Year in Review: Best & Worst of 2016

In year three of this annual Year in Review series, it occurs to me perhaps “best” and “worst” represent an inadequate way to analyze trends in cinema. To a degree, it is a matter of formatting. It was my initial mistake to try to bifurcate the film landscape in such a manner, to pass judgment by way of a subjective pro/con list.

With that in mind, this entry called out for a different approach this time around, a new format. In the interest of becoming more open-minded and considerate of other viewpoints – a condition sorely lacking in so much public and private discourse – here is the proposal: Point/counterpoint. Not a new idea, by any stretch, but with this twist – it’s just me.

I have assumptions and preferences like anyone else. Perhaps by challenging my own prejudices, I can come to a new understanding and point of view. That is the hope anyway, and not a bad goal for life outside the cinema as well.

Point: Home distribution models threaten the nature of the cinema

You do not need me to restate the mission statement of this site, which I have done a dozen times before, including yesterday in the introduction to this Year in Review series. A film is meant to be seen on the biggest screen, heard through the loudest speakers, and felt in the darkest room. The cinema is a transporting experience, allowing you to walk through dimensions, envelop yourself in new worlds, and leave behind the grievances of real life. Show me the living room that encompasses all of these and make it available to the masses, and I will tell you that is called a movie theater.

This is not a new problem, but it is an expanding one. The rise of Netflix and other video-on-demand services has made it possible to see new releases in the comfort of your home sometimes the same day as they become available in theaters. Being reasonable, I see the allure of a comfortable couch, a big-screen, hi-definition television, and surround sound. No one can be blamed for blanching at the cost of a movie ticket, the price of concessions, or any of the dozens of nagging annoyances that plague the theater-goer’s experience.

However, this devalues the medium. Going to the movies once was and still can be a glorious night on the town. There is no better way to spend an evening than with a good film, and the ritual of the cinema is as important as any other aspect of it – the sound of a ticket being torn, the smell of freshly popped popcorn, the feeling of sinking into a worn-out old seat, and the moment the lights go down and the image begins to flicker on that big, white screen.

Counterpoint: This model democratizes cinema, making it available to anyone, anywhere

Around March every year, once the Oscars have passed and release schedules firm up, I sit down and make a list of every upcoming movie I want to see in the next calendar year. I have spreadsheets with lists of films, directors, and release dates (as well as check marks for those I have seen) for every year going back to 2006.

When I first moved to New York City three years ago, I thought of those lists of release dates and how so many of the best films came with the same disclaimer: New York and Los Angeles only. I hated that disclaimer because it meant I would have to wait or, worse still, miss out entirely because I lived in a small, secluded college town, four hours from the nearest metropolis, let alone New York or Los Angeles. Moving here was a permanent reprieve from having to wait or miss out.

This is not true of most people. Large swaths of the population of this country live nowhere near a movie house even, never mind the kind of screens that might show the independent and foreign films that nurture an appreciation of cinema. Some of the best films of this year such as The Lobster, 13th, and Under the Shadow never played near many of my friends back home, yet they are experiences that cannot be missed. The theater remains the best place to watch a movie, but if the choice is at home on your television or not at all, then there is no choice to be made.

Point: It has been a great year for African-American representation and movies exploring black life in America

After enduring two years of #oscarssowhite controversy, the Academy has a chance to course correct in a big way, and not through some benevolent tokenism but rather due to the quality and volume of black voices and black stories in theaters this year. From Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight to Denzel Washington’s Fences, as well as documentaries such as Ezra Edelman’s O.J.: Made in America, Ava DuVernay’s 13th, and Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro, powerful, comprehensive stories about the black experience in America found their way into cinemas.

Denzel Washington and Viola Davis in Fences

Each stands as a damning document of struggle and oppression, a radical call for change and re-evaluation, and even in times as bleak as those we now face, an inspiring message of hope, survival, and transcendence. The central question of movies like these, as well as Loving, directed by white southerner Jeff Nichols, is whether we can do better than the generations that came before and whether we can leave a path for future generations to do better than we have.

Counterpoint: And yet, we still have not come far enough

Not one of those wonderful movies has made more than $32 million (Fences), which is good for 82nd at the domestic box office in 2016. The rise in strong black voices on screen and behind the scenes is a wonderful development, but it means little unless we can pack theaters and show financiers and distributors these stories are not only profitable but fill a gaping hole in the marketplace. Put plainly, audiences need to want these movies more or risk losing them.

