2009 has been one gold mine of a year for world cinema with so many great directors across the globe attempting, one last time, to register their name in the decades’ best list. Even if most of these films turn out to be minor works of major filmmakers, the sheer richness and variety it has brought within a small time span is remarkable. Here is the list of my favorite films of 2009 (in order of preference, with a tie at No. 10). Please note that the movies considered for this list were only the ones which had a world premiere in 2009. That means noteworthy films (some of which could have well made their way into this list) such as Denis’ 35 Shots of Rum (2008), Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker (2008) and Bahrani’s Goodbye Solo (2008) were not counted. Unfortunately, I have not seen films from some big names including Rivette’s Around A Small Mountain, Resnais’ Wild Grass, Campion’s Bright Star, Herzog’s My Son My Son, What Have Ye Done?, Farocki’s In Comparison, Noé’s Enter the Void, Denis’ White Material, Costa’s Ne Change Rien, Mendoza’s Lola and Kinatay, Reitman’s Up in the Air, Eastwood’s Invictus, Kashyap’s Gulaal, Anderson’s The Fantastic Mr. Fox and Coens’ A Serious Man. So, sadly, they would have to vie for this list later. And needless to say, the following list will most definitely shuffle and change with time.
1. Inglourious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, USA)
“I don’t know whether it’s a comedy or a tragedy, but in any case it’s a masterpiece”, says one of the characters, self-referentially, in Godard’s A Woman is a Woman (1961). I’m tempted to say the same thing about Tarantino’s deceptively irreverent, endlessly enthralling and relentlessly inventive piece of bravura filmmaking. At once paying tribute to exploitative war movies and incriminating them, Tarantino’s swashbuckling “WW2-film film” is a war movie that ends all war movies. Absorbing as much from Truffaut as it does from Godard, Tarantino’s film is as potent and as personal as the “genre explosions” of the French directors. Essentially a mere medium of conversation between cinephiles on either sides of the film, Inglourious Basterds is the movie that seals the American auteur’s status as a contemporary giant of cinema and one that has the power to make its mark, deservedly, in our collective cultural vocabulary. With Inglourious Basterds, to steal from Michael Powell, Tarantino becomes the ventriloquist and his doll, the singer and the song, the painter and his palette, the pupil and the master.
2. The Maid (Sebastián Silva, Chile/Mexico)
A sister film, in some ways, to Jonathan Demme’s brilliant Rachel Getting Married (2008), Sebastián Silva’s The Maid is nothing short of a spiritual revelation at the movies. What could have been an one-note leftist tirade about Chile’s class system is instead elevated into the realm of human where one facial twitch, one stretch of silence and one impulsive word can speak much more than any expository monologue or contrived subplot. There is no simplification of human behaviour here, no easily classifiable moral categories and no overarching statement to which truth is sacrificed. Nor does Silva suspend his study of the classes to observe his characters. He merely lets the obvious stay in the background. And just when you think that Silva’s vision of the world is getting all too romantic, he delivers a fatal blow to shatter your smugness – a single, deceptively simple shot during the final birthday party that masterfully sums up everything from the irreconcilable, repressed tension that exists between classes in capitalistic societies to our adaptability as humans to live peacefully with each other despite socio-economic disparities.
3. Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl (Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal/France/Spain)
Rigorous but oh-so-tender, centenarian Manoel de Oliveira’s one-hour wonder Eccentricities of a Blonde-haired Girl is a film in one and a half acts. Oliveira translates the work of Eça de Queiroz to the screen, running the 19th century tale of romance through the current economic landscape and harnessing the resultant anachronism to paint an achingly beautiful picture about the inability to transcend class, escape reality and lose oneself in art. Despite its decidedly Brechtian and ceaselessly self reflexive nature, Oliveira’s film is rife with moments of poignancy and touches of humour. Using double, triple and quadruple framing and achieving a mise-en-abyme of art and reality, Oliveira writes a ruminative essay on the impossibility of art and reality to merge, the confusion that exists between them and the classism that exists within and with respect to art. Flooded with references to art and art forms, Eccentricities is such a dense and intricate fabric of the arts that even the past is treated in a detached manner like a piece of art, where each image looks like a painting, each sound feels like a melody and each movement cries out: “cinema!”.
