Year in Review: Top 10 Quotes of 2017

To be honest, this is the column I look forward to writing each year. The best performances, best films, all of that, they are fun but sometimes feel like work. The Top 10 Quotes of the year are a joy to write about, a joy to compile, and a joy to share.

In the past, there has been an overarching structure or theme to the quotes – whether it was to define the movies they were contained within or to speak to the world outside – but this year more than any other, I went with my gut. These are the quotes that stood out immediately for one reason or another. And in ways large and small, I have thought about each since seeing them spoken on the big screen.

Last Cinema Standing’s Top 10 Quotes of 2017:

10. “It’s good in a peculiar way” from School Life, written Etienne Essery, Neasa Ní Chianáin, and David Rane

School Life is the kind of gem of a film it is hard to find and even harder to see. By which I mean, even for those of us lucky enough to live in a place where it might play in theaters, it does not necessarily stand out as a must-see or appointment viewing. It is a little documentary about a year in the life of a modern Christian boarding school in Ireland, and I can identify at least four words in that sentence that will drive some people away. They shouldn’t.

The film follows the day-to-day travails of husband-and-wife team John and Amanda Leyden, teachers at the Headfort School. They are nearing the ends of their careers, but through all the years, they seem to have maintained a sense of duty and pride in their work, helping children take their first awkward steps into adolescence and eventually adulthood. They act as educators, confidants, wardens, and substitute parents all at once, leading the kind of quiet, humane lives so often ignored by a world obsessed with the grand and the flashy.

In one of the film’s many standout sequences, Amanda helps the students put on a Shakespeare play, and after a particularly odd, energetic performance, she tells a student: “It’s good in a peculiar way.” This is kindness distilled to its most basic form, telling a child – away from home, away from his parents for the first time, lonely and scared – something positive in a way that doesn’t sugarcoat, coddle, or condescend. The same could be said of this film, which is peculiar only in its commitment to generosity and openness, so rare in these times.

9. “The square is a sanctuary of trust and caring” from The Square, written by Ruben Östlund

Östlund is perhaps the foremost progenitor of high comedy rung from the slowly cracking social facades that keep us bound within ourselves. In his superlative Force Majeure, he took a broad swipe at the falseness of masculinity and the social structure that requires reverence to such. At Cannes in 2017, where Östlund walked away with the prestigious Palme d’Or, he returned with The Square, broadening his critique and sharpening his sense of satirical wit on a story of class, entitlement, and the thin line between order and chaos.

Christian (Claes Bang) is the curator of a contemporary art museum, confronted on all sides by both the ludicrousness of the art world and the need to find meaning in something greater than the self. He glides through his world, often seeming to hold himself at a remove from it, perhaps for fear of realizing he is no better than anyone else in his orbit. He engages with few and engages deeply with even fewer. His connections are surface-level at best, a start contrast to the art he surrounds himself with, where the surface does not begin to reveal its meaning.

“The Square” is an art installation in front of the museum. It defines the brutality and inhumanity of the outside world by creating a separate space, outlined only by a series of lights arranged in a square. “The square is a sanctuary of trust and caring” reads the plaque placed next to the installation, and the implication is clear. If within this space – no more than a few feet by a few feet – there has been made room for trust and caring, then we have failed to make in our world space for such values.

8. “We don’t like each other, but we’re friends” from BPM (Beats Per Minute), written by Robin Campillo and Phillipe Mangeot

Activism depends, more than anything, on the group, on collective action, on working together to achieve a common goal. Thanks to great leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi – or rather, the way we are taught and learn about such figures – we tend to have a romanticized view of protest and rights movements. We envision an impassioned man or woman standing up in front of a giant faceless crowd and pointing the way forward. We revere these people and study them, but in truth, as great as they are, it is the faceless crowd and every individual therein who truly effects change.

If you saw the great 2012 documentary by David France How to Survive a Plague, you will be familiar with the American chapter of ACT UP, the AIDS activist group that pushed for change in the medical and health care rights of AIDS and HIV patients. In BPM, Campillo portrays the work of the French chapter of the group, of which he was a member, showing the nitty-gritty details of putting together and maintaining a real movement, the work often ignored by more perfunctory histories.

The film’s greatest strength comes in showing how groups of people from disparate backgrounds, sometimes sharing only the goal of living with their disease just a little longer, can come together and how tough it is to stay together. Members fight, they bicker, they back bite, they disagree, but at the end of the day, they have only one goal, which they all share: to survive. So they don’t have to like each other, but they are friends.

7. “Hi. This is Jonathan. I’m at the end of the world and have no reception. I’ll call you back someday” from Foxtrot, written by Samuel Maoz

War, even at its most righteous, is an absurd endeavor. It devalues the lives of those fighting, those dying, and even those nowhere near but still touched by it. All arguments toward war are founded on the same premise – that somehow the lives of others are less than our own. It is, at its base, the worst of us-vs.-them thinking. The act of war is an act entirely devoid of empathy.

