The Year 2002: A Year in Review

With 2002 coming to a close, it's that time again when T.S of the mighty Screen Savour, now in it's swanky new home and still dishing out the same, brilliant posts on classic and contemporary cinema, reviews the year in film and lists his top ten of the year. Do you agree with the list or do you think he's got it wrong? Counting Down The Zeroes wants to hear from you on the films of the year and asks one simple question, what were your top ten films of 2002?

The Best Films of 2002

Without a doubt, 2002 stands as a contender for one of the decade's strongest film years. I can't detect any cultural sensibility that conspired for it to be a particularly strong year for movies; it would be impossible to deny that 9/11 resonates in some of the year's films (some of which I don't discuss below for other reasons), but reassessing many of them, it was interesting to note how many moments in which the filmmaker could have gone there but seems consciously trying to avoid. It is possible that 2002 comes off as such a strong year to me because many of my favorite directors, actors, and artists released work within short spans of each other, and so much of it was genuinely good. The year was a return to form for Spielberg, Scorsese, Polanski, just to name three. A top ten list almost doesn't do the year justice; below I have four honorable mentions which, on any given day, might replace one or two of the titles I've selected as the year's best.

But if anything, I'll remember 2002 as the grand Year of the Cinematographer. Per capita, I felt more than ever than the year was flooded with camerawork on par with paintings. Almost all the films I have below hold greater affinity to me because they look so astounding — Janusz Kaminski, who produced two atmospheres in Catch Me If You Can and Minority Report that couldn't be more dissimilar except for their supreme watchability; Conrad L. Hall, whose work in Road to Perdition belongs on permanent exhibition in the cinematographer hall of fame; Edward Lachman, who brought impeccable '50s sensibilities to Far From Heaven; Pawel Edelman's delicate camerawork in The Pianist; and so many others. In the runners-up section, it's worth noting the tri-period work of Seamus McGarvey on The Hours; the earthy work of Scorsese regular Michael Ballhaus in Gangs of New York; the spooky corners of England captured by Alwin H. Kuchler in Morvern Callar; and of course, the 90-minute unbroken sequence led by Tilman Büttner that creates the totality of Russian Ark. Even films I didn't love were recipients of great camerawork: Punch-Drunk Love (Robert Elswit); Chicago (Dion Beebe); Talk to Her (Javier Aguirresarobe); and About Schmidt (James Glennon).

Here are my selections for favorite films of 2002, ranked alphabetically. For all annual lists post-1998 (the year I began publishing reviews), my standard of eligibility has always been based on first-run theatrical release in the United States during the year. If you don't see something you might have expected, check back for 2003. And a final note: I consider this list open and unsealed until I'm finally able to catch Frederick Wiseman's documentary Domestic Violence, which is not currently in circulation.

My favorites:

• Adaptation (d. Spike Jonze, USA)


Being John Malkovich, the offbeat first-time 1999 collaboration between director Spike Jonze and screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, left many thunderstruck from its bizarreness and sucked the air out of the room upon its debut. But the creative duo's follow-up film (and as of now, still their second), Adaptation, is better — denser in its tapestry of themes and more rewarding its deconstruction of the creative process. Of Kaufman's best known works, it is also his closest to reality, although it simply wouldn't bear the mark of its auteur without some standard deviations, including himself and his "twin brother" as lead characters (both played superbly by Nicolas Cage). "Charlie," as we see him on film, is struggling to adapt a nonfiction book into a screenplay while his brother Donald zips through cliche after cliche in his more successful screenplay. The joke never wears thin, thanks to Kaufman's fusion of secondary storylines (Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper brilliantly in one) and utilizing cliches on his own simply for the virtue of turning them inside out.

• Bloody Sunday (d. Paul Greengrass, UK)


Written and directed with a haunting elegance by Paul Greengrass, Bloody Sunday is the story of the infamous 1972 massacre of Irish demonstrators told through the eyes of Ivan Cooper (a fine performance from James Nesbitt), a Protestant member of Parliament attempting to control a nonviolent protest march against British domestic prison policy. The chaos of that day — which the story makes inescapable by setting it entirely within that single day — is captured in remarkable control by Greengrass, who delivers a near-masterwork of verite fiction. Much like its on-screen events, Bloody Sunday grows and grows to something large and seemingly unwieldy, but unlike the disastrous implosion awaiting Cooper and the demonstrators, Greengrass never lets the filmmaking slip away.