4. The Milk of Sorrow (Claudia Llosa, Peru/Spain)
Of all the recent movies that have attempted to acknowledge dark chapters in national histories and advocated looking forward to the future instead of crying over what is lost, perhaps, none is as sober, ethical and uncompromising as Claudia Llosa’s Golden Bear winner. Llosa inherits her tale from the terrorist atrocities that plagued Peru two decades ago (Inheritance being the prime motif of the film) but, subsequently, discards every possible opportunity for sensationalism or propaganda. Tightly framing the lead character, Fausta (Magaly Solier), within and against claustrophobic structures, doorways, photographs, windows, paintings, mirrors and walls, gradually varying the depth of focus along the movie to detach the protagonist and integrate her with her surroundings and using extremely long shots to dwarf her in vast opens spaces of the tranquil town, Llosa concocts a film of utmost narrative austerity and aesthetic rigor. Punctuating and contrasting these downbeat images of Fausta’s life are slice-of-life sequences from the town depicting various wedding rituals and parties which tenderly highlight Peruvian people’s open-hearted embracing of capitalism and their resolve to come out of the trauma of the past and move on with life.
5. The Limits of Control (Jim Jarmusch, USA/Japan/Spain)
If Inglourious Basterds was a coup from within the system, Jim Jarmusch’s The Limits of Control is an out-and-out war against the machine. The essential piece of cinema of resistance, The Limits of Control eschews simple genre classification and flips every ingredient of Hollywood’s conveyor belt products to surprise, appall, irritate and provoke us with each one of its moves. The complete absence of Jarmuschian brand of deadpan humour announces the film’s seriousness of intent. It is as if Jarmusch wants to establish once and for all that Hollywood does not equal American cinema and that the cinema that the former school marginalizes is truly alive and kicking. The Limits of Control is a film that can easily get on your nerves but, eventually, it succeeds in getting under your skin and evolving gradually to reveal how meticulously crafted it is. Using Cinematographer Christopher Doyle, production designer Eugenio Caballero and editor Jay Rabinowitz masterfully, Jarmusch creates a movie so meditative and relaxing that one feels exactly how William Blake (Johnny Depp) would have at the end of Dead Man (1995).
6. Police, Adjective (Corneliu Porumboiu, Romania)
Porumboiu’s follow-up to one of the most hilarious comedies of the decade, 12:08 East of Bucharest (2006), is a companion of sorts to Jarmusch’s film not only in the sense that both of them negate the function of the genre they are supposed to belong to, by completely de-dramatizing their narratives, but also because Porumboiu’s film, too, is a conflict between two types of cinema – the cinema of analytical contemplation represented by the detective-protagonist of the film (Dragos Bucur) and the cinema of thoughtless action represented by his ready-for-ambush boss (Vlad Ivanov). However, more concretely, Police, Adjective is an examination of how our own political and social systems, partly due to the rigidity of our written languages, end up dominating us and how individual conscience and social anomalies are effaced clinically in order to have the bureaucratic clockwork running smoothly. Like Bucharest, Porumboiu, often self-reflexively, sketches the portrait of a bland and pacific city that tries to ape the far west and project itself as more dynamic than it actually is. The film’s disparate themes crystallize deliciously in the final, side-splitting, Tarantino-esque set piece where we witness the police chief urging his subordinates to act by the book, literally.
7. Tetro (Francis Ford Coppola, Italy/Argentina/USA/Spain)
Tetro is a beautiful film. Not just in the way it looks, but in the sheer romance it has for a lost world. The only worthy B&W film of this year out of the four I saw (the other three being Haneke’s The White Ribbon, Villeneuve’s Polytechnique and Lu’s City of Life and Death, the last one being my candidate for the worst film of the year), Tetro is a wonderful expressionistic melodrama in the vein of Powell and Pressburger – figures whose films form the thematic and narrative focal point of this movie. Like many of the films mentioned in this list, but with more optimism, Coppola investigates the possibility of revival of the past and revelation of the obscured using art – movies, theatre and literature, in this case – employing a number of experiments with the film’s aspect ratio, colour and sound. Coppola also comments upon, nostalgically, the filmic medium’s ability to influence people to see cinema as a reflection of personal histories. But most importantly, Tetro is Coppola’s ritual of killing his patron-turned-authoritarian father (like his mentor Bertolucci did in The Conformist (1970)) – Hollywood – as his decisive farewell to industrial cinema and an autobiographical allegory about the obliteration of artistic vision by the alluring yet dangerous, powerful yet ephemeral flash of light called fame.
