Moonlight

Directed by Barry Jenkins, United States, 2016

Moonlight opens with a long shot following Juan in a regular day as a drug dealer in Miami's Liberty City neighborhood. The camera tracks behind him as he crosses the street, scoping out his surroundings. As he catches up with a younger dealer, the camera circles round and round the two of them, also taking in a strung-out addict begging for a free fix and a young man sprinting down the street while sirens blare in the distance. The roving, 360 degree camera movements reflect Juan's paranoid, cautious awareness of his surroundings. He can never let his guard down, not knowing what direction a threat might come from. He has a silent, stoic tough guy poise that we later realize is more of a defensive mask than his natural personality.

Moonlight has several such scenes, where the expressionistic camerawork reflects the emotions or mindset of its characters. We see a gentler side to Juan when he forms an unexpected friendship with Chiron, a young boy he finds alone in an empty drug den. Juan and his kind-hearted girlfriend Teresa become like surrogate parents to the quiet, sensitive but intense Chiron. In one gorgeous scene, Juan takes Chiron to the beach and teaches him how to swim. The camera mimics Chiron's perspective, bobbing in and out of the waves as Juan holds him in the water, then releases him to swim on his own. We feel, as Chiron does, the safety of Juan's arms, and the scary but exciting thrill of struggling independently through the choppy surf. Another shot from Chiron's point of view shows his mother, Paula, staring at him with hostility - and at us, directly into the camera. She's backlit by an ominous pink glow that heightens the intensity of her expression, which looks to Chiron like hatred. We see only brief moments between Chiron and Paula, who is addicted to drugs, but the glimpses of their relationship make it clear why he avoids home to seek shelter elsewhere.

Moonlight unfolds in three chapters, each covering several days at different points in Chiron's life. The first chapter, "Little", is about Chiron as a boy, "Chiron" as a teenager, and "Black" as a young man. The screenplay is an adaptation of the unpublished play In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue by Tarell Alvin McCraney, which was based on his own life. McCraney grew up in Liberty City. His single mother was addicted to drugs, and passed away fairly young from HIV-related complications. Juan is based on a real man, Blue, a drug dealer who became like a father figure to young McCraney but died when he was only 7. Chiron's experiences with bullying and discomfort with himself as a gay kid and man are rooted in McCraney's own life. Moonlight's director, Barry Jenkins, also grew up in this neighborhood with a drug-addicted mother, though he and McCraney had never met until they collaborated on the project. Jenkins and McCraney know these streets and these people; Moonlight thrums with authenticity.

On paper, Moonlight might seem thin. The characters rarely explain their motivations or past histories, let alone speak their minds. We must fill in the gaps of their silences, and the missing time between the three chapters. Barry Jenkins's camera expresses what the characters cannot, making vivid their inner emotional lives that they prefer to keep hidden. An excellent ensemble cast also communicate so much, moreso through their body language than their dialogue. Mahershala Ali has limited screentime as Juan but makes a quietly powerful impression as a man living out a dangerous, toxic path. His relationship with Chiron is an expression of regret and a yearning for redemption and connection beyond his own dog-eat-dog world. Naomie Harris is frightening and heartbreaking as Paula, a woman who does have love for her son but has been overtaken by addiction and despair. She's the only actor to appear in all three chapters, transforming from a wrathful, larger-than-life figure in the eyes of young Chiron to a regretful, diminutive phantom of a person in the adult Chiron's perspective. Three actors play Kevin, a friend of Chiron and the man he falls for. Kevin is more comfortable in his own skin than Chiron, a friendly extrovert who more freely accepts his romantic desires in private though is just as unwilling to express them publicly. Jharrel Jerome and Andre Holland capture Kevin's confidence and charm, but also his underlying fear and insecurity.

Chiron is also played by three actors of different ages - Alex Hibbert, Ashton Sanders, and Trevante Rhodes, respectively. As a boy, he's all wide-eyed shyness and caution. As a teen, his coiled body language and clipped speech reveal his pent-up fury. The transformation between chapters two and three is the most shocking, as Chiron grows from a skinny boy to a hulking, muscular man. He speaks and moves more assertively, with a presentation that says, loud and clear, don't fuck with me. One of the dangers facing films where multiple actors play the same character is audience disbelief that they are actually watching the same person, but Moonlight draws a simple, persuasive character arc between the three iterations of Chiron. His peers and mother perceive his gentleness as weakness, and torment him for it, calling him "not a real man" or a faggot. As a teen Chiron is clearly overwhelmed with anger, and after a brutal incident he snaps, tired of being a victim. Chiron decides on a course of violent action, seeing it as the only way to protect himself. Barry Jenkins shows us Chiron's new decisiveness through his cinematography and Ashton Sanders's body language. He surveys his bloodied face in the mirror, an unfamiliar hardness in his eyes - one of many shots in Moonlight where a character directly, confrontationally stares into the camera. He then charges through the hallways of his school, intent on getting revenge on a bully. His movements are now laser-focused and aggressive, such a change from his previous timid and uncertain physicality. Even the colors in this scene reflect his newfound purpose, the bright blue of his shirt syncing with the blues of his school's hallways - he's becoming like his environment. Though his violent outburst is hardly unjustified it directly leads to the adult Chiron we later see - a drug dealer, unrecognizable beneath his muscles and impenetrable tough attitude.

A running theme in Moonlight is the impact certain expectations of masculinity have on men, gay or straight. In the world of Chiron, Kevin and Juan, to be a man is to be "hard". Vulnerability is punished, while violence is upheld as a man's way. Both Kevin and Chiron resort to violence as a tactic of survival and self-protection, though it's not behavior that comes naturally to either man. Juan is a small-time kingpin in his neighborhood, but in his interactions with Chiron we see a completely different man - one that is silently calling out for freedom from the cruel, false world he has mired himself in.

Moonlight illustrates a depressing cycle of violence and falsehood. As an adult, Chiron models himself after Juan - he becomes a drug dealer, drives a similar car with the same crown on the dash, owns a similar kind of pistol. We see him on the job and are reminded of Juan - the same paranoid awareness, the same shallow toughness, the same kind of half-threatening, half-businesslike interactions with a young underling. The world violently denied Chiron as himself, and he's responded by giving it what it expects from a man like him - poor, black, from a community overrun with drugs. For him, it's not only learned behavior but a way to survive. Moonlight makes clear that for all these characters, their actions are a form of survival. Paula uses drugs to escape her crushing loneliness. Kevin betrays Chiron to save himself. Juan deals drugs to blend in to his Darwinian society. Chiron resorts to drastic self-transformation to stay safe. The terrible irony is that they all end up contributing to the very systems and ideologies that have made their own lives hell, and by seeking survival have put themselves in terribly dangerous positions. We never learn exactly what happens to Juan, but it's not hard to guess, nor to see the same future for Chiron if he does not change.

