Note: Number ten under decade refers to Werner Herzog’s 2001 film, not the Mark Whalberg football movie.

Best films of the year:

1. 1. Antichrist
2. 2. A Serious Man
3. 3. Ponyo
4. 4. Two Lovers
5. 5. Up in the Air
6. 6. Sugar
7. 7. Tulpan
8. 8. Still Walking
9. 9. My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done
10. 10. Fantastic Mr. Fox

Best Films of the Decade:

1. 1. Synecdoche, New York
2. 2. There Will Be Blood
3. 3. A.I.: Artificial Intelligence
4. 4. Finding Nemo
5. 5. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
6. 6. City of God
7. 7. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
8. 8. The New World
9. 9. Antichrist
10. 10. Invincible

-Jason Bardin

In the film, this theme of suffering is expressed through the only two characters: a man (Willem Defoe) and his wife (Charlotte Gainsbourg); they are nameless in the film, but appropriately referred to as He and She in the credits. In the beginning, they are having sex, which brings about their son, as this act often does. They are still fornicating passionately well after he is born. They do this in super slow motion, black and white, where the cascading droplets in the shower are indistinguishable from the falling snow outside. While the lovers swoon, their son Nic, a toddler, falls out of the window, crashing, along with his teddy bear, to an immediate death. The parents will grieve, the mother in particular, who has a mental collapse at the funeral, blaming herself for her son’s death. But perhaps it wasn’t her fault. Nic sees his parents in coitus; the same two people, performing the same action that led to his own birth and life, and perhaps actively decides to leave this world. He climbs a table, knocking down statues of the three beggars as if to pronounce his escape from a world run by cruelty and misery where even an act of creation seems unnecessarily violent, and triumphantly takes his life, escaping the pain of misfortune that will soon overcome his lusty parents.

He is a therapist and at odds with his wife’s medical doctor’s insistence on pills to cure her depression. Instead he asks her to reveal what she fears the most, and she says the forest where they have a cottage. In his least wise decision, he forces her to return to the cottage. The forest is named Eden and it is here where Satan rules, where the trees produce not fruit but hailing acorns. Von Trier begins to distort reality almost immediately upon their arrival. Standard, well-balanced, medium shots are intercut with distant, shaky, hand held shots as if to suggest they are being watched. The frame distorts from time to time, suggesting a hallucinatory state; depression has taken over and paranoia has been firmly established. In the biblical Eden, God gives to man and woman dominance over the animals and plants. In von Trier’s Eden those animals and plants retaliate against their lords. The ground burns her feet and she fears the tall grass and a stream. While he is trying to sooth her at the hospital, the camera looms slowly over a plant in a water vase, which seems to encapsulate a world of terror and madness, foreshadowing everything to come. He has surreal interactions with animals; they seem to be both in cahoots and at war with each other. In one shot an army of militant ants devour a dead bird, yet in another it is revealed that a talking fox, a deer carrying a half delivered still born, and a violent raven all seem to be working together against the man, standing by each other staring menacingly at him. This talking fox says precisely two words: “Chaos reigns.” It’s not unusual in parabolic fiction for a fox to talk. Foxes appear throughout Aesop’s Fables and later in Medieval literature, most notable in the tales of Reynard the fox, who makes his most famous appearance as a character in Chaucer’s “The Nun’s Priest’s Tale.” Friedrich Nietzsche, in Twilight of the Idols, refers Reynard as a dialectician, in his discussion on Socrates. It is therefore appropriate that a fox should pronounce the mantra of life’s pain.

