Kevin’s Top Ten Films of 2021
“The whole world at your fingertips, the ocean at your door”
Watching a movie in a darkened room sometimes makes me think I am bearing witness to something when, truth be told, I see it as much more an voyeuristic pastime. As viewers, we demand the depiction of intimate moments from the characters on screen or, if nothing else, the care from those behind the camera. How else can we connect to the lights and sounds we hear and see on the big screen? Granted, most films try with all their might to convince me I am anything but a passive witness. In return, I try (with all of my might) to forget that I am not just in a darkened room. This unspoken compromise can be a beautiful thing between individuals and artists who likely will never share the same space. It has undeniably enriched my world! But I sometimes ask myself, what right do I have to such an existence?
In one way or another, my favorite movies of 2021 seem to be chipping away at passively existing- a feeling exacerbated by yet another year of precautions. As with me, I hope that art helped you feel a bit more alive in some way this year.
Before we move too far into 2022, let’s reminisce together about some films that did that for me…
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Honorable Mention
Bo Burnham: Inside
“I want to help to leave the world better than I found it. And I fear that comedy won’t help, and the fear is not unfounded,” laments Bo Burnham early on in Bo Burnham: Inside. As his first comedy special or one-man-show in more than 5 years, his return was a notable surprise following his 2016 special Make Happy where he announced, via song, an indefinite hiatus from performing to prioritize his mental health. It’s understandable if Burnham’s brand of existential humor does not sound like your usual topic for an hour of musical comedy, but it’s not new territory for Burnham either; he’s put in over a decade into jokes that gradually lift the veil between audience and performer.
Oddly enough, when I think of Burnham’s continued interest with digital age comedy, I think of Claude Monet. Nestled into the Art Institute of Chicago are a handful of works from Monet’s Haystacks series, twenty-five paintings each depicting the same pastoral subjects in varied settings based on weather, season or time of day. I am no art scholar, but I am reminded of an individual’s unique perspective on life every time those works cross my mind. For Monet, he is a definitive voice on the ever-changing light on these haystacks. Who else could speak as well to that subject?
For Bo Bunrham, he is a definitive voice on growing up on the early internet; few know its pros and cons better than him. Bo started as a YouTuber, uploading comedic songs to the platform and amassing a following that led him to record the youngest Comedy Central Presents special ever at the age of 18. From there, he’s toured and completed 3 more specials before Inside, each toying with the traditional stage composition of a comedian with a mic and an instrument. Throughout his career, Burnham has returned to familiar ideas regarding the effects of the internet and the relationship his comedy has with it. With Inside, he revisits these ideas, but, like Monet’s Haystacks, with a different setting and perspective for the contemporary present.
The setting? The elephant in the room, a pandemic that interrupted everyone’s life on this planet in some shape or form. Inside never refers to it with a name, only saying that “the coolest thing happened” in the spring of 2020 while he was planning on returning to the stage. In place of a touring act, Burnham dedicates himself to writing and recording his songs himself, alone, in his guest house. However, the specials isn’t just the songs. He begins his special with a scene of himself recording said songs, resulting in a behind-the-scenes look at the one-man-show we are currently watching.
About halfway through, Burnham propositions the allure of the internet’s knowledge and discussions with “Welcome to the Internet.” “Can I interest you in everything, all of the time?”, he muses. The song goes on to highlight the never-ending abyss of information and debauchery that can be found online, a sentiment that grows ever more relevant with each passing year it seems.
“Trying to be funny and stuck in a room, there isn’t much more to say about it,” Burnham later laments. And for the way I watch films, I find myself asking a similar question. It’s a staggering thought for such a lover of movies, but should I even be watching movies at a time like this?
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Honorable Mention
The Beatles: Get Back
It is a strange comment to make about a documentary shot nearly 50 years ago, and about such a well-known band, but watching The Beatles: Get Back is a bit like a family reunion. For the Beatles themselves, they haven’t played together since recording the music video for “Hey Jude.” Once wrapped, John, Paul, George and Ringo scatter to their respective bubbles, don new facial hair and piece together preliminary song ideas for their next album. Now, they reconvene in the studio to finish the songs, record a tv special where they will perform for the first time in four years, and shoot a documentary of the process — all this taking place when the Liverpool lads are in the midst of change, both individually and as a group.
