...and a Happy New Year!Originally Posted by Chris Knipp
(in the style of Citizen Kane)
It is quite rare that this time I should have a lot to say about the 2017 movies because I have seen 4 out of the top 5 from the IndieWire poll and the one with the top Metacritic score. At the moment though, I'm most inclined to post that I will also remember 2017 not only for new movies such as Faces Places, A Quiet Passion and Lady Bird but also for movies I knew from previous years that got better with age, in a manner of speaking, or revealed more, or seemed more like unique achievements after watching them again in 2017.
Perhaps at the top of this "rediscovered" list would be 2 Lovers, written and directed by James Gray. His new movie is titled The Lost City of Z and I haven't watched it. 2 Lovers (2009) takes the protagonist from Fyodor Dostoevsky's short story "White Knights" and confronts him with scenarios from Krystof Kieslowski's A Short Film About Love and Philip Roth novels. The ending is perfectly ambiguous, suggesting a variety of things without settling on any one because it knows precisely when to cut to black for the last time. Gray is a careful, deliberate filmmaker and his films have long gestation periods. But 2 Lovers went from pitch to finish in months. Gwyneth Paltrow and Joaquin Phoenix said yes and were available right away and their casting secured ample financing. Gray and Phoenix have developed one of the most fruitful actor/director collaborations in recent decades, and now I think this is their masterpiece. I'm interested in hearing comments from my female students when I show it (I never have before) because I think it speaks from a rather masculine place and I want to hear what women think about, for instance, the depiction of the female characters.
I plan to say more about new films in future posts, but I want to salute 2017 for the "old" films I discovered or rediscovered this year.
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As I estimated, 2 Lovers is the film directed by James Gray that is preferred by IMdb users and the average, of course, male vote is substantially more favorable to the film than the female vote.
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