8. Vincere (Marco Bellocchio, Italy/France)
Writer-director Marco Bellocchio’s ballad, based on a nebulous part of fascist leader Benito Mussolini’s life, can teach those so-called historical dramas a thing or two about locating personal ideologies within collective history without being exploitative or pandering to pop demands. Bellocchio’s film is far from a detailed recreation of Mussolini’s political life. It is, in fact, a commentary upon such “detailed recreations” of history based on documents written by winners. Bellocchio’s formidable script and mise en scène keep probing and remarking upon the tendency of fascist systems to suppress histories – personal and national – and exploit popular media, especially the relatively young and emotionally powerful cinema, to blind people of truth and forge a faux reality – a theme underscored in Tarantino’s film too. What more? Bellocchio constructs the film exactly like one of those Soviet agitprop films – not by easy spoofing, but by retaining their spirit and rhythm – using rapid montage, expressionistic performances and operatic sounds. Be it common folk fighting in a cinema hall over a news reel or a bereaved mother breaking down during the screening of The Kid (1921), cinema registers its omnipresence and omnipotence in Bellocchio’s film.
9. Samson and Delilah (Warwick Thornton, Australia)
The perfect antidote to the summer blockbuster, Warwick Thornton’s Samson and Delilah is an extremely assured and undeniably moving piece of cinema that arrives, appositely, as the golden jubilee reboot to Herzog’s thematically kindred movie, Where the Green Ants Dream (1984). Cleverly relegating specific issues such as the Australian government’s intervention and relocation policies for the Aborigines to the background, Thornton frees his films of broad, propagandist political agendas, without ever making the film lack social exploration. With an extraordinary sound design, Thornton keeps the word count in the film to an absolute minimum, letting the stretches of silence shared by his lead characters speak for themselves. The film’s observations about banality of racism in contemporary Australia, exploitation of tribal art and its consequences, the effect of colonialism, especially due to Christian missionaries, on the Aboriginal culture and the ever growing chasm between the tribal and white life styles themselves are fittingly subordinated to the beautiful, unspoken love story that, essentially, forms the heart of the film.
10. A Prophet (Jacques Audiard, France/Italy)
Let me dare to say this: Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet is either the most profound or the most pretentious movie of the year. For now, I choose the former. Audiard’s decidedly unflinching feature breaks free from the limitations of a generic prison drama and takes on multiple dimensions as the apolitical and irreligious protagonist of the film, Malik (played by Tahar Rahim), finds himself irreversibly entangled in ethnic gang wars within and outside the prison. A trenchant examination of religion as both a tool of oppression and a vehicle for political escalation, A Prophet is an audacious exploration of Muslim identity in the western world post-9/11. Although the plot developments may leave the viewer dizzy, it is easy to acknowledge how Audiard confronts the issues instead of working his way around it or making cheeky and superficial political statements. Strikingly juxtaposing and counterpointing Sufism and Darwinism in Malik’s search for identity, Audiard creates an immensely confident and nonjudgmental film that trusts its audience to work with the rich ambiguity it offers.
(Images Courtesy: IMDb, The Auteurs, Screen Daily)
[EDIT: 7 Jan: Since it seems like The Beaches of Agnes had its premiere in 2008, I’m removing it from this list. That leaves exactly 10 movies on the list]
January 3, 2010 at 9:51 pm
What an absolutely beautiful presentation here. Exquisite, professional layout, perfect balance, and as expected a highly eclectic and scholarly selection that has even thrown my ultra-prolific theatrical filmgoing for a loop, as I haven’t seen several here. I also always have a #10 tie, so every year I have 11 films on my own list; nice to see someone else employs the same strategy. Admittedly I was no fan of the Tarantino, the Coppola, the Varda and the Jarmusch, but all have legions of serious film fans, and your capsules are irrefutably splendid. Your #2 choice, THE MAID, is a wonderful film, with a terrific understated performance by Ms. Saavedra, and it is among my dozen honorable mention choices.
