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Article by Mark Dujsik | December 20,
2021
Here
are the ten best films
of 2021:
 10.
Silent
Night
A
group of childhood friends, who have grown up to see each other live seemingly
fulfilling lives, is having a gathering for Christmas. Soon into Silent
Night, we learn that this will be their final Christmas, holiday, party, and
day. A storm of poisonous gas is spreading across the globe—a poison that
causes a lot of anguish. The UK government's only solution is a suicide pill—a
painless alternative. This is a particularly haunting tale of an impending
apocalypse—not only because it directly addresses the terror of encroaching
and inescapable death, but also because it examines the absurdity of the
interim.
Writer/director
Camille Griffin, making her feature debut, eases us into all of these
relationships, as the story establishes itself as a kind of comfortably comedic
study of pressure and awkwardness. Her steadiness in raising existential dread,
difficult discussions about mortality, and constant suspense about impending
doom is even more impressive. To be clear, the film is funny, because it knows
these characters and, more to the point, understands human nature. To be
clearer, it is also and unabashedly bleak—even beyond its farcically fatal
climax.
 9.
In the
Heights
There's
a sense of love and joy in In the Heights.
Director Jon M. Chu's adaptation of Quiara Alegría Hudes and Lin-Manuel
Miranda's stage musical is a slice-of-life musical about a community of
immigrants in New York City, of various generations, and from around Latin
America. This story doesn't try to do too much, and as a result, it does quite a
bit. Hudes' screenplay just follows these characters, while Miranda's songs
accompany and give depth to their hopes, fears, and beliefs.
These
stories—about the effects of gentrification, issues of immigration, and
romance, lived over the course of a few days—are what matter to the film,
although Chu doesn't skimp on the spectacle we expect from a musical. Huge
crowds of dancers overtake an entire city block, the local public pool, and a
night club. The more standout sequences are the more intimate ones, such as an
older woman's tour of her past and a duet between two of the lovers on a
balcony, which cannot contain their passion. The film wants us to see the beauty
and the hope of these moments, not as a dream, but as the here and now.
 8.
Identifying
Features
Only
one question matters to Magdalena (Mercedes Hernández): What happened to her
son? Is he alive, and if so, where and in what condition is he? Is he dead, and
if that's the case, how and why did he die? Magdalena's search for the answer to
this question will take her across Mexico in co-writer/director Fernanda
Valadez's haunting debut feature Identifying
Features. It's a fascinating, troubling, and ultimately devastating
examination of modern-day Mexico, which observes the causes, complications, and
consequences of immigration to the United States exclusively from the
perspective of those who do migrate and, more importantly, those who are left
behind.
Magdalena's
path crosses with others in a similar position and, most importantly, Miguel
(David Illescas), recently deported from the United States and returning to his
small village. Valadez's film is a mystery about frequent attacks and
abductions, a conspiracy to hide assaults, and a local militia that has
overrun Miguel's village, but it's primarily about connections. The film is
patient, because Magdalena must be and we must feel the weight and pressure of
time on this scenario. We do feel it and deeply, too, especially when the truth,
as it must and as painful as it perhaps can be, is revealed.
 7.
The
Green Knight
Writer/director
David Lowery's The Green Knight
concerns itself with, exists within, and communicates ideas, values, ideals, and
even storytelling that are of much older age. The film's intentionally
meandering narrative, elliptical and puzzling and concerned in almost every
moment with communicating some—sometimes ambiguous and sometimes
blatant—moral lesson, is so old-fashioned that it now feels novel. The story
has a singular point: communicating the journey and adventures of a young,
inexperienced, and aspiring knight Gawain (Dev Patel), through perils and trials
of the world, humanity, and supernatural events/entities. This journey of the
lone hero has existed in the tales of every culture throughout most of recorded
human history, so Lowery's adaptation shouldn't seem so special.
It
is, though, in ways that are difficult to describe but that are consistently
felt. The tale, freely adapted from a classic "chivalric romance," has
Gawain journeying to receive a matching blow from the Green Knight (Ralph Ineson),
whom the hesitant adventurer beheaded but who survived the strike. The episodic
story's relaxed pace belies and complements the richness of the images
here—from the dreadful and dreary to the subtly or wholly fantastical. Make no
mistake, the film is bizarre in an assortment of ways. Lowery embraces that,
just as he adopts the mood, mentality, and moral compass of this tale.