Point: Documentary films this year provided a powerful, necessary lens through which to view our world

We already touched on O.J.: Made in America, 13th, and I Am Not Your Negro, which address issues of race in America. In addition, Josh Kriegman and Elyse Steinberg documented the folly of our political system with Weiner, Josh Fox showed us a new outlook on an environment teetering on the brink of disaster with How to Let Go of the World and Love Everything the Climate Can’t Change, and Kirsten Johnson showed us the world as a set of puzzle pieces, waiting to be put together in a portrait of humanity, with Cameraperson.

In Newtown, Kim A. Snyder delivers a poignantly human take on the gun violence epidemic, while the prolific Werner Herzog gave us a pair of films (Lo and Behold: Reveries of a Connected World and Into the Inferno) that made us question the very nature of human civilization and demonstrated how tenuous the grasp of society truly is. All of these are vital works that taken individually or as a whole, shine a light on who we were, who we are, and who we could be, answering questions it has never been more important to ask.

Counterpoint: To what end, the truth

Angela Davis in 13th

As a journalist, it has been clear for some time you cannot tell someone something he does not want to know. Throughout the 2016 election and certainly since, it has become fashionable to refer to this as a post-truth society. The proliferation of fake news and propaganda online and elsewhere contributes to a world in which facts are meaningless in the face of belief.

This is a country in which people believe the Sandy Hook massacre was a government plot to confiscate guns. This is a country in which the fact of global warming is debated while the planet rapidly dies. This is a country in which racism is denied as it is perpetuated and a history of systemic oppression is seen as just the way it is.

Powerful as these documentaries are – and many of them are perfectly constructed artifacts of a world gone mad – they lack the power to change hearts that have hardened and grown cold. In this, however, the fault lies not with the films but with us. Our blindness, apathy, and self-regard mean we will not notice when we are being led off the cliff but will grow ever more confident as we take the plunge.

Check back tomorrow for more of Last Cinema Standing’s Year in Review as we count down the Top 10 Quotes of 2016, and check back each day this week for continued Year in Review coverage.

Last Cinema Standing’s 2016 Year in Review

No matter how it ended for you, no matter where things left off, and no matter how you felt about what transpired, 2016 was a trying year. It tried our patience. It tried our sanity. It tried our humanity. The average among us – and that is damn near all of us – tried our best, I like to think. We weathered the storms, savored the highs, and survived the lows. If you are here with me now, we made it through, which is an accomplishment in and of itself.

Last Cinema Standing took a backseat in 2016 to events both personal and universal. I did not write as much as I would have liked or hoped – nor as it turned out, as much as I needed. If this site is nothing else, it is a place for me to share with the world that which is close to my heart and to be a small part of that world. As always, I thank those of you who join me on this journey for your indulgence, your support, and your participation. Such things are not lost on me.

I began a new professional job in January 2016 as a copy editor and web writer for the sports department of the New York Post. While adjusting to my new circumstances – which included a shift to working evenings and late nights – I continued my tradition of breaking down the Oscars category by category. I wrote more on the Academy Awards race in 2016 than I did the previous year, and I wrote too much that year. This is a long way of saying I burned myself out early and what felt like irretrievably.

It is a rewarding job in many ways, and it does not escape me that to watch, write, and read sports as a profession is to live a dream most people would hardly dare imagine. I love it, but it has become increasingly clear it cannot be my whole life. Film is my first love, and I put it on the backburner this year, whether for reasons of fatigue, lack of focus, or divided energies.

I do not make New Year’s resolutions because life is a continuum without regard for the calendar, and we are all works in progress. However, when reflecting for this series on the past 12 months – particularly the past 10 – it is clear I have moved away from that which has made be happy and that in which I have previously found solace. Such will not be the case, I promise to myself, this year.

At the end of November, I proposed to my longtime girlfriend as we stood in the cold in front of the New York Metropolitan Opera House. We had celebratory drinks steps away at the Lincoln Ristorante, a flight of stairs above the Elin Bunin Munroe Film Center, the best place in New York City to see a film. You see, no matter the occasion, cinema is never far from my heart.

When you spend much of your life in the dark of a theater, it helps to have a partner there to share the experience. It is also helpful if that partner will drag you out into the light, which it is sometimes easy to forget exists. In these twin endeavors, I could not wish for a better partner in life and cinema than my fiancée. As supportive as one can be, she is that and more, and on my best days, my hope is I am able to return the favor.

