2011 Midway Point: Blake’s Top 10

#10. Play – Ruben Östlund (Cannes 2011)
Riveting, harrowing, infuriating. Never has adolescent bullying and manipulation been so watchably mundane. Östlund has clearly got this meandering realism down to a T; applying it to a clearer form and purpose has its ups and downs in comparison to his previous, more free-form film, Involuntary. Borrows, and expands on, the better moments of Haneke’s Code Unknown, which is to say: he understands the depressing impossibility of inter-cultural unity.

#9. This is Not a Film – Jafar Panahi (Cannes 2011)
I was getting ready to throw my hands up and call this a flat-out masterpiece until Panahi realized what he was about to prove and steered the project in another, less interesting direction at the half-way mark. The state-implemented constraints on the Iranian auteur turned his filmmaking strategies into a damning hybrid of Dogville and The Five Obstructions (that Von Trier made both is, I think, coincidental), blowing apart the idea of complete artistic integrity while simultaneously celebrating the representational power of cinema. As is, it’s still an incendiary portrait of creativity in captivity, just not the grand statement I was hoping for.

#8. The Day He Arrives – Hong Sang-soo (Cannes 2011)
For a guy that ‘makes the same film over and over again’, Hong sure knows how to toy with some delightful conceits and variations. In my mid-Cannes daze, the central structure of this film – supposedly the same as Groundhog Day’s – went straight over my head, yet I was still surprisingly moved when the credits began to role. With the ‘same film over and over again’ accusations and a Groundhog Day conceit potentially constructing some kind of perfect allegorical harmony, I imagine this film has to be the best-yet incarnation of Hong’s navel-gazing concerns.

#7. Elena – Andrey Zvyagintsev (Cannes 2011)
A collective triumph from a duo – Zvyagintsev and Philip Glass – that I had suspected might never impress me again. The straight-forward plot, as I remember it, remained cryptically banal as a woman goes to great lengths to erase certain class disparities in her life. The final act wades through a tidily impressionistic aftermath that suggests either a return to normalcy or a societal apocalypse. A mannered progression of his style, without the faux-poetics of his earlier work, that I desperately hope be continues to develop.

#6. Drive – Nicholas Winding Refn (Cannes 2011)
Figure this one out: the sexiest film I’ve seen in years doesn’t have a single sex scene. The mesh of blissed-out romance and furious violence is so crude that it generates its own brand of empty-headed poetry. The whole is a bit slight, but certain moments are still revving in my subconscious.

#5. Martha Marcy May Marlene – Sean Durkin (Cannes 2011)
This team of filmmakers gives me some genuine hope for the future of independent filmmaking in America. Durkin, like Campos did in Afterschool, nails the inescapable sense of alienation that pervades every corner of contemporary life. The enigmatic final moments have been haunting me ever since.

#4. The Tree of Life – Terrence Malick (Cannes 2011)
Okay, I Was Wrong: this film is gorgeous. It’s also frequently moving, if only because the anti-commercial approach makes it all the more obvious that what is onscreen is a subjective, ultra-personal account, rather than Malick’s ill-advised attempt at making the most universal and complete film ever. An atheistic version of it would likely be my favourite film ever, sure; as is, I’ll just have to plug my ears during the precious and trite voiceovers, clearly addressed to God, with Norman Rockwell 50¢ stamps.

#3. Meek’s Cutoff – Kelly Reichardt (Theatrical April 8th)
I Was Wrong, pt. 2. The buzz really killed my viewing experience at TIFF 2010 (Greatest film ever!! OMG the ending is so awesome!! Malick-esque!!), but I could at least identify what I’d seen as a uniquely unsettling experience. I checked it out when it opened last month at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, expectations properly in place, and holy cow, ‘uniquely unsettling’ only scratches the surface. Possibly the most extra-terrestrial telling of this (true) story imaginable. I still don’t really know what it all is supposed to mean, but at least now I feel it’s all-the-better for it.

#2. House of Tolerance – Bertrand Bonello (Cannes 2011)
Bonello finally reigns in his provocations to make something truly beautiful. The clash of painterly Romanticism with 60’s soul tunes (sometimes used diegetically, just cuz; but seriously, someone locate a complete soundtrack listing, stat) creates a nostalgic tragedy that is lush and heartbreaking. Might be the most elliptically seductive film since Beau Travail.

#1. Melancholia – Lars von Trier (Cannes 2011)
Before nazis and Hitler entered the conversation, this film, in its first five minutes, stomped on the head of these god-awful conventions and rituals that have turned life on Earth into a Precious Moments pop-up book. It not only has tons of ideas that I agree with and think about daily, but tackles them full-circle, even touching on the aesthetic coding of modern art. Not remotely controversial or inaccessible, ensuring that it will actually reach an audience who needs it.

Blake is a Toronto based filmmaker and critic.