Goodbye Lovers and Friends: Ryan’s Top Five of 2013

Good Morning, and welcome to 2014. If you’re like me, you can’t wait for this year to get started.

I don’t write that in a “TGIF” sort of way. Suggesting that I want the working week of 2013 over with so we can get to the weekend of 2014 couldn’t be further from the truth actually. To the contrary, I sit here in the afterglow of a year that brought me so many thoughtful, engaging, and beautiful films that left me with a great deal of resonance. Sometimes they were massive studio pictures (GRAVITY, FROZEN), sometimes smaller arthouse offerings (MUSEUM HOURS, FRUITVALE STATION). Some left me humming a tune, some left me in stunned silence. It’s possible that I got better at choosing what to watch, but I doubt I’m that intuitive – so let’s just all agree that it was the films being shown more than it was the hoser attending the showing.

What does this have to do with 2014? Simple: It’s shaping up to be a quiet year where most of the fast food offerings are concerned. There are few franchises rolling out this year…few spectacles…few happy meal movies. So perhaps that will encourage this focus on more varied cinema and bring us more of what made 2013 so special.

That’s my hope anyway.

So before we wade into the chilly January waters of this new year, allow me one last shoulder-check on the good year of film that just passed…

 

Ryan’s Top Five Films of 2013

#5. HER

If you’ve already listened to the year-end Matineecast, you might have heard my guests throw a bucket of cold water on my love for this film. They’re not wrong; from a storytelling standpoint it’s flawed. I submit to you though that an imperfect story can still result in a deeply moving film…and that’s what I got with Spike Jonze latest offering. Many films in 2013 felt very in-the-moment (most of them dealing with financial corruption), and to me HER is one of those films. It encapsulates something specific about what makes us tick in these strange days; that we can be so isolated and so connected all at once. Further, that we have reached a stage where falsities can feel so genuine. Look at the “beautiful handwritten letters” our hero in the film creates: it’s a complete figment of Jonze’s wild imagination, but its appeal is tangible because it’s a form of tangible expression so many of us crave.

HER is a poem more than it is a story; a simple one and a messy one, but a lovely one and one I want to revisit soon.

(Full HER review here)

#4. 12 YEARS A SLAVE

What can I possibly say about this film that hasn’t been said a million times over already? It’s intense, it’s stunning, it’s unflinching, and (most unfortunately) it’s deeply relevant in 2013 North America.

More than once in the film, its characters look straight to camera – straight at us. As they do, we feel the deep-seeded urge to look away. Because of discomfort? Because of guilt? Because of shame? Perhaps, worst of all, for reasons we don’t know and can’t articulate. However, the film isn’t content with being a lesson in morality and document of human atrocity. It knows that to best make its point, it must employ a great deal of visual splendour, sharp direction, and complicated characters. It’s a pity that it took this long to arrive at a film on slavery this affecting, but we should all raise a glass that 12 YEARS A SLAVE made the most of its opportunity.

(Full 12 YEARS A SLAVE review here)

#3. NEBRASKA

Films three-through-one were movies that struck me more on a personal level, hence their placement for me as win, place, and show of 2013. With that in mind, NEBRASKA felt like going home.

It reminded me of an inkling I got during the one-and-only time I ever visited my father’s hometown some years ago. My father is nothing like Woody Grant, and my relationship with him is nothing like what David goes through. Yet there’s something about wandering through a place that has meaning in your past to make you feel more at one with your present. You end up seeing your parents in a slightly different way. At best you understand them better; at least you get a big ‘ol clue.

There’s something about NEBRASKA that feels like winter giving way to spring – a hopefulness to its stark aesthetic. In much the same way visiting my dad’s hometown helped me ground myself growing up, NEBRASKA helped me ground myself as the final few weeks of 2013 played out. Who says you can never go home again?

(Full NEBRASKA review  here)

#2. THE BROKEN CIRCLE BREAKDOWN

If you’re reading this, I have you to thank for the pure beauty I witnessed with THE BROKEN CIRCLE BREAKDOWN. You see, I might never have caught up with it had it not been for a Listener’s Choice episode of The Matineecast that happened back in November. It was on that fateful 99th episode that a gaggle of you banded together and chose this glorious Flemish film as the movie you wanted to hear discussed.

When I think about how I might have missed it were it not for that moment, I feel lucky. When I think about the heartache and beauty I was able to witness on a big screen, I feel a mix of sweetness and sadness.

In a year of great soundtracks, it’s this one that has been ringing in my ears for weeks on end, and rightfully so. It’s the music of the common man, the music I was raised on. Hearing the characters in this film sing and play these iconic songs remind us how desperately we all want to believe in “America”, and how hard that can be to achieve both inside and outside of America.

THE BROKEN CIRCLE BREAKDOWN was the gift my readers and listeners gave me in 2013, and if you haven’t seen it yet, track it down and consider it my gift to you.

(Full BROKEN CIRCLE BREAKDOWN review here)

#1. BEFORE MIDNIGHT

By and large, Hollywood is an environment of diminishing returns. A place where every sequel feels less like an intentional offering, and more like a copy of a copy of a copy. So one could excuse a filmgoer’s surprise in 2004 when BEFORE SUNSET built so beautifully on top of what BEFORE SUNRISE established.

One could likewise be excused if they were flat out floored that BEFORE MIDNIGHT could build so beautifully on top of both.

The way Richard Linklater’s film was able to do that would be reason alone for it to be in the conversation for the top film of the year. What sets it at the top of the list for me is its sense of honesty. Regardless of what one thinks of the ultimate fate of Celine and Jesse, one would be hard-pressed to find a film that speaks so honestly about the nature of love in the new millennium. Whether it comes down to the compromises we all have to make (yet remain discontent in making), to the fact that we are all “just passing through”.

Whether the love we share is indeed for life or in fact just fleeting, BEFORE MIDNIGHT wants us to cherish it and be be realistic about it. It wants us to know when to fight for it, when to walk away from it, and how to value every bit of it in all its forms. Where HER examines the real enlightenment brought on by virtual connection, BEFORE MIDNIGHT examines the real obstacles true connection puts in our way. How we handle those obstacles remain up to us, and those we walk alongside in this crazy world.

(Full BEFORE MIDNIGHT review here)

Other films on my shortlist for 2013 include AMERICAN HUSTLE, BLANCANIEVES, DALLAS BUYERS CLUB, FROZEN, FRUITVALE STATION, THE GRANDMASTER (Chinese Cut), GRAVITY, INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS, PACIFIC RIM, THE SPECTACULAR NOW, STOKER, STORIES WE TELL, UPSTREAM COLOR, VALENTINE ROAD, and THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

What did you think? Please leave comments with your thoughts on the list, and your own selections for the best films of 2013.