This site began in earnest in July 2007 as a way to promote active engagement in the films we watch. Film is the only medium capable of showing us who we are as a people, of taking us outside of ourselves, and of demonstrating what the world is like for so many people we will never meet or know. Now, more than any time in the site’s history, these qualities of film are crucial to processing the world as it unfolds around us.

The mission of this site has never changed. For anyone who wants to understand this world a little better, Last Cinema Standing will be there with you in the dark of the theater, looking for a light that shows us what any of this means.

Snowden: Nothing to hide, everything to fear

Moderator Matt Zoller Seitz (left to right), stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Shailene Woodley, and director Oliver Stone at a screening of Snowden on Wednesday night in Manhattan.

The story was never supposed to be Edward Snowden. The story should have been the National Security Agency, domestic spying, the circumvention of due process, and the end of privacy as we thought we knew it. For a while – a few days maybe – it was, but the complexity of the issue and the overwhelming scope of the offense made for a tale that was less Aesop and more Tolstoy. Put simply, the media could not sell it. The story of an ex-CIA spy going on the run after revealing secrets of national security, however, was one they could sell.

When the public grabs hold of your story, it ceases to become your own. The narrative builds on itself. People choose to believe the parts that fit their argument and disregard the rest. No one has the full picture, nor could they comprehend it if they did. If it ever was, this is no longer a culture that can digest complex issues. It is a culture of soundbites and snippets, headlines and clicks, tweets and shares. Arouse anger. Fuel suspicion. Light a match and hope there is profit in the flame. All of which is a roundabout way of saying: None of us knows Snowden well enough to judge him, and none of us is in a position to judge anyway.

On Wednesday night, in the Loews Theatre at the AMC Lincoln Square in Manhattan, Oliver Stone, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Shailene Woodley sat and spoke with author and critic Matt Zoller Seitz after a screening of their new film, Snowden, which seeks to explore the man behind the mythos. They were joined, via satellite feed from Moscow, by Snowden, who is among the most impressive people I have ever had the chance to see speak. Their 45-minute discussion, which was broadcast across the country to more than 700 theaters, covered everything from the weather in Moscow to the importance of privacy, even in a world dominated by social media.

“It’s easy for the media to spin a story and to portray a certain narrative,” said Woodley. “Something that fascinated me about this screenplay to begin with was a lot of us know who Edward Snowden is, or we thought we knew who he was, and a lot of people have a lot of strong judgments about Edward Snowden, and I feel like until this movie, none of us actually knew the story of Ed the human. We knew the story that mainstream media had put out, we knew the story that the government had released, but we didn’t know his story.”

Gordon-Levitt

Snowden’s story, as Seitz addressed and Stone acknowledged, has many parallels to another Stone protagonist, Ron Kovic, the real-life hero portrayed by Tom Cruise in Born on the Fourth of July. Both men loved their country and made immense personal sacrifices for its protection. Both men then were disheartened and disillusioned by what their fights proved in the service of – Kovic’s fight the war in Vietnam and Snowden’s the global cyberwar, which turned out to be a massive civilian spying program. Finally, both men were ostracized and demonized for speaking out against the corruption and moral decay they witnessed.

What is easy to forget – or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, what is convenient to forget – about people like Snowden, Kovic or anyone else who speaks out against the government is this: They are patriots, more so than any one of us who says nothing or follows blindly the edicts of the ruling class. To speak out against the U.S., you must love it. To criticize your nation’s actions, you must believe it is capable of better. To question its motives, you must care deeply about its direction.

The benefit of telling the story of Snowden’s life leading up to the reveal of the NSA’s domestic spying program is to understand the kind of person he was and the kind of circumstances that would drive him to such dramatic action. When he chose to go public with what he knew, Snowden was a 29-year-old government employee with a beautiful, supportive girlfriend living in Hawaii and making a fortune. His life was, for lack of a better term, idyllic. It serves us then to question what could be so morally repugnant, so clearly offensive to basic humanity, as to make a person give that up.

“Silence is the biggest weapon that’s used against us,” Snowden said. “We don’t want to be weird. We don’t want to be different. We don’t want to say anything at all. But that kind of thing is de-mobilizing. That’s the kind of thing that makes people think we don’t care. That’s the kind of thing that makes government officials think they can get away with anything. … Whistleblowing – whistleblowers are elected by circumstance. It’s not about where you went to school. It’s not about who you know. It’s about what you see.

