I personally struggle to sum up such a year in film as 2019. Whatever your tastes, your passions, your guilty pleasures, there was greatness for each and every audience member.
With that said, and my own Films of the Year to come (as well as 2019 in FILM video), I went fishing among the reeds of internet film lovers. And asked them what they liked. Be it popular, be it way under-seen, be it divisive. Thanks to all those who make up his rather jumbled, but still essential, alternative review of some of the highlights of 2019 at the movies.
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Scene – The Last Black Man in San Francisco
Jaime Davis: Pretty much every shot in The Last Black Man in San Francisco is arrestingly composed, thanks to first-time feature director Joe Talbot and cinematographer Adam Newport-Berra. Drop-dead gorgeous on the big screen, it’s even lovely to look at on my relatively teeny TV. It’s no surprise that the film has earned a number of accolades.
In addition to visuals, I adore the storied friendship between Jimmie and Montgomery (Jimmie Fails and Jonathan Majors), two people alienated in different ways from the world around them. There’s a scene in the beginning where Jimmie and Montgomery, after waiting for a bus that never arrives, skate their way from Bayview Hunters Point, their neglected San Francisco neighborhood, into the heart of the city.
In stunning slow-motion, we spy the indignant, busied reactions of folks to two black men in their city. It’s a fitting introduction to a story about the ills of gentrification and its capacity for tearing families apart. Talbot, Fails, Majors, and Newport-Berra win all the awards in my heart this year for crafting something so visually stunning with a story so vital and pressing – with every watch I fall more in love with the movies.
Scene – Joker
Amy Smith: In terms of single iconic scenes that have come from cinema in 2019, the penultimate sequence in Joker may become one of the most iconic. From the inclusion to show the fate of the Waynes in a brutal moment, to the moment that Arthur Fleck smears the blood around his mouth (and in my mind in that moment truly becoming the Joker persona), the editing, cinematography, colour palette and performance heightens this single scene to be the strongest in a film full of incredible sequences.
Scene – Dogs Don’t Wear Pants
Jaime Davis: From exhilarating Finn director J.P. Valkeapää (The Visitor, They Have Escaped) comes one of the most unusual yet highly satisfying romances of the year. After the death of his young wife, Juha retreats into a shell of work, sleep, clean, repeat. He interacts with his teen daughter mostly through post-it notes and lives a very quiet, blank existence as a mediocre dad (at best). That is until he meets Mona, a beguiling dominatrix who triggers something deep within Juha.
At first he uses Mona to disastrous results, but eventually finds acceptance in himself and his awakening identity. At the beginning of Dogs Don’t Wear Pants, you think you’re wading into dark, twisty body horror but by the final scene, as Juha joyously dances in BDSM gear at an underground club, he’s free, himself, truly at peace once again. When the estranged Mona enters and they spy each other, the walls built up around them crumble as Juha lights up like a tree at Christmas. It’s one of the most beautiful, moving resurrections I’ve seen in film this year, and the most unlikely of romantic comedies.
Scene – Marriage Story
Bailey Holden: ‘Okay!’ Shouts Charlie (Adam Driver), at his not quite ex-wife Nicole (Scarlett Johansson). It’s an okay familiar to anyone who has fought with a loved one, an okay that says ‘We are no longer talking, we are fighting. And if we are fighting, I am going to win.’
After months of trying to end their marriage as amicably as possible, it all boils over. But it’s not about those months, and the labyrinthine legal system that has kept them in this between place. Not really. It’s all the years of resentments, of petty grievances, of unspoken hatreds finally released, forming together into something unwieldy and ugly.
They lash and wail and scream at each other, trying to make it hurt. Nicole invokes Charlie’s alcoholic father, and Charlies spits that Nicole has no interest in having her own voice, she only wants to complain about the lack of one. Usually these kind of fights lean towards indulgence, especially from the actors, but writer-director Noah Baumbach builds the scene so slowly and so carefully, that this intensity feels completely earned. That and it’s harsh messiness, it’s much too human in a way that modern dramas seem so afraid of.
But perhaps to be close is to be too close, as echoed in ‘Being Alive’, the Sondheim song Charlie sings a few scenes later, ‘someone to hold you too close, someone to hurt you too deep.’ Despite this bleakness, when Charlie looses it, when the screaming collapses into tears and he drops to the floor — Nicole comforts him. Maybe it’s not in-spite, but because of this ugliness that she could. Only someone who knows you deep enough to see your worst parts, who can tear you open, can truly forgive you.
Scene – Eighth Grade
Archie Marshall: As we enter the third act of Bo Burnham’s terrific debut feature Eighth Grade, Kayla (Elsie Fisher) is at her lowest. She has isolated herself from the world and abandoned her vlogging persona. And now she and her Dad (Josh Hamilton) sit and watch the box full of her ‘hopes and dreams’ disappear into the fire. The following conversation is a moment of intense intimacy and heart.
Throughout the film, Kayla and her Dad’s interactions have been plagued by fragmentation and discomfort. But for one, brief moment, their rhythms finally synchronise and they are able to communicate how they truly feel. As Kayla asks her Dad ‘Do I make you sad?”, you can immediately sympathise with her pain. The high-schooler inside all of us has had those days where you feel like you’re not enough. But her Dad’s following monologue, recounting his joy and pride of being her father, reminds Kayla, and in turn us that we are.
It’s a moment that could have easily felt saccharine, but it’s a testament to Burnham’s writing and the honesty of the performances that the scene strikes the perfect balance of being emotionally liberating and devastating simultaneously. There wasn’t a dry eye in the theatre when this scene played and it remains one of my favourite scenes of the year.
Scene – Blinded By the Light
Jeremy Robinson: There were a number of Jukebox movies which used songs by a certain artist that was significant to the plot. There was Yesterday which used Beatles songs, Last Christmas used George Michael, but the one that pulled it off the best was the Bruce Springsteen inspired coming of age film Blinded by the Light.
Javed is a young Pakistani immigrant living in Luton England. There he suffers every day with feeling out of place, not to mention having to deal with racism. He’s an aspiring writer and poet but he’s just about to give up hope when suddenly he discovers the music of Bruce Springsteen.
In a glorious scene, director Gurinder Chadha illustrates for us the power of Springsteen’s lyrics on Javed’s life. Walking around during a powerful windstorm, Javed is on his walkman listening over and over to the songs which have just become new to him. They awaken in him an inspiration, and a feeling of kinship and that he no longer feels alone. The demonstrate this Chadha frames Javed against a wall, with the lyrics projected above him as if they have just become gospel to him. Using the windstorm as symbolism, the moment feels like a revival or a religious awakening.
We could all pinpoint the moment when we heard the songs from an artist who touched might touch you in such a way. For Javed, it just happens to be Springsteen, and as a fan myself I could share what he was feeling on screen and there is a cathartic feeling of not feeling alone. No matter what artist it may be that makes you feel the same way, Blinded by the Line demonstrates this in such a magical, and cinematic way making it one of the most joyous moments of the year.