In the final chapter of Moonlight, Chiron reconnects with two people from his past who have done him harm - his mother and Kevin. Kevin calls up Chiron and apologizes for his act of betrayal - Trevante Rhodes's performance is beautifully subtle in this moment, as Chiron's tough exterior falls away and we see the vulnerable little kid again. He drives to meet Kevin, recently released from prison and working in a diner. Though the first two acts of Moonlight are very moving, and punctuated with moments of brilliance, for me it's in the third act that Moonlight becomes truly great and powerful. As Chiron and Kevin reconnect in the diner, we are witness to an acting masterclass between Rhodes and Andre Holland. Every glance, gesture, and indirect statement is loaded with more meaning and emotion than is apparent on the surface. I found myself hanging on to every little nuance of their interaction, a sign of subtly brilliant acting, writing, and directing.

Moonlight's last act is astonishing for its quiet catharsis. Chiron begins to honestly reckon with himself, and to forgive. His story ends with luminous hope, a hope that Moonlight genuinely earns. It ends with redemption too - even for Juan, long gone from the story. Chiron breaks from the same path that took Juan, and instead heeds the better advice Juan shared with him as a kid - that he needed to decide for himself what kind of man he was going to be, not to let anybody else make that decision for him. Chiron finally speaks his heart, and as we've seen so much of his silence, his hurt, and his anger, his vulnerably honest words land with stunning power. We're not only seeing an individual man finally speak truthfully for himself, we're seeing the cyclical despair of his world finally broken.

Love & Friendship

Directed by Whit Stillman, United Kingdom, 2016

Love & Friendship is a confusing title for this Jane Austen adaptation. There is a Jane Austen short story titled Love and Freindship (yes, with 'e' before 'i') written when she was only 15, but Love & Friendship is actually based on her unfinished novella Lady Susan, written when she was 19 and unpublished during her lifetime. Lady Susan tells, in epistolary format, of a middle-aged widower and social climber with a genius for manipulation. Considering it was written in 1790s England - and by a teenager, no less - Lady Susan is pretty risque. Its main character is an unrepentant schemer, sexually and financially ambitious, who is neither redeemed or overtly punished for her behavior. A tacked-on epilogue resolves the story and spells out Lady Susan's villainy, but up until its final pages Lady Susan is all scandalous wit. Jane Austen mines humor out of the drastic differences between Lady Susan's letters - depending on who she is writing to, her language is all sugary sweetness or politely phrased savagery. That Jane Austen could conceive of this character at such a young age is early proof of her cleverness and insight.

For superficial reasons it might be surprising that Whit Stillman, the oddball director behind Love & Friendship, would adapt Jane Austen. He's an American indie filmmaker, and none of his previous works were period pieces. But he's been making Austen-inspired movies all along. His 90s cult classics Metropolitan and The Last Days of Disco are comedies of manners whose privileged characters are intelligent and erudite, but not as wise as they believe themselves, Emma Woodhouses stranded in the late 20th century. Stillman does justice to Austen with his first official adaptation of her work. Their sensibilities work perfectly together - many of the funniest, sharpest lines come straight from the book, but Stillman fleshes out and deepens the story, adding welcome touches of absurdist humor and a much more satisfying ending.

Playing Lady Susan would be an exhilarating challenge for any actress, and Kate Beckinsale absolutely owns the part. Most well-known in America for her role as leather-clad heroine in the action-horror series Underworld, Love & Friendship is a very different kind of project for Beckinsale and she clearly enjoyed the change of pace. It's her best performance since The Last Days of Disco nearly 20 years ago - which is, not incidentally, also a Stillman movie where she gets to show off her sharp comic timing. Lady Susan, described as a "genius of a diabolical sort" and "the serpent in Eden's garden", manages to manipulate every single character at some point in the movie. She knows exactly how to use deliberate language to twist the moral standards of the time and make herself appear appealing or innocent. Beckinsale plays Lady Susan with a quick tongue and a mischievous gleam in her eyes, self-delighted for pulling off her schemes.

Love & Friendship might surprise audiences with how directly comic it is. Previous cinematic Austen adaptations, though not entirely without humor, have mostly been romantic dramas (Clueless excepted). And though her novels are romantic, that side of her work has been overemphasized. Jane Austen is as practical as romantic in her view of couplings - she is always aware of the economic and social necessities men and women had to negotiate, and casts a gently satirical eye on the hypocrisies of upper class English society. Lady Susan in particular is all satire and no sweetness. Love & Friendship captures her cutting wit. For these characters, Lady Susan especially, language is a weapon and armor. Every polite, verbose conversation is a covert power struggle and battle of wills, characters using convoluted rhetoric and slyly (mis)applied moral principles to prove their rightness - or, at least, maintain the appearance of rightness.

Actually, the "appearance of rightness" is what's most important in this society. Even in how it tells its story, Love & Friendship makes clear that reputation is more important than truth to its characters. The most dramatic moments of the story are elided - two marriage proposals involving major characters happen off-screen. We learn about them by characters' discussions after the fact. This might frustrate some viewers hoping for a more dramatically conventional approach, but it's not accidental. What happens in this story is less important than what characters say about it, how they manipulate gossip surrounding events to further their own agenda.

Love & Friendship also makes clear that, for a woman in Lady Susan's place and time, manipulation was sometimes necessary. She's in a dreadful position - a middle-aged widow who, just by how her society is structured, must be entirely reliant on the hospitality of others for her livelihood. She's a proto-feminist in a way, relentless in the pursuit of independence and unabashed about her romantic and sexual ambitions. Her determination is impressive and a direct rebuke to the ingrained sexism of her times, a point underlined by Sir James's speech about the essential differences between men and women (deeply ironic in context). But Love & Friendship does not turn Lady Susan into a hero either - her schemes are clearly not just a necessary evil, but something she enjoys for the sake of it. And through her carefully-worded witticisms Lady Susan often unintentionally reveals her own faults. "Only by one's friends can one truly be known," she remarks sagely. If true, her one real friend, equally unscrupulous American expat Mrs. Johnson, exposes plenty about Lady Susan - as their entire friendship is founded on a shared disdain for everyone else.

