The Asphalt Jungle

The Best of the Decade - #9

March 6th, 2010 by Raj Ranade

Genre filmmaking with heart and soul.

Raj:

Children of Men (dir. by Alfonso Cuaron): When I look back on the first decade of this new century, the film that reminds me most of just how it felt to live through the worst of these troubled times is “Children of Men”.  Alfonso Cuaron’s sci-fi thriller creates a world that is a fever dream of the global concerns that haunted our nightmares over the past ten years: bombs explode in cafes every morning as people go to work, zealous evangelists self-flagellate on every street corner, and Iraq and Guantanamo have seemingly moved inexorably from faraway locales towards your local neighborhood. Our political affairs are here in microcosm, and things, needless to say, look bleak.

Of course, the genius of “Children of Men” was that all of this is expressed through subtle cinematic technique instead of through plot – here is the rare film where the production design says just as much as the story. In the foreground, Alfonso Cuaron gives us a frightening sci-fi parable filmed with some of the most overtly virtuosic direction of the decade. The journey of Cuaron’s protagonists to save the only pregnant woman in a world where all other women have become infertile is told using awe-inspiring long takes like a seemingly-impossible continuous shot within a vehicle during a claustrophobic car chase. The continuous long shot of the battle towards the end is also quite possibly one of the most effective depictions of war ever filmed (detractors say these long shots take them out of the movie, but I’ve always felt they fit in perfectly with the real-world-extended aesthetic of the film).

For all the filmmaking mastery on display, though, this is a work of art with true soul. Like “Southland Tales”, “Children of Men” is ultimately a plea for sanity and rationality in a world consumed by political radicalism. Our hero Theo (Clive Owen in a career-best performance) is initially apolitical and apathetic, but he sheds that latter characteristic while hanging on to the former, becoming a moral man of action to protect his charge, and only resorting to violence once when absolutely necessary. Personal ethics and responsibility trump any political concern in “Children of Men”, which is the kind of resonant point that will last long after the point when the film’s terrifying allusions (hopefully) seem quaint.

Fareed:

Pusher II: Blood on my Hands and Pusher III: Angel of Death (dir. by Nicolas Winding Refn): Director Nicolas Winding Refn burst on to the international filmmaking scene with “Pusher.” His debut provided a memorable vision of the underworld in mid-nineties Copehagen. Refn brought every classic genre element, from dealers to crime lords, all together into a world brimming with suspense. It was a perfect gangster film that identified Refn as a master of his craft. Following a failure in Hollywood, Refn returned to the series that made him famous to create two of the most astonishing, relentless films of the decade that explode past the genre roots of the series. The viciously molds the gangster genre into something horrifically new.

The narrative focus of the films reveals Refn’s ambitions to alter the series and its conventional gangland world. “Pusher II” centers on a thug whose brio masks an inferiority complex.  His criminal existence is one of un-ending disgrace as even prostitutes laugh at his inability to perform.  No glory lies in this underworld, only repulsion. Mads Mikkelsen brilliantly lends the brute a quite rage that drives Refn’s poignant study on how humiliation breeds hatred. “Pusher III” takes a different approach, breaking down the terrifying aura that surrounded the crime lord Milo of the first entry. So deftly, Refn turns a simple tale of a father planning his daughter’s birthday into a terrifying chronicle of an aging man forced to confront the emptiness of his life.

The anthem of the entire trilogy is a sudden burst of white noise.  Every time the aural cue fills the soundtrack, the film signals that a decision will be made that will drag the protagonists further towards physical or psychological despair.  A telling moment in “Pusher III” occurs when Milo seems ever closer to the verge of losing his last remnant of control. The familiar white noise suddenly disrupts the scene. When the noise repeats, it becomes clear that the sound emanates diagetically from a door bell – the anthem of doom has bled into the depicted city! This ingenious moment testifies to how successfully Refn fashions his Copenhagen into a hellish sphere that reflects the ever-more rotten interior of its inhabitants. If the 1st “Pusher” was Refn’s calling card as a master craftsmen, his two follow up features heralded the Danish filmmaker as a true artist.

Entry Filed under: Best of the 2000s