Of course, the one choice here that has made BOTH our lists is the Romanian POLICE, ADJECTIVE, which is my #6 choice. My own list is admittedly quite different:
1 Bright Star
2 Avatar
3 35 Shots of Rum (France)
4 Up
5 A Single Man
6 Police Adjective (Romania)
7 Everlasting Moments (Sweden)
8 Summer Hours (France)
9 A Serious Man
10 District 9 and Star Trek (tie)
Just missed:
Anti-Christ (Denmark)
Of Time and the City (UK)
Rembrandt’s J’Accuse (UK)
The Son (Japan)
The Last Station
The Hurt Locker
Flame and Citron (Denmark)
Tokyo Sonata (Japan)
Somers Town (UK)
La Danse
Seraphine (France)
House of the Devil
In the Loop (UK)
Me and Orson Welles
I am REALLY looking forward to THE PROPHET (as I am a big fan of Audiard) and your co-number 10, SAMSON. I need to see THE MILK OF SORROW.
What beautiful writing once again JAFB, you are truly one of the best in every department. And needless to say this is impeccable, incomparable taste here on display.
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January 3, 2010 at 10:23 pm
Sam,
Thanks so much for those kind words and, most importantly, for unveiling your top 10, which I was looking forward to since I hitchhiked into Dave’s countdown.
I haven’t seen all those interesting films of both your lists, may be because I missed some of them last year and never made an effort to catch up.
UP was the closest contender for me and “lost out” by a hair’s breadth. And yes, 35 Rhums is my favorite film of 2008, alongside In Bruges. The biggest regret for me, though, is missing Bright Star, which I expect to be an amazing film. I never really could hang out happily with the Coens, but perhaps A Serious Man is the transformation point.
Thanks again, Sam, for the detailed summation of your year in film…
My special-mention list would be:
1. Up
2. Antichrist
3. Moon
4. In The Loop
5. Broken Embraces
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January 3, 2010 at 10:05 pm
I am still weighing a major change for my #10 spot. But until the final decision is made there is always this shuffling! Ha!
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January 3, 2010 at 10:24 pm
I empathize completely. I’m already beginning to wonder about the order of films above :)
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January 3, 2010 at 11:37 pm
The change has been made JAFB.
#10 remains a tie, but DISTRICT 9 and STAR TREK have now been moved to honorable mention.
TOKYO SONATA (Kurosawa) and OF TIME AND THE CITY (Davies) are in.
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January 3, 2010 at 11:44 pm
Thank you, Sam, for the update. Now, it looks even more formidable, with the genre films making a graceful exit.
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January 4, 2010 at 2:15 am
You always state everything perfectly, JAFB. A “graceful exit” indeed for those two genre pieces, which I do admit I was very fond of in an entertainment sense (DISTRICT 9 of course also had that compelling ‘man’s inhumanity to man’ message) but it wouldn’t be fair to overlook two films I genuinely adored, and I was trying for “list diversity” when that should NOT trump “list quality.” So I am now content that I made the right decision, though I know it won’t change the world!!! LOL!!!!!!! At this time of the year I lose my sanity.
But as I said I love the way you said ‘graceful exit’ which acknowledged teh fact that they were originally chosen to make the list. Indeed.
I am not 100% certain you will embrace BRIGHT STAR to the level that I did, or whether you will even be fond of it, but either way I am greatly looking forward to what you think.
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January 4, 2010 at 9:16 am
Haha, I know. This list making business is a very dangerous thing. The movies succumb to the list when we try to compare and rank films. Somehow, I’m really loving what Jim Emerson did to his list of favorite films:
http://blogs.suntimes.com/scanners/2010/01/jims_favorite_movies_of_2009_t.html
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January 4, 2010 at 5:34 am
Try as I might, I can’t visualise you watching these films. I’m imagining that some of them are not very good DVDs or downloads. I only make this comment because I haven’t seen a single one of your Top 10. Some of them I chose not to see but I’m
really intrigued by the others, especially the Peruvian, Chilean and Australian films which I’m fairly sure haven’t made it to cinemas here. Une prophete arrives at the weekend – hooray!
Thanks for the list – it gives us some hope for the releases yet to come in the UK.