 6.
Quo
Vadis, Aida?
Quo
Vadis, Aida?
is a film of absolutely righteous anger, but the most striking thing about
writer/director Jasmila Zbanic's approach is how calmly that anger is
communicated. The story itself, about a massacre during the Bosnian War, is
infuriating on multiple levels. Zbanic knows she simply must show it as it
happened. The obvious targets of the film's ire are members of the Bosnian Serb
Army, who expelled tens of thousands of civilians from their homes and killed
some 8,000 people in and near the town of Srebrenica in 1995. The other target
is the United Nations, displaying depths of incompetence, inaction, and apathy.
Our
protagonist is Aida Selmanagic (Jasna Djuricic, in an incredible depiction of
trying to keep a cool head under unthinkable pressure and rage), a teacher
working as a UN translator. She attempts to protect her family at a UN base just
outside of town, and the rest of this story plays out almost as a kind of
thriller. The stakes here are as high as they could be, but the real point of
Zbanic framing this real-life story in such a way is to highlight the constant
feeling of uncertainty, the increasing sense of frustration, and an inevitable
slide toward helplessness and hopelessness. This did happen, and the film shows
how it did with clarity and precision.
 5.
Judas
and the Black Messiah
In
Judas and the Black Messiah, the true
story of the assassination of Fred Hampton, the chairman of the Illinois chapter
of the Black Panther Party, becomes a multifaceted tale of politics and power.
Co-writer/director Shaka King frames this potent piece of historical fiction as
a Shakespearean tragedy, in that a king-like figure is brought down by forces
outside of his sphere and sniveling just beside him. The king here is Hampton
(played by Daniel Kaluuya, imbuing the character with seemingly undeterred
strength and unshakeable confidence, as well as moments of vulnerability and
humility), and the betrayer is Bill O'Neal, a career criminal who works in grand
larceny but whose personality and belief system can only be described as petty.
He's played by LaKeith Stanfield in a performance of constant, internalized
anxiety and mounting shame.
The
resulting drama is equally political, historical, and personal. King necessarily
and effortlessly weaves the inescapable politics of Hampton, the Panthers, and
the federal government's efforts to destroy the man and the group, and the
personal side of both figures makes an even more significant impact: a story of
deepening romance for Hampton (Dominique Fishback plays his intelligent partner)
and O'Neal's internal battle of personal gain, paranoia, and growing admiration
for the man he has been recruited to betray. All of these threads come together
with the mournful inevitability of a classical tragedy, as King brings history
to cathartic life.
 4.
Procession
Director
Robert Greene is an objective observer of pain and trauma in Procession,
a stunning and empathetic documentary. The film follows six men, all of them
survivors of childhood sexual abuse by Catholic priests, attempting to find
catharsis by way of tell their stories through cinema. Essentially, all six men
write and direct a short scene, based directly on their abuse, the nightmares
that have haunted them for decades, or a hypothetical scenario in which they
would be able to say what they really wanted to say during an
"independent" review board meeting. The documentary follows each of
them—individually and, with a level of camaraderie that provides the film's
most powerful and affecting scenes, together—as the men write, prepare, stage,
and shoot these six short films. There is a heavy weight of responsibility on
multiple fronts here: Greene for the survivors, the survivors for themselves and
each other, and the need for these stories to be told.
The
basic idea is that the scenes themselves will allow these men to transform their
abstract thoughts and deeper feelings into something they can logically
comprehend. Whether or not that kind of catharsis is achieved in that specific
way is irrelevant for us. It belongs to these men, and Greene is respectful
enough to allow his subjects that degree of privacy. The film allows us to see
these survivors working and moving toward that goal, and it's the sense of unity
in pain and in healing that ultimately matters here.
 3.
Summer
of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)
The
culture and history of the summer of 1969 have come to be defined by two events:
Woodstock and the Apollo 11 moon landing. Before the former and as the latter
was unfolding, another significant event was and had been unfolding. The Harlem
Cultural Festival, an ambitious series of concerts, ran for six consecutive
Sundays in the neighborhood's Mount Morris Park and featured a wealth of talent.
