You never know what will stick with you when you see a film.
Sometimes, you think you know what you will take away, but then something else
catches you by surprise and never leaves you. It could be a performance, a stunt,
a joke, or maybe just a look, but when you see it, you know it. You feel it.
Like the perfect line in a great song, it comes to define an experience. These
moments can be painful or joyous or both, but no matter what they are, they are
the experiences that make moviegoing so wonderful.
By their very nature, these moments are personal. Your 20
favorite film memories from the decade will be different from mine, and that is
okay. That is great, in fact. I hope you share with me some of yours and allow
me to share with you some of mine, the 20 moments from the 2010s that will stay
with me forever.
20. The villagers are crucified – from Silence,
directed by Martin Scorsese
Scorsese’s true magnum opus of the decade – his ultimate
statement on the themes he has explored his entire career – is Silence,
about a Jesuit missionary (Andrew Garfield) who sees himself in Christ’s image.
In this extended crucifixion sequence, he is confronted with the reality of
that image, and the emptiness of his words in the face of true suffering. He prays
the villagers remember what Christ went through, but he watches as their torture
continues for days and no amount of prayer will make it stop. When one villager
sings a hymn as he dies, he is left to do so alone on the cross, and we are
witnessing not some glorious martyrdom but a senseless death.
19. Jordan Belfort has lunch with Mark Hanna – from The
Wolf of Wall Street, directed by Martin Scorsese
Matthew McConaughey won his Oscar in this year for Dallas
Buyers Club, beating out scene partner Leonardo DiCaprio for the prize.
Many saw that as the culmination of the McConaissance, but I actually think peak
McConaughey is right here, sipping martinis and beating a drum on his chest. Mark
Hanna is the macho ‘80s stereotype Jordan Belfort has modeled himself after,
and he lays out the entire scam of the machine. As long as he is getting paid,
getting drunk, and getting off, nothing else matters. We are watching a snake
oil salesman explain his craft, and in so doing, we see why it works. Jordan is
hooked, and so are we.
18. W’Kabi kneels to Okoye on the battlefield – from Black
Panther, directed by Ryan Coogler
Apart from Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger, the most
memorable character in Black Panther is Okoye, played by Danai Gurira.
She is a fierce warrior, loyal to her nation, and torn between honor and duty.
Her arc reaches its glorious climax when she must face down her love, W’Kabi
(Daniel Kaluuya), on the battlefield. When she chooses Wakanda over him, he
realizes that this civil war is destroying them and their people, and he knees
to her. In this moment, Coogler is paying tribute to the power and resilience
of black women while also condemning the kind of internecine conflicts that
distract from pursuing meaningful change.
17. Captain Phillips receives a medical evaluation – from
Captain Phillips, directed by Paul Greengrass
Greengrass is an expert at crafting tense thrill rides that
never let up for a moment. See United 93 and his Bourne films for
further evidence. These movies, Captain Phillips included, so rarely
afford the viewer a chance to breathe. This is their defining quality. So, when
Captain Richard Phillips’ (Tom Hanks) ordeal is over and he is given a second
to reflect, the audience is taken aback. We are shocked by his vulnerability,
his pain, his sadness, and ultimately, his relief. The steely, resolute man who
had been so strong throughout all of this finally breaks down, and we see the
real person underneath, the person who could be any of us in both courage and
fear.
16. “The incident” goes down – from I, Tonya,
directed by Craig Gillespie
“This is what you all came to see!” Tonya Harding (Margot
Robbie) snarls, and we are indicted. Gillespie pieces together the maiming of
Nancy Kerrigan with precision and skill, expertly building up tension until the
moment the knee buckles. It all works brilliantly, but it is undeniably voyeuristic.
What in us compels us to watch this? Why do we need to see poor Nancy beaten
and broken? What the hell is wrong with us? By asking these questions, the film
is already miles ahead of us in the audience. Tonya is right. This is what we
wanted, and that says more about us than it does about Tonya Harding.
15. The band records “Please, Mr. Kennedy” – from Inside
Llewyn Davis, directed by Joel and Ethan Coen
This is when it all goes wrong for Llewyn (Oscar Isaac).
Yes, the song is uproariously funny, and performers Isaac, Justin Timberlake,
and Adam Driver commit to its goofiness. Driver’s deepthroated “uh-oh,”
Timberlake’s guileless enthusiasm, and Isaac’s weary skepticism come together
in a hilarious sequence that displays the absurdity of the business they have
all chosen. When the gut punch comes at the end, no one knows that is what it
is until much later, but when we do, the irony is almost unbearable. This is
every bad decision Llewyn has made coming back to bite him, the greatest
near-miss of his life, and it is all his own damn fault.
