Motivators of 2010: Technology and Greed
IFC Films
Isabelle Huppert portrays a beleaguered French co-owner of a coffee plantation in Africa who faces civil unrest in Claire Denis’s “White Material.”
By STEPHEN HOLDEN
Published: December 17, 2010
Capitalism and con artistry: the economic catastrophe we faced in 2008 may have been avoided, at least for now. But it left behind a reservoir of dread and cynicism that have seeped into every corner of American life, even the movies. That unease found its way into one 2010 megahit, Christopher Nolan’s diabolical “Inception.” However convoluted and impenetrable, this cinematic labyrinth sabotages the very idea of reality with its notion of dream invasion, theft and implantation.
Related
A Zillion Friends, and a Few Enemies (September 19, 2010)
Melissa Moseley/Warner Brothers Pictures
Leonardo DiCaprio in Christopher Nolan’s “Inception,” which reflects a treacherous climate in which nothing can be trusted.
New Yorker Films
A scene from “My Dog Tulip,” the hand-drawn adaptation of J. R. Ackerley’s 1956 memoir.
Even if you couldn’t figure it out — and could anyone, including Mr. Nolan? — it reflects a treacherous social climate in which nothing can be trusted: not facts and figures, not institutions, not politicians, business leaders or media figures, not science and (most disturbingly) not even the evidence of your own senses. Apply that to the movies, and what do you have? 3-D animation, for one thing. You put on glasses to enter another reality that is at once minutely detailed (digitally precise) but still a cartoon. At least this year 3-D animation seemed to be taking over Hollywood and has begun to invade television.
Mr. Nolan’s film is also about mass consciousness in an age in which technology is increasingly viewed as inimical to humankind. Increasingly we are awakening with the foreboding sense that the way we use the wonderful gadgets we have invented for communication is a sorry reflection of who we are. Taking it a step further we are becoming mobile power stations increasingly controlled by the technology we attach to our bodies.
Once upon a time the bottom line was television; now it is the Internet. The two are in the process of fusing with the movies into something larger and more omnivorous. If the past is any indication, we would rather use our technology to steal and attack others than use it to spread knowledge and good will. To revise Shakespeare: “The fault, dear Snooki, is not in our technology. But in ourselves.” If “Inception” evokes the confused metaphysical state of things at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the year’s other most important films, David Fincher’s
“Social Network” and Charles Ferguson’s documentary“Inside Job” address the age’s moral turbulence.
“The Social Network,” a big hit, though not a blockbuster, embodies the very confusion it portrays. This docudrama about the founding of Facebook and the power struggles over the ownership of intellectual property and its financial rewards is fiction in the same way that reality television shows are fiction. It is truth that has been tweaked.
At the same time the movie is so well made that you are not inclined to question what is factual and what is not (unless you’re one of the real-life individuals depicted).Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), the genius geek behind Facebook, comes across as vaguely sociopathic in his emotional isolation and ruthless competitive drive. He is definitely not a hero in the film, nor does he even fit the image of a well-developed adult. Since the movie was released, it should be noted, Mr. Zuckerberg has become a prominent philanthropist.
This extremely smart but untrustworthy film weirdly parallels one of the year’s dumbest movies, the Adam Sandler vehicle “Grown Ups.” That gigantic hit, which I detested, observes the reunion of a sixth-grade basketball team 30 years later for a chaotic Fourth of July weekend of farcical shenanigans. In this sloppy, puerile mess of a movie, the emotional ages of the former teammates, now in their 40s, are not all that different from that of Mr. Zuckerberg as played by Mr. Eisenberg. It strokes a reassuring possibility that we can all remain sixth graders.
Aaron Sorkin’s screenplay for “The Social Network” doesn’t directly address the ramifications of the Facebook phenomenon, but it can give you the creeps when you consider that Facebook facilitates childish game playing, deception and adopting multiple identities, as does “Inception.”
“Inside Job,” a comprehensive investigation into the causes of the 2008 financial crisis, leaves you with the uncomfortable realization that greed, when allowed to run rampant, trumps every other human trait. Without playing politics, it charts the deregulation fever that began in the mid-1970s, fueling the housing bubble and leading to a calamitous international stampede to grab the spoils. Point by point, the film explains the shady financial engineering and collusion that led to the crisis. Several power brokers who agreed to appear in the film are actually offended when asked about their possible culpability.