Sir James Martin is one of the movie's most inspired embellishments from the book. He's described by Austen as "a bit of a rattle", a vague but apt description that Stillman and actor Tom Bennett take to absurd extremes. Sir James behaves like an alien attempting to communicate with the proper Georgian manners and failing disastrously. Tom Bennett's performance is over-the-top in the best way - the rambling scene where he cluelessly introduces himself is comedy gold. Both Sir James and Lady Susan are indelible comic creations, and both also, though in different ways, expose the hypocrisy of their society. Everyone around Sir James is clearly mortified by his lack of social graces. They only tolerate him because he's wealthy - making clear the values of their world. "He brings a lively new angle to things," they say euphemistically. Many of the foolish things Sir James says are uncomfortably revealing, not least of all his bizarre homily on "the Twelve Commandments". When cautiously corrected by another character that there are, in fact, only Ten, Sir James is delighted. Missing the point entirely, he now wonders which two commandments he can ignore. "Perhaps the one about the Sabbath. I prefer to hunt."

One of the running jokes in Love & Friendship is the ornamental nature of religion among its Anglican characters and their constant botching of the Ten Commandments. Lady Susan shames her daughter with the fourth (or is it fifth?) commandment, "honor thy father and mother". "Thou shalt not bear false witness" is addressed in a brief but telling moment - one these characters break gleefully and often. Sir James's foolishness is just a ridiculous reflection of the more sophisticated, refined foolishness of his society, and his Twelve Commandments gaffe is not just a gag. Religion is just another accessory to this world, which for all its moral posturing is motivated by wealth and status more than anything else.

But Love & Friendship is not all cynicism - in fact, some of Stillman's additions make it gentler than the book. Supporting characters like Lady Susan's guileless daughter, Frederica, offer a counterpoint to the more manipulative and cluelessly privileged characters. Frederica is the only character who seeks out the truth with humility. She visits the local curate looking for answers about how to really honor her mother. The curate's academic, over-zealous demeanor is amusing, but his words offer an alternative worldview to the scheming and complacency surrounding Frederica. He rhapsodizes about "the superb Baumgarten" and his "aesthetic trinity" - "Truth is the perfect perceived by reason, Beauty by the senses, and Good by moral will". I know nothing about Baumgarten or his theory of an aesthetic trinity, but can sense these principles at work in Love & Friendship, particularly the final scene. Lady Susan's schemes have been rewarded with triumph for her - she's now involved in a secret menage-a-trois, one man her desired conquest and the other providing income and blithely unaware of his position. But in spite of all her plots, the other characters have emerged largely unscathed and happy. Frederica and Reginald DeCourcy, both former victims of Lady Susan, are wed and seem blissful. Reginald reads a poem praising his wife's greatest beauty as "virtue", and Frederica (alternatively known as a "Kentish nightingale" or "Surrey songbird") sings "Love Will Find Out the Way", no matter what manipulations try to squash it.

For all its snarkiness and self-effacing humor, Love & Friendship is ultimately gracious and generous. This graciousness is the secret ingredient that makes Stillman's movies - deadpan and wryly postmodern on their surface - not only witty, but unassumingly wise. I always get the sense that he likes his characters, even as he pokes fun of their self-absorption, cluelessness and dishonesty. In the fashion of all the best comedies, Love & Friendship exposes and mocks the nonsense that people are capable of, but by the end all is well (or mostly all - Sir James would disagree if he had any awareness).

My Favorite Films of 2016

Ranking favorite movies, especially after only one viewing, is kind of useless. Boiling down complex storytelling and artistic experiences to "I liked X better than Y" is pretty silly and misleading, especially as my opinion on all these movies might revise over the next few years. Some I might grow to love even more, some I might realize are not as great as I initially thought. Also, I still haven't seen several potentially awesome 2016 movies (Toni Erdmann, Elle, Cameraperson, Things to Come, Loving, etc).

But I like making these goofy lists anyways - because I'm a nerd and they're fun. Don't take it as a list of "the objectively best movies of 2016" or "most highly recommended movies of 2016", as your mileage may vary. They're just the ones that moved, excited and fascinated me most.

1. Silence (my review)

2. Love & Friendship (my brief review / UPDATE: wrote a full review)

3. Knight of Cups (my review)

 4. The Witch - possibly my favorite American horror film since The Shining. As thoughtful and artful as scary.

 5. Tale of Tales (my review)

 6. Cemetery of Splendor - another humbly mind-bending vision from Apichatpong Weerasethakul (aka 'Joe'). Casually blurs lines between past and present, mundane and magical, politics and folklore.

 7. Hail, Caesar! - a classic Hollywood tribute and critique, a Passion Play that is half-ironic and half-sincere, another lighthearted but deceptively thoughtful movie from the Coen brothers.

 8. Arrival - a parable on the value of patient communication, a drama about one mother's incredible love and sacrifice, a heady exploration of fate vs. free will and how language shapes perception, and a sci-fi spectacle starring majestic tentacle monsters!

 9. Moonlight - a coming-of-age story of unusual gentleness and dignity, about a young man who is given very little of either. Moments of grace surrounded by predictably constant heartbreak. The ending is luminous with hope. (UPDATE: wrote a full review. Also, after a second viewing, I would've rated this even higher on my list.)

 10. Paterson - another remarkably kind film, a look at the quiet life of a bus driver, poet, and husband. Its quirkier elements felt distracting on first look, but I suspect my appreciation might deepen on a second viewing. Sweet and meaningful either way.

Honorable Mentions:

• The BFG
• Certain Women
• Everybody Wants Some!!
• The Fits
• Hell or High Water
• La La Land
• The Lobster
• Our Little Sister
• Right Now, Wrong Then
• Rogue One
• Sunset Song
• Voyage of Time: The IMAX Experience

10 Great Performances (not ranked, and with the caveat that there are many acclaimed 2016 performances I haven't seen yet)

• Amy Adams in Arrival
• Mahershala Ali in Moonlight
• Kate Beckinsale in Love & Friendship
• Bebe Cave in Tale of Tales
• Andrew Garfield in Silence
• Alden Ehrenreich in Hail, Caesar!
• Lily Gladstone in Certain Women
• Jung Jae-Young in Right Now, Wrong Then
• Trevante Rhodes in Moonlight
• Anya Taylor-Joy in The Witch

Knight of Cups

Directed by Terrence Malick, United States, 2016

For the first four decades of his career, Terrence Malick completed only five films. From 2013 through 2018, he will have released five more. This newfound productivity is totally unexpected from Malick, now 73 years old. His latest films, To the Wonder and Knight of Cups, feel slightly different from earlier works like The Thin Red Line or Days of Heaven. Those were rare events, from a perfectionist and visionary who took years between masterpieces. In comparison, Malick's recent work, though no less visionary, is sketchier and slighter, more autobiographical and idiosyncratic. With Knight of Cups, Malick has moved further than he ever has from traditional narrative - there is a story here, but told as a stream of recollected memories, a cinematic collage driven by music, narration and nonlinear editing.

Knight of Cups follows Rick (Christian Bale), an L.A. screenwriter in an existential funk. Rick is hardly even a character - we never learn what he writes about, his hobbies or opinions, and Christian Bale barely speaks in the role. He is an autobiographical stand-in for Malick and a placeholder for an emotional state - he is searching, restless and dissatisfied, which is all we really need to know.

