From Middle-earth to Mulholland Drive

The best in movies, 2001: The world turned to the tune of sexy beasts and even darker dreams.

By Charles Taylor

Dec. 31, 2001 |

1) "Mulholland Drive" Is it possible we still haven't gotten used to David Lynch? For Lynch, surrealism is the natural look of the world, and he immerses the audience in that vision so completely that coming out of this enveloping erotic noir, you feel disoriented, waiting for the world to shake off its new unfamiliarity. Which is why, for many of us, it took two viewings to realize that there's a rigorously structured plot here. If "Blue Velvet" was his Hardy Boys movie, this is his Nancy Drew movie (with two girl detectives) and it's even darker. "Mulholland Drive," which throws off real sexual heat, is about innocence corrupted by the pain of romantic-erotic loss. And as Lynch's (figurative and literal) dreamland innocent, Naomi Watts seems, as so often happen in his movies, to be living the film rather than acting in it.

2) "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" There are moments -- many moments -- in Peter Jackson's film of the Tolkien novel that return you to what it felt like to be a child experiencing the emotional and physical grandeur of movies for the first time. It's the greatest piece of epic filmmaking in years, and like all great fantasies, "Lord of the Rings" is grounded in real, earthbound emotion. Seamlessly blending special effects with real locations, Jackson never allows the characters to get lost in his visual sweep. The potential for violence and death hangs over the movie, which imparts a sense of real terror, all of it seeming to emit from Elijah Wood's preternaturally blue eyes. And Jackson's masterful battle sequences convey the dirt and sweat and horror of combat in a way that makes you certain that somewhere, Kurosawa and Welles are looking down with envy.

3) "Last Orders": Fred Schepisi's version of the Graham Swift novel opens wide in February (after this month's one-week qualifying Academy Award run in Los Angeles). It's the story of the journey made by four friends (Bob Hoskins, Tom Courtenay, Ray Winstone, and David Hemmings) to scatter the ashes of a fifth (Michael Caine). Told in flashback, "Last Orders" moves effortlessly between past and present, conveying the arguments and love and betrayals and kindnesses of a lifetime of friendship. "Last Orders" understands the bittersweet comedy of old age, the tendency to hoard memories, and the need of letting them go. The dream cast gives the year's finest ensemble performance, especially Hoskins and, as Caine's widow, Helen Mirren, whose scenes with her mentally handicapped daughter are marvels of emotion held in check, and all the fuller because of it.

4) "Together" Lukas Moodysson's lovely ensemble comedy about life on a Swedish commune still soldiering on in the mid-'70s. This young Swedish director has a talent for gently lampooning his characters and yet never withholding his love. Like all good humanist moviemakers, Moodysson erases the barriers between the characters and the audience. A satire done from the inside, "Together" kids the quixotic fantasies of the '60s left while honoring their commitment to their ideals. The soccer game that provides the film's elating climax is a validation of their dream. Like Moodysson's direction, it's a demonstration of boundaries crossed and community realized.

5) "The Gleaners & I" Inspired by the Millet painting, Agnes Varda's documentary essay on people who live by scavenging is also a meditation on the bits and pieces by which filmmakers put a movie together. The French new wave generation of filmmakers to which Varda belongs took their inspiration from the real world, the catch as catch can quality of life in cafes and shops. Varda demonstrates how her form of scavenging uncovers unexpected bits of beauty. And her acknowledgement of her own mortality makes life's fleeting moments the most precious of all trash-picker treasures.

Next page: "Moulin Rouge" and "Sexy Beast"