Memoria (2021) | Directed by Apichatpong Weerasethakul

 5/5

Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Memoria is an absolutely masterful and stunning work of cinema – and surprisingly it’s the most accessible of Weerasethakul’s films (though it certainly isn’t the easiest to see). This is a film that begs multiple viewings in order to keep exploring its many layers and subtleties, the mysteries and enchantments, the elegance of the craft on display.

Like so much of Weerasethakul’s filmography, this is deeply rooted in Buddhist thought and philosophy, in the notion of the connectedness of all things. It’s a film about what draws us toward empathy, as well as the toll interconnection and empathy takes – the personal cost and the deep pain it can cause. Whether it’s Karen’s early conversation about the dog she tries and fails to care for, or old Hernán’s assertion that every experience he has causes him pain, all of the characters in Memoria go about attempting to alleviate or understand the suffering of others – and at times suffering themselves. The film folds back on itself to explore the very nature of cinema as an art form that can generate empathy and connectedness. “Why are you crying?” One character asks another. “These memories aren’t your own.” Isn’t that what cinema does – evoke an emotional response within us by presenting us with the memories of others? Weerasethakul uses the very real condition of exploding head syndrome and pushes the cinematic depiction toward the surreal – asking his protagonist, Jessica, and his audience to listen, truly listen to the world and the people around us.

The sound design is rich and immersive – sound has a tactical, almost physical presence throughout the film, even causing car alarms to go off in the middle of the night. It fills the contours of the city’s architecture and makes its mark on the countryside so that the rocks and rivers and trees can become vessels for memory and story – sound as an instrument for connection and empathy. And because Weerasethakul holds his gorgeously composed frames for such a long duration, we’re allowed to not only soak in the rich visual details within the frame, but the dense sonic textures as well. Sound becomes an awakening, an invitation into deeper empathy and connection, a call to join with the film’s characters in listening to and remembering the stories of others.

Like all of Weerasethakul’s films, there’s more to uncover, more to explore, more to tease out upon further thought and reflection – the fluidity of identity, the excavation of the dead, the way characters appear and vanish, and of course, more about the way the land remembers the past in ways that we humans never will. But what I’m left with after this first viewing, is the urge to listen.

I do feel the need to address the film’s US release strategy – I wish I didn’t need to, as the film is gorgeous and should have stood apart from any conversation about how it was being released and marketed. However, the film is being made inaccessible in the US to anyone with a disability that prevents them from attending theaters and those of us with medical conditions that put us at higher risk for COVID.

I suffered a leg injury at the end of 2020 and was misdiagnosed and mistreated for three months, putting my life and danger and eventually causing my lungs to be compromised to the point that I still have to remain in isolation, even though I’m vaccinated and boosted. So the only way I was able to see this film was through a press screener because of my podcast work. Very few people in my situation will have that privilege.

The film is gorgeous, but any comparisons to installation screenings or site-specific work is spurious. This is a work of narrative cinema that can just as easily be appreciated at home as in the cinema. The experience may be different, but it isn’t so different that it requires the film to only live in theaters, forever preventing accessibility for those who may never be able to be present in physical spaces.

The Lost Daughter 2021 | Directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal

 5/5

Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter is an exceptionally crafted character study – filled with incredible performances from its stellar cast. The film explores the burdens of motherhood and the inexpressible feelings mothers aren’t allowed to express publicly – as well as the incredible harm to both mother and child that can occur when those sentiments are kept bottled up inside. The film opens with a moment of shock, cutting immediately to its opening credits over the film’s jazzy score, a bold and confident declaration that immediately sets us on edge. The handheld camerawork intensifies this growing anxiety throughout the film, with the precise framing able to shift ever-so-slightly to reveal watching eyes in the distance or to alter the composition and show Leda watching and observing back. The dislocation that comes with traveling – especially with having an “idyllic” vacation “spoiled” by the realities of rotting fruit, bugs on your pillow, rude neighbors – invites the kind of introspection and soul-searching upon which Leda embarks throughout the film, especially when confronted by a young mother that reminds her of herself in her younger days. Here’s another film this year that makes incredible use of the fluidity of time and memory – the way flashbacks intrude upon the present evoke the way that memories intrude upon our day to day lives. And here, the flashbacks are shot more often in closeup, giving them a much more subjective and intensely personal stylistic flavor. This is a sensational film that has numerous layers to continue exploring.