The entire series of concerts, featuring Black artists and musical groups and
comedians and activists, was recorded, but nobody seemed interested in doing
anything with the extensive footage. Summer
of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised), the debut
feature of Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson, gives the festival its place in
history.
This
is a documentary of supreme joy—for the art and power of performance, the
atmosphere of a massive and fully invested gathering, and the recollection and
validation of an event that was seemingly lost to time and societal
knowledge—and thorough inspection. In terms of concert footage alone, the film
is a triumph. Thompson, fully aware of the treasure trove of talent to which he
has access (including—but definitely not limited to—Stevie Wonder, Nina
Simone, Sly and the Family Stone, and Gladys Knight), simply allows many of
these performances to unfold, uninterrupted and without commentary. The
filmmaker, a musician himself, also brings knowledge and passion for musical
history, theory, and technique through thoughtful interviews. The film is an act
of remembrance, analysis, and love for a time, a culture, and, of course, music.
 2.
The
Power of the Dog
Initially,
the story of The Power of the Dog seems like the stuff of melodrama.
Writer/director Jane Campion, though, shatters those expectations, as she subtly
but clearly continues to define and re-define these characters. The story comes
from a 1967 novel by Thomas Savage, and the film retains that novelistic sense
of becoming steeped in the lives and thoughts of its characters. Here, we meet a
quartet of figures, living and making the best of what upbringing and fate have
given them in 1920s Montana. By the end, we come to understand each of them on
an uncomfortably intimate but profound level.
Benedict
Cumberbatch, in an exceptional performance that deconstructs the
rough-and-tumble exterior of a cruel man, stars as Phil, a cowboy who runs a
ranch with his dull but compassionate brother George (Jesse Plemons). George
marries Rose (Kirsten Dunst) and becomes a stepfather to her delicate son Peter
(Kodi Smit-McPhee). Phil sets out to destroy her in a calculated way. All of
these characters are, to one degree or another, larger-than-life figures.
Campion's determination to ensure that we comprehend and, as unlikely as it may
seem, sympathize with every single one of them, though, grounds each of them as
fully human—frail and fragile and tragic.
Indeed,
the story here is a tragedy although one would be hard-pressed to identify the
actual tragedy of this tale from the start. That's another of the film's
strengths—the way it allows these characters, their pasts, their secrets, and
their unspoken longings to define what the story is and what it actually means.
Campion's incisive and increasingly sensitive direction makes this an
exquisitely crafted and generally superb character study.
 1.
Nine Days
The
introduction to writer/director Edson Oda's Nine
Days involves a man, living in a house in the middle of seemingly endless
desert, watching television. There's a mystery here, but Oda has far greater
mysteries in mind for this story—about the foundational elements of the
consciousness or the soul, the notions of morality and ethics, grieving both the
way of the world and not feeling a part of it, and what, if anything, actually
constitutes a good life, lived well and with some form of goodness. This is a
remarkable debut feature and the best film of 2021.
The
central gimmick involves a kind of pre-life, which also serves as something of
an afterlife for souls such as the man we meet. His name is Will (Winston Duke,
in a beautifully internalized performance, gradually revealing depths of regret
and anguish), a soul that once experienced life. When there's a
"vacancy" in the mortal realm, Will's job is that of an interviewer,
who tests newborn souls.
The
premise here is inventive, but Oda's approach makes it ingenious and gives the
entire film its undeniable sense of philosophical, psychological, and emotional
vigor. His design style is completely minimalistic, and his dramatic aims are
fully set within realism. Will interviews new souls (Bill Skarsgärd and a
wonderful Zazie Beetz are among the actors in those roles), probing them with
ethical questions and forcing them—and us—to consider what gives meaning to
a life.
This
is a film of subtle and specific power. It's an allegorical fantasy that
transcends both allegory and fantasy by fully investing itself in its
characters, allowing them to become the story, the message, and the meaning of
this inspired, empathetic film.
Honorable Mention:
C'mon
C'mon, CODA, Drive
My Car, Found, The
Harder They Fall, A Hero, In
the Same Breath, Kurt
Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time, The Lost Daughter, Raya
and the Last Dragon, Red
Rocket, The Rescue,
The Tragedy of Macbeth, West Side Story, The
White Tiger
Copyright © 20 21 by Mark Dujsik. All
rights reserved.
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