Most critics have casually dismissed Antichrist. They call the talking fox ridiculous and the sexual violence of the movie unpleasant and unnecessary. It seems that once a year the major critics band together to take down one challenging, prestigious film. This mode of action seems to be a way of proving to the general public that they have a common bond, that they too don’t like artsy films like Antichrist, which are about the meaning of life, and instead sell the public on easily digestible, but vapid and manipulating films like Slumdog Millionaire or this year’s Precious. Last year they cruelly took down Charlie Kaufman’s magnum opus Synecdoche, New York. This year they have their targets set on von Trier. A.O. Scott writes in the New York Times, “The scandal of ‘Antichrist’ is not that it is grisly or upsetting but that it is so ponderous, so conceptually thin and so dull.” Dull? Appreciate the film or despise it, it is anything but dull. Here we have a film that deals with the problem of biblical interpretations of woman, violent sexual mutilation, wild passionate sex, all of which are playing off themes concerning life in depression, in grief, in a state of nothing, where life has no meaning. Scott is using a common ploy. By calling a film that one does not like as thin and dull is an attempt to strip it of its power. This can often be embarrassing. In his review for the release of Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, New York Times film critic Bosley Crowther wrote, “This one is so thoroughly mystifying that we wonder whether Mr. Bergman himself knew what he was trying to say.”

Fyodor Dostoevsky writes in The Brothers Karamazov that, “If God does not exist everything would be possible,” which is proven by the mass circulation of A.O. Scott’s premature review. However, von Trier objects to Dostoevsky’s theory and instead marks that in the absence of God there is depression, desperation, and insanity, and without a guiding force outside that of the knowledge of men, of a therapist’s Freudian logic, there is not nothing; we are left to grieve.

-Jason Bardin

This is by no means a movie for children.  Max exists alone in a tumultuous world.  There are no other children.  He exists as a lonely entity without so much as a friend besides his mother (Catherine Keener).  Even she seems to grow tired of him after he attacks her while she’s sipping wine with an innocent suitor (Mark Ruffalo).  Max runs down the stairs in his ruffian monster costume, attacks his mother and bites her as she tries to pick him up.  She brings him into the kitchen, whereupon he roars, “Woman, feed me!”

Frustrated with those whom are deservingly angry with him, Max runs away.  He sails to a fantasy world, intended as an escape from the complex people of reality.  Unfortunately, the creatures that inhabit this new world become allegories for all the impenetrable people that inhabit the real world.  Max models them in his own image; unfortunately that means they are equally rage filled and bipolar.  The most important of these creatures is Carol (voiced by James Gandolfini).  He has the same wants, needs, and fears as Max.  We watch Carol pine over the loss of KW (voiced by Lauren Ambrose) with the same alternating dejection and wrath that Max has over the growing rift between him and his sister.  Max empathizes with Carol and inspires him to rediscover his own spirit of play.  As they grow closer and closer, Max grows to appreciate his natural talents more and more.  As Carol opens up to Max, the two explore their own insecurities with the general transience of childhood.  Carol is Max’s imaginary friend, created to have everything Max loves about himself.  Carol is Max’s projected feelings, and in their interactions Max gains a unique perspective on himself.

As the wild things play a game at Max’s suggestion, they begin hurling “dirt clods” at one another.  The inevitable conclusion brings to mind a common phrase heard by most children Max’s age: it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt.  The game culminates in Douglas the giant bird (voiced by Chris Cooper) having his arm ripped off by Carol. In this Chaotic proliferation, Max finally embraces the consequences of unbridled mayhem.  He finally understands that he is simply too free and too angry.  He is ungrateful, and he is in essence a spoiled child.  His sudden revelations create a natural divide between him and Carol, and Carol reacts as old Max would: he gets angry.  As Max flees the horrors that are himself, he longs for his old life.  He is capable of appreciating it now.  Eventually we see these same maturations in Carol, but they are still in the style of old Max: he roars, then he cries.  There is nothing in between.

