I Answer the Question: Is it Ever to Early to Talk About Next Year's Oscars? (Hint: YES!!!!)

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According to my calender today is July 2nd. Nonetheless in today's San Francisco Chronicle there is an article by film critic Mick LaSalle about the year in film's so far. Fair enough. But the article also includes numerous sidebars about which films have a chance at receiving an Oscar nomination.

With six months left in the calendar year.

Seven months before the nominations are announced.

Eight months before the awards are presented.

Is is ever to early to discuss the coming year's Oscars? I think the day before the show is too early. Eight months? Gimme a break....

I'm open to any discussion on the state of films over the last few weeks, months, years or any other arbitrary time period you care to introduce. While the fact is that there have been more than enough great films released over the past 100 years to keep me busy for as long as I inhabit this planet, I'm always willing to enjoy another terrific new film.

If new pictures had stop being released a year ago at this time I'd have missed out on Inglourious Basterds and A Serious Man, two of my all time favorites. So as much as it cuts into my valuable time, bring me more.

But please, once and for all can we put an end to this fallacy that the Academy Awards have the slightest thing to do with determining the best achievement in films over the course of a year?

And for God's sakes, we're stuck with enough Oscar hype from November through March, can we at least be spared from it in July?

While I'm badly beating a dead horse (God forbid PETA should find out) let me refer  you to last Tuesday's list on the wonderful website, Listserve. It is titled Top 10 Biggest Travesties of the Oscars. It only really scratches the surface and in fact I did a better job a couple of years ago, but it's worth a look in any case.

I better ask my daughters never to name any of their children, Oscar.

Sometimes You Have to Accept the Mystery of a Movie

Life is almost never episodic. It is less like a TV show and more like a river. It flows.

When a movie does not tack on an ending, when the "story" is not wrapped up in a nice neat package, a lot of people complain. There were howls from many people over the sudden ending of the Coen Brothers' No Country for Old Men (2007). A few more could be heard from their latest film, A Serious Man (2009). Both films concluded somewhat abruptly without resolution, with questions unanswered.

Evidently many movie goers have a hard time with ambiguity. They want their stories to have a "once upon a time" beginning and a "they lived happily ever after" ending. Others of us are happy to be invited to have our brains indulged in a little thinking. I welcome stories that ask me to ponder possibilities.

Film is, after all, art and art at its best encourages us to exercise our intellect. The absence of denouement is but one method. A Serious Man gives us much to ponder while still being fully satisfying at face value.

I recently enjoyed my third viewing of the film. This time I was particularly struck by a very minor character encouraging the main character, Larry Gopnik (Mark Stuhlbarg) to "accept the mystery." He could well have been the voice of the Coens telling the audience that not all this film's riddles need be solved. Indeed maybe they aren't even meant to be.

Larry's life is plagued with a series of Job like troubles. Answers, would be nice. Very nice. He visits three rabbis. The first, the junior rabbi, can do little better than marvel at the parking lot (emphasis his and mine). The second tells Larry the story of dentist who is a mutual acquaintance. The dentist once had a patient, a goy by-the-by, who had a message inscribed in the back of his teeth. The dentist puzzled over both the meaning of the message and its origins, written as it was in Hebrew, in a goy's mouth. Only when the dentist embraced the mystery was he again able to sleep, eat and enjoy life.

Larry was not amused.

The third rabbi, the senior of the synagogue's three, was "too busy thinking" to see Larry. So it goes.

Why is this all happening to Larry? Wife wanting a divorce (didn't see that coming) brother in trouble with the law (who knew?) and the tenure committee deciding Larry's future is receiving scurrilous letters about him (huh?). Oh yes and he's wrecked his car and the Colombia House Record company is on his ass. Wait, I forget about the menacing neighbor who seems to be violating their property line, the student trying to bribe him and the damage his car sustained....

Why do bad things happen to good people? Why aren't there answers to all our questions, or at least the important ones? Why is that as we get older, instead of everything becoming clearer, new mysteries emerge? WHY?

I think many people with strong religious faith (regardless of denomination) would agree that much is to be left unanswered in this life. Yet we continually struggle, if not for answers, for meaning. What about karmic laws? The old what goes around comes around business. We want to make events represent something. There must be a point. Things can't just happen. Can they?

Can and do.

So the Coens gave us this wonderful stew of a film. If you haven't seen A Serious Man you may at this point be picturing something rather bleak. On the contrary it is rich with humor. It has to be, life is rich with humor. A Serious Man succeeds in reveling truths about life while asking if we wouldn't like to contemplate meanings, whys and wherefores. Or not, up to us.