“If you see something and you have feelings about it, share them. Try to do something about it. That’s not to say burn your life to the ground and try to be a martyr. We don’t need martyrs. What we need are people who care and say something about it and try to do something in an effective way. Don’t destroy your life for nothing, but if you see an opportunity to share the reality of what’s actually going on in our world, particularly behind closed doors, recognize that that may be an opportunity to make the world a better place.”

At this, the audience burst into applause. There was much cheering for Snowden’s words and those of the assembled filmmakers who brought his story to life. While the feed from Moscow was being set up, one audience member shouted out, calling Stone a hero, a plaudit the three-time Academy Award winner politely demurred. Much as the evening was a forum for a serious discussion about global security and the right to privacy, it was also a celebration of an impressively mounted, elegantly conceived Hollywood film.

Snowden is the kind of smart political thriller the industry has little patience for these days, preferring instead stories where the president is taken hostage by terrorists and must blast his way to safety. Stone makes this film with the belief his audience is intelligent and attentive, and viewers are rewarded with a film that neither dumbs down the complex nature of its story nor weaves a tale so byzantine it proves impossible to follow. It finds balance in ways few big-budget, star-driven vehicles do.

Gordon-Levitt, Woodley, and Stone

To that end, leads Gordon-Levitt and Woodley deliver wonderful performances, with Gordon-Levitt effectively disappearing into the role of Snowden and Woodley, as Snowden’s longtime girlfriend Lindsay Mills, providing a sturdy anchor to keep the audience moored amid the ever-choppier waters of the story. Some will argue the love story is a distraction from the more pressing matters at hand in the film, but his relationship with Mills is among the things that makes Snowden so human, so relatable.

“If you’re going to do a character, I like characters who change or undergo tremendous difficulty or adversity and either keep their character or change it. Depends on the circumstance,” Stone said. “It always comes back to a drama, comes back to a person, persons, and that fascinates me. People will make this thing go. As much scientific technology as there is in a movie, especially this one, it comes down to the faces who are looking at the computers. Unless you feel what Joe’s feeling or Shailene is feeling, you’re not going to follow the computer story.”

Those parallel narratives – the human story and the computer story – are both magnificently executed by Stone and his team, in particular cinematographer Anthony Dodd Mantle, who captures several perfect moments and images within the film’s largely frenetic pace. One beautifully rendered sequence in particular stands out as Snowden lays out for documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras (Melissa Leo), who directed Oscar winner Citizenfour, the scope of the NSA’s spy program.

If the government looks at all the people one person knows and all the people those people know, and so on, by the fourth level out, the privacy of millions is being invaded for no reason other than a tenuous connection to a connection to a connection. Stone conceives the scene visually as a cascading map of human interconnectedness in which we are eventually all connected and all of our personal information funnels into the black hole of the government’s prying eye.

Perhaps none of this moves you. There is a strong likelihood you are not a terrorist nor affiliated with anyone remotely linked to terrorism. Perhaps you do not steal. You do not cheat. You do not lie. You think, for all intents and purposes, you have nothing to hide and, thus, nothing to fear. It is the common line of argument among supporters of the domestic spying program. I cannot refute this more strongly or eloquently than Snowden himself, so here he is:

“One of the most important things – and I think we all have a duty collectively in society to remember this – is to think about when we’re being manipulated, when we’re being told to think a certain way and accept a certain argument reflexively without actually tackling it,” said Snowden. “The common argument that we have – if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear – the origins of that are literally Nazi propaganda. This is not to equate the actions of our current government to the Nazis … but that is literally the origin of that quote. It’s from the minister of propaganda, Joseph Goebbels.

Edward Snowden

“So when we hear modern politicians, when we hear modern people repeating that reflexively, without confronting its origins, without confronting what it really says, I think that’s harmful. And if we actually think about it, it doesn’t really make sense because privacy isn’t about something to hide. Privacy is about something to protect, and that’s who you are, that’s what you believe in, that’s who you want to become. Privacy is the right to the self. Privacy is what gives you the ability to share with the world who you are on your own terms, for them to understand what you’re trying to be, and to protect for yourself the parts of you that you’re not sure about, that you’re still experimenting with.