Admittedly the luster of Beatlemania has faded a bit. It’s personified in the ever encroaching outside influence, but The Beatles remain extremely popular; so much so that tabloids continue to print unfavorable daily stories on them. Since the death of their original manager, Brian Epstein, they manage themselves now. This not only means more freedom in recording songs, but it also leads to habitual late starts and malleable plans. The band only has three weeks budgeted in the studios before Ringo has to shoot a movie (a tight turnaround). It’s a setting ripe for interpersonal strife and animosity that has been well documented in rock and roll history.
Get Back’s opening shot might produce déjà vu for avid Beatles fans. It’s the same shot as their eighty minute documentary Let It Be from Michael Lindsay-Hogg, released in 1971 before becoming unobtainable in the 1980’s. The Let It Be documentary shot over sixty hours of video and over 150 hours of audio for the project, almost none of which has been seen publicly outside of the clips in the 1971 film. Of all people, Peter Jackson convinced the powers that be to open the archival vault in order to create a new film with this material. Over the course of four years, he’s whittle down everything to a relatively seamless eight hour story. In a way, Get Back is a documentary about a documentary, albeit one where most of audience has not seen the original film. Even with the knowledge of the eventual album that is produced, and the venue for their final live show, it’s a joy watching the iconic band’s last month unfold.
The cracks in the band are evident, as expected. What isn’t, however, is how little those cracks appear. Largely, we’re involved with old friends, both band members and loyal, longtime record producers and technicians alike. The Beatles talk about adding pianist Billy Porter as a fifth member. Peter Sellers starstuckedly visits the studio. The band practice their earliest songs together alongside new ones that we know end up on respective solo albums outside The Beatles’s name. There is a thought of the future between the members that is simultaneously enrapturing and heartbreaking, knowing the eventual outcome of the band. It’s absolute magic for the entire runtime and perhaps the best time I had watching anything on a screen this year.
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10. Pig
Longing propels Michael Sarnoski’s serene debut Pig. Longing for what exactly? That is a more particular question. “We don't get a lot of things to really care about,” Rob Feld (Nicholas Cage) says at one point in the film. He has lived off the grid on the outskirts of Portland, content with selling the culinary treasures his truffle-hunting pig finds to a local entrepreneur Amir (Alex Wolff). It seems that Rob is at peace with just his privacy and his porcine companionship. But one night, his house is raided, and his pig stolen. Enraged, he leverages his value as a supplier to Amir, and the two set out on his mission to find and reclaim the thing Rob values most.
When Cage delivers his line about caring in Pig, it’s almost as if the movie has reached the last line of its introductory paragraph, proclaiming “here’s the thesis statement” to the audience. It’s an off-beat decision, but Pig is an off-beat movie and all the better for it. It somehow feels like a Frankenstein assembly of Ratatouille, Fight Club, and Up. Cage is enigmatic as Rob, delivering some of his better work in the last decade and sporting an empathy the film could not otherwise succeed at. To his credit, Wolff is also given a substantial role that he handles competently, delivering one of the film’s best emotional payoffs. Bolstered by striking cinematography right out of your favorite nature documentaries and culinary shows, Pig dines on a full course of old memories, memories we know are not the end of our story but feel weighty enough to define who we are.
On a long enough timeline, I suppose most things in life you once cared for become relatively unimportant to you. Time can put some things into perspective. But when you reach a certain stage, you accumulate so many past traumas that they can run together and coalesces into a single ache. Pig is an auspicious debut from Sarnoski and perhaps the theatrical surprise of the year for me, particularly for how rich and cathartic it is in its simplicity. Pig’s bizarre and meditative farm-to-table journey into Portland food subcultures leaves enough space to provide a temporary balm to alleviate that single ache.
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9. Shiva Baby
If it takes a village to raise a child, then all of the village is mourning together at the same shiva in Emma Seligman’s debut feature Shiva Baby. Maybe mourning is not the correct word as the shiva feels more like a community gathering than a seven day Jewish custom of respecting the dead. Old acquaintances lock eyes and promise to circle back around to catch up later. Others must keep a damper on the timbre of their voice as they excitedly share new stories to longtime friends. At the center of it all is Danielle (Rachel Sennott), a twenty-something wanting to avoid almost any conversation of the past and who seems more interested in the heaping table of food set out for the event. She initially doesn’t even know the name of the person who passed. Quickly, she is reminded by her parents and ex-girlfriend Maya as appearances must be kept, after all, in such a close-knit community.