Stuhlbarg's Larry is the perfect protagonist for such a story. He never tries to impose his will on events. No, he's trying to survive and prosper and wants only to understand so that he can navigate events. Understanding is not a philosophical exercise for Larry, it is a survival mechanism. He is, after all, a physics professor. He is, after all, a serious man. It would be a different movie and maybe not so satisfying a movie, if Larry were raging, or ironic or anything other than...a nice guy.

Larry rides the river. Which, as I said, is what life is like.

Some meaning can be enough meaning. A lot of meaning can be faking it.

Okay, Okay, My Top Twenty Films of the Last Decade

I'm yielding to overwhelming and unrelenting pressure (okay a couple of people mentioned it in passing) and publishing a top 20 of my favorite films from the preceding decade. The oughts.

Initially I had balked because I felt there weren't a score of movies worthy of a best decade list. But upon further reflection, there were some excellent efforts, surely enough for a passable top twenty. And indeed this past decade is probably far better than either the 80's or 90's. (Still, this list is in no way comparable to the decade bests from the 1930's and 1970's that I recently published here.)

So here at last are my top 20 films of the oughts.

1. Inglourious Basterds (2009) Tarantino U.S.
2. The Aviator (2004) Scorsese U.S.
3. No Country For Old Men (2007) Coen Brothers U.S.
4. Barbarian Invasions (2003) Arcand French Canada
5. Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001) Cuaron Mexico
6. Zodiac (2007) Fincher U.S.
7. Minority Report (2002) Spielberg U.S.
8. A Serious Man (2009) Coen Brothers U.S.
9. Downfall (2004) Hirschbiegel Germany
10. City of God (2002) Meirelles/Lund Brazil
11. Lives of Others (2006) von Donnersmarck Germany
12. Wonder Boys (2000) Hanson U.S.
13. Gangs of New York (2002) Scorsese U.S.
14. The Man Without a Past (2002) Kaurismaki Finland
15. Vicky Christina Barcelona (2008) Allen U.S.
16. Amores perros (2000) Inarritu Mexico
17. Bamboozled (2000) Lee U.S.
18. Milk (2008) Van Sant U.S.
19. The Class (2008) Cantet France
20. Bad Education (2004) Almodovar Spain

It's Eminently Habitable

I've seen the A Serious Man twice now and can't wait for its DVD release. The above scene is just one small example of its brilliance. Nice to know they still make a great film every now and again. Two this year, counting this and Inglourious Basterds.

Great Filmmaking, It's a Matter of Faith

The great ones don't hold back. They aren't afraid to take chances. They have faith in themselves. That's what distinguishes greatness, a faith in oneself.

I saw it yesterday in my second viewing of A Serious Man. The Coen Brothers did not use a single pretty face. Not one. They had a man endure all manner of misfortune. They had a film steeped in Jewish culture. They had a story within the story that went nowhere. They had a moral retrobate that we felt  for. They had loose ends (isn't life full of them? Loose ends everywhere. So why not in art?). They had a magnificent film because they weren't restrained. They let the story dictate itself. This was not from a script writing template.

Quentin Tarantino did the same thing. Not a shy man, more importantly, not a shy director (read: artist). His Inglourious Basterds just went ahead and changed history. Why not? Actual events are just a plot device anyway. That long unbroken first scene. Who does that? He did and it was cinematic gold. Sticking the David Bowie song in the middle of the film was inspired, just as the Coens did by using a Hendrix tune in the middle of the story about the Jewish dentist. Anyone can do unconventional, not many can make gold out of it.

Fellini could. 8 1/ 2 begins with a guy stuck in traffic, he's suffocating, he floats away... That's just the start of the movie!


Conventionality is good to a degree, but my God you need to break away and dance. You need to look at the world in different ways. Look at it this way. Black and white films, beautiful. But life, you want colors, lots of them. You want variety. That's where art comes in. It forces helps you see the world, your life, your view of the world your view of life, in different ways. Art Inglourious Basterdschanges our focus. It gets our brain ticking and might I add tocking. Like the character, the young rabbi in A Serious Man said: "look at that parking lot!"


It's not so easy to look and think in different ways all the time. Most of us only have the one brain (and that's if we're lucky) so great artists come along and help us see. And in terms of movies I'm not just talking directors or screenwriters, the cinemaphotogpraphers and set designers are crucial too and let's not forget the actors. Marlin Brando, Sean Penn those actors who interpret a character in a different way. Helps us see a person, people maybe, in different ways. Heck, the Marx brothers did that too. (Ya know what Geoffery T. Spaulding in Animal Crackers said the T. stood for? Edgar!).

