Moments and quotes. Quotes and moments. I’ve gone back and forth over the years between which column I write for the Year in Review series. For the films of 2020, I did both because 2020 was a strange year, but that piece felt good to write. Some years, there just are more moments that stand out, and in others, there are more quotes. Why not celebrate both, especially because this is my game played by my rules? So, I give you the combined column on the quotes I couldn’t stop thinking about and the moments I couldn’t stop replaying in my mind.
As is tradition, before getting on to the top choices, here are a few more moments (and one quote) that I also loved from this year: the 2001: A Space Odyssey homage that opens Barbie; the couple’s first date at the movies in Fallen Leaves; when Leonard meets Wen at the beginning of Knock at the Cabin; the whole atomic bomb detonation sequence in Oppenheimer; the dinner between the Assassin and the Expert in The Killer; and the line, “I ordered more toothpaste,” from The Zone of Interest.
Moments
Moment of the Year
Sandra and Samuel argue in the kitchen. – from Anatomy of a Fall, directed by Justine Triet
A perfect movie scene must function on a number of levels. It should push the story along in some clear way. It should tell you something new about or deepen your understanding of the characters. And, it should have some kind of thematic resonance within the larger point the filmmaker is trying to make. That’s all on top of needing to be well written, well acted, well staged, etc. It is a necessarily high bar to clear. The sequence in which Sandra (Sandra Hüller) and Samuel (Samuel Thiel) argue in their kitchen leaps over the bar. To borrow a phrase, it’s not in the same ballpark as the bar. It’s not even the same sport.
What Triet, her actors, and co-writer Arthur Harari have crafted here is one of the finest scenes of domestic drama ever committed to film. Every element comes together in a way that leaves you changed after viewing it. The dialogue is so sharp and so knowing about the way long-term couples build up resentments and grievances, just waiting for the chance to unleash them for maximum pain. The performances by both actors are otherworldly, tapping into deep wells of both heartache and anger. It is difficult to watch because it feels real and is earned by everything we know about these people already.
For a film about how the truth is virtually impossible to know, Triet is masterful in the way she deploys just enough objectivity to make the audience believe we understand what is happening, then pulls the rug out from under us at the last possible moment. We see an argument. We believe we understand these people. But, no one can ever understand what is really going on in someone else’s marriage, and that is the ultimate point of the movie. We can never understand.
Four more moments that stood out this year
The campers perform Joan Still. – from Theater Camp, directed by Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman
I love a good “puttin’ on a show” movie, from The Muppets to The Blues Brothers. Theater Camp is a film about people whose whole lives are dedicated to puttin’ on a show, and put on a show they do. The show within a show here is Joan Still, a silly, intentionally try-hard musical about the beloved founder of the titular camp. It’s over the top and strange and barely coherent, but it’s earnest and funny and joyous, too. It is the culmination of everything the movie has been about, and it’s catchy, to boot. Just try getting “Camp Isn’t Home” out of your head for days afterward.
Lizzy Q meets her ancestors in the afterlife. – from Killers of the Flower Moon, directed by Martin Scorsese
In general, the Scorsese style is associated with quick cuts, big camera movements, and a helluva lot of violence. Killers of the Flower Moon has those things. But, what it also has is the other side of the Scorsese style: a deep connection to the spiritual world. When the matriarch of an Osage family being infiltrated by white usurpers dies, there is a funeral. We have seen this before, but in the middle of the ceremony, the dead woman opens her eyes and stands up. She sees her ancestors, who smile at her. She smiles back and is taken gently into the next world. It is one of the most subtle, beautiful flourishes in the entire Scorsese filmography.
Ethan Hunt rides a motorcycle off a cliff. – from Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, directed by Christopher McQuarrie
The Mission: Impossible movies, as they exist today, are largely constructed around showcasing one jaw-dropping stunt. Of course, there are many stunts in these movies, many of them tremendous, but there is always the big one. The Burj Khalifa climb in Ghost Protocol. The HALO jump in Fallout. Hanging onto the plane in Rogue Nation.
The thing is that the Paramount marketing department knows it has to sell the big stunt, so the motorcycle jump that takes place late in Dead Reckoning Part One was all over the place in advance of the film coming out. If you saw a movie at an IMAX theater over the summer, you probably saw the behind-the-scenes sizzle reel of how they filmed the stunt, performed by Tom Cruise himself, as always.
There was no avoiding knowing about the stunt going into the film. So, here’s how good the stunt is: The advanced knowledge didn’t matter. It played like gangbusters. In my theater, at least, you could hear a pin drop when Cruise went over the edge of the cliff. Those couple seconds of silence were followed by a round of audible gasps and wows. That’s the magic of movies.