We first meet Danielle at the film’s opening where she is having sex with an older man, Max (Danny Deferrari). She tells him she is paying her way through law school with the money they exchange for the act. It’s only later at the event that, by pure coincidence, Max appears with his wife (Dianna Agron) and newborn to pay their respects. We get the sense that Danielle was not aware he was married with a kid, but Danielle is harboring some secrets of her own. Her mother and father unknowingly reveal to Max they bankroll her undergraduate education decidedly not in law. With this, the stage is primed for Shiva Baby to conduct an envious seventy-eight minute ratcheting of tension fueled by the looming threat of sudden exposure of Danielle’s sex work, Max’s infidelity, or the profound current tension between Maya and Danielle.
The frantic pace of Shiva Baby is a real testament to Seligman’s script and blocking. At every moment, new attendees squeeze into the claustrophobic home hosting the shiva, limiting the places Danielle can escape to safe conversation. It feels like only a matter of time until some secret is exhumed in front of the whole community. Ariel Marx’s prickling score heightens the strained facade Danielle puts up to deal with barrage of questions from family and friends.
The casting here is top notch led by Rachel Sennet’s expert distillation of chaotic Danielle into a complex, magnetic centerpiece of this hellish shiva. Molly Gordon’s Maya is a wonderful accompaniment and embodiment of Danielle’s secret past. And Glee regular Dianna Agron is pitch perfect as an intuitively suspicious bosslady less familiar with the customs of Judaism. I mean, seriously, who brings a baby to a shiva?!
But what is perhaps the most impressive aspect in this debut is the focus on a sex worker who is seemingly content with her line of work. It is an unspoken assumption that most members of the shiva would look down upon Danielle’s secret, but not once does the film fall into the cinematic trope of assigning a morality to her side-hustle itself. It’s a refreshing, but tricky, balancing act to keep going over the course of the film’s runtime, but Seligman completes it with aplomb.
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8. c’mon c’mon
Curiosity is at the core of Mike Mills’s empathetic filmography, and C’mon C’mon is no exception. Curiosity fuels Johnny’s (Joaquin Phoenix) job as a radio journalist which sends him around the country interviewing children about their outlook on the future. Curiosity also spurs his nine year old nephew in a way that only youngsters can view the ever-changing world. One day, an emergency with Jesse’s father’s mental health puts Jesse’s mother Viv (Gabby Hoffman) in a tight spot. She calls Johnny asking him to take care of Jesse for a a few days to sort everything out. What follows is a two hander between a contemplative Johnny and a grating Jesse as they desperately try to relate across generations, experiences, and familial baggage.
I am always amazed at how universal Mills’s film can be despite their banal trappings. There is a very specific type of Mills’s magic in his didacticism that speaks to the commonalities in life. If Beginners focused on a son learning who has father has become in old age, and 20th Century Women on a mother trying to raise her son right, then C’mon C’mon is about how having your first kid opens you up to the world. A small, but towering performance from Gabby Hoffman’s Viv distills her lessons in motherhood to Johnny in a telephonic attempt to give the parenting tools he needs to be Jesse’s temporary guardian. “Over the years, you will try to make sense of that happy, sad, full, empty, always-shifting life you're in,” Johnny notes to Jesse at one point in the film, and with a Mike Mills film you feel like he is doing just that.
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7. Power of the dog
We romanticize the Old West as a place where danger lurks everywhere, so much so that even the plants have spikes to protect themselves. There is an unspoken, adventurous nobility in surviving there, and anyone who tries their luck needs to take the proper precautions to construct the right defense mechanisms. In the Old West, it’s every man for himself. You can’t trust anyone or show vulnerability, lest someone see weakness in you. Of course, that’s mostly folktale horseshit, or maybe cowshit, if you find yourself in Jane Campion’s Power of the Dog.
In Campion’s first feature in over twelve years, the famed director highlights how sharp and subtly threatening everything can be in her rendering of 1920s Montana (a guised New Zealand believe it or not). Benedict Cumberbatch’s Phil Burbank is no exception to this ethos. He brandishes a tenacity that can fell others without raising a hand, something that cannot be said about the character of Phil’s brother, George (Jesse Plemmons).