• Catch Me If You Can (d. Steven Spielberg, USA)


With its layers upon layers of crisscrossed fathers and sons, in both a biological and surrogate sense, and its crisp, lively style that echoes the films of director Steven Spielberg's boyhood and his first few films as a director, it would be hard to deny that Catch Me If You Can positively suggests a close proximity to the director's heart and soul. It may not be his most personal film (and whichever film that is may certainly be a debate worth having), but it is a film that channels his auteur sensibilities in the clearest sense. For a moviemaker who has devoted his professional career to myth-making possibilities, this film about a teenager (Leonard DiCaprio) who runs away from home and bluffs his way into the cockpits of airplanes, the operating rooms of hospitals, and the courtrooms of Louisiana, all while eluding a determined G-Man (Tom Hanks) in dazzling flights of fancy, is familiar territory. Catch Me If You Can contains the echoes of Spielberg's past leitmotifs and works — it captures the energy and humor of Raiders of the Lost Ark, though it ultimately falls short of that film — but establishes itself as a contained entity. Extra kudos go to Spielberg regulars Jamusz Kaminiski, for his airy and feather-weight cinematography; Michael Kahn, for his polished editing; and John Williams, for producing a score that feels fresh and un-Williamsian.

• Far From Heaven (d. Todd Haynes, USA)


I suspect one needn't be a classical film lover to become enraptured by Todd Haynes's Far From Heaven, although it maintains spiritual and stylistic dialogues with melodramas from 1950s Hollywood that such knowledge may be necessary to fully appreciate what Haynes has accomplished with this gorgeous and profoundly emotional film. Haynes provides a window into a painstaking reproduction of 1957 suburban America and its films (aided by an illustriously talented art direction team; Edward Lachman's brilliant faux Technicolor cinematography; and Elmer Bernstein's score, evocative of the time). Like the films of Douglas Sirk, whose influence here is hangs as heavy as shame, Haynes' script is an exploration of social issues, but unlike Sirk, he is uninhibited. His Mr. and Mrs. America struggle with homosexuality (Mr. America) and the comfort of a friendly heart of someone not your own race (Mrs. America). I mention the devotion from Haynes to the look and feel of the 1950s, and the film even executes its dramatic crescendos in the style of that era; but it is peacefully void of irony. It is a great risk to attempt a film like this, where its design could potentially overtake its theme, but Haynes never lets up and always keeps the focus on tragedies in his characters' lives. Everything is earned through old-fashioned and powerful artistry. To paraphrase Roger Ebert, Far From Heaven is like the best film that was never released 50 years ago.

• Minority Report (d. Steven Spielberg, USA)


With both Catch Me If You Can and Minority Report, 2002 was Steven Spielberg's best year in nearly a decade. The latter, a prophetic sci-fi detective thriller set in 2054 and adapted from a short story by Philip K. Dick, seemed all too appropriate for a post-9/11 America grappling with privacy issues, crime prevention, burgeoning technology, the philosophical constraints of our understanding of free will, and vengeance. It is the story of a police officer from the future who is indicted by his own government system that allows crimes to be predicted before they can be committed and, thus, prevented. At such a blush it may appear that the two have little in common other than the go-go-go energy of sublimely crafted chase pictures, but each speak to the recurring Spielbergian themes of paternalism and estrangement. Call it what you want — perhaps an action film with a brain, or maybe a character drama with a thumping pulse; regardless, it's an unmitigated achievement in an age when most films flounder because neither action nor character seems alive.

• The Pianist (d. Roman Polanski, France)


As subjects, the Holocaust and the European theater of World War II need relatively few artistic devices to communicate their gravity, eeriness, and heart-wrenching agony; and yet only the most skilled artists are capable of producing films about those subjects with any success. Roman Polanski's The Pianist is an oddity even within its own genre; it is a tremendous success, no doubt — largely different from many of Polanski's earlier films, but nevertheless his best since Chinatown — but it achieves its greatness in approaching its subject from an unexpected and narrowed angle, caught in the head of pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman (a great and robust performance by Adrian Brody) and adapted from his memoir about the years he spent hiding from the Gestapo in occupied Poland. Polanski himself saw the physical and moral destruction first-hand as a boy in Poland, but The Pianist doesn't spill forth with a must-tell urgency. The authority to tell the story is here, but the vantage is from the outside and the film is given all its power by its spooky restraint.

