The best films of 2020, so far …

Uncut Gems (Benny Safdie and Josh Safdie)

Energetic and rowdy, the Safdie brothers’ Uncut Gems is their most exciting film to date, boasting a Shakespearian performance from Adam Sandler as the Jewish-American jeweller Howard Ratner (his best role since 2002’s Punch-Drunk Love (Paul Thomas Anderson). Available to stream on Netflix.

 

The Lighthouse (Robert Eggers) 

Two lighthouse keepers (Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson) gradually lose their sanity whilst stranded on a remote island in 19^thcentury New England. Superstition, homoeroticism and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick wonderfully collide over its 100 minutes runtime.

 

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Céline Sciamma) 

Taking place over a week and a half, Céline Sciamma’s latest picture tells the brief affair of Marianne (Noémie Merlant) and Héloïse (Adèle Haenel). Filmed in soft, romantic pastels, Portrait of a Lady on Fire captures the rush and headiness of falling in love. (See an extended review here). Available to stream on the Mubi Library.

 

Parasite (Bong Joon-ho) 

Bong Joon-ho triumphs in this perfect satire of class relations, building from ideas stretched and flexed in both The Host (2006) and Snowpiercer (2013). The impoverished Kim family ingeniously infiltrate the household of the wealthy Park family, with devastating and bloody consequences ensuing.

 

Vivarium (Lorcan Finnegan) 

Imogen Poots and Jesse Eisenberg find themselves trapped in topsy-turvy suburbia after agreeing to a house viewing in the development site “Yonder.” Unable to leave or find a way out, the couple decides to accept their new life. John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos (1957) and Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (1988) inspire this multi-layered, unique thriller.

 

Light of My Life (Casey Affleck) 

Indebted to the post-apocalyptic world of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006), Casey Affleck writes, directs and stars in Light of My Life (his first time behind the camera since 2010’s mockumentary I’m Not Here). Father (Casey Affleck) and daughter, Rag (Anna Pniowsky), attempt to survive in a landscape where the female population has been decimated by a plague. Subtle, beautiful and evocative.

 

The Painted Bird (Václav Marhoul) 

One of the most shocking films in recent years, The Painted Bird (adapted from Jerzy Kosiński’s novel of the same name) is a violent and muddy vision of post-Holocaust Europe. Carried from one extremity to the next, an unnamed, Jewish boy (Petr Kotlár) journeys across a changing Europe. (See an extended review here).

 

A Hidden Life (Terrence Malick) 

Terrence Malick returns to form with A Hidden Life, abandoning the wishy-washy ensembles of Knight of Cups (2015) and Song to Song (2017) for an elegant, mercurial autobiography of the Nazi-objector Franz Jägerstätter (August Diehl). If Malick demands patience from his viewers, then he also rewards them with a sympathetic and beautifully-realised picture.

 

Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee) 

Having shared the Oscar for Best Screenplay in BlacKkKlansman (2018), Spike Lee reteams with co-writer Kevin Willmott to produce another spectacular and timely picture. Experiences of the Vietnam War are hazardously revisited when a group of ageing veterans return in search of the remains of their fallen squad leader (Chadwick Boseman). Available to stream on Netflix.

 

Little Joe (Jessica Hausner) 

Alice Woodward (Emily Beecham, taking the award for Best Actress from Cannes) is the breeder of an artificially engineered strain of flower titled “Little Joe,” whose curious scent leaves its owner feeling happy. Far from the grotesque appetite of Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors (Frank Oz, 1986), “Little Joe” poses a subtler kind of threat. Hypnotic and beautiful in equal measure.

 

The Truth (Hirokazu Kore-eda) 

Turning from Japan, Hirokazu Kore-eda translates his studies of family life into a Parisian setting, exploring the relationship between the actress Fabienne (Catherine Deneuve) and her daughter, Lumir (Juliette Binoche). Tenderly observed.

 

Other films to mention include Autumn de Wilde’s comic adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma.; David Lynch’s latest selection of short films (including What Did Jack Do?, Fire (PoZar), and The Story of a Small Bug); Luca Guadagnino’s fashion-short The Staggering Girl; and Patrick Vollrath’s hijacking thriller 7500 (a student of Michael Haneke).