It’s very common for something to be lost when a music video director attempts to direct a feature.  David Fincher’s first feature after directing Madonna is the incoherent mess that is Alien³.  Michel Gondry’s first feature after directing Björk was the sputtering Human Nature.  Some directors making the transition forget about character development (i.e. Tarsem Singh’s The Fall).  Others forget that they need occasional breaks in action (i.e. Michael Bay’s Bad Boys, The Rock, Armegeddon, Pearl Harbor, Bad Boys II, The Island, Transformers, Transformer 2). Where The Wild Things Are feels far too much like one of Jonze’s music videos.  Although visually stunning, it doesn’t allow viewers any time to stop and appreciate the visuals.  Oddly enough, Jonze’s first two films (Being John Malkovich and Adaptation.) are all-around great movies, but it’s beginning to seem that credit is entirely owed to their screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman.  In Where The Wild Things Are, Max doesn’t give so much as a second glance to any of the fantastical landscapes and structures surrounding him.  This perspective leaves the audience to also ignore them as commonplace.  Just as a music video must for lack of time adjust tone in a jarring shift, the movie approaches every emotional change with an uncomfortable abruptness.  While sudden tone shifts are certainly effective when used once or twice, their frequency in this movie give it a manic quality that virtually eliminates any emotion that isn’t as severe as it is sudden.  Both Max and his creatures cry and then roar, then fight, and then cry again.  There is never a break; there is no appreciative moment where the creatures look at each other with a subtle smile.  Each emotion is entirely explicit.  Kaufman and Eggers should know better.  Jonze’s Adaptation. emphasizes the subtle, unstated (and frustrating) love between brothers and Egger’s Away We Go shows a couple completely in love expressed entirely through casual conversation.  The wild things never stop saying, “I love you” or “I hate you.”  All the work made to create truly organic creatures is virtually destroyed by cardboard bipolar dialogue that would be more believably uttered by 6 year olds.  Hopefully Jonze will eventually adapt to the unique demands feature films.

But maybe this is all deliberate.  When the wild rumpus starts, the audience is swept into the free wheeling style of a contemporary Smirnoff commercial.  Jonze captures the joyful cadences of roughhousing in his directing.  This is probably his best skill as a director.  He creates extreme emotions.  Thinking about how most 10 year olds appreciate the world around them, it can be absolutely solely in these extreme emotions.  They have very little patience, and little to no desire to stop and appreciate the beauty that is life.  Is it the fault of the director that he so convincingly eliminates all pauses from life?  Isn’t he really just perfectly emulating the frustrating un-appreciativeness of this particular ten-year-old child?  Yes, it is irking to watch someone act with complete abandon, but if the perspective is true to the character, then is it truly at fault?

At heart, Where The Wild Things Are is a morality tale.  It is about self-discovery and growing up.  Reread Maurice Sendak’s book and you will discover that it and Jonze’s movie center around the same themes.  By exploring these themes of family and youthful ferocity further, Jonze has created a movie that is too complicated for kids, but too juvenile in its revelations for adults.

- Paul Brinnel

Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a Jewish physics professor, awaiting tenure at a Midwestern college in the late nineteen sixties, is having a bit of an existential crisis. His job is threatened and his wife (Sari Lennik) is asking for a divorce to marry their obnoxiously tender friend, Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed). Larry teaches Schrodinger’s paradox of the cat, which must be assumed to be both dead and alive. He teaches with zeal, a feeling unreciprocated by his students. He confesses to a failing South Korean student that he does not understand the paradox, but uses it like a fable to emphasize the concepts and theories. The prologue of the film is a Yiddish fable of a self-proclaimed rational man who invites an old man home for dinner. His skeptical wife claims that the old man is a dybbbuk, the Jewish equivalent of a zombie. Both fables, in science and folklore, allude to the idea of false perception. Larry’s fault is that he has no perception. Behind his thick glasses he can only observe the world in terms of facts like the mathematics he teaches, which attempts to explain the world in a logical manner. He stands on his roof to fix the antennae, and triumphantly surveys his neighborhood. His gaze is equally confused when he sees his redneck neighbors, father and son, playing catch, as when he sees his other neighbor, considerably more attractive, sunbathing nude. Not only are there fables, but dream sequences, and characters under the influence of narcotics. The Coen brothers are playing with the concept of reality to the point that we can hardly distinguish what is real and make believe. This makes the film akin to the bible, which proclaims to be fact, but mixes unfathomable fairy tale elements. The Midwest certainly is not Eden, but its not Sodom either.