One day while herding their cows, they stop at an inn run by the good-intentioned Rose (Kirsten Dunst) and her effeminate son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Much to the chagrin of Phil, George becomes enamored with the inn keeper, and soon thereafter weds her. Phil picks fights with anyone and everyone, across both words and music. He’s a scoundrel, but not only so. Like with much of Campion’s work, Phil begins to reveal himself as more complex than just a Scrooge of the old West. He attended Yale, he plays banjo, but he cannot stand Peter’s mannerisms and his resistance to address what Phil views as a vulnerability. Like a tumbleweed rolling through a duel, we get the sense that the plodding path Campion takes is careening towards danger, though we don’t know how or when it will strike.
Power of the Dog is the type of film where the less said about it the better. Suffice to say, that competing definitions of masculinity play out in classic Campion fashion. Certain movies tell you how to watch them a second time, and the best of those have a card up their sleeve for its last moments.
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6.Licorice pizza
A famous line in the musical Company — “You've got so many reasons for not being with someone, but Robert, you haven't got one good reason for being alone.” — is written by Stephen Sondheim, but I’d imagine if the line were to flow from Paul Thomas Anderson’s pen instead and into the script for Licorice Pizza it would be, “You've got so many reasons for not being someone, Alana, but you haven't got one good reason for being no one.”
She is twenty-five in 1973, at a time when the generational gap between parents and children could not be greater in America. The summer of love has already captured the minds of the progressive thinking, and has filtered down to the mainstream for people under a certain age. We meet Alana as a yearbook photo assistant in a high school, a job that she show no real passion for. When fifteen-year-old Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) tries to cajole a date out of her while waiting in line for his photo, she is skeptical. Eventually, some mix of Gary’s actor chaisma, entrepreneurial spirit, and plain boredom from her family’s condescending lectures causes her to take the leap into Gary’s life.
Licorice Pizza feels like a suburban summer of shenanigans before the weight of the world plants itself firmly down on your motivation. It’s about that time in your life where you’re careening as fast as you can towards the future because you can’t wait to get there. It’s told in running feet, speeding motorcycles, and snowballing moving trucks. But it’s also told in moments of sexual harassment, off-color jokes, and financial swindles. Frankly, it’s easy to see shades of most suburban upbringing in its story.
“They’re all shits, aren’t they,” a line delivered to Alana in a particularly poignant scene in the film. The line refers to boyfriends in general, and you’ll find no argument here about that, but with it, Licorice Pizza seems to also ask, “Aren’t we all shits when we’re caught in the fearful whirlwind of finding ourselves?”
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5. West side story
For a brief time as a young kid, Saturday mornings meant waking up early before my family and rushing into the living room where I donned a set of ill-fitting headphones and played the soundtrack to the 1961 film West Side Story on my family’s old boombox. It rarely housed another CD. Every time I did this, the opening track started with a soundless span that made me anxious. Had I pressed the correct button to begin? Just when I began to doubt myself, a whistle would break the pristine silence of that early Saturday. Then came an echoed response, an orchestral hit, and finally, the snapping. I realize that is perhaps not a typical morning for an eight-year-old, but the sports games and goofing around came later in the day, I swear. These mornings were spent entranced by Leonard Bernstein’s orchestra and doing my utmost not to mimic snippets of Jerome Robbin’s iconic choreography.
If you know anything about musicals you’ve likely heard of West Side Story. I am not a musical super fan, and I was not not a “theater kid.” Yet, I knew all about West Side Story. I think it was just that work of art that could transcend the usual boundaries. It’s color-coded sets, poignant Stephen Sondheim lyrics, and impeccable synchronicity between dance moves and score stuck with me through out the years. But it wasn’t until I heard of the 21st century reimagining that I ventured to revisit the original film for the first time in years. The technical prowess remained in my rewatch, albeit a bit traditional in cinematic language. The songs soared, and the Shakespeare backbone kept it dramatic. But the film felt frozen in amber — a time capsule of dubious casting, disingenuous voices, and some outdated values. To an eight-year-old me though, it was just a story about how true love could be taken away at any moment. A misreading, I think, if there ever was one, but I was more naive and foolish than someone who knew better.
