Year in Review: What is a ‘2020 Movie’ anyway?

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Another way to phrase that headline would be: What is a movie in 2020 anyway? In one sense, what I mean is which movies would be eligible for “best of the year” consideration in a year as strange as 2020? In another sense, however, I mean to ask what we even mean anymore when we talk about film. Is it the theater? Is the pedigree of the artists? Is there some magical, mysterious force that confers importance upon a project such that we deem it “cinema?”

Famous culture critics such as Matt Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepinwall have raged against the debate between cinema and television for years, particularly when a director like David Lynch suggests the third season of his show Twin Peaks should actually be considered an 18-hour movie. Such a suggestion implies a certain embarrassment at the prospect of having made television instead of film. That is, of course, silly. Breaking Bad may be one of the finest pieces of art of the 21st century. It is definitively television, and it is decidedly better and more important that 90 percent of what we might call cinema.

If it were ever important at all to distinguish the two, the difference between film and television used to be relatively clear in my mind. Movies played in theaters. Television played at home on TV. With the rise of streaming and the seeming de-emphasis of the cinema, though, the lines get blurrier and blurrier, and the noise on both sides of the debate gets louder and louder.

It is funny even to frame it as a debate. The stakes are low, there is no right answer, and no one wins a prize for convincing anyone of anything. Anyway, for most folks, the distinction is academic. If you can watch it and enjoy it, does it matter if it is film or television or some weird hybrid in between or none of the above? No, but around here, we like to make academic distinctions.

So, we will not frame this as a debate --  I feel no need to convince you, and you should feel no need to change your mind -- but rather a discussion in four parts.

Case study No. 1: Portrait of a Lady on Fire

You may recall hearing a lot about Céline Sciamma’s brilliant romance around this time last year. The film debuted at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival then opened in theaters in November 2019 for a one-week Academy Awards qualifying run. It received no nominations, but the critics and few audience members who had seen it immediately recognized its brilliance. Thus, Portrait of a Lady on Fire ended up at or near the top of many Best of 2019 lists and even a few end-of-decade lists. It was not on mine.

I did not get to see the film until the same time much of the public did -- in February 2020. Its greatness was, of course, self-evident, featuring two stunning lead performances from Adèle Haenel and Noémie Merlant and some of the most gorgeous cinematography you will ever see. My own Best of 2019 lists had long since been compiled, and it felt strange to consider putting it on my Best of 2020 list more than a year and a half after it screened at Cannes.

This actually is a common problem with Academy eligibility and release windows of foreign films. One of the best films of 2016 was Danish war drama Land of Mine, but you will not find it on any of my year-end lists. This is because it was nominated at the 2016 Oscars but released in the U.S. in early 2017. To complicate matters further, it screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2015 and was released to theaters in Denmark in December that year. So, is Land of Mine one of the best films of 2015, 2016, or 2017? 

Such matters really only matter to those of us obsessed with listmaking and chronicling the history of the cinema in an orderly fashion. By any measure, Land of Mine is a tremendous achievement and a must-see film. So it is with Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which will appear in my end-of-2020 wraps-ups. By any previously established precedent, it would not have qualified for me as a “2020 movie,” but as we now know, 2020 was the year of the unprecedented.

Case study No. 2: Hamilton and David Byrne’s American Utopia

I have never attended one of those Fathom Events screenings where they show pre-recorded performances of theater productions. They always seem interesting but have never been a viewing priority. However, when I heard Disney was going to release Hamilton in theaters, that became a priority. Of course, theaters shut down and Disney chose to release the show on its nascent streaming platform in July.

The show, of course, is excellent, but is it a movie? Most would say no. The Academy deemed it ineligible for Oscars consideration, although it will be eligible at the Golden Globes as a film. Perhaps an argument could be made for it as an avant-garde documentary depicting a single performance of the Broadway show Hamilton. 

It certainly feels as though it rises above the level of a mere pre-recorded stage production, with editing choices and camera angles that place it in the realm of great cinema. But as Zoller Seitz and Sepinwall will tell you, a filmed piece of art being great does not make it a movie. I have not seen Hamilton appear on many if any year-end lists, particularly not those strictly confined to film. And yet, we have David Byrne’s American Utopia this very year as a counterexample.

The Spike Lee concert film of David Byrne’s Broadway show is a wonderful, joyous document, and it has appeared on many end-of-the-year lists, but it is not substantially different from Hamilton as a film. It is a Broadway production, recorded and presented with amazing craft by a great filmmaker. Fans of Stop Making Sense or The Last Waltz would argue the concert film has a long, vital history in the cinema, but what is a Broadway musical if not a concert with a story?

Again, I have no answers here, only questions and beliefs. In this case, that belief is that if we want to call Lee’s film one of the best of the year -- and it should certainly be considered as such -- then we should refer to Hamilton in the same fashion.

Case study No. 3: Small Axe

I will be brief here because I intend to write about Small Axe in much greater depth in the coming days. If you are unfamiliar, Small Axe is a series of five feature films directed by Steve McQueen, all dealing with the experiences of West Indian peoples in the UK around the mid-20th century. The films played on Amazon Prime in the US and the BBC in the UK, though the first two features in the series, Mangrove and Lover’s Rock, premiered at the New York Film Festival.

If you look around, you will find Small Axe represented across lists of the best television of the year and the best films of the year, sometimes by the same publications. Everyone can agree on the series’ brilliance, but no one can seem to agree what it is. Some critics have broken it apart and called Lover’s Rock one of the standalone best films of the year, while still others have made the NYFF double feature of Mangrove and Lover’s Rock a single entry.

I do not begrudge anyone their opinion and am simply thrilled Small Axe is receiving the recognition it deserves. Hopefully, wherever people read about it, they are intrigued, and they watch it. That is the point of all this year-end handwringing anyway. For me, much like Krzysztof Kieślowski’s much-lauded Decalogue, Small Axe is meant to be taken as a whole. It is one grand, magnificent film, and that is how this site will treat it.

Case study No. 4: Nomadland, et. al.

Finally, what of the “2020” films that were not released to theaters or streaming services in the previous calendar year? Nomadland, Minari, Promising Young Woman, and more, the movies some folks have seen, which will be eligible for this year’s Academy Awards, but which most of the filmgoing public will not have had the chance to view. These are some of the best reviewed, most anticipated films of the year, and they just will not be able to factor into any kind of year-end wrap-up, at least not on this site.

If all of them end up being stunning masterpieces, then we will likely have a more wide-ranging version of the Portrait of a Lady on Fire scenario outlined above, and that is okay. If January 2020 rolls around and I am the only one left talking about Nomadland amid next year’s crop of potential modern classics, then so be it. I am here to talk about great films, whenever and however, and at the end of it all, that is why we are here. To talk about great films, whether or not they fit our preconceived notion of cinema.