Important corollaries to “Inside Job” include Alex Gibney’s documentary “Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer,” which suggests that his downfall was plotted by Wall Street titans, and “The Company Men,” John Wells’s sober, beautifully acted depiction of the effect of corporate downsizing on the lives of three executives at a fictional Boston corporation.
Fear and loathing, of course, weren’t the only moods emanating from 2010 movies. The year’s upscale mainstream films offered many things to admire. The finest male performance is Colin Firth’s portrayal of the young George VI in “The King’s Speech.” Struggling with the help of an eccentric therapist (Geoffrey Rush) to conquer his stammer, he runs the emotional gamut.
A well-made, old-fashioned Anglophilic product from the “Masterpiece Theater” school of filmmaking (it could as easily have been a play), it is lent distinction by Mr. Firth’s brilliant performance. Proud, angry, insecure and ashamed, the repressed, lonely future monarch, who was mistreated as a child, vents a complex mixture of imperiousness and self-doubt.
The other great screen performance in an English-language film is Annette Bening’s in “The Kids Are All Right,” the family drama by Lisa Cholodenko. Her character, Nic, is a feisty, forthright lesbian whose happy-scrappy relationship with her life partner (Julianne Moore) is threatened by the appearance of the birth father (via artificial insemination) of their two children. As Nic's every joy and fear registers on her face, Ms. Bening invites the same deep empathy that you feel for Mr. Firth’s chilly king.
This was Ms. Bening’s year. Playing a mother who gave up her child at 14 in Rodrigo Garcia’s fine film “Mother and Child,” she was almost as compelling. Proudly middle-aged and exhibiting not a trace of vanity, Ms. Bening is one of the great reactive actors of our time.
Below is my personal Top 10 in approximate order of preference, with runners-up.
1. THE SOCIAL NETWORK
2. INSIDE JOB
3. INCEPTION
4. CARLOS Olivier Assayas’s 5 ½-hour docudrama about the life and times of the notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal is a study of swaggering, lethal narcissism with an imposing lead performance by the Venezuelan actor Edgar Ramírez. Its great set piece reconstructs the kidnapping of OPEC oil ministers in Vienna in December 1975.
5. ANOTHER YEAR The English filmmaker Mike Leigh is a contemporary, cinematic offshoot of Charles Dickens. His newest group study portrait of humble working-class lives is one of his best movies and features indelible performances by Jim Broadbent, Lesley Manville and Ruth Sheen.
6. VINCERE Marco Bellocchio’s portrait of Ida Dalser (Giovanna Mezzogiorno), Mussolini’s mistress who claimed to be his first wife and was imprisoned in a mental hospital, is a tragicomic little opera of a movie that savagely mocks the vainglorious Italian dictator.
7. WHITE MATERIAL In this Claire Denis film, Isabelle Huppert gives a typically crackling performance as the white French co-owner of a coffee plantation in an unidentified African country, who refuses to leave when civil strife erupts.
8. THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT What does it say about our changing times that Ms. Cholodenko’s portrait of a nontraditional clan headed by a lesbian couple is the most believable and heartfelt film about an American family of the last several years?
9. TRUE GRIT Not a remake of the John Wayne classic, the Coen brothers’ adaptation of the Charles Portis novel leaches out most of the boisterous humor to treat the story as a stately black comedy with breathtaking cinematography by Roger Deakins.
10. MY DOG TULIP Narrated by Christopher Plummer, the exquisite hand-drawn screen adaptation of J. R. Ackerley’s 1956 memoir chronicles his late-life 15-year relationship with a beloved dog, devoting much attention to her bathroom and mating habits.
RUNNERS-UP (in no order): “The Ghost Writer,” “Fish Tank,” “A Prophet,” “Mid-August Lunch,” “Greenberg,” “Exit Through the Gift Shop,” “The Secret in Their Eyes,” “I Am Love,” “Toy Story 3,” “Winter’s Bone,” “Lebanon,” “Animal Kingdom,” “The Tillman Story,” “Boxing Gym” and “Blue Valentine.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 19, 2010
An earlier version of this article misidentified the name of Annette Bening's chracter in the film "The Kids Are All Right." She plays Nic, not Jules.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 20, 2010
An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of an actress in “Another Year.” She is Lesley Manville, not Leslie.
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