The Year in Film (So Far): Exploitation, War and a Brutal Economy in Film and Reality Alike
The global haves and the have nots collide in the brilliant Brazilian nightmare Bacurau
A year of difficulty for individuals and also for the film industry, COVID-19 made 2020 a trial by fire for many. But even despite quarantine, incredible films by a variety of talented filmmakers, many of which flew under the radar, have made this a banner year for great filmmaking. It was also a year when smaller, independent or art house fare had a moment to shine, as blockbusters and big Hollywood movies took a back burner and tried to wait out COVID for the moment when theaters opened up. Smaller films, foreign films and works by a new wave of younger female directors were able to shine in the absence of the Hollywood's braying media blitzkreig. Read on for some of my favorite films of 2020 so far, in a year of visual delights still to come. All are currently streaming now on a TV near you.
Ken Loach's chilling, painful in its truthfulness film is a portrait of a brutal facet of modern life and could be the most relevant COVID-era tale of the year. Set in the aftermath of the 2008 economic collapse, Loach's incisive, deeply felt film follows a decent but ill-fated Newcastle family as they struggle to survive the gig economy, the husband as an Amazon-style deliveryman and the wife as a caregiver run so ragged she barely has time to tend to the frail, lonely elderly Brits in her care. Exhausted and desperate, these determined but luckless parents sacrifice their own family at the altar of work and more work. This universal story should be required viewing by elected officials on every continent for its painful look at the enormous difficulties hardworking people face in a system built to foil their ambitions at every turn. Sorry We Missed You makes you feel the insurmountable difficulty and the unchanging rigor of working in a contemporary global economy tailor made for corporations and not people.
A profound, moving portrait of the struggle of the disabled to assert their full humanity and civil rights, this film produced by Barack and Michelle Obama's Higher Ground centers on the life-altering experience for a generation of disabled kids from the Fifties to the Seventies, of attending a summer camp in upstate New York, Camp Jened. Run by hippies who live up to that ideal of caring, radical human beings anxious to change the world for the better, the counselors at Camp Jened gave campers the chance to become what their limited hometowns and families denied them: full, complex humanity. With this life-changing experience tailored to accommodate and validate the disabled, many of those same kids carried their sense of self-worth and justice into adulthood, becoming vocal advocates for full-inclusion in American life and champions of equal treatment under the law that would eventually morph into the Americans With Disabilities Act. In a year where it was easy to feel sorry for our individual plights, Crip Camp was a bracing reminder of real struggle and endurance and the ordinary heroes who helped pave the way for a better, more just America every day of their lives.
Excoriating in its illustration of how the USA Gymnastics organization covered up the sexual abuse of young athletes by team doctor Larry Nassar for years, this documentary goes even deeper in showing how the merciless grind of training girls to be top athletes stripped the sport of joy and turned it into a thankless, unrelenting treadmill. Giving possibly the year's most beleagured industry — journalism — its due, Athlete A also shows how a team of determined, relentless journalists at the Indianapolis Star unmasked the deep layers of corruption at USAG. The film is a portrait of how a culture of money and power-tripping adults turned a beloved sport into torture for girls whose bodies, performances, faces and hard work were never enough, an apt metaphor for the deforming effects of beauty culture in America.
Bacurau
Udo Kier — the glacial, malevolent imp of international cinema — delights in this brilliant, heady, disturbing story of colonial exploitation that mashes up the western with a just-shy-of-sci fi sensibility. In this eerie, fantastic film universe where psychedelics and ghosts coalesce, first world sport hunters terrorize Brazilian villagers for fun. A canny distillation of how the wealthy and white prey on the poorer, darker citizens of the world, Bacurau has a terrifying, slow-building rage that ends in an unexpected, bloody and cathartic cataclysm. This is politically relevant, shrewdly entertaining and deliriously gruesome filmmaking for a world in need of more.
The Trial of the Chicago 7
Proving he's more than just a subversive, anarchical and slippery funny man, Sacha Baron Cohen is the moral and charismatic center of this dramatization of the trial of student activists who clashed with police at the Chicago police at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The perfect foil to Nixon's starched, sadistic America, Cohen is a beacon of light, chaos and sensitivity as the wickedly complex and strangely fragile counterculture upstart and hero Abbie Hoffman. Though Aaron Sorkin's story of how an early generation of activists paved the way for today's social justice movements like #metoo and Black Lives Matter can veer into standard courtroom drama hysterics, the film shows the urgency and necessity of activism, and the hard work necessary if Americans want to retain the rights and freedoms Sixties student activists fought for. In every way, it feels like a film well-suited to the year of our own political meltdown.
Emma
Defined by a delightful, confectionary set design of creamy, sugary pastels and a winning performance from Anya Taylor-Joy as Emma Woodhouse, first time director Autumn de Wilde's fresh retelling of Jane Austen's story of matchmaking and romantic intrigue has a piquant sense of humor, a touch of melancholy and a heart of gold.
Beanpole
Devastating in its depiction of the unique horrors of war for women, this Russian drama set in Leningrad in the aftermath of World War II has the creepy energy of Volker Schlöndorff's adaptation of Gunter Grass's The Tin Drum. Inspired by the real stories of female soldiers drawn from journalist Svetlana Alexievich's nonfiction work The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in World War II, talented 28-year-old director Kantemir Balagov skillfully weaves a story of two female veterans contending with inescapable memories as they cling to each other for sustenance. Gorgeous cinematography with a palette of saturated reds and greens brings to mind Wong Kar-wai and Russian icon painting. And Beanpole gets under your skin, lingering long after the last stunning image has faded.
Stay Tuned for The Year in Film (So Far), Part II in What to Stream Now
-Felicia Feaster
Comments