The poster tagline for Knight of Cups is simply "A Quest". The film opens with narration from John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, the story of Christian who must travel through the City of Destruction and Vanity Fair before arriving at his desired destination, the Celestial City. It is, of course, an allegory for the spiritual journey of a Christian, who must navigate dangerous temptations through the course of their worldly life before reaching heaven. As the words of Bunyan fade, another allegory is narrated to us - the tale of a prince who is sent West from the East to find a pearl by his father the King. But once in the West, the prince drinks from a cup and falls into a deep sleep - he forgets the pearl, and forgets who he is. But the King does not forget his son, and sends messengers to remind the prince of his quest. It's a hybrid of two ancient spiritual texts - "The Hymn of the Pearl" from the apocryphal Acts of Thomas, and A Tale of the Western Exile by medieval Persian mystic Suhrawardi.

Seemingly disassociated imagery plays underneath the narration of these allegorical quests. We see Rick wandering an empty desert landscape, and shots of Earth from orbit. Then we see VHS-quality images of children at play, maybe distant memories from Rick's childhood. And as we hear of the prince forgetting his mission, we see the adult Rick, stumbling through a lavish L.A. party in a drunken stupor. There is a brief stop-motion animation scene - an art installation playing at the party - of a topless model covered in black paint, taking on and off an unnerving mask, seeming to lull Rick to sleep and a visual representation of an unfixed, mutable postmodern identity. This prologue tells us to view Rick's journey as an allegory - he is our Christian and Prince, the Celestial City and Pearl his destination, and the Angelenos he meets are tempters and guides in his quest. Knight of Cups belongs to an ancient, archetypal storytelling mode - the moralistic and religious allegory - but tells it through a radically modern style, as influenced by avant-garde art as traditional cinematic grammar.

The title, Knight of Cups, is also the name of a tarot card that sums up Rick's personality. The Knight of Cups, when upright, represents a romantic adventurer, a seeker with high principles. When reversed, it represents a person who is easily distracted and cannot discern the truth from lies. Knight of Cups is split into chapters named after tarot cards, each centered around Rick's relationship with a different character. They all have a unique philosophy or lesson to share with him that aligns with the meaning of their chapter's card.

The mix of Christianity and tarot is intentionally baffling. Knight of Cups is about the search for meaning in a postmodern, pluralistic society. In 21st century Los Angeles, radically different forms of belief rub shoulders. Looking for answers, Rick visits a Catholic priest, a tarot card reader, and a friend who eloquently speaks of Buddhist monastic life. He witnesses the prayers of his Christian father and a Buddhist girlfriend. He is surrounded by religiously devoted hedonism - fashion shoots worshipping beauty, lavish parties sanctifying pleasure, billboards evangelizing consumerism.

If this all sounds very esoteric and obscure, that's because it kind of is. From its opening minutes, Knight of Cups is a take-it-or-leave-it enterprise, whose unabashedly grandiose themes and approach will variably leave viewers intrigued, puzzled, or rolling their eyes. But Terrence Malick, particularly when collaborating with genius cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, has a visually distinct, sensual style that grounds his lofty ideas. His films capture a vivid sense of place, whether 1950s Texas suburbs, 17th century London, or the jungles of Guadalcanal. Malick's eye, when turned to present-day Los Angeles, yields fascinating results. The rich lounge in decadence in Hollywood Hills mansions and unnaturally clean, towering skyscrapers. The street level is a different, much less glamorous world, strewn with trash and poverty, seedy strip clubs and curiosity shops.

Modern urban life looks alien through Malick's camera. Everything is transitory, impermanent, on the move. Knight of Cups often returns to bird's eye views of buzzing traffic, and ground-level shots of crisscrossing overpasses. Nearly every shot of the sky shows airplanes and helicopters in the distance, always on the move - but to where? There's no still center to this world. In one scene, Rick wakes to an earthquake shaking his apartment. He stumbles outside with his equally unsettled neighbors, aftershocks still rumbling - an alarming reminder of what an unsteady edifice the city is. A brief detour to Las Vegas is surreal - it's a ludicrous monument to artifice, an enormous desert mirage that somehow hasn't disappeared yet.

The temporary nature of modern civilization is contrasted to the stillness and permanence of the natural world. The towering desert mountains outside L.A., which were there long before the city at its foothills and will outlast it. After the hectic Vegas sequence, Malick's camera lingers on one of the mysterious sailing rocks of Death Valley, a path cut behind it from its patient, slow journey forward. In particular, Knight of Cups always returns to the ocean. Every chapter of Knight of Cups has its characters return to the beach, to play in the waves and look in awe at the waters' expanses. Going to the beach is a regular part of L.A. life, sure, but in Knight of Cups it has symbolic meaning as well - an attempt to commune with something eternal and unchanging.

But Knight of Cups ultimately resists total dichotomies between the natural world and human civilization. His camera is too curious to be very condemning. We see the hollowness and instability of modern cities, but they are also places abuzz with life, creativity and playfulness. Malick doesn't seem to nod in stern disapproval at all the Hollywood bacchanals (which are ultimately not very extreme) so much as find them amusing and misguided - an absurd expression of adults' desire to return to a state of childish play.

Knight of Cups finds small signs of the eternal within the temporal. Angels appear in unlikely places - a statue hovering over Vegas, a hungover partygoer wearing wings, a model's back with a chintzy wings tattoo framing the word "Faith". Commonplace L.A. swimming pools are filmed like holy places, backyard baptismal waters. Knight of Cups is much less black-and-white in its allegorical meaning than Bunyan. Does the City of Destruction really need to be escaped, or can the Celestial City be found within it? The transcendent and mundane, holy and sinful, worldly and spiritual might not be so easily extricated from each other.

Many of Malick's previous films build to a moment of cathartic revelation, like the heavenly reunion in The Tree of Life or the priest's monologue in To the Wonder, but Knight of Cups does not provide any answers or point towards one way of truth. However, the last chapter, "Freedom" (the only chapter not named after a tarot card), is distinctly different from the rest of the film, more serene. It's not because of a change of settings, which remain the same, but how they are filmed. The camera is no longer whirling and lunging, but staying still. The shots last longer. The soundtrack, filled with repetitive classical music, is replaced by sounds of the city and nature. The L.A. streets and skyline look suddenly peaceful. Rick has somehow found inner calm, and the film reflects it.

Viewing Journal - January 2017

Two 2016 releases I've caught up with this week...