 

Films to avoid include Pablo Larraín’s dull and vacuous Ema; Carlo Mirabella-Davis’ body-horror Swallow; the Irish production Sea Fever (Neasa Hardiman); Naomi Watts as a paranoid author in The Wolf Hour (Alistair Banks Griffin); and William Eubank’s Alien-rip off Underwater (see an extended review here).

The Painted Bird – review | Václav Marhoul’s eastern-European horror show

                The Painted Bird (dir. Václav Marhoul, 2019)

                                            ✭✭✭✭✭

In retrospect, the audiences of the 76^th Venice Film Festival were far too comfortable amid the selection: Hirokazu Koreda’s latest picture, The Truth (2019), and Todd Phillip’s Joker (2019) hardly compromised their afternoons. Václav Marhoul’s third feature, The Painted Bird (2019), offered a visceral antidote with its tour of post-WWII Europe. After its premiere, over twelve viewers were reported to have stumbled out the auditorium (see Xan Brooks’ comic description in The Guardian); this backlash would later repeat at the Toronto and London Film Festivals. 

 

Having faced up to Marhoul’s picture – just shy of three hours – I recognise these reports work to its favour. In the past, films ranging from William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973) to Gasper Noé’s Irreversible (2002) have gloried in their public attention, equally building the directors’ reputations whilst lionised for their perversities. However, if we criticise these films for their subject matters, then we forget to admire them for their commitment to the cinematic experience.

 

Over nine episodes we follow the movements of an unnamed, Jewish boy (Petr Kotlár) across Nazi-occupied Europe. He rarely speaks, and the number of horrifying experiences endured only seem to harden his mute profile. Swept from one abusive community to another, the boy reconciles with the cruelty of an adult landscape: either through experiences of torture, bestiality, paedophilia or after being pecked by a murder of crows whilst buried in the ground. In a later scene, the boy watches from afar as Nazi guards spray bullets into a group of Jews fleeing from a freight train. Their belongings are quickly plundered, including by the child, out of a necessity to survive. These experiences are brief (thankfully, for the audience) but sketch the realities of a Holocaust Europe.

 

Surprising cameos are also dotted throughout the landscape, including the international stars of Stellan Skarsgård (one of the few, kinder characters); Harvey Keitel (robed as a local priest); and Julian Sands (a deceptively violent miller).

 

Adapted from Jerzy Kosiński’s novel of the same name (published to controversy in 1965), Marhoul pitches its central theme of childhood innocence against a brutal adult world. Telling one episode at a time, the film neatly reflects its literary material: each episode, whilst offering a stepping stone toward the prospect of ‘home,’ provides a variation on the preceding cruelty. Pasolini’s adaptations of The Decameron (1971) and The Canterbury Tales (1972) offer comparable narrative structures.

 

Shot in crisp, 35mm monochrome, cinematographer Vladimír Smutný textures The Painted Bird with an uncomfortable beauty. This was undoubtedly intentional, and works to its advantage. Heavy nods to The Virgin Spring (Bergman, 1960) and Ivan’s Childhood (Tarkovsky, 1962) also abound here, as well as to the films of Béla Tarr and Grigori Kozinstev. The Painted Bird, despite being set in twentieth-century Europe, captures something of their medieval landscapes, peppered with superstition and magic realism. Maybe this is where the terror lies: the smoothness with which the present traffics with the barbarities of the past. It is a muddy and unsettling vision.

 

Now that cinemas are vacant spaces during the time of Covid-19, (and the opportunities for walkouts are left to the foreseeable future), it feels all the more relevant that we are reminded of what defines the cinematic experience. Todd Phillips’ Joker took the Golden Lion home from the festival, a decision I found both dismaying and infuriating; the mound of controversies it stacked was overblown, and unlike The Painted Bird it played its cards relatively safely. 

 

Marhoul’s picture is deserving of its praise, disgust and controversies.