Doris Von Erich dresses for another funeral. – from The Iron Claw, directed by Sean Durkin
Much of Durkin’s epic tragedy is necessarily masculine, following as it does the lives of four brothers whose goal in life is to please their domineering father. But, the most heartbreaking scene in the film revolves around the two women at the center of the story: Doris Von Erich (Maura Tierney) and her daughter-in-law, Pam (Lily James).
Another of Doris’ sons has died tragically, and she is meant to be preparing for the funeral. However, Pam walks in to find her staring at a black dress laid out on the bed. Doris doesn’t want to put it on. She is afraid people will recognize it as the same dress from the last funeral she attended for one of her sons. Pam is supportive, but there is no getting around the weight of this realization. There have been too many funerals, and there is too much tragedy to bear.
Quotes
Quote of the Year
“This is what adults do.” – from May December, written by Alex Mechanik and Samy Burch
At its core, May December is a movie about three people playing pretend. One woman (Natalie Portman) is an actress, whose job is to pretend. Another woman (Julianne Moore) is a wife and mother pretending she has a perfect life filled with love. The man (Charles Melton) is a boy pretending to be a man. The drama of the film comes in the way these characters’ delusions bump up against one another until they can no longer pretend they are anything but what they are.
When the actress and the boy finally have their affair, as we knew they would, she is taking advantage of him in the way that he has always been taken advantage of by his wife. When he seems hurt by her, she tells him, “This is what adults do,” and we understand how little his life has prepared him for the trials of navigating the adult world. He is stunted by his trauma, so of course she must tell him how the adult world operates. He is only in this moment realizing he never had a chance to learn, and that realization is heartbreaking.
Three more quotes that stood out this year
“You can’t even dream a whole dream, can you?” – from The Holdovers, written by David Hemingson
The old professor (Paul Giamatti) explains to his two unlikely companions (Da’Vine Joy Randolph as Mary and Dominic Sessa as Angus) that he hopes one day to finish his monograph on Carthage. “A monograph is like a book but shorter,” he explains. Mary knows what a monograph is, and Angus asks why he doesn’t just write a book. “I don’t know if I have a whole book in me,” he responds. At which point, Mary drops the devastating line: “You can’t even dream a whole dream, can you?”
The professor has lived almost his entire life on this campus. He cannot see beyond the world that is right in front of him, or more accurately, he has shut himself off to anything beyond that world. He believes himself to be content, but he is not. He lives a limited life because he does not believe himself capable of living anything else. Mary sees this. Angus sees this. Over the course of the movie, he will finally see it, too.
“The turnover rate for footmen is notoriously high.” – from Saltburn, written by Emerald Fennell
The sheltered rich kid Felix (Jacob Elordi) argues with his cousin Fairleigh (Archie Madekwe) about his privilege and blindness to the world. Fairleigh wants money from Felix and is attempting to guilt him, but it doesn’t make him wrong. Fairleigh accuses Felix of not knowing the names of his footmen, to which Felix replies with this all-time great excuse: “The turnover rate for footmen is notoriously high.”
On its face, this is hilarious and got a good-sized laugh from the audience in my theater. But, it’s deeper than that. It is important to note that Felix says this with no irony. He is incapable of irony, so it would not occur to him to question why the turnover rate for footmen is so high. Perhaps that begins with not knowing their names and treating them as subhuman. That the turnover rate would be “notoriously” high suggests this is a commonly known problem among an entire class of elites who are just as clueless as Felix. They cannot see what is glaringly obvious, which is a weakness Fennell digs in on for maximum effect.
“You think I see two roads.” – from Albert Brooks: Defending My Life, directed by Rob Reiner
This is a bit of a cheat since this comes from a documentary and the line is not written. Rather, it is spoken by the subject of the documentary, Alber Brooks, but Reiner had the good sense to leave it in the film, so here we are. Reiner, in fact, ends his tribute to the great comedian and filmmaker by giving Brooks the last word with this statement.
Brooks is talking about an agent asking him why he always chooses the most difficult path in his career, and Brooks says, “You think I see two roads. I don’t. … I see one road.” In Brooks’ position as an artist, this makes perfect sense. Make the art you want to make and accept no substitutes. But, for the rest of us, this is also true. Yes, we have choices in life, but those choices are guided by so many outside forces that it becomes more the illusion of choice. There is only one road, and it goes only one direction, which is to say this is the only life we get, and all we can do is our best.
Check back next time for Part V of Last Cinema Standing’s Year in Review series as we close out our look back with the Top 10 Films of 2023.
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