My favourite films of the year, '12

Here are my favourite films of the year. I also made a list of three films last year. (These were Midnight in Paris, Cave of Forgotten Dreams and The Tree of Life.) I've been following new releases quite closely now after I subscribed to Sight and Sound.

Films that narrowly missed this list were Tabu by Miguel Gomes, Amour by Michael Haneke and Cosmopolis by David Cronenberg.

The Master, dir. by Paul Thomas Anderson

I remember walking through a street in Manchester with my dad. There was a Scientology centre nearby, with a steward standing by the foyer. I loudly heckled something like (paraphrasing) "Look at that phony pseudo-mystical centre of brainwashing cunts!" This alarmed my dad who, fearing that the steward may have heard my loud diatribe, cautiously went "Shhhh!"

And this film, though it does not state so directly, follows what happens when you find yourself absorbed into that strange sect. The indoctrination therapies, the obnoxious bullying and the mandatory espousal of hocus-pocus quasi-mystical nonsense. It's little wonder that my dad was weary that the steward may have overheard my rant because, once these sly crooks set their eye on you, you're in for a whirlwind.

The film is even more heavy going, as the lead protagonist (not the master, incidentally, a disciple) is vulnerable, aggressive (The Master repeatedly calls him an 'animal') and simple-minded. He is the perfect prey for this opportunist's scheme.

The films becomes more wrenching as it progresses. We get therapy after therapy after therapy, with the disciple gasping for air. The Master, meanwhile, is constantly tested about the value of his endeavour by sceptics. He has no answers because, as a quack, he is only capable of producing vacous empty-headed babble short on either scientific or philosophical rigour. One of the many discomforting things about the film is that you somehow sympathise for him at times, no matter how facile or bullying he gets.

Finally, I'll mention that the misce-en-scene is fab - it really feels like 40s/50s America (and, later, UK). It is beautifully shot. And the performances (especially Hoffman's) are overwhelmingly good.

Into the Abyss, dir. by Werner Herzog

 Like the list I made last year, I've chosen another Herzog film. I think he's been on really good form of late.

The documentary deals with a devastating murder committed by a couple of ruffians in Texas, U.S.A. One of the criminals is ten days ahead of his sentence, looks remarkably calm, is unrepentant and denies the charges. The other convict, who genuinely exhibits feelings of guilt and remorse, gets a life sentence.

The film mainly consists of a series of interviews Herzog made with the convicts, family members, friends and witnesses. Herzog has been charged with exploiting his subjects in the past and here there are several scenes where the interviewees break out in tears.

Several ethical questions are obviously raised. How can the death penalty continue to be practiced? Are the criminals simply a result of their surroundings, having received little in the way of education? Herzog in the past has dealt with ethnographic and anthropological questions. Yet there's little sense of the interviewees being tools for a social case study. They are, on the main, seen as people who have undergone searing traumas. Herzog also completely avoids the political corruption in Texas (George W. Bush, as governor, signed off slip after slip of death penalties yet he does not figure at all in this film). What I mainly got from this film was a highly moving, emotional account of a human drama.

Nostalgia for the Light, dir. by Patricio Guzmán

Another documentary!

Guzmán apparently had trouble financing this when he pitched the idea. Astronomy, the Pinochet atrocities, the Atacama desert, Chilean history. How does it fit? As it turns out, there is no discrepancy with any of these things in the film.

There is an astronomy base in the Atacama desert, where astronomers observe the stars and record data. As this takes place, family of political prisoners whom Pinochet murdered, scour the arid surface for the remains of their relatives.

Time is a recurrent subject talked about, particularly from the scientists. The present, so we are told, is ever-elusive, as it can only be evoked through reflection. In addition to that, our bodies are made up of a great deal of calcium, which came from the stars. The astronomers are clearly searching for philosophical questions as well, something which is by no means exclusive from science. Archaeologists, meanwhile, are followed excavating relics of indigenous civilisations. The astronomers are on the look-out for figments of vast cosmological explosions that occurred billions of years ago. The archaelogists modestly admit their relics date from a few hundred years. (Interestingly, when I went to the Atacama Desert I was told by a tour guide that the Atacaman aborigines believed that the Spanish colonisers, and by extension the rest of the world, were invaders from space!)

And, perhaps more pertinently, the victims, instead of looking at the stars in awe, lower their heads to the ground in the hope they may find a bone or two of their kin.