The BFG (Steven Spielberg, United States) - Like a stowaway from a more innocent era of children's films. Spielberg's latest has none of the frantic pacing, anachronistic brattiness or vulgar humor of your average kid-pic drivel. OK, there are a surprising number of fart jokes, but even those are painless; they're not a desperate grab for cheap laughs but actual jokes, with patient set-ups and silly punchlines. That patience is key to The BFG's charm. It doesn't rush through the spectacle, but soaks in the wonder of its young heroine catching dreams like multi-colored fireflies, or the absurdity of the titular gentle giant visiting Buckingham Palace and making its human-sized grandeur look like a dollhouse. The main attraction is the Big Friendly Giant himself. All-CGI characters usually leave me cold but he's an engaging exception, since very little of Mark Rylance's winsome charm has been lost in translation. The BFG may not be distinctive enough to become a new kids' movie classic, nor is it among Steven Spielberg's finest. But it is modest, lovely, and child-like, virtues that shouldn't be underestimated. Had it come out in the 90s, little-kid me would've loved it.

American Honey (Andrea Arnold, United States) - Not only is American Honey a road trip movie, watching it was like experiencing a road trip. Moments of spontaneous beauty flit by, but it's dreadfully long and I was relieved when it ended. No doubt, American Honey's lengthy aimlessness is intentional, as it reflects these kids' lives - they're going nowhere. Star, a bright teen with a wild streak, escapes her miserable home life to join a hard-partying crew of vagabonds, traveling across America in a van and selling magazine subscriptions. They're America's abandoned kids, the so-called "white trash" from neighborhoods devastated by meth and poverty, banding together and looking for freedom on the road. Director Andrea Arnold captures natural moments of camaraderie among the crew, from sing-alongs to drunken fights, and coaxes believable performances from a cast of nonprofessional actors. Even Shia LaBeouf, the only established Hollywood actor in the crew, blends in. Arnold has a good eye for the gorgeous expanses and grim detritus of middle America, and a good ear for music. The rap / country soundtrack fits the milieu and works in unison with the visuals. American Honey has the stuff to make a great movie but, frustratingly, it isn't one. Despite being 160 minutes long, it does not expand in meaning as it goes along. The characters remain half-sketched. The social commentary - the teens a microcosm of capitalism at its starkest, their American Dream not stretching beyond "make money, get turnt" - offers little insight. As an experiential, sensual immersion into a certain lifestyle, American Honey is occasionally exhilarating, but too monotonous to maintain interest over nearly three hours.

Silence

Directed by Martin Scorsese, United States, 2016

The 1966 novel Silence, written by Shusaku Endo, is set in 17th century feudal Japan. After the Shimabara Rebellion, a thousands-strong uprising of mostly Catholic peasants against the ruling Tokugawa shogunate, the Emperor outlawed all Christianity from the country. Remaining Kakure Kirishitan ("Hidden Christians") were discovered by Japanese authorities by forcing them to step on the fumie, plaques with carved images of Christ and Mary. Those who refused were tortured or killed. In Endo's novel, two Portuguese Jesuits sneak into the country despite the danger, to spread their gospel and to track down their old mentor, Padre Ferreira, who is rumored to have apostatized under torture. Shusaku Endo had a unique perspective on his novel's subject matter. He was a Japanese Roman Catholic, a religious minority in his home country who experienced persecution for his beliefs, particularly during the imperial years of his youth. When studying abroad in France in the 1950s, he experienced racial hatred and the lack of understanding between West and East. His experiences must have granted him a rare, empathetic perspective on this time and place in history, as his Silence illuminates the sincere faith of the Jesuit priests while exposing their destructive colonial hubris.

Silence had been adapted onto film once before, in 1971 by filmmaker Masahiro Shinoda, but Endo reportedly disliked it, believing it misrepresented his story. Of course I would have no way of actually knowing, but I suspect he would approve of Martin Scorsese's new adaptation. Martin Scorsese has desired to adapt the book for decades, and his passion for the material shows clearly in the finished film. Even more importantly, he understands the book's multitudinous meanings, and has translated them from prose to cinema with powerful emotional and intellectual clarity.

Scorsese also wrote a foreword to a recent reprinting of Silence. He begins by asking, "How do you tell the story of Christian faith?" If his film can be taken as a reply to his own question (though certainly nothing like a definitive answer), you can tell the story of faith by stripping away everything else. And that is exactly what happens to the protagonist of Silence, Padre Rodrigues. With as much witty, unsparing ruthlessness as the Japanese Inquisitors, though with far more compassionate intent, Silence breaks down Rodrigues's assumptions, the things he clings to as truth but which are actually more related to cultural perceptions, his church's laws, and his own ego than any immutable truth. Once these things are painfully taken from Rodrigues, what is left?

These are only my first impression thoughts. I suspect this is the kind of film that will reveal something else on my second and third viewings. The story is dramatically straightforward and easy to follow, but its implications are startlingly dense, and lead to a multitude of moral, historical, and religious interpretations. Silence has the power to challenge and productively unsettle anyone who open themselves to its line of questioning, no matter their beliefs or ethnicity.

On first look, the visceral qualities and vibrant humanity of Silence resonate with me even more than any one interpretation of "what it means". The production values are phenomenal - it is a detailed and immersive recreation of Edo-period Japan, brought to life with beautiful cinematography. Scorsese's camera pays particular attention to hands and faces, to foggy landscapes and symmetrical Japanese architecture. His filmmaking recalls many of classic cinema's greats, from Japanese masters like Kenji Mizoguchi and Akira Kurosawa to European transcendentalist filmmakers like Carl Dreyer and Roberto Rossellini, but it remains very much a singular, personal vision.

The characters are unforgettable. Padre Rodrigues is an immensely complex character and Andrew Garfield is up to the challenge, charting out Rodrigues's turbulent psychological journey from beginning to end with piercing emotional truth. Rodrigues vacillates between steadfast faith and crippling angry doubt, cowardice and bravado, selfless love and arrogance, and Garfield shows us how all these various attributes belong to one personality, while making Rodrigues's core sincerity and goodness clear enough that we, as viewers, are never allowed to feel superior despite his faults. Even with a distracting half-assed Portuguese accent (I don't understand - if they're speaking English and not Portuguese, why bother?), it's a tremendous performance.