Now comes the brilliant Foxtrot, from Israel, where it should be noted military service is mandatory. It addresses the falsehoods of war at home and abroad in personal terms that cut so close to the bone they are hard to watch. It deals with grief in ways so painful and daring, few films have ever endeavored to portray them, and many of those that have pale in comparison.

In the film’s enthralling first act, a father and mother learn of the death of their son at war. They grieve in separate ways, and eventually the father (Lior Ashkenazi) finds himself pulling out his phone and calling his son over and over, knowing he will never answer. Instead, he calls to hear his son’s voice the only way he can, on his outgoing voicemail message: “Hi. This is Jonathan. I’m at the end of the world and have no reception. I’ll call you back someday.” That he will not call back now is a given because he was sent to wherever the end of the world may be, for what reason no one can say.

6. “The only way to protect the right to publish is to publish” from The Post, written by Liz Hannah and Josh Singer

Steven Spielberg’s handsomely mounted The Post is about one thing above all else: the importance of speaking truth to power. Set in the 1970s amid the Pentagon Papers scandal and the administration of Richard Nixon, its modern-day parallels are immediately obvious. One need not look closely to see modern counterparts in the Nixon administration, a group of powerful men doing whatever they can to stay in power by obfuscation, intimidation, and outright abuse.

Yet as much as the film is a critique of the current administration and its many failings and abuses, it is also a celebration of the freedom of the press and need for that press to perform its duties and perform them well. After The New York Times is barred from doing its job by a fearful government, the Washington Post takes up the mantle of defender of the First Amendment. The movie revolves around the decision whether to publish the classified documents that will unveil to the people – you know, those from whom the government derives whatever power it has – the full history of the Vietnam War.

Early in the film, the paper’s editor, Ben Bradlee (Tom Hanks), makes it clear where he stands, when speaking about an entirely unrelated matter. The Post has been barred from attending Nixon’s daughter’s wedding, and Bradlee says they will write about it anyway, even if it angers the government. “The only way to protect the right to publish is to publish.” This is the film’s mission statement, and it does not matter if you are printing wedding gossip or classified government secrets, its truth remains. In the end, we must defend our rights by exercising them, whatever the cost.

5. “We’re all looking for something real” from Blade Runner 2049, written by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green

If I haven’t made it clear by now, I think we have a hard time as a society fostering empathy for each other. On the whole, we are too wrapped up in ourselves and those closest to us – read: those most similar to us – to worry about anyone else. Yet, as bad a job as we do feeling for our fellow humans, that doesn’t compare to our failures to consider the rest of intelligent life on this planet. For the most part, if it isn’t human, we treat it like it isn’t alive.

This is perhaps not the primary concern of Denis Villeneuve’s belated Blade Runner sequel, which is several movies at once and most of them pretty good, but it is among them. K (Ryan Gosling) is a replicant, in the film’s parlance, investigating a mystery, at the end of which he believes he will discover something miraculous about his own origin. Similar to Spielberg’s AI: Artificial Intelligence, it is at its core a Pinocchio story. The android dreams of being more than he is, even if he cannot be quite human.

His boss, Lieutenant Joshi (Robin Wright), visits one night and offers her insight into K’s predicament, which will take him to the far reaches of their society in a search for what he believes is the truth. But it never gets more honest than Joshi’s assertion: “We’re all looking for something real.” We all want truth. We all want meaning. We all want something more. It is often an endless search, and as K will discover over the course of the story, even if we reach the end, we do not find what we were looking for.

4. “Anyway, it amused us at the time” from T2: Trainspotting, written by John Hodge

Trainspotting, from 1996, is a modern masterpiece. A sequel has never felt particularly necessary to Danny Boyle’s rollicking ode to and indictment of a generation raised on sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. T2: Trainspotting, down to its tongue-in-cheek title, disproves this notion handily. Reteaming with Hodge, who wrote the original, Boyle finds new life and fresh ideas to mine still from Irvine Welsch’s dense, inscrutable work. They combine these with their own observations on being 20 years older and having little to show to produce another searing work of depth, insight, and not just a little fun.

The best remembered sequence of that original film is probably its opening, set against the thumping strains of “Lust for Life.” It is the “Choose life” speech, wherein Renton (Ewan McGregor) lays out his and his friends’ philosophy on getting high, getting laid, and getting through your miserable life by numbing everything that makes life worth living. It was a gutsy call to revisit the speech for the sequel, but this updated version, while perhaps lacking the energy of the earlier incarnation, earns its place by being something even deeper and darker.