Where to Watch

Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy (2021) | Directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi

 4.5/5

Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy is a lovely and delicate little film whose power becomes more and more apparent as it moves along and its triptych of stories accumulate. It’s a poignant and bittersweet look at individuals’ fumbling attempts to reach out for connection and the ways those attempts can be painful, liberating, joyous, or destructive. Each of the three stories are anchored by long conversations filled with confessions, vulnerability, and revelations. It’s a testament to Hamaguchi’s sense of staging and framing – and each of the incredible performers – that these long conversations never feel boring or static, there’s always a sense of movement and a trajectory of emotional connection within each sequence. As the characters lay their souls bare in an effort to find love or connection, the camera is willing to linger – on faces, on empty spaces – to let moments breathe. There’s a quiet poignancy to each of the stories here, characters may not always find connection in the way they liked or hoped, and sometimes their attempts go awry, but the attempt is made. And for Hamaguchi and the characters in the film, it’s the attempt itself that matters.

Where to Watch

Bergman Island (2021) | Directed by Mia Hansen-Løve

 5/5

Mia Hansen-Løve’s Bergman Island is a lovely rumination on life, love, relationships, and art – as well as the ways in which all of these can intersect and collide in the cinema. The very structure and framework of the film – and the meta-narrative surrounding its genesis – invites us to explore the power of cinema and art as tools we can use to refract our experiences and reshape them into something that, while it might resemble lived events, is something far more powerful and profound. The act of telling this story of filmmakers romantically involved and setting it on the island that Ingmar Bergman called home invites reflections on the latitude given to male artists and the burdens placed on women – just seeing the way that Tony is mobbed by admirers after a lecture while Chris is virtually ignored only drives home the point. Hansen-Løve also invites us to inhabit Chris’s creative process as the narrative folds in on itself at the film’s midpoint – becoming the unfinished fragment of a film that Chris describes to Tony before shifting into work on the film itself and then back into the work of writing it in the present. It’s glorious and elegant and simple – capturing what it is to create and the struggles (and joys) of sharing your life with another artist.

Where to Watch

Procession (2021) | Directed by Robert Greene

 5/5

Robert Greene’s Procession is an exceptionally moving documentary that utilizes the tools of filmmaking as a means for the film’s participants to continue their work facing and recovering from the abuse and trauma they experienced as children. Through the use of recreation and cinematic reinterpretation of the survivors’ traumatic experiences, they’re able symbolically interrupt their abuse and protect their younger selves, speak truth into their past, and face the physical spaces in which they were abused in order to have them loom less ominously in their lives. The use of the same child actor across the scenes is a powerful choice that serves to highlight the repeated patterns of abuse throughout the Catholic Church. Greene works closely with the survivors, allowing them to shape the work to suit the needs of their recovery, rather than the needs of the film. It continues in Greene’s exploration of the act of filmmaking and performance as a means of healing, and it gives agency to these men who had their agency taken from them as children, who have repeatedly been denied justice. In a year when documentaries have crossed so many ethical lines, it’s refreshing to see a film that consistently gives its subjects such control over the process, that checks in with its participants at every step along the way, and that is always attempting to put the welfare of those involved above the finished work. And that final work is a film of tremendous empathy and compassion, an overwhelmingly emotional exploration of trauma and the healing that can come through connection and community.

Where to Watch

C’mon C’mon (2021) | Directed by Mike Mills

 4.5/5

While Mike Mills’s C’mon C’mon had the potential to be just another story of a weary and broken man whose life is changed by the time he spends with a child – a clichéd narrative structure that is all-too-often tiresome and emotionally manipulative – Mills is able to assemble a such a beautiful and genuinely moving film that earns its emotional beats, rather leaning hard into mawkish sentimentality. So much of that is due to fantastic performances from the entire cast – from the adults leads and the phenomenal child performer, to the exceptional supporting actors. They help ground what could otherwise be a saccharine melodrama and give this film about the need for connection more weight and substance. The incorporation of interviews with real children is an essential component that helps to ground the film and effectively contrast Johnny’s ability to connect with kids he has just met with the very real struggles he has in caring for his nephew. The film’s use of time and memory are lovely here – the fluid breaks from the present are perfect representations of the ways that the past is always with us, and in this film, the ways that the family’s present continues to be shaped by past hurts and wounds. With Johnny’s work in public radio, the sound design is stellar, and as he introduces his nephew to the tools of his profession, the film’s soundscape is spectacular – opening Jesse up to a world of sonic possibility. So many narratives in this vein completely sideline the child’s parents to ensure that the new adult caregiver can have their moment of growth, so it’s refreshing that Gaby Hoffmann’s character remains a constant presence throughout the film and is given her own arc. It’s a rich and rewarding family drama that never comes by its emotional moments through manipulation or cheap narrative tricks, but through great performances and an incredibly honest script about the ways life rarely turns out the way we expect and our need for connection and community to weather the inevitable sorrows along the way.

