10. All We Imagine as Light
Payal Kapadia’s film about three Mumbai women is full of a mysterious beauty that manifests itself through both its shimmering images and its luscious sounds of music, trains, human voices and human lives.
You can find my full review here.
9. Wildcat
If you make a film about Flannery O’Connor, you really risk a lot. You risk unflattering comparison with her great literary works. You risk oversentimentalizing, overthinking, or overdramatizing an artist who was tremendously complex and unusual.
Director Ethan Hawke and actress daughter Maya Hawke do not avoid all of the above overages, and they most regrettably do not avoid spoiling both of O’Connor’s novels. Please try to read her stunning Wise Blood before watching this film. At least cover your ears during the car scene in which the O’Connor character gives a one-sentence Cliff’s notes summary of the dramatic ending of that novel.
Considering the risks inherent in this endeavor and the rewards that come from it, though, the Hawkes’ film is wonderful. It is a space to consider the writer and her works, and the way it fulfills that calling is a special gift to O’Connor devotees and an invitation to those unfamiliar with her.
The film imagines certain passages of time in the writer’s life, especially those in which her writing passion and failing health seemed ready to collide with one another. Those scenes themselves are interesting, but their power does not fully crystallize until we see Maya as O’Connor on her sickbed being visited by a priest. In this scene, we see an artist of faith grappling with the harsher aspects of grace. At the same time, we see her fighting to know that her art is a form of service to God. The scene is bitterly painful but also cathartic.
As much as in the scene with the priest, though, the film stuns us with interspersed filmic realizations of some of O’Connor’s best short stories. These realizations, all highly stylized, pulse with melodrama, music and the mysteries of the world that echo throughout the writer’s own work. By putting these stories to film in such compelling ways, the film works together with O’Connor to do what the writer herself wrote in her prayer journal : “Dear God, please help me to get down under things and find where You are.”
8. Rebel Ridge
Why does this film feels so special even though its vigilante narrative arc does not surprise us very often? It’s because of the central character of Terry, both as acted and as written.
Aaron Pierre’s presence in the title role is even more soulful than it is kinetic. Sure Pierre as Terry has the fighting action moves…but these moves can be seen in many good action films. The difference here is that these moves only come after good and measured thought, and this from a mind spinning with fierce moral vision and imagination.
With Pierre it’s not just those striking eyes, but also the heart of this character that Pierre inhabits so richly. This is a character who is unusually patient in his desire to see justice and truth win out. He is passionate enough to want those things, but wise and restrained enough to work for peaceful solutions before he uses his hands that have been trained to take men down.
We often see this patient quality in the way Terry handles weapons that come into his hands in the film – one of his first instincts when getting ahold of a gun is to empty all its bullets onto the ground. This may be partly so that no one can eventually use the weapon against him, but something deep about this character’s lack of lust for violence comes out in this action.
AnnaSophia Robb is also excellent in her own simpler way. Her Summer makes a great partner on this journey for Terry because she carries some of the wounds he carries. These wounds were not inflicted because of her race as those of Terry were, but rather because of her own weaknesses out of which she is valiantly fighting her own good fight.
In the end, both of these two characters command our attention most of all because of their love. This is a love for the truth and for those individuals, present and future, who will be affected by whether or not truth wins out. In the film, we are confronted at several points with characters who do not seem to want to know the truth but rather to remain blinded to it. The converse of this, a passion for justice alongside a hatred of evil, is embodied by Terry and Summer.
1 Corinthians 13 : 6 says, “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.” I would argue that these two characters are exemplifying the love mentioned in that passage.
7. The Taste of Things
This film has an embarrassment of riches for aficionados of thinking, eating, movies, and the mysteries of love and marriage.
6. Rapito (Kidnapped)
I knew the function, but I did not know the form.
In the brief synopses of this film, you will quickly and easily learn what it is about. You will see that it tells the true story of Edgardo Mortara, a 6-year-old Jewish boy who was taken from his home and forced to be raised as a Catholic in 1858 Italy.
You will not, however, be prepared for the style with which the movie approaches this story. It turns out to be a film possessed of grand music, camera, gestures, and emotions. Much of the emotions are painful, mind you, but all of them resonate deeply and serve a narrative that itself is huge in historical, moral, and theological scope.
5. Green Border
What does it mean to show love and compassion for the refugee who has had to leave home and country in order to seek safe haven in a faraway land? Several very good movies this year (e.g., Cabrini and The Old Oak) have thought deeply about this question. None, however, has done that so thoroughly and with such immediacy as Agnieszka Holland’s Green Border. The film soberly looks at an ongoing crisis on the border between Poland and Belarus. As it looks at the events from varied angles and viewpoints, this film seems to invite us to see something of what God sees in what looks like an irredeemable mess. It evokes His heart for refugees at the same time as it evokes His heart to touch the thoughtless oppressors who would trample them underfoot.
4. Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell
Vietnamese directorPhạm Thiên Ân takes the slow cinema tradition of Béla Tarr and uses it to enthralling effect in this film. Ân uses that style to plumb some of the depths of what it means to seek spiritual life, meaning, and truth. The film is filled with visual tableaux and camera movements that we drink in even more deeply when we consider them in the light of the themes. It is a film about the thirst for something beyond the mortal coil of tragedies, corruptions, and disappointments we experience in our everyday.
I want to be there with this film’s Thiện as he stands in the doorway of a church filled with holy books, one of whose pages is fluttering in the mysterious wind.
**This film won the Camera d’Or at the 2023 Cannes festival for best first feature film. It’s too bad it wasn’t in the running for the Palm, as it looks great even up against excellent films like that festival’s Anatomy of a Fall and Zone of Interest.
3. The Bikeriders
I am drawn to this film as a Christian because I can imagine Jesus sitting among these bikers and listening to them as this film does. I can imagine Him quietly nodding along as passions, hopes, and pains are shared.
You can find my full review here.
2. Daughters
This is on the short list of films most likely to change the world. It is that kind of film partly because it documents a social program that could bring that sort of change. The film highlights a fatherhood program in a jail in Washington, D.C., one that offers willing inmates the chance to spend a few precious hours with their daughters at a daddy-daughter dance. We learn at the end of the film that 95% of the fathers who join in this special moment with their daughter do not return to prison.
However, when I say the film could change the world I am thinking also of its impact on us who experience this story. We see the incarcerated dads sit and chat with their daughters, dance with them, and ultimately hand them a flower signaling their promise to keep showing up for them. When we look with a wide enough angle, we can see ourselves in these dads. We then can say to ourselves…
If tonight is the only few hours I will get with you (read as daughter, son, wife, husband, friend…) for the next five years, how will I spend that time?
Will I be there for you during this time?
Will I overflow with thanks for every second I have with you?
Will I learn to love you during that time?
I will, I will. With God’s help, I will.
- Perfect Days
Among many reasons for naming this my favorite film of this past year (the US release date was in early 2024 even though many critics would list this as a 2023 film), one of the most important is that this film is a tonic for a world that has gone bottom side up with diatribe and rancor. Take a close look at this film’s toilet cleaner Hirayama in his daily routine of cleaning toilets and taking photos of nature. In doing this you will remember what it means to simply sit, listen, and watch the world around you. Better even than that, though, is watching Hirayama deal with the people that start coming into his life by the time we get to the film’s second and third acts. In spite of the pain they may sometimes bring, he accepts people’s “intrusion” into his quiet sphere with a special grace and gentleness. The film itself brings these things into a compelling dramatic form that, once you see the postcredits statement about the play of shadows and light, also becomes a profound meditation on time, memory, and eternity.
You can find my full enraptured review here.