The entire cast impresses. Adam Driver gets less screen time than expected as Padre Garrpe, but has a striking presence as always. His unique facial features look especially gaunt and severe here, like a stern religious icon brought to life. The normally intimidating Liam Neeson looks deflated, his Padre Ferreira is a defeated and spiritually crippled man - though fascinating, subtle notes in his performance suggest that may not be the whole truth. Shinya Tsukamato radiates courage as Mokichi, a Kirishitan martyr. His faith is not only hope in the afterlife, but an assertion of his own value in the face of a feudal system that denies him dignity - the sequence where he is strung up on a cross in the surf, quietly singing a hymn even as the waves relentlessly beat his body, is at once horrific and beautiful. Tadanobu Asano compels as the Japanese authorities' interpreter to Rodrigues, a jovial sadist who is fascinated and disgusted by the proud Rodrigues, and knows the exact words to undercut the priest's sense of superiority. Issey Ogata's performance as Inquisitor Inoue might be the most unexpected, in part because it's unrecognizably different from the only other Ogata performance I've seen, as the businessman in Edward Yang's Yi Yi who is a paragon of kindness and joy. In Silence Ogata is joltingly bizarre and comic - his Inoue uses flamboyantly pronounced courtly manners to disarm Rodrigues before dismantling his pride with wicked wit and insight.

But the most affecting character in Silence might be Kichijiro, played by Yosuke Kubozuka. In addition to acting, Kubozaka sometimes models for advertisements and fashion magazines in Japan, but his role as Kichijiro is about as unflattering and unglamorous as they come. Kichijiro is a filthy, bumbling alcoholic, cowardly and dedicated to self-preservation at all costs. His unending cycle of panicky betrayal followed by scrounging repentance grows increasingly absurd - but is also fundamentally human. Like J.R.R. Tolkien's Gollum, Kichijiro is a fascinating tragicomic creation whose weakness and naked desires reveal a lot of uncomfortable but truthful things about human nature.

"Uncomfortable but truthful" is, I think, an accurate way to describe Silence. This is a great movie.

BBC Best Films of the 21st Century #9: A Separation

The BBC recently surveyed 177 international critics about their picks for the best films released since 2000. You can read the resulting list of 100 films here. Of course, no-one will ever entirely agree with cumulative lists like this, but it's a great place to start if you're interested in exploring the best of what modern movies have to offer. I will be reviewing the top 10 picks, and offer my opinion on what's great about them.

Directed by Asghar Farhadi
Iran, 2011

A Separation received exceptional acclaim and success on its release in 2011. The critical response was unanimously great, and the movie earned nearly 8 million dollars in the United States - a tiny amount compared to the average Hollywood release, but a smash hit compared to the average Middle Eastern film, which rarely crack a million in box office earnings. It was nominated for Best Screenplay at the Academy Awards - an uncommon achievement for a film not written in English - and won for Best Foreign Language Film, a first for an Iranian movie.

Part of A Separation's enthusiastic reception was likely due to its novelty with many non-Iranians. In the United States, Iran is known mostly for its repressive government and politics, for nuclear fears and sexism. A Separation was an eye-opener for many. It's an intimate study of everyday people who live in a culture alien to most outside Iran's borders. A Separation was less novel to those who had been following Iranian filmmaking - a unique film culture that produced artists like Abbas Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf, who had been making films of startling poetry and clarity since the 1970s despite restrictive censorship from their government. It was even less surprising to those who had seen previous Asghar Farhadi films like Fireworks Wednesday or About Elly, noteworthy for their multi-layered characters and intricate stories.

However, no matter how fascinating it is as a rare honest glimpse into a foreign culture, the main appeal of A Separation is not educational - it's just a tremendously good movie, the work of a master storyteller. Before becoming a filmmaker, Asghar Farhadi studied theater. His theater experience shows in his carefully structured, dialogue-driven screenplays. Farhadi's genius as a screenwriter lies in how he reveals the motivations of his characters and shows how everyone has reasonable cause to believe what they do, even as their individual perspectives fall disastrously short of the whole truth.

A Separation begins with a simple but difficult ethical quandary. By the end, the varying truths and lies told have woven an enormous web of moral questions, which the characters have created and cannot escape. Nader and Simin want a divorce. She wants to leave the country to provide a better life for their young daughter, Termeh, and their visa expires soon. He needs to stay to care for his Alzheimer's-afflicted father. During the divorce, Simin leaves home to live with her mother. Due to her absence, Nader hires a young woman, Razieh, to become his father's caretaker while he's at work. One day Nader returns home to find Razieh gone, and his neglected father injured after a collapse. Razieh returns to a furious Nader, who also accuses her of stealing before violently shoving her out the front door. Nader later learns that Razieh ended up in the hospital, suffering a miscarriage soon after their argument. Razieh and her hotheaded husband, Hodjat, take Nader to court, accusing him of causing her miscarriage by his aggression - an accusation that, if proven, would equal a murder sentence.

If there's a running theme connecting the Iranian films I've seen, it's the quest for truth. What is truth? How do we determine it? Maybe this search for truth in Iranian film arises from the urgent importance placed on certain virtues in Islamic Middle Eastern cultures, such as righteousness, justice, and honor. Maybe it's a reaction to a government with a totalitarian claim on The Truth in all aspects of life: religious, social, individual. The best, most conscientious artists cross-examine the accepted mores of their societies, and Asghar Farhadi is particularly bold in that regard. A Separation is about the impossibility of determining a singular, objective truth. Everyone's version of the truth is formed by their own limited perspective, their self-interest, justifications, and misunderstandings.

Where do we find truth? Turning to official, society-mandated truth often provides no satisfying answers. A Separation's opening credits unfold over images of passports being scanned - the elements of an individual collated onto an official document, proof of a person's existence even as it flattens and dehumanizes them due to bureaucratic necessity. The government courts of A Separation - fascinatingly different from the legal system in America - apply rigid moral judgments, drawn from the Qur'an and Iranian law, to messy human lives that don't fit in such neat boxes of right and wrong.

But individual perspectives in A Separation are often no more truthful. The opening scene is the film in miniature. Nader and Simin tell their reasons for seeking divorce to a judge. The dissolution of their marriage has been caused by, ironically enough, devotion to family members. Simin wants a better, freer life for her daughter - when the judge huffily asks why she believes Iran would not provide a good future for Termeh, Simin's silence and confrontational stare speaks volumes. Nader wants to be a good son and not uproot his already-fragile father from his home, or place him in a hospital. Their decisions are motivated by good, right things, but have nevertheless brought them to an ugly, wrong place - a formerly loving couple, now divided and spiteful. Farhadi's staging of the scene is simple but brilliant - the couple sit facing the camera, putting the audience in the place of the judge. This immediately draws us, the viewers, into their dilemma, making us more than passive spectators but directly involving us as judges to their case.

I found my judgments, and sympathies, constantly shifting throughout the film. Nader's anger with Razieh was justified. She had neglected her job, putting his father in danger. We see the depths of love he has for his father when he returns home to find him sprawled on the floor, hardly breathing. Determining he is alive and not seriously injured, Nader cradles him in his arms, weeping with relief. His fury with Razieh is largely a way to vent his fear. But his violence is cruel and unjustified, and has unforeseen consequences.

