9. Let Them All Talk, Steven Soderbergh
8. Ammonite, Francis Lee
6. 日子 [Days], Tsai Ming-liang
1. Last & First Men, Jóhann Jóhannsson
Like us, Yugoslavia's mysterious brutalist sculptures are too unusual to exist, except for the fact that they do. Through grainy 16mm compositions ingeniously distorting these Soviet-influenced sculptures' sizes and our distances from them, Jóhannsson renders his first and final feature "Last & First Men" an avant-garde artifact out of time - a secret awakening we are not meant to have discovered, except for the fact that we have. The gravitational Tilda Swinton's overlaid reading of Olaf Stapledon's source excerpts not only meets but challenges more sophisticated visions of our future, with evolutionary speculation and an inescapably finite end point for our chapter in the grander cosmos. The symbolic alignment of narration and image interprets representations both existing and imagined in ways both encouraging and sorrowful as it memorializes a potential era of humanity yet to pass, and thereby humanity itself.
With "I'm Thinking of Ending Things" Kaufman again flexes his intrinsic understanding of the avid film viewer's relationship to the filmmaking process as a means to forward his adaptive ideas narratively, emotionally, and psychologically. From the entrancing continuity of persistent wiper blades cutting through symbolic snow, to subtle costume inconsistencies, then carefully contradictory dialogue, deliberately disorienting scene changes, and more, the astoundingly detail-oriented trick gradually becomes as overt as it is expert. The relationship between audience and artwork is ultimately confronted, with the most attentive led to the deepest reward.
From the era of distance and division, the Ross brothers' funereal people-watching illusion de vérité "Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets" recalls a waning yet universal sense of coexistence on the precipice of the Trump years - "Battleship Potemkin" on TV through the bottom of a shared glass.
Exhibiting near perfect harmony between the broad strokes and minutia of its production from refined performances to intrusive sound design, the winning "Ammonite" utilizes what we know of Mary Anning's fascinating life to infer a romance contextualizing her professional and personal accomplishments. As Anning was often excluded from and painted over by her cosmopolitan contemporaries on the basis of gender, bleeding this over to her sexuality rings thematically and culminates in a beautiful open ending that wordlessly challenges the meaning of true satisfaction.
In all the reasons to love Soderbergh, chief among them is his technical precision. It then becomes interesting to see him operate a performance-driven piece in which the cast achieves extemporaneousness to a multiplicity of successes. Dwelling at once in the impersonality of cosmopolitan modernity and the intimacy of a retrospective writer’s mind, “Let Them All Talk” is definitively light yet markedly resonant. Tangentially, the admirably understated utilization of an actual Atlantic crossing for production is apparent through various details, making situations feel all the more present.
The audacity of Spike's work continues to be its most grabbing quality. It's one thing to weave an impactful portrait of black American troops fighting in Vietnam on behalf of a country that doesn't equally value them. It's another to tell that story through a contemporary retrospective lens, sympathetically digging into why one of these veterans might go on to perpetuate such plight by contributing to a Trump presidency. The appropriately uncomfortable "Da 5 Bloods" presents these concepts as poignant echoes to bare each sociopolitical conflict to the bone through major explosive monologues, as well as minor touches such as the acceptance of a toast from former Viet Cong before grooving to Marvin Gaye's "Got To Give It Up" - a strong candidate for the year's best scene.
Complete 2020 rankings on Letterboxd (subject to change).