Lot of people complain about ambiguity in films, especially at the ending. Want the story wrapped up in a pretty little bow. So what, you want it neatly finished to store away and forget about? Come on. How about a movie that lives with you. That leaves questions for you to ponder and answer your own way. Speaking of the Coens, their No Country For Old Men  was brilliant in that regard. Not just who the hell was Anton Chigurh, but what was he? What did he represent? Art isn't a summation, it's an invitation. If its all  there it can be an empty experince. In one ear out the other. But if we have, no GET TO think, to ponder, to wonder. That's beautiful. That's art.


Challenging. Maybe at first resistant to us. We have to try. The more you put in the more you get out. A nice comfy movie can be good every now and again but how cool is it when a film makes some percolation go on in our brains? Hey, to me that's fun stuff. It's the stuff the great ones produce.

Seriously, You Should See This Movie

Okay movie, take me somewhere unexpected. Come on, surprise me. Really, I don't at any time want to know where you're going. I just want to be along for the ride. Please, no formulas, no one dimensional characters. Give me a little depth. And leave me something to think about, to interpret. I'm a big boy, I can be left to decide for myself about the whys and wherefores. In fact, I insist upon it. You don't have to dazzle me with fancy schmancy special effects. I don't want hand held cameras and let's not overdo the odd camera angles. I want a story first and foremost and one that leaves me wanting more, not less.

If that's what you want out of a film I've got just the thing for you. It's the latest from the Coen brothers, A Serious Man. It's a movie that trusts you think for yourself. Hell, it insists upon it.

The cast is relatively unrecognizable, although many of the actors are of the I-know-I've-seen-him-somewhere-before variety. Trust me, the relative anonymity of the cast adds to the film's charm.

A Serious Man centers around one Larry Gopnik (Michael Sthulbarg) who we watch go through a series of episodes that would make Job weep. Wife, job, children, brother, health, money and legal issues all seem to be conspiring to bring this upstanding citizen down. He's really a likable sort. Not adorable, like too many film leads are, but someone who we empathize with and wish not the slightest ill will. He doesn't seem to be asking too much of life, nothing more than he's owed -- isn't that what we all want? Our just rewards? Don't you just hate it, seriously hate it, when the unexpected and undeserved gets in our way? Of course you do.

A young rabbi that Larry visits for counsel gestures out the window of his office and exclaims, "just look at that parking lot!" Of course.

Another rabbi tells a long story. Is there a point? Will it help? I better not say.

The third rabbi, the oldest and wisest is too busy thinking to deal with our friend Larry Gopnik. Oi vey.

Did I tell you Larry is of the Jewish persuasion. You guessed! And no, no, no, no you don't have to be Jewish to appreciate the film, I'm far from, though it may (or may not help).

Our story is set in a Minneapolis suburb in 1967 which is as good a place to set such a story as any, don't you think? You wanted this thriving Jewish community in New York? Been there. Done that. You don't get cliches in A Serious Man. You don't get well trodden ground. All virgin territory. You should trust me on this.

Family. Such a blessing, such a curse. Larry's wife is unhappy with him and has found love in the arms of a long time family friend -- Sy Ableman. Fred Melamed plays Sy and I've got to dig into my adjective bag for him and say he's "fantastic." Not that anyone in the cast is lacking. Sy just shines. Larry has a daughter who just wants to wash her hair and a son who likes dope and F Troop and a brother who...

You know its hard to tell a heckuva lot more detail without getting into areas that viewers should discover for themselves. Suffice it to say you've got the music of the Jefferson Airplane, one randy neighbor and another quite Aryan neighbor (is he frighteningly so? You decide). You've got dental work, of sorts, dream sequences, a desperate Korean college student, physics. You have to have physics. You get a bar mitzvah and marijuana and hey how about if the twain meet? You've also got one of the best closing shots since 400 Blows (1959). You know what you've got here? A seriously good movie.

But, and again I'm totally serious, it's funny too. Not at all in broad way. You're not going to fall out of your chair laughing. Nothing silly. You'll smile a lot though. You'll think a lot too. It's very brave in these days of Transformers and Hulks and Spidermen to make a film that asks the audience to think. The Coens are nothing if not brave. These are serious men, or at least serious film makers.

(What, you're still here, you should go see it already.)