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January 4, 2010 at 9:13 am
You’re welcome, venicelion. Looking forward to your views on the Audiard film.
Yes, the Latin American cinema seems to be my pick this year…
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January 4, 2010 at 7:39 am
[…] https://theseventhart.info/2010/01/03/favorite-films-of-2009/ (JAFB) […]
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January 4, 2010 at 10:22 am
[…] one of the very best I’ve yet seen, and I haven’t seen a few of the choices either: https://theseventhart.info/2010/01/03/favorite-films-of-2009/ Likewise, Ari at The Aspect Ratio has had an excellent list up for almost two weeks: […]
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January 6, 2010 at 3:49 am
Wow, fantastic list here. I am going to seek all these out since it appears we have similar taste. I really, really want to see the Coppolla.
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January 6, 2010 at 7:18 am
Thanks Jamie! The Coppola movie is plain wonderful. Definitely check it out…
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January 6, 2010 at 8:25 am
Where has Herzog’s MY SON MY SON WHAT HAVE YE DONE? opened? I saw it make another blogger’s list for the best of 2009. The only Herzog film that appeared stateside was Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.
I’ve very eager to see MSMSWHYD? as a collaboration between David Lynch and Werner Herzog promises much.
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January 6, 2010 at 9:05 am
Yes, David. It has been screened only at a few places – at Venice and Toronto festivals. I expect it to be a cracker of a film too.
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January 7, 2010 at 6:30 am
Indeed JAFB.
But David, this movie has been playing at Manhattan’s IFC for weeks! Unfortunately everyone I’ve spoken to, including one friend who is a Herzog fanatic, has spoke badly about it. I haven’t seen it yet.
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January 7, 2010 at 10:01 am
Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!
CORRECTION: I see that The Beaches of Agnes did indeed get a 2008 premiere That means I’ve got exactly 10 films on the list, with Tetro at #7, Vincere at #8 and Samson and Delilah at #9.
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January 7, 2010 at 8:17 pm
Glad you gave The Maid its props. Fantastic film that was.
“Jarmusch creates a movie so meditative and relaxing that one feels exactly how William Blake (Johnny Depp) would have at the end of Dead Man.”
Glorious!
What took Duncan Jones’ Moon off the list?
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January 7, 2010 at 8:24 pm
The Maid is an amazing film indeed. As for Jones’ film, I did have some gripes, even when I was watching the film. A lot of times, I felt that the profound subtexts of the film were somehow lost in translation.
But here’s someone who shares your deep enthusiasm for the film
http://movie-place.blogspot.com/2010/01/moon-movie-review.html
Cheers!
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January 9, 2010 at 7:50 pm
Thanks for the intro to Jim Jarmusch, dude.
Impressed by “Limits of Control”… I dug further to see another of his gems “Dead Man”.
I am at loss to describe it. only few movies have done this to me. Beauty. Such Beauty! Such subtle, poetic beauty! God! I’m in love with that film.
ps: yet to see “Broken Flowers”
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January 9, 2010 at 7:54 pm
Oh man, what coincidence. I was just watching the trailers of all JJ films!
I’m yet to completely digest Dead Man, but its hypnotic power is undeniable. Ironical that, at the end of the film, one does feel that it is indeed preferable to travel with a dead man.
Check out Broken Flowers too. Amazing film. So are Down by Law, C&C and Stranger then Paradise
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January 17, 2010 at 3:13 pm
Brilliantly set out and argued again, JAFB.
You know my thoughts on Inglourious Basterds and I have only recently seen Limits of Control. You say it can surprise, appal, irritate and provoke.
Unfortunately for me it only irritated with its pretentious and constipated attempts at meaning. I hope to write something on it once I’m done with my pieces on animation.
I’ve been trying in vain to see Police Adjective which I am particularly keen on viewing because I am half Romanian and a close follower of their / our new wave of cinema.
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January 17, 2010 at 3:28 pm
Ha, well, it did irritate me too. But I could get over it a little while after the film got over . I’m looking forward to you take on it.
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November 27, 2010 at 7:00 pm
[…] a strong if not the ideal case against armed struggle. It probes, as does Bellocchio’s masterful Vincere (2009) (although Assayas’ ideological investment is relatively insubstantial), into a hermetic […]
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