1. Yi Yi
2. A Woman Under the Influence
3. The Mirror
4. Sansho the Bailiff
5. Viridiana
6. Wild Strawberries
7. The Swimmer
8. My Dinner With Andre
9. Beau Travail
10. Happy Hour
Honourable mentions:
The Addiction, After the Storm, Angels With Dirty Faces, Angst, Au Revoir Les Enfants, Bob Le Flambeur, Bride of Frankenstein, Close-Up, Contempt, The Dawns Here Are Quiet, Diabolique, Le Doulos, Drug War, Elevator to the Gallows, Faust: A German Folk Legend, The Firemen's Ball, The Fire Within, Forbidden Games, Germany Year Zero, The Green Ray, Ivan's Childhood, Ivan the Terrible Parts I & II, Killer of Sheep, LA 92, The Last Wave, The Magic Blade, A Moment of Innocence, New Rose Hotel, The Ninth Gate, Notorious (1946),
Old Joy, Oslo August 31st, Out of the Blue, Pierrot Le Fou, Rat Film, Ronin, Sleuth (1972),
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring, The Tenant, Vivre sa vie.
Narrowing down the best viewings to a ranked top 10 is tough in any year, but especially one where there was nothing to do but sit at home and watch movies (more so than usual, anyway). Still, I figured that
Yi Yi was the stand-out for me - I had not seen any of Edward Yang's work before and jumping in with a sprawling three-hour tale of a Taiwanese family with little in the way of external action would always be a bit of a gamble, but he demonstrates such a command over such simple dramatics and slice-of-life sincerity that I just proved mesmerised for the entirety of the runtime. This arguably also applies to my number-two pick,
A Woman Under the Influence, but that is much more clearly defined as a tale of ordinary madness that deftly avoids simplifying any of its key relationships or characters.
I picked
Solaris as my favourite first-time viewing last year and joked about how
The Mirror might take the top spot the following year, but I guess it wasn't to be. Tarkovsky's reverie takes place at the intersection of dreams and memories in such a way as to prove reasonably compelling, but at the same time so matter-of-fact that I feel it's going to have to grow on me.
Sansho the Bailiff lives up to its reputation as a grim period drama that doesn't let the restrictions of its time prevent it from crafting a horrifying (yet occasionally beautiful) tragedy that still resonates.
Viridiana sees Bunuel unleash a no-holds-barred satire that skewers so many different targets - pious would-be saviours, upper-class perverts, even an underclass that refuses to be treated as victims to be saved - to the point where it almost seems too broad for its own good, but it retains its sharpness from start to finish.
I realise now that the ten I singled out do kind of bleed into one another thematically as I move on
Wild Strawberries, another odyssey through life and death that bounces between past and present in a valiant attempt to make sense of both, but at least having Bergman at the helm makes it interesting in its own right.
The Swimmer touches on the same thing with its bizarre New Hollywood satire where an extremely game Burt Lancaster ruthlessly deconstructs his own movie star persona in order to undercut not just the foolish aloofness of his protagonist but of the society that alternately humours and disparages him.
My Dinner With Andre may be the true outlier here with its infamously low-key premise about two friends getting together for dinner and just talking about whatever crosses their minds - I've watched a whole bunch of Louis Malle films this past year and he's certainly jumped genres and themes a whole lot in the process, but this is currently my pick for a favourite.
To cap things off, more shenanigans involving weird power structures and how they alternatively help and hinder the individuals who move within them in the form of
Beau Travail, Claire Denis' homoerotic arthouse comedy about the French Foreign Legion and a bizarre love triangle that unfolds mostly as a result of the jealousies of one man (the ever-mercurial Denis Lavant). The number ten pick brings things full circle with another lengthy Asian drama, this time the five-hour
Happy Hour and its tale of a circle of friends who find their seemingly pleasant lives being slowly thrown out of balance. It may be one of my favourite films of the decade.
As for the rest, hard to argue with any of them. Most of them are great and even the ones that aren't can have compelling arguments made for them.