Razieh's duplicity proves destructive to everyone around her. She lies to Hodjat about the nature of her job, since he would not approve of her working alone in a man's apartment. She does not tell the truth about why she left Nader's father alone. And she neglects to mention all the events leading up to her miscarriage, which would throw reasonable doubt onto Nader's complicity in the tragedy. But she also lives under enormous pressure from the impossible demands of her strict religiosity and oppressive husband - her circumstances force her to be duplicitous to survive. One small scene reveals much about Razieh. She calls some sort of religious hotline to get the Islam-approved answer to a problem: Nader's father has wet his pants and it is her duty to clean him - but he cannot undress himself, and it is a sin for her to be in the presence of an undressed man apart from her husband. She is caught between the threat of damnation and the necessities of life, and is not always honest in negotiating the two.

Similarly, her husband Hodjat's plight is sympathetic even as his behavior is despicable. He carries himself as a man who has been mistreated his whole life. He has lost his job and been jailed for failing to pay his creditors, resulting in a terrible bout of depression. He cannot find work and feels emasculated by his wife working to pay the bills behind his back. Hodjat has become hyper-religious and quick to anger to compensate for his failings. Once his wife loses her baby, he finds in Nader an easy scapegoat for all his problems. It is easy to characterize Nader - middle-class, educated, successful - as The Man, a symbol of all his oppressors. Similarly, it was easy for Nader to accuse Razieh of theft (wrongly, we learn) because he views her as lower-class and uneducated. The stark difference in their lives is illustrated by their apartments. Simin and Nader's home is well-furnished, marking them as comfortably middle-class, and filled with stacks of books, showing that they are educated. Razieh and Hodjat's apartment shows their poverty, with its barren walls and floors, and generations of their family living in a few small rooms. Considering the very different environments that have shaped them, when presented with the same sequence of events how could these people possibly arrive at the same conclusions?

Another characteristic that many Iranian films share is the prominent use of children as major characters. This is for a multitude of reasons - some of them subversive, as supposed children's films are less likely to be accused of anti-government / anti-Islamic content, so filmmakers can sneak social criticisms beneath censors' noses. Often it's for the sake of contrast, as the guileless, faithful perspective of children reveals the hypocrisy and cynicism of the adult world - and this is certainly true of A Separation. Termeh remains faithful to both her parents, watching them intently and trying to ascertain what is right. She is put in the impossible position of having to choose between them, and the terrible cost of divorce is written on her face.

A Separation is not always pleasant to watch, but I urge you to do so anyways. Farhadi's script deserves to be counted among the all-time great screenplays. It is full of perfectly-timed twists and revelations without ever feeling contrived, and creates the suspenseful urgency of a thriller not from the threat of violence but from moral dilemmas and the weight of characters' decisions. This is a movie of rare intelligence and integrity.

The BBC Top 10:

1. Mulholland Drive
2. In the Mood for Love (previously reviewed)
3. There Will Be Blood
4. Spirited Away
5. Boyhood
6. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
7. The Tree of Life
8. Yi Yi
9. A Separation
10. No Country for Old Men

Viewing Journal - May 2016 #5

Love & Friendship (Whit Stillman, United Kingdom, 2016)

I'm now convinced that Whit Stillman was born to write and direct Jane Austen adaptations. While watching Love & Friendship I realized he's been making Austen stories all along - comedies of manners that are both satirical and affectionate - only in contemporary settings. His unique wit flourishes even more in the 1790s, and when matched with Austen's beautifully drawn characters. I haven't yet read Lady Susan, which Love & Friendship is adapted from, but in some ways it's an atypical Austen story. Lady Susan is a devious and cheerfully amoral character, a social climber with a genius for manipulation. She begins and ends the film unrepentantly horrible, but she is so witty and charismatic that we can't help but be impressed by her scheming ways. Kate Beckinsale clearly had a blast playing this character, delivering Lady Susan's politely wicked dialogue with virtuosic comic timing. Love & Friendship also has a welcome absurdist, irreverent streak, more reminiscent of Oscar Wilde or screwball comedy than Jane Austen. Yet, more than any other Austen adaptation I've seen, Love & Friendship captures her humor - her genius for mining comedy out of the gap between what people say and what they actually mean. It's one of the funniest movies I've seen in ages.

Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse, United States / Hong Kong, 1973)

Despite considering myself a fan of Hong Kong kung fu flicks, I had never seen a single one starring the legendary Bruce Lee. Clearly I needed to correct this oversight. Enter the Dragon is a collaboration between East and West - made in Hong Kong with a local crew, but filmed in English with an American director and co-stars. It's a genre hybrid as well, both a martial arts extravaganza and a James Bond-style espionage thriller, with influences of so-called "blaxploitation" and psychedelia. About every B-movie genre popular in America or Hong Kong circa 1973 shows up in Enter the Dragon in one form or another. This democratic blending of East and West is typical of Lee, a citizen of both Hong Kong and the United States who was passionate about spreading the philosophy of martial arts across the globe. Enter the Dragon is also a total mess, though an exuberantly fun mess. I now see why Bruce Lee was such a star. He's not only an astonishing athlete but a magnetic screen presence. There's a mischief and wily intelligence in his eyes, and his lightning quick movements are mesmerizing. His body zigs when you expect it to zag; his bird-like shrieks in battle are amusing and terrifying.

The Most Dangerous Game (Ernest B. Schoedsack and Irving Pichel, United States, 1932)

I love these horror-thrillers made in the early 30s, before the Production Code clamped down on what Hollywood films could show. Though tame by today's ultra-violent standards, The Most Dangerous Game remains an entertaining thriller that must have shocked audiences of 1932. Based on a famous and influential short story (which I have yet to read) with a perfectly simple, sinister premise: a wealthy madman and big game hunter entraps shipwrecked people on his private island to hunt them. If they survive a single night, he will release them - but none have survived before! Though it's only an hour long, The Most Dangerous Game spends much of its runtime building up to the hunt, as shipwrecked survivors are trapped inside Count Zaroff's gothic castle. The evil Zaroff is played by an over-the-top Leslie Banks; his bug-eyed expressions and preposterous Russian accent are difficult to take seriously but quite entertaining, especially next to Joel McCrea's stiffly stoic leading man. The really good parts arrive in the final twenty minutes, in a cat-and-mouse showdown in the jungle. The Most Dangerous Game was filmed on the same sets as King Kong - Kong would use the sets during the day, and Game at night. It's clearly an artificial jungle, but with all the grandiose charm and dream-like exaggeration of Old Hollywood. It's the perfect setting for an action-packed climax, as our heroes set elaborate booby traps, flee from hounds across logs bridging canyons, and do battle at the edge of a giant waterfall. The final fight is unusually realistic for the time, with sweaty, flailing desperation that looks unchoreographed.