“If we don’t have privacy, what we’re losing is the ability to make mistakes. We’re losing the ability to be ourselves. Privacy is the fountainhead of all other rights. Freedom of speech doesn’t have a lot of meaning if you can’t have a quiet space, a space within yourself, within your mind, within your community, your friends, your home, to decide what it is that you actually want to say. Freedom of religion doesn’t actually mean that much if you can’t figure out what you actually believe without being influenced by the criticisms and outside direction and peer pressure of others. And it goes on and on and on.

“Privacy is baked into our language, our core concept of government itself in every way. It’s why we call it private property. Without privacy, you don’t have anything for yourself. So when people say that to me, I say back, ‘Arguing that you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like arguing that you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.’”

Legends of the fall: 10 Most Anticipated Movies

Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga in Jeff Nichols' Loving.

There you have it. Three years in a row makes it a tradition here at Last Cinema Standing. We put the depths of the summer movie season behind and look ahead to a bright future in our darkened theaters. That’s right. It is time for Last Cinema Standing’s 10 Most Anticipated Movies of the Fall – with a couple cheats thrown in for early September movies that look too interesting not to include.

Some of this list will court controversy, which will be addressed below, but for the most part, some big-name directors are taking on some fascinating projects and some young gunslingers look ready to break out in arresting fashion. Your mileage will vary on how much these films appeal to you as a group, but with everything from horror-fantasy to documentary to historical drama to surreal comedy, nearly everyone should be able to find something on this list for which to be excited.

Before moving forward, let’s take a quick look at the past and consider how last year’s list held up. The Revenant lived up to its billing as the most anticipated movie of last year and delivered a spectacle unrivaled in ambition and achievement. It was also the only movie to make both the most anticipated and end-of-year 10 best lists.

That said, Macbeth (No. 3) and Suffragette (No. 7) were both magnificent films that earned an honorable mention on the year-end countdown, and the only true clunker on the list was Jobs, at worst an intriguing failure. Meanwhile, Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’ English-language The Lobster (No. 5) has a strong shot to end up on this year’s best list, its release having been delayed to this spring.

Among the following 10, one or more of the year’s best films could reside. Only time will tell. For now, they represent promise and potential. Presenting Last Cinema Standing’s 10 Most Anticipated Movies of the Fall:

10. Sully, directed by Clint Eastwood

Release date: Sept. 9

There was a period from about 2003-2008 when Eastwood was appointment viewing. Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Letters from Iwo Jima, Changeling, all magnificent in distinctly different ways. They are all recognizably Eastwood films, but each brings something new to the table. Since then, the results have been less than magical, and I have never agreed with the populist opinion on American Sniper. Sully, on the other hand, has the feel of something that could be special. How special will depend on two things: the director’s handling of the plane landing and Tom Hanks’ central performance. I have no doubts in my mind about either.

9. Toni Erdmann, directed by Maren Ade

Release date: Dec. 25

Of these 10, Toni Erdmann is the film about which I know least. Ade has directed sporadically over the years – just three features since 2003 – but she has been a producer on several of Portuguese master Miguel Gomes’ works, and the buzz around this film has been deafening. Since debuting at Cannes, critics have billed this as the frontrunner for Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards. To the best of my knowledge, it is a surreal comedic drama about a father and daughter. The last time I went solely on buzz out of Cannes, the film was Leviathan, and if you follow the site, you know how that worked out.

8. The 13th, directed by Ava DuVernay

Release date: Oct. 7

Selected to be the first documentary to open the New York Film Festival in the event’s 54-year history, DuVernay’s latest film chronicles the history of racial inequality in the U.S. prison and judicial system. It is an expansive topic and difficult subject matter, but if anyone can bring to the film the necessary investigation and investment, it is DuVernay, whose Martin Luther King Jr. film Selma already stands as a modern masterpiece.

*Note: I could not find a trailer for The 13th, so here are DuVernay and others talking about the wonderful work she does.

7. Kicks, directed by Justin Tipping

Release date: Sept. 9

Many words have been written in this space about Creed director Ryan Coogler – I cannot say this enough: the best young filmmaker working today – who burst onto the scene in 2013 with Fruitvale Station. Tipping’s directorial debut has all the markings of a similar breakout, tackling the everyday struggles of an inner-city kid who wants a new pair of sneakers. Like Coogler, Tipping is from Oakland, Calif., where Kicks is set, and I will admit to a little personal bias here. The Bay Area is rarely on screen unless San Francisco is being destroyed by a monster or natural disaster, and certainly, the East Bay, where I grew up, never appears. If Tipping can capture the rhythms and feel of life on the other side of the Bay, that is more than enough for me.