• Road to Perdition (d. Sam Mendes / USA)


Sam Mendes' second film, Road to Perdition, is a cold, cold picture, and were it not for its fantastic performances (where exteriors remain stiff while rivers of anguish flow beneath the surface) and its striking cinematography (the last film of the late and great Conrad L. Hall), I could understand why it would turn audiences off. But this is one of the most visually breathtaking films of 2002, a patiently stirred blend of image and theme that should banish all perceived notions of coldness with its sheer kinetic artistry. Adapted from the graphic novel by Max Allan Collins, Road is a Depression-era tale of Irish-American fathers and sons in the Midwest. Hall posthumously won his third Oscar for cinematography in a crowded field of strong candidates; he reportedly took inspiration from Edward Hopper's paintings (known world over for their own meticulous austerity and alienation) in his approach to composition and lightning. On a recent viewing I couldn't shake that fact from my mind and found the criticism of emotional distance more perplexing than ever. Like Hopper's artwork, I don't want to cuddle with a film like this — all I want to do is sit back and behold its strange beauty.

• Spirited Away (d. Hayao Miyazaki, Japan)


Pixar has become the name synonymous with great animation in the new millennium, and for the most part that title has gone unchallenged, either by other American studios or by foreign artists. The one exception is the Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki. His Spirited Away contains the same elegaic craftsmanship for which he has become familiar and justly esteemed. This tale of a young girl who becomes held in an otherworldly and upside-down resort for the supernatural has some clear and unambiguous parallels to Alice in Wonderland, but it does not do justice to Miyazaki to draw such a simplistic correlation. This is patient and purposeful animation, the kind of animation — hell, even the sort of filmmaking at-large — that is sorely lacking in many studios. It is the sort of film that can be adored on the first run; but it must be experienced twice, thrice, or as much as you want to be completely absorbed.

• Time Out (d. Laurent Cantet, France)


Time Out, the sophomore effort from Laurent Cantet, is perhaps the most unexpectedly harrowing character study from 2002. Aurelien Recoing plays Vincent, a middle-class French businessman who has been laid off and has constructed an elaborate fictitious opportunity for himself in order to keep the news hidden from his wife, children, parents, and friends. The script, by xxx, sends Vincent far beyond acceptable territory, particularly when he begins soliciting investments from his father and his former business acquaintances and there's an overwhelming sense of dread that begins to fill the frame as you wonder how he could possibly get away with his flawed plan and what sort of punishment awaits him on the other end from so flagrantly deceiving those close to him. The great strength here is in Recoing's gentle performance as a fractured man, too ashamed and too proud to admit the truth to those he loves and ultimately to himself, and the screenplay, which builds tension effectively and paints an outwardly political portrait of a layoff victim.

• Y Tu Mamá También (d. Alfonso Cuarón, Mexico)


Alfonso Cuarón's Y Tu Mamá También may not be as controversial as it was upon its premiere (that is, if you're the sort of person who can find an honest and unrepressed film controversial), but I contend that's all the more proof this marvelous film was not the beneficiary of short-lived critical buzz eclipsing any relatively objective analysis. This is sexy, tension-filled filmmaking of a high order, a film that still feels alive on its surface with the chaotic and misappropriated energy of youth, its lessons lingering on the horizon and only learnable through the crashing of the human ego — namely, the fragile and masked machismo of two friends (Diego Luna and Gael Garcia Bernal) who set out on a road trip with a woman a decade older (the lovely Maribel Verdú) who accompanies them both in an act of unabashed boyhood fantasy but delivers them to a shore of life and lust that is adult turmoil. If the story feels familiar, that's because it is; but the film, under Cuaron's confident direction and fully fleshed characters in the script he wrote with his brother Carlos, the merges verve of the French New Wave with the adventurousness of the Mexican cinema's renaissance.

Hon. Mention: Gangs of New York (d. Martin Scorsese); The Hours (d. Stephen Daldry); Morvern Callar (d. Lynne Ramsay, UK); Russian Ark (d. Alexander Sokurov)

Remember, we want to hear from you, let T.S know if he's got it right about 2002 or has he lost the plot on this one :) Counting Down The Zeroes is after your opinion and your top ten of 2002, so get involved and get commenting.