Renton, speaking to his betrayed old friend’s girlfriend, Veronika (Anjela Nedyalkova), unleashes 20 years of anger, regret, and pain in explaining what he and his friends meant by “Choose life.” He attempts to undercut it by framing it as a joke on an old anti-drug ad, but the feelings it evokes are real. Finally, he ends the speech with a melancholy chuckle: “Anyway, it amused us at the time.” As so much did 20 years ago, but nothing remains the same. Time colors all things a little darker, a little sadder, and that which we loved so much then no longer means what it once did.

3. “Love’s tough. That’s why they call it love” from The Big Sick, written by Emily V. Gordon and Kumail Nanjiani

No one knows what they are doing. We are all just feeling along in the dark, hoping we make good decisions. Hopefully, those decisions bring joy to us and others or, at the very least, cause no pain. But no one has any answers. No big ones, anyway. Within all that randomness, we cling to those we love in an attempt to make some sense of it and not feel so alone. Even that isn’t always easy, but it’s all we have, so we keep going.

Gordon and Nanjiani’s real-life love story is the basis for this delightful romantic comedy that speaks to the similarities among all people at heart. It argues that love is enough of a guiding force to carry us through even the darkest times. The crisis in The Big Sick comes when Emily (Zoe Kazan) is struck by a mysterious illness and put into a medically induced coma. Through this ordeal, Kumail (Nanjiani) bonds with her parents, Terry and Beth (Ray Romano and Holly Hunter), while they endure their own marital strife.

Terry ends up on Kumail’s couch after an argument with his wife, and the two men talk late into the night. Kumail looks to the older man for advice, and Terry offers up: “Love’s tough. That’s why they call it love.” Kumail rightly points out this is nonsense that means nothing. Terry confesses this is true, but it speaks to the deeper truth they share – no one knows anything. These are good people trying to do the best they can, and that’s all that can be asked of them.

2. “Why walk if I can’t dance” from Mudbound, written by Dee Rees and Virgil Williams

Set in World War II-era Mississippi, director-co-writer Dee Rees’ Mudbound is a masterful portrait of multigenerational racial tensions in the rural south. Two families – the McAllans and the Jacksons – live in a fragile peace founded on the understanding that the white McAllans are in charge and their authority is not to be questioned. In return, the Jacksons are allowed to work the McAllans’ land, to live in a home on the McAllans’ land, and to lead a life under the thumb of their supposedly benevolent masters.

They work themselves near to death for not a fraction of what the McAllans have. The McAllans are not so well off themselves, but at least they own their fate. They determine their destiny in a way the Jacksons cannot. This point is driven home when the Jacksons fall behind on planting their crops after Hap (Rob Morgan) breaks his leg. Due to economic, social, and racial pressures, he is compelled to try to return to work too soon, injuring his leg even worse in the process.

As he heals from this second disaster, he shares a tender moment on the porch with his wife, Florence (Mary J. Blige). His leg still in a cast, he stands and asks his wife to dance. She warns him he will hurt himself even further and, if he does so, may not even be able to walk. He asks: “Why walk if I can’t dance?” Then he shares a dance with his wife. He will determine his fate. If only in this small matter, he will say what he can and cannot do, and in this moment with his wife, no tragedy befalls him.

1. “It all depends on how one sees things” from Faces Places, written by JR and Agnès Varda

In its quiet, delightful way, Faces Places is as experimental as anything you will see this year. A travelogue documentary collaboration between a young artist on the rise and an old master on perhaps her last go-round, the film is a tribute to the people and things we touch without knowing it and those that touch us. It is about finding beauty in places where few see it and creating beauty in places that lack it. JR and Varda travel the French countryside, spreading love and joy in the ways only they can.

Varda is the French New Wave genius who brought us such great films as Cleo from 5 to 7 and The Gleaners and I, but this may be her crowning achievement. And go figure, the 89-year-old genius hits her stride just as she is losing her eyesight. What a terrible thing to happen to anyone, but particularly someone who has changed her small corner of the world by the very way in which she sees it. It is her unique view of life that has always been her greatest asset, so to lose her eyesight must truly be a tragedy.

Well, “It all depends on how one sees things,” she tells JR. And that is the beauty of this collaboration. While JR has the vitality of youth and a willingness to try anything, Varda has taken the long way to get here and has gained the perspective that comes with it. JR, who never removes his dark sunglasses, has his head down, buried in work, ready to produce at a moment’s notice, but Varda is more measured, less mercurial. She’s here not only to smell the roses but to reflect on what they mean. Eyesight or not, in her reflections, she will still find new ways to see things.

Check back tomorrow for more of Last Cinema Standing’s Year in Review as we present the Top 10 Moments of 2017, and keep checking back each day for more reflections on the year that was, leading up to the reveal of the Top 10 Films of 2017.