Flirting (John Duigan, Australia, 1991)

Ignore the frivolous title. Flirting is the rare teenage comedy that treats its adolescent characters with dignity, as intelligent and thoughtful people. In 1965 Australia, two boarding schools, one all male and one all female, face each other across a lake. Danny is a gawky kid, intelligent, not athletic, teased by fellow students, though he's mostly unfazed by them. Thandiwe has just arrived to Australia from Uganda, and stands out from her peers for her race, her sophistication and irreverent humor. Both are attracted by the rebellious qualities of the other, and over a series of awkward and charming encounters grow to love each other. Flirting is the kind of well-observed film where even minor characters come alive as real, specific people, where you will laugh and cringe with fond recognition at their behavior. Noah Taylor and Thandie Newton give sensitive, lively performances as the leads, while Nicole Kidman and a baby-faced Naomi Watts appear in small early roles. Director John Duigan brings to Flirting a quiet beauty unique for its genre - like when Danny sneaks out at night to meet Thandiwe, rowing across a shimmering starlit lake out of a fairy tale.

Viewing Journal - May 2016 #4

Breathless (Jean-Luc Godard, France, 1960)

Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung fu film. -Werner Herzog

There's no argument against Breathless being a trendsetter. Its fourth wall breaks, sporadic cuts, and meandering approach to a crime narrative - spending more time on digressive conversations and mundane moments than suspense or melodrama - showed the film world of 1960 that not all films need to be made the same way. Film could break free of adherence to classical literary or theatrical storytelling. Breathless was a phenomenon among critics and movie lovers. It has inspired many subsequent classics, among them Penn's Bonnie and Clyde, Malick's Badlands, Kar-wai's Chungking Express, and Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.

But trends fade, and stylistic innovations cease to be shocking if not built on a solid foundation. Once the initial buzz of its 60s chic-cool wears off, Breathless is a massive bore. Michel is among the most obnoxious protagonists I can think of. He's a try-hard poser and petty thief who whines when women don't immediately give him sex. Of course, great films can have unlikable main characters if they offer insight or hard-earned compassion, but I suspect I was supposed to be dazzled by Michel and his cynical affectations. I was not. Breathless flaunts its male chauvinism like a badge of honor. Women are persistently objectified, and Michel's sort-of girlfriend, Patricia, is a spineless "unfaithful woman" and a nonsensically written character.

I could forgive a lot if Breathless was fun, but despite all its spontaneous stylistic flourishes I found it insufferably tedious. Dialogue rotates between passive aggressive flirtations and inane philosophical non-sequiturs. The unconventional editing obliterates many rules about how to edit a film, but without much purpose beyond breaking the rules. Its random jump cuts and narrative elisions have little beauty or meaning in themselves. Indeed, Breathless as a whole seems intentionally devoid of meaning except when compared in a critical framework to other, more conventional films. I am uninterested in that approach to art. I would take a well-crafted generic film over this any day - or a non-generic film that actually has intrinsic meaning.

Regardless, I would never discourage a cinephile from watching Breathless. It is an important film for its place in the history of the medium, and my irritation seems to be the minority response. Jean-Luc Godard and I just don't get along. As far as French New Wave filmmakers go, I'll stick with Truffaut, Varda and Melville. Their films are every bit as clever as Godard's, but have real soul.

Carol (Todd Haynes, United States, 2015)

Todd Haynes strikes me as unique among contemporary filmmakers, in that his films are often just as influenced by artworks of different mediums as by other films. Carol, his latest, is set in the 1950s, but aesthetically shows less in common with melodramatic and romantic films made during the decade than it does with photography and paintings. Todd Haynes has cited 50s New York photographers such as Saul Leiter and Vivan Maier as inspirations, and even though I know next to nothing about photography, their influence on Carol's cinematography is apparent.

Many shots in Carol also reminded me of the paintings of Edward Hopper.

The influence of great photographers and painters of mid-century America gives Carol a unique visual appeal. There is little nostalgic sheen in its portrayal of 1950s New York, which looks grimy and grey, though enlivened by brightly colored women's fashions of the era. But Haynes and cinematographer Edward Lachman's borrowing of other artists' visual motifs is for more than just style. In both Saul Leiter's photography and Carol, people are often photographed behind reflective windows. These images show both the private world - individuals alone with their thoughts - and a bustling public world, separate but existing in the same place. And like in Edward Hopper's paintings, Carol often shoots characters from afar in public spaces, making us voyeuristic observers of people in moments of reflection. Through its cinematography, Carol shows private worlds existing within a public sphere; it also makes us aware that these individuals are always being watched by society at large, and must be cautious lest they reveal too much.

Carol is an adaptation of The Price of Salt, a 1952 novel by Patricia Highsmith. Highsmith was best known for her thrillers about sociopaths, such as Strangers on a Train and the Tom Ripley books. The Price of Salt is unique among her work because the thriller elements are minimized, and unique among 1950s literature because it is a forthright lesbian romance with a hopeful ending. Lesbian fiction did exist at the time, but usually was coded in its language and ended in tragedy, punishing the characters for their transgression and restoring moral order (or just appeasing censors). Highsmith published the novel under a pseudonym - she did not want to be labeled as a lesbian author, but she was gay and much of the story was veiled autobiography. Though I have not read The Price of Salt, it is clear that Carol's characters and insights are derived from lived experience.

Carol is a love story about Therese, a shopgirl, and the titular Carol. They meet at the department store and Therese is immediately drawn to this striking, intelligent woman, though it takes a while before she realizes why. Carol is among the most moving on-screen love stories of recent years for a variety of reasons, not least of all how well-drawn the two women are. The disparities between them are vast. Therese is younger, middle-class, inexperienced and uncertain of herself. Carol is middle-aged, wealthy, experienced and confident. One is hesitantly engaged, one is undergoing a divorce and custody battle of a beloved daughter. The initial stages of their romance are more of a one-sided seduction, the elegant and wily Carol drawing in the awestruck Therese with ease. But Carol's society lady manners hide vulnerabilities that slowly reveal themselves - and as Therese grows in confidence and discovers inner strength, it becomes apparent that Carol is the one with everything to lose. Carol beautifully captures the danger of falling in love - giving your self to another, for them to accept or reject. This is especially perilous in Therese and Carol's case, where they must keep a low profile within society or else their relationship will incur dangers other than heartbreak. It culminates in a lovely series of last shots, where they are finally on equal footing as their eyes meet.

Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara are wonderful. Mara communicates so much with only her eyes and gestures. I would say "Blanchett has never been better!", except she's been this perfect before - as Galadriel, as Bob Dylan, as Queen Elizabeth. What an insanely talented woman! Their performances, along with Todd Hayne's beautiful and sensitive direction and Phyllis Nagy's excellent script, made Carol one of the truly great films of last year.