Steven Spielberg knows a thing or two about foolish kids, especially the brave ones in over their heads. To name a few, he brought us a pipsqueak Christian Bale in Empire of the Sun (1987), and captured the quintessential, idealistic childhood in ET: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) with the endearing combination of Henry Thomas and Drew Barrymore. Like many, I was hesitant about a West Side Story remake. Do we really need another? Especially with so many outdated pitfalls seemingly woven into the very core of the original show and movie? It’s a tall task for any movie to justify its existence, but against all odds Spielberg’s West Side Story does.
Janusz Kamiński’s camera never stops moving when the choreography takes flight. We first catch it soaring above the rubble where New York’s Lincoln Center for the Arts is planning to be constructed. The camera mimics the gentle, foreboding arc of a wrecking ball hellbent on knocking down the very San Juan Hill buildings that rival gangs, the white Jets and the Puerto Rican Sharks, are fighting over.
In a few short months, none of their scraps will matter as the blocks they call home will be entirely new, and they themselves forced somewhere else through gentrification. These kids are foolish, and their misplaced pride and anger can’t be cooled. Riff, the gaunt leader of the Jets played expertly with menace and loyalty by Mike Faist, proposes an all or nothing fight for the west side territory to the leader of the Sharks, David Alvarez’s Bernardo. They reach an uneasy agreement. Like rats coming from the underground and out of the woodwork, the gang members assemble by scurrying over fences and building remains searching for the last scraps of something in this soon-to-be wasteland; it’s an expert massaging of setting by longtime Spielberg collaborator Tony Kushner. Finally, perhaps no one was more ready for the assignment than Spielberg whose profound love for the original play and movie shine through his modernization by way of formal cinematic language.
At the Romeo and Juliet core of West Side Story are two lovers. Their fated infatuation brings to life the hard work of behind the camera. Here, Natalie Wood’s original 1961 role of Maria is in expert hands with newcomer Rachel Zegler; with unquestionable vocal chops, Zegler adds the young innocence and naivety that is needed to pull off such a harrowing story. Coupled with a powerhouse performance from Ariana Debose as Anita, Bernardo’s girlfriend and best friend to Maria, West Side Story is carried solidly by its actresses.
I swear, womb to tomb, this reimagining is a single casting decision away from being an all timer. But despite that, if even a kid who used to wake up early and listen to the West Side Story soundtrack could find new and inspiring moments in this adaptation, then I think that’s enough evidence to assert Spielberg’s West Side Story as a personal all-time musical.
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4. Wheel of fortune and fantasy
There is a moment in Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s nuanced Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy when two strangers lock eyes on an escalator. It is the second time these characters have done this, the first being hours earlier when they’re astonished to recognize one another as long-lost friends. What happens between these two encounters, which will remain a secret here, encapsulates why the film is one of the closest analogs to cracking the cinematic short story format I’ve seen on the silver screen.
Hamaguchi’s first of two 2021 releases is told in triptych form with each segment starting with a simple hook: hearing a friend’s magical first date, hatching a plan against a professor that has slighted you, and recognizing a long lost friend. From there, the three sets of characters encounter a stranger-than-fiction-esque progression with each of their premises. It’s a thin line between fated resonance and contrivance in these waters, but Hamaguchi maximizes every visual and emotional space to great effect. You get the sense that these characters are only on-screen when we’re supposed to see them. We’ve fluttered in and out of the lives of real people, catching just enough of a glimpse to glean fundamental truths while being respectful of their own journeys. We would want the same if our own stories and truths were to be shared in light and sound.
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3. the green knight
I haven’t met many people under 40 who didn’t feel a bit like Chicken Little. The sky might not be falling literally, but ultimately the existential threat is the same. Beyond the understandable first thought of “What do we do about this?”, an incredulous “how did we get here?” soon arises. As shrouded as it might be, I think that David Lowery’s The Green Knight tries to shed some light on the later while finding envious peace with the former.