6. A Monster Calls, directed by J.A. Bayona

Release date: Dec. 23

Originally slated for an October release closer to Halloween, the studio shuffled this one back to a Christmastime slot, which tells us two things. First, it will be more family-oriented fantasy than horror, which it always seemed anyway. Second, the studio believes in its awards prospects. Bayona, from Barcelona, has made just two previous features, the excellent Spanish horror The Orphanage and the problematic but enthralling The Impossible. If Bayona can find the right balance between the family drama of the latter and the thrills and storytelling of the former, A Monster Calls will be a can’t-miss prospect.

5. Voyage of Time, directed by Terrence Malick

Release date: Oct. 7

Though I was a fan, Malick rubbed many of even his most ardent supporters the wrong way with his Knight of Cups earlier this year. With Tree of Life, To the Wonder, and Knight of Cups, Malick seems to be drifting further from straight narrative filmmaking, which is fine by me. However, for those who wish Malick would again tackle subjects with more well defined substance, it does not get any more substantive than this. A documentary about the entire history and future of the universe that clearly evokes the best sequence in Tree of Life – or any recent film for that matter – sign me up.

4. The Light Between Oceans, directed by Derek Cianfrance

Release date: Sept. 2

We will not have to wait long for this one. It opens Friday. However, anticipation for Cianfrance’s follow-up to The Place Beyond the Pines has been high since the cast list was announced, headlined by Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, and Rachel Weisz. Early reviews are in, and they are decidedly mixed. I also was not over the moon for either The Place Beyond the Pines or Blue Valentine, Cianfrance’s two most recent features, which both received glowing critical praise. However, with a cast like that, it would take more than an ocean to keep me away.

3. Loving, directed by Jeff Nichols

Release date: Nov. 4

Nichols’ Midnight Special was a tremendous work of science fiction, unfairly forgotten toward the beginning of this year. The same fate is unlikely to befall his forthcoming feature, which tells the true story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple sentenced to prison in 1950s Virginia for the crime of getting married. The story alone would be enough to get me in the theater, but Nichols’ best work – Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter, Mud – has a deeply humanist streak that should be perfect for this material.

2. The Birth of a Nation, directed by Nate Parker

Release date: Oct. 7

The controversy surrounding the accusation of rape against Nate Parker cannot be ignored, and it would be irresponsible to do so. The facts of the case are widely available, and I will not recount them here. This is not the forum for that discussion. If after reviewing the details of the case, however, you choose not to see this film on moral or ethical grounds, that is a decision I respect but with which I do not agree. If Parker is in fact a rapist, he belongs in prison, but the movie has been made. Should this telling of the Nat Turner slave revolt live up to its subject, its press out of Sundance, and the promise of its early trailers, The Birth of a Nation has all the makings of truly great art.

1. Silence, directed by Martin Scorsese

Release date: TBA

Scorsese is the greatest living filmmaker. That needs no qualifier. He simply is. As such, any film of his is an event. Add to that he reportedly has been trying since 1991 to bring to the screen Shûsaku Endô’s 1966 novel about two Jesuit missionaries in 17th century Japan, and it becomes clear this is a passion project. Scorsese brings care and thoughtfulness to everything he makes, but the 25-year struggle to make this film means he sees something remarkable in this story that he feels he can bring to life. Of course, this project has attracted actors and craftspeople who are the best in the business, so the film will be gorgeously rendered and wonderfully acted. The star, though, is Scorsese, and that is a star on which we can all wish.

New movie review: The Lobster

Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz go on the run in writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos' excellent The Lobster.

We should be past the point in human history where any of us believes there is one way for a person to live his life. We should be, but we are not. The loudest among us in fact want very much to dictate rules for how we act, speak, create, love, and in a larger sense exist. Some embrace these mandates as gospel, while others rebel, lash out, and decry the whole system. This push and pull is like an ideological tug of war in which no one wins but those shouting the commands. In truth, we should all probably just drop the damn rope.

