Year in Review: The Best Moments and Quotes from 2020

Small Axe: Lovers Rock, directed by Steve McQueen

A different kind of year calls for a different kind of approach to the Last Cinema Standing year-end wrap-up. Truth be told, I just did not see enough this year to put together confidently a best-of roundup that would feel anything more than cursory. So many more movies to see, so many great moments to revel in, so many great quotes to enjoy. But, the best I saw this year still deserves to be talked about and remembered.

So, here we are. A smaller, more subdued countdown, but an appreciation no less of the great moments the cinema offered this year. They range from jubilation to sorrow, triumph to despair, and everywhere in between. If 2020 was anything, it was a year of snatching small joys from the wreckage of a world tossed into chaos. That is what these moments and quotes represent: small joys. Whether that joy comes from celebration or shared grief, it is about connection in a time when we are so disconnected.

Moments

Moment of the Year

The party goes a cappella to “Silly Games.” - from Small Axe, directed by Steve McQueen

The Lovers Rock section of Small Axe is 70 minutes of Black life like we have never seen it on screen. It is the house party to end all house parties, and not in the destructive sense so many American films over the years have depicted. The party we see is pure collective exultation, borne out of a need for community left unfulfilled by the culture at large. The UK of Steve McQueen’s opus does not provide spaces for Black people, so they must build their own spaces.

In those spaces, they are free. They are alive. They are human. There is nothing inherently “Black” about what is depicted in Lovers Rock, except that the revellers are all Black. Instead, McQueen presents a window into life, lived openly and honestly. No sequence better exemplifies this than the moment the music cuts out during Janet Kay’s rendition of Dennis Bovell’s “Silly Games.”

The DJ stops the record, but the party just keeps going, with every person on the dancefloor busting out an a cappella version of the song. McQueen lets his camera drift through the crowd, capturing every face, every motion, every syllable. As the rest of Small Axe demonstrates, these times of respite from the outside world are few and far between, and there are moments even during Lovers Rock when the constant, underlying threat to Black lives seems about to burst forth. But for these glorious few minutes, there is nothing but joy and togetherness.

Four more moments that stuck with me this year:

Escape in the night. - from The Invisible Man, directed by Leigh Whannell

The Invisible Man was among the true pleasant surprises in the early part of the year. It was one of the last movies I saw in theaters, and I am so glad I did because I could have heard a pin drop during the opening sequence. Everything in Cecilia’s (Elisabeth Moss) flight is taut, tense, and thrilling, setting the stage for the throwback monster movie that was to come. It has been a long time since a horror filmmaker remembered that silence, stillness, and empty space can be more terrifying than jumpscares and gore. Leigh Whannell knows, and he proved it right at the start. 

Levee busts through the locked door. - from Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, directed by George C. Wolfe

Levee (Chadwick Boseman) cannot break through the door. Why is the door even locked? He throws himself at it repeatedly throughout the film. In August Wilson’s original stageplay, he never gets through that door. In George C. Wolfe’s film, he does, and on the other side, he finds a brick wall. He is trapped, and we see in a single image the entire tragedy of the Levee character and the Black artists and performers he represents. The system is rigged, and there is always another barricade, locked door, or brick wall.

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, directed by George C. Wolfe

Autumn answers the questionnaire. - from Never Rarely Sometimes Always, directed by Eliza Hittman

So much of Never Rarely Sometimes Always is about the steely resolve of Autumn (Sidney Flanigan) as she encounters people and systems designed to prevent her from carrying out decisions about her own body. It is disarming, then, when she finds someone who displays empathy and concern. The scene plays out almost entirely on Flanigan’s face as she responds to the health questionnaire that gives the film its title. She is overwhelmed and, for the first time in the film, vulnerable. In this moment, we feel sorrow for her and for every woman and girl who has had to fight through this arcane system.

David Byrne and Co. perform “Hell You Talmbout.” - from David Byrne’s American Utopia, directed by Spike Lee

For most of its running time, David Byrne’s American Utopia is an ode to joy, a celebration of connectedness, and an embrace of the universality of all experiences. It is a wish for the America and world we want to build. But, no bright, new future comes to pass without struggle, and the performance of Janelle Monae’s “Hell You Talmbout” that comes toward the end of the show is an acknowledgement of that struggle. The names of murdered Black citizens ring out, one after the other, and as the list grows, it becomes increasingly apparent how far we are from an American Utopia.

Quotes

Quote of the Year

“I am Black, and I love being black.” - from Small Axe, written by Steve McQueen and Alastair Siddons

Spoken by education reformer Hazel (Naomie Ackie) midway through the final segment, Education, this line could serve as a mission statement for the entire seven-hour saga. Underneath the struggle and the hostility and the pain, Small Axe is about normal lives and normal people. Sometimes, they are presented with extraordinary circumstances, while most of the time, the circumstances are quite ordinary. 

McQueen has stated that one of his primary drives in making the film was so that his mother could see herself represented on screen. The power of Small Axe is that it embodies representation in all ways: good, bad, and irreducibly real. In that representation, there is pride. At the core of each segment lies an abiding love for community and the ways the West Indian people of the UK come together to lift up one another. They are Black. They love being Black. And in that love, there is power.

Two more quotes that stuck with me this year:

“You know you’re successful when you get tired of America.” - from The Nest, written by Sean Durkin

The Nest is a period piece about the 1980s that does away with all the usual trappings of the ‘80s. There is nothing about malls or leg warmers or the new wave in here. It is about a psychology, a mood, a pervasive sense of excess and greed. Though most of the film takes place overseas, the Reagan of it all is unmistakable. This line gets to the heart of Rory’s (Jude Law) obsession with appearing wealthy and the sense that there are no bounds to his craven pursuit of the high life. 

“Death sucks. I’m not okay with it. Death is ass.” - from Shithouse, written by Cooper Raiff

Sometimes, it helps just to state it plainly. After the year we had, I do not know if there is any American who would disagree. Death sucks. Cooper Raiff’s film was made long before we were overcome by a pandemic that would kill more than a quarter-million Americans. It is about smaller losses and the ways we cope and find solace in one another. But, even at the grandest scale, the fundamentals of death do not change. It sucks, and we should not be okay with it.