrenders Sir Gawain’s mystical quest for glory to the creeping power of time, nature, and mortality.
Where one might expect to find an intelligent, sharply-dressed detective at the centre of this neo-noir, the Coen Brothers instead give us the opposite – a bearded man dressed in sandals, baggy shorts, and a robe, stuck in the hippie movement that has long since grown out of fashion. In the world of The Big Lebowski where few people can be trusted, the Dude’s carefree lifestyle is the only constant which we can depend upon.
The partnership of Gilbert & Sullivan becomes a rich historical canvas upon which Mike Leigh grafts reflections of his own creative processes in Topsy-Turvy, and yet in its gloriously lavish interiors and the depth of the ensemble’s great talents, it also becomes an ode to those artists who can put aside their egos to share in the joy of artistic collaboration.