In The Lobster, Greek writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos depicts a world drained of passion, expression, and choice. Its inhabitants are offered just one option, a single guiding path for their lives, and if they fail to remain on this path, a whole other oppressive structure awaits. The Lobster is a bold statement about the ways in which we let systems control us through fear, humiliation, and the threat of violence or worse. Because Lanthimos is a visionary filmmaker and singular storyteller, the film is also a darkly comic fable about a hotel where people are transformed into animals.

The rules of this world are established economically and matter-of-factly. To live in this society, you must have a romantic partner. If you do not have a partner – regardless of the reason, be it death, divorce, or lack of interest – you must register at the hotel, which operates like a cross between a singles cruise and a totalitarian re-education center. Those people who find their match are returned to The City to live out their days together. Those who do not meet someone in 45 days are transformed into the animal of their choosing.

Colin Farrell, here sapped of his usual roguish charm and dashing good looks, plays David, a schlumpy architect whose wife leaves him for another man. The first question he asks is whether the man is near-sighted, and we will soon find out why this question preoccupies him at this devastating moment. When he arrives at the hotel, accompanied by his brother, Bob, who has been transformed into a dog, he meets the Lisping Man (John C. Reilly), the Limping Man (Ben Wishaw), the Biscuit Woman (Ashley Jensen), and the Heartless Woman (Angeliki Papoulia).

Each of these people is identified by a single defining trait, both by the world at large and by their own consent. On their first night in the hotel, they must introduce themselves by their defining feature, and it becomes clear that in matchmaking, they will live or die (or rather, transmogrify) by whether they find another person with whom they share this trait.

We see people try to connect, some desperately, some earnestly, but most unsuccessfully. There is a sense of resignation in all of them. None wants to be turned into an animal, but they have been sapped of their ability to seek happiness in romance. In a world where the options are pair or perish, there is little time for passion, joy or love.

John C. Reilly, Ben Wishaw, and Farrell in The Lobster

Indeed, the Limping Man, believing himself unlikely to find a woman with a limp – there was one, but it turned out just to be a sprained ankle, he says dejectedly – decides to lie to the Nosebleed Woman (Jessica Barden) and claim he, too, is beset by bloody-nose fits. He resigns himself to bashing his face against walls and countertops several times daily for the rest of his life to achieve the illusion, thinking this better than the alternative.

In between these scenes of desperation, we get bracingly humorous insights into the ethos of this society. The hotel guests gather for demonstrations, hosted by the Hotel Manager (Olivia Colman), of how life is so much better for a couple. These include: A man eats alone and is seen to choke and die, but when seen eating with a partner, she is able to save his life. Also, a woman walks alone and is attacked by a rapist, but when she walks with a partner, the would-be rapist does nothing.

These lessons are presented dryly and accepted without question. We get a sense of a world without human emotion, and it begins to seem that in a place where becoming a wild animal is the worst fate that can befall you, even acting like a human being might be considered too beastly. After David’s own attempt at deception fails and he is forced to escape the hotel and live in the woods, Lanthimos shows us the beastly side of human nature.

He joins a group known as the Loners, who have rejected the rules of the system. They live as a pack in the woods and are hunted by guests of the hotel – each Loner caught represents an extra day in the hotel before being transformed. They live, for all intents and purposes, like the animals they would be turned into anyway. This is not the reprieve David might have hoped for, and he quickly realizes the Loners are as militant about not coupling as the rest of their society is about coupling.

Romantic liaisons among Loners are punished in creatively gruesome ways such as the Red Kiss (you do not want to know) and the Red Intercourse (do not ask). This poses a problem when David at long last meets the woman he believes could be his partner, the Nearsighted Woman (Rachel Weisz). Escapees from one totalitarian regime, their love is now forbidden by the only other system available to them.

All of this is executed gorgeously by Lanthimos and delivered wonderfully by the actors, whose purposefully wooden performances are more expressive than at first they appear. The stylistic choices – such as Lanthimos’ often-flat shot setups and the actors’ stilted line deliveries, among much else – are perfectly in keeping with the thematic investigations of the film.

As David and the Nearsighted Woman become emotionally more involved, their world opens up. They are capable of more together than they were apart, which is a seeming endorsement of the state’s rules, but it is not. Their love, their passion, and their commitment can only exist outside the systems the world would impose on them. They have dropped the rope on which they tugged and run from it. In this world though, there is another rope, tied tightly around the neck, and it is this noose from which they must escape to find happiness, love, and freedom.

See it? Yes.