14. Eliza and the Amphibian Man dance – from The Shape
of Water, directed by Guillermo del Toro
Bear with me a moment. I liked La La Land fine. It
had some lovely sequences, including the dance in the observatory among the
stars, featuring two of the most attractive movie stars on the planet. This ain’t
that. This is a deaf-mute woman (Sally Hawkins) and an Amphibian Man (Doug
Jones) re-enacting their version of a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dance
number. In making these his heroes, del Toro crafts a tribute to all those
outsiders and weirdos, himself among them, who may never defy gravity like some
of the pretty people but who dream of a transcendence made in their own image.
13. A woman cries in the rain – from Foxtrot,
directed by Samuel Maoz
Rutger Hauer, who died in 2019, is responsible for delivering
into the lexicon the line “tears in rain.” The very idea is arresting, so
simple but so powerful, and demonstrated so movingly here by Maoz. At an army checkpoint,
Israeli soldiers get their kicks harassing the Palestinians trying to get
through, trying only to live their lives. The cruelty is the point. When a well-dressed
man and woman arrive, apparently on their way to a function, they are forced
into the pouring rain, humiliated for no reason other than being who they are.
She fights back tears, but they fall anyway, and in the deluge, we feel a world
weeping for this pain but doing nothing to stop it.
12. Juan teaches Little how to swim – from Moonlight,
directed by Barry Jenkins
For two brief, fleeting minutes, the weight of the world is
lifted from Little’s (Alex R. Hibbert) shoulders and he is weightless. The film’s
defining image is that of Juan (Mahershala Ali) cradling Little’s head as he
helps him to float in the ocean. Though waves crash down around them and on
them, Juan assures Little he will not let go, and Little is supported. He is
held. He is lifted up for perhaps the first time in his life. Things will not be
this good, this free, again for a long time, and as Jenkins’ final shot shows
us, Chiron will have spent his whole life trying to rediscover what he felt at
this moment.
11. Patsey is flogged – from 12 Years a Slave,
directed by Steve McQueen
Filled with sequences of unhinged brutality and dreadful
torture, McQueen’s masterpiece reaches its moment of greatest horror when
Solomon (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is forced to whip Patsey (Lupita Nyong’o) by Epps
(Michael Fassbender). Patsey’s cries are what we remember as the blood and flesh
spray from her back, but it is not only the pain of slavery we are witnessing
but also the impotence and cowardice of those who uphold its virtues. They are
weak, hateful, and malevolent, driven by a need to destroy what they see as
strength in others. Patsey cannot demand to be clean. Solomon cannot demand
mercy. Demands require power, and as McQueen demonstrates, they have none.
10. Aron Ralston cuts himself loose – from 127 Hours,
directed by Danny Boyle
Not since the reverse vibraphone at the end of Taxi
Driver has a musical sting stuck with me so long and so vividly as the
moment Aron Ralston first hits the nerves in his arm. The entire sequence is a
transcendent blend of Boyle’s high-octane editing style, A.R. Rahman’s
propulsive score, and James Franco’s understated performance. The stakes are
life and death, and we feel every second tick by as Aron battles for his future.
Of course, it is a difficult sit and not for the squeamish, but the payoff is
so magnificently played by all involved that I could watch it over and over
again.
9. The raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound – from Zero
Dark Thirty, directed by Kathryn Bigelow
Bigelow’s Oscar-winning epic was controversial when it debuted
and has only grown more so over the years. The filmmaker likely inflated the
role of prisoner torture in finding and killing Osama bin Laden, and that inflation
has had real-world consequences. That is the film’s first two hours. Its final
half-hour, however, is a tense, moody, boots-on-the-ground depiction of the
raid on bin Laden’s compound. The precision and competence of the Navy SEALs is
impressive and exciting to watch, but we are always ill at ease as we realize
just how easy it is to kill a man, and we grapple with just what that death
means.
8. The Edmund Pettis Bridge sequence – from Selma,
directed by Ava DuVernay
We go here from the cold calculation of Kathryn Bigelow’s Navy
SEALs to the unsettling chaos of an attack on civil rights marchers in the
south. What guts and brilliance from DuVernay to stick a miniature war film
right in the middle of her historical drama. The first march on Selma is a
masterclass in putting the viewer in the middle of a battle, demonstrating the
brutality of the racist forces of oppression without exaggeration or
embellishment. DuVernay puts the camera on the ground and makes the audience a
part of the struggle, ensuring each blow of a billy club is felt and each drop
of blood is remembered.