“Why greatness? Why is goodness not enough?”, asks Essel (Alicia Vikander) of Gawain (Dev Patel). Gawain, the nephew of King Arthur, has accepted a task by The Green Knight, an intruder to the Camelot Christmas feast who proposes a twisted game. Any man brave enough to land a blow on the the Green Knight will get the knight’s axe, but the man must return to the knight’s chapel in exactly one year for a reciprocal blow. Gaiwan, eager to prove his worth and gain knighthood, immediately agrees. Cannot greatness be only achieved by doing unprecedented things? He fells the knight and for nearly a year Gawain is hailed as a legend, but the second half of his promise looms over him. Now that the time has come, when he has to decide to set out and fulfill his oath or not, Essel prods him about the logic of his quest, knowing full well the two are romantically involved. What follows is a journey of trials for Gawain, synthesized from countless retellings and translations of the 14th-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
More seamless with every viewing, The Green Knight is a feast for the senses with its colors that leap from the screen and its sweepingly majestic camera movements. Lowery, director of 2017’s A Ghost Story, returns to playing with existential time in this film. The fatality of individuals in the greater forces that share our world seems to comfort Lowery in a way that his characters here lack. Gawain’s obsession with knighthood harkens back as a way to leave his mark on the world while idolizing those who came before him. He quite literally asks to stand on the shoulder of giants at one point. Only the heroes of the generations before you aren’t necessarily good idols. Gawain’s uncle, King Arthur, is frail and waning like the nobility he espouses. And Gawain’s didactic trials seem to underscore the question Essel asks of him. Historically, haven’t quests for “greatness” brought on destruction? The idea of humanity’s warped sense of manifest destiny at a societal and individual level are ripe for Lowery’s meditative tendencies. After all, what constitutes “great” may change, as humans are fickle with what we value, but in this climate, why is just goodness not enough?
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2. the worst person in the world
After Millennials were through sacrificing home ownership for avocado toast, declining the worldwide copulation rates, breaking the sanctity of marriage, co-opting another generation’s title, and daring to pursue a sense of belonging, they have no recourse left but to turn their destructive ways on themselves. What a tough break. Less sarcastically, most Millennials have endured a constant besmirching since the ambiguous generational term was coined, and, when their minds are not preoccupied with recent or impeding financial collapses, it weighs on them. Or, at least it weighs on me for one.
That baggage was looming when Joachim Trier’s The Worst Person in the World introduces us to Julie (Renate Reinsve), initially a medical student in Oslo. I say initially because Julie is almost always in the midst of changing her career path. Her medical studies transition to psychological ones as she realizes her ‘true’ calling. Soon after, another realization leads her to the world of photography. Then to writing. Then to activism. Anything really that she can romanticize putting her whole self into. Like her career path, Julie is also constantly searching for both a partner and the values she wants in them. She’s first attached to another medical student before she meets the alluring Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie ), a cartoonist fifteen years her senior, who sweeps her off her feet. Aksel is passionate about his work, but perhaps most importantly to Julie, his success at it, too. He knows what he wants in his future and maybe that doesn’t align fully with Julie’s wants right now. No matter, Julie is convinced this is where she is meant to be. But that might change after meeting a charming barista Eivind. How long does certainty last?
Trier’s third entry in his Oslo trilogy is sub-divided into twelve chapters plus a prologue and epilogue spanning a number of years in Julie’s life. Throughout, we focus on Reinsve’s mesmerizing Julie, seemingly stuck in a cycle of coming-of-age epiphanies. These realizations seem to energize her, but the constant searching can be daunting. The same societal pressures that cause people to write blogs about entire generations feed into the Julie’s insecurities regarding her own self worth. Many times she laments that she is the worst person in the world because of her dedication to her search. But to me, her conviction to what she thinks will make her happy is admirable, however ephemeral that happiness may be. That perspective doesn’t have to be shared by older generations who maybe lacked the luxury of living through epiphany after epiphany to find themselves, but who wouldn’t take a lighting strike of clarity that makes you wish all the world would stop so you could be in the place you were meant to be?
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1. drive my car
In a year where everything seemed to stand still, Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car encapsulated the continual struggle to push forward. An expansion of the Haruki Murakami short story, we follow Yūsuke Kafuku (Hidetoshi Nishijima) as a theater actor putting on a production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya while still grieving over the loss of his wife. A chauffeur Misaki (Tōko Miura) drives him hours each day to the the theater in a red Saab 900. He ponders his loss during this time and its larger significance in the world. Like most, he is desperately searching in the art around him for any help with his pain.
A lot of movies try to tackle the stories we tell ourselves to survive — how our greatest pains can sometimes ripple across time and transcend our own social circles to effect others. The truth is, all we have is each other. As distanced as it sometimes feels, we’re all more connected and similar than we realize. For me, filmmaking is at its height when it can remind us of those delicate and fateful commonalities. As Drive My Car hints, art might have its limitations with pain, but for me, this year, Drive My Car sits at the apex of how powerful movies can be.
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