Why The Tree of Life is my top movie of the decade
A mind-bending exploration of life tops a very personal list of the best films of the past 10 years.
What were the best movies of the decade on which the credits will roll next week? Before I list my top 10, four caveats.
First, I haven’t seen every movie released since January 1, 2010. So if I don’t mention a film others think is a masterpiece, that’s because I haven’t seen it or I have seen it but don’t rate it as highly.
Second, what follows is my opinion and it may be different to the opinions of others. It may seem unnecessary to mention that but in this day of instant judgment via social media, I prefer to have it spelled out. David Fincher’s The Social Network (2000), by the way, does not make my list.
Third, if the best movie of the past decade is based on release date then No 1, by the length of the Congo, is Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now: Final Cut, which came out in August. However, as it is a rejigged version of the 1979 original (a masterpiece) and the 2001 Redux (a masterpiece), perhaps we have to leave it out.
Fourth, I’m going to cheat a little and say the most influential film of the past decade is James Cameron’s Avatar, starring Australia’s Sam Worthington, which was released in December 2009. Its impact flowed into and through the new decade. The sequel, with Worthington returning, is due in 2021. There is no film I more look forward to seeing.
I see Avatar as the Star Wars of its day, a movie that changed how movies were made. Not visually, as Star Wars did, but intellectually and emotionally. There’s a prescience to its focus on how human beings will destroy their own planet and any planet (or moon in this case) they manage to latch on to.
It’s a movie that turns audiences against their own species and has them cheering for the non-humans. In the decade that followed, this theme was picked up by other filmmakers. We watch what is happening on screen and we want the humans to lose.
Back in 1968 we might have preferred Roddy McDowall’s chimp to Charlton Heston’s astronaut, but we still empathised with the human struggle. In the 2011-17 Planet of the Apes reboot we want the apes to win. In The Meg (2018) do we want Jason Statham or the not-extinct-after-all-and-it’s-our-fault-it’s-back giant shark to prevail? That’s a no-brainer.
It’s worth noting that the movie that this year became the highest grossing animated feature, Jon Favreau’s The Lion King, is free of human characters. Even in the movie it displaced at the top of the animated honour roll, Frozen (2013), I suspect most viewers would, if it came to it, sacrifice the princess to save the snowman.
As I have mentioned Star Wars, I should say that I’ve seen the new one, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and it is not on my best-of-the-decade list. Nor is George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). However both Star Wars (1977) and Mad Max (1979) would be high on any list of the most important films of the past 50 years.
I don’t have an Australian film in my top 10, though Australian actors feature in three of the movies. While thinking geographically, I suspect it is foreign language films where I am most likely to have missed a masterpiece or two. I have one, or perhaps 1½, in my top 10.
Last year I preferred the Polish film Cold War, directed by Pawel Pawlikowski, to Alfonso Cuaron’s Mexico-set Roma. I have seen the South Korean film everyone is raving about, Parasite, directed by Bong Joon-ho, but it didn’t rock my world. Nor did the 2011 Iranian film A Separation.
None of these is anywhere near Michael Haneke’s Amour (French, 2013), which is on the fringe on my top 10. The sequel, Happy End (2017), is also magnificent. Amour deals with ageing and mortality in a way that is true and therefore heartbreaking. Unlike Ron Howard’s Cocoon (1985), there are no aliens to turn back the clock. Paolo Sorrentino’s Youth (Italian, 2015), starring Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel and with an astonishing cameo by football great Maradona, also deals with ageing. It and its 2013 prequel, The Great Beauty, are on the edge of my top 10, along with Leviathan (Russian, 2014), directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev.
Only one best picture winner makes my list, Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight (2016), which tells the story of one conflicted man over three stages of his life. On the cusp are Spotlight from 2015 (though I prefer, when it comes to movies about the Catholic Church and sexual abuse, John Michael McDonagh’s Calvary from 2014, with Brendan Gleeson in the lead); and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Birdman (2014). Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water, best picture in 2018, is not in my top 500.
One superhero movie does make my top 10, Logan (2017), starring Hugh Jackman as a decrepit, vulnerable Wolverine. It is the best Marvel movie yet. That leads to another topic that has been buzzing around the film world this decade: the dominance of superhero movies, mainly based on comic books from Marvel and DC.
In a recent article in The New Yorker, Richard Brody, who I like as a film critic, argued that superhero movies are not real movies and that “many directors of less-than-distinctive visual sensibility” are hired to make them.
He doesn’t name names, so I will. The remarkable Kiwi director Taika Waititi (Hunt for the Wilderpeople, the coming Jojo Rabbit, which is a hoot, and … Thor Ragnarok, the second best Marvel movie); James Mangold (Cop Land, still his best, Walk the Line, Ford v Ferrari, in cinemas now, and … Logan); Christopher Nolan (Memento, Interstellar, the absolute masterpiece Dunkirk and … the greatest Batman movie, The Dark Knight). I could add Sam Raimi (Spider-man), Bryan Singer (X-Men) and others. My point is I think these filmmakers know where to point the camera.
Now to my top 10 films of the past decade. The first three are in order, the remaining seven in a group.
The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick, 2011). First and clear. A mind-bending exploration of life from beginning to end. Also a reminder that Brad Pitt, who is being lauded for his acting chops in Ad Astra (which is good but not great), has always been a damn fine actor.
Boyhood (Richard Linklater, 2014). Filmed over 12 years with the same cast, it follows the childhood and adolescence of one boy (Ellar Coltrane). It is full of truth and beauty.
Dunkirk (Nolan, 2017). The first time I saw this time-bending account of the Dunkirk evacuation at the start of World War II I thought it was a five-star film. I have seen it twice since and each time it went higher in my estimation.
Then there’s Moonlight and Logan as mentioned, plus: Manchester by the Sea (Kenneth Lonergan, 2016). Casey Affleck in the lead was the performance of the decade … until Joker (Todd Phillips, 2019). This is a four-star film revealing the sad, unfair and all-too-likely backstory of the man who became Joker, with a 20-star performance by Joaquin Phoenix, the most compelling male actor at work today. The only performance that comes close this year is Al Pacino in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, which is a four-star film. However, I think Scorsese’s best of the decade is The Wolf of Wall Street.
Holy Motors (Leos Carax, French, 2012). I have no idea what this movie, which features Kylie Minogue in a stunning scene, is about, and I like it for that. I think it’s about a life in stages. It reminds me of the TV show everyone has been talking about, Watchmen, which had its finale on December 15. I have no idea what that’s about either, and as a result it was my only must-watch show.
Call Me By Your Name (Italian director Luca Guadagnino, 2017). Based on Andre Aciman’s novel, with a script by James Ivory, this northern Italy-set coming-of-age story about a young man and his slightly older male lover is the movie, I think, that announced the arrival of Timothee Chalamet, one of the most exciting actors we have.
Once Upon a Time … In Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019). Astonishing from beginning to its history-subverting end, with must-watch performances by Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Australia’s Margot Robbie (and her compatriot Damon Herriman pops up as Charles Manson). It’s about how the smallest change in circumstances can produce tragedy and damnation, or rescue and salvation, and so, while set in the late 1960s, is very much a film of today.
Stephen Romei is one of The Australian’s film critics.