7. Moana sings “How Far I’ll Go” – from Moana,
directed by Ron Clements and John Musker
“How Far I’ll Go” is the movie song of the decade. I will
hear no other arguments. There were bigger hits (“Let It Go,” “Happy,” “Skyfall”)
and songs more integral to their films (“Feels Like Summer,” “Everything Is
Awesome”), but there was no other song in the 2010s that demonstrated so succinctly
the greatness of the film in which it appears. Auli’i Cravalho’s performance of
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s glorious show-stopper is evidenced of what family films can
do at their best. It lifts the spirit and empowers the soul, urging all
listeners, young and old, of any race or class, to wonder … well, you know.
6. Lancaster Dodd interrogates Freddie Quell – from The
Master, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
I wrote previously in this series of the performances by
Philip Seymour Hoffman as Lancaster Dodd and Joaquin Phoenix as Freddie Quell.
I called them the two best performances of the decade. This scene contains
within it all the proof I could ever need. What starts almost as an acting
class exercise in repetition becomes something else entirely as the Master
tries to break through to this seemingly unknowable beast before him. In so
doing, they form a bond that is unlike any we have seen in cinema before. It is
deep, it is troubling, and it is fascinating. These are two performers
absolutely demanding each other’s and our attention, and they are getting it.
5. Jeannine sees her portrait on her home – from Faces
Places, directed by Agnès Varda and J.R.
Varda died near the start of 2019 at the age of 90. Right up
to the end, she continued making tremendous works of art, filled with the kind
of empathy for which she was so rightly celebrated. The penultimate work of her
career, Faces Places, is empathy writ large, literally, as she and co-director
J.R. go around the countryside putting up giant portraits of the people they
meet. It is the first portrait, however, that sticks in mind the longest, the
lone woman in an abandoned neighborhood, Jeannine. She is a quiet revolutionary,
battling back against a world that would just as soon forget her. Varda and
J.R. ensure that will not happen.
4. The history of the universe sequence – from The
Tree of Life, directed by Terrence Malick
Even at its most direct, The Tree of Life is an
impressionistic collage of memories and free-floating ideas. Then, for one glorious
sequence, Malick goes full-on expressionist, showing us the violent, fiery, yet
ultimately empty history of the universe from moment one. It is gorgeously shot
and exquisitely executed, but it is not just aimless wandering through the galaxy.
It is a history of life, which is itself a history of cruelty. Malick takes us
beyond our little lives and the lives of his characters, and their petty
grievances, to show us just how small we are and just how much of what we are
has been there from the beginning.
3. Jack Mulligan gets a ride home – from Widows,
directed by Steve McQueen
The single take has been around for years but really exploded
this decade with directors like Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro G. Iñárritu, along
with cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, essentially making it their calling
card. But the best single take of the 2010s was also the most subtle, with McQueen
telling the entire tale of inequity and corruption in Chicago during a single
car ride home. As the camera slowly pans across the hood of the car, we see wealth
and poor side by side, a juxtaposition that helps us understand just how far
apart the rich and the poor truly are.
2. Sharon Tate goes to the movies – from Once Upon a
Time … in Hollywood, directed by Quentin Tarantino
I had never cried during a Tarantino movie. Never really even
felt teary. That is not the wavelength on which his films operate. But when
Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), whose fate we know so well, goes to the theater to
see one of her own movies, that’s when the director finally got me misty-eyed.
All of Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood feels like an elegy to a time long
since passed. Tate has become emblematic of that – her murder for many
symbolizing the end of the ‘60s dream. Her joy in seeing herself on screen
reverses this, turning her from a symbol back into the living, breathing, joyous
human being she was. If only for a moment.
1. Frances runs through the city – from Frances Ha,
directed by Noah Baumbach
When the beat kicks in, all you can do is dance. Greta
Gerwig’s Frances Hawthorne is a dancer, anyway, and so she must do more. She
runs. As David Bowie’s “Modern Love” blares on the soundtrack, she runs. As New
York City goes about its day, she runs. Her sprint down the sidewalks of the
city is boundless, inexhaustible, unfettered joy, exploding out in every direction
at once. She spins and leaps and, yes, dances through the streets with the exuberance
of youth and the seeming knowledge that maybe it will not last forever, but it surely
exists right here and right now. So, let’s dance.
___
Check back again as we wrap up the Best of the Decade
project with some fun ephemera and the Top 20 Films of the 2010s.
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