Where to Watch

The Power of the Dog (2021) | Directed by Jane Campion

 5/5

Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog is a haunting study of loneliness and the yearning for connection, as well as the ways that this isolation can lead us into increasingly destructive behavior – either toward ourselves or others. Each of the film’s four leads is touched by this loneliness in some way, each lost in the vastness of the landscape and haunted by the menacing, discordant score. And while each of these characters choose to address their loneliness and isolation in different ways, each of their flailing attempts at connection contributes to the film’s chilling tragedy. All of the performances are outstanding here, each perfectly calibrated to play off of each other’s strengths. The naturalistic cinematography is glorious – capturing the natural world that Phil loves so well, while the shadows hide and allow everyone else to be oblivious to his secrets. In the hands of a lesser storyteller, Rose’s narrative would be incidental to Phil’s story, but in Campion’s hands, we’re given so much of her perspective in the film’s early chapters, enabling us have empathy for her plight. This is a rich, beautiful, haunting, and heartbreaking film in equal measure.

Where to Watch

Pig (2021) | Directed by Michael Sarnoski

 4.5/5

Michael Sarnoski’s Pig is an incredibly moving film, anchored by a tremendous performance from Nicolas Cage and complimented by the stellar supporting cast. The film complicates our relationship to revenge narratives at every turn, becoming a much more profound meditation on loss, grief, and what it means to let go of those we love, to move on and rebuild our lives in their absence. Food becomes the medium of interaction at every point along the characters’ journey throughout the film – it’s how characters barter and make plays for power, it’s how they show their love for one another and make connections, it’s how they bring comfort and soothe one another’s grief. As such, the food in the film is lovingly shot, each meal (and its preparation) filmed in a gorgeous light that connects the characters to a warmth and humanity that much of the film, drained of its color, lacks. And the way these meals – be they extravagant or humble – can forge connections and understanding is truly moving. As Cage’s character moves through a world he tried to leave behind, we’re reminded that it can take tremendous loss to encourage us to throw off the expectations of others and finally connect with your true passions. This is a truly remarkable film and keeps surprising at each and every turn.

Where to Watch

The Works and Days (of Tayoko Shiojiri in the Shiotani Basin) (2020) | Directed by C.W. Winter and Anders Edström

 5/5

C.W. Winter and Anders Edström’s THE WORKS AND DAYS (OF TAYOKO SHIOJIRI IN THE SHIOTANI BASIN) is an astonishing meditation on aging, mortality, grief, and the simple things that can help us as we move on and begin to heal. We, the viewer, are invited to enter into this rural Japanese community, to hear the stories of family members, to sit with Tayoko Shiojiri during the final year of her husband’s life – to bear witness and respond with the same empathy that the filmmakers display. At eight hours in length, the film is precisely attuned to the rhythms of the day (routines we come to know so well over the course of the film), the changes in season on the ever-shifting landscape with which we grow ever more familiar, and the cycles of the year and the way it brings family and friends in and out of the narrative as naturally as our own friends and family come in and out of our lives. The film is suffused with incredible images, capturing the subtle shifts of light that occur during the day and the small, incidental details in the foreground as characters carry on lengthy monologues in the background. Dense soundscapes orient us to the location and help us find our bearings as the film carries us over the course one year. While the film is a work of fiction, it’s grounded in real events that happened to the performers. The filmmakers are so embedded in the community that they become part of the film, and the performers become integral to the filmmaking process. This is such a compelling and captivating work that, while the duration is vital to the experience, you’re never left feeling burdened by the film’s eight hours. It’s a monumental work of cinematic empathy that will have you eager to revisit this quiet village, continue peeling back the film’s layers, and sit with its reflections on our mortality and our place in this world.

Where to Watch

Spencer (2021) | Directed by Pablo Larraín

 5/5

Pablo Larraín’s Spencer is a gorgeous and lush film, haunted by a past that’s always threatening to encroach on the present – and often does just that. This is a film filled with impeccable performances working with an astonishing script – no moment in the film is wasted and every performer (especially Kristen Stewart) is doing some of their best work. Seemingly innocuous lines of dialogue can have multiple meanings based on the performer’s reading, a polite menace hangs in the air behind forced pleasantries, and Stewart effortlessly conveys the sensation of being trapped and crushed by centuries of tradition – her hushed whisper, the quiet desperation in each attempt to connect or break free. Larraín fills the frame with stunning images – haunted mist rising over the grounds at night, elegant gowns become suffocating cages, curtains thrown open bathe Diana in a soft, comforting light. And the score is exquisite – it anchors us in a classical past while using discordant motifs to convey Diana’s discomfort and heighten our sense of tension at her ever-increasing loss of freedom. At every turn, Diana’s agency has been taken from her, her personhood robbed by the institution she has married into, and this film is a poetic exploration of the ways her freedom was curtailed and her struggles to break free. It’s an outstanding work.