 A Serious Man is a comedy of sorts. We laugh if only not to cry. Larry is an innocent man, trapped in a world he doesn’t understand, tormented by forces out of his control. He seeks spiritual advice from three rabbis, one more useless than the last. In fact, the only person who seems reasonable and honest is Larry’s divorce attorney. The score by Carter Burwell is of a deep and melancholic sadness, placing strong emphasis on the hopelessness of human existence. Yes, the film is a comedy, but that’s not a limitation. We never laugh at Larry, but only his surrounding world. When Larry’s brother cries out at night, wondering why God has given him nothing, there is not a hint of irony. When the film ends we leave battered and bruised. The film lingers as a tragedy, not a comedy. We recognize Larry Gopnik as ourselves, a useless, little cog in a world that doesn’t need us or want us. Amen.

-Jason Bardin

Brawne (Abby Cornish) is an early nineteenth century socialite. She dances with all the men and makes her own clothes, which are of a colorful, if not flattering, austerity. In talking about Brawne, the word ‘bright’ can only be used to refer to luminosity, not intelligence. She can’t even properly lie about her literary pursuits. When talking to Keats’s boorish friend Charles Brown (Paul Schneider), Brawne claims to have read all of The Canterbury Tales, The Odyssey, and Paradise Lost over the previous week. Falling in love with a Romantic poet is perhaps her most ill conceived notion of all. The lifespan of the Romantic poet was considerably short and they are not the most desired lovers. On one end of the spectrum you have Lord Byron, whose principle character, Don Juan, parallels his own lecherous sexual conquests. On the other end is John Keats, who is alluded to as a possible virgin. Keats confides to Brawne that women, including his mother, confuse him. By the time of his death at twenty-five, despite being engaged to Brawne, their relationship never progresses past a kiss. But what a kiss! The first kiss between Brawne and Keats is a moment of high erotic tension and power. They’re lying on the grass, Brawne is elevated above Keats, and their lips just connect. While not quite matching the moment in Campion’s The Piano when Harvey Kietel fingers a hole in Holly Hunter’s stocking, this bit of eroticism in Bright Star is still enough to shame most other films in their gratuitous, un-erotic use of nudity, which desensitizes our perception and appreciation for true pleasure and beauty.

The film succeeds the most during the limited portion of when the two are happily in love. Campion provides her boldest images in this sequence. Keats lying on top of a tree bathing in sunlight; a room full of butterflies that creates a poetic sense of elation. However, most of the film deals with Brawne in despair and Keats dying. Individual moments of story evaporate and the second half of the film becomes an exercise in tone, creating an indistinguishable narrative of utter despondency. The film, which promises to be an authentic recreation of love, becomes one of dread and loss, which is fine, and in doing so more or less succeeds, but it sacrifices narrative. Nothing notable happens in the second half of the film outside of some minor character development of Charles Brown. Keats is absent from the second half too, so we’re stuck with Cornish, who’s emotional range is limited to sad eyes and hysterics. Cornish needs Whishaw’s Keats to stabilize the film. Whishaw plays Keats not as any person or individual, but as the human embodiment of Keats’s poetry. He longingly looks into the sky, fails to express himself in simple emotions, and has the countenance of a dying puppy. In one scene, Keats, because of his lack of funds and resources, explains to Brawne that they cannot marry. Cornish’s crying reaches levels of histrionics, but the scene works because of the amount of thought behind Whishaw’s heartbroken eyes. Later, after Keats dies off-screen and Brawne is informed of her lover’s demise, she screams, and King Kong is nowhere to be found.

-Jason Bardin

The film’s main protgonist is Ric O’Barry. When we first meet him he appears a little paranoid: a man not to be trusted. He’s wearing a doctor’s mask on his face so as not to be detected by the local authorities in Taiji. From this initial impression, I developed an immediate cynical response to O’Barry as just another crazy left-wing lunatic. Later, when Taiji’s chief of police is tailing O’Barry’s van, my cynicism dissipated. As the film progresses, and we learn who O’Barry is and what he stands for, it becomes evident that O’Barry is brave for even being near Taiji and that his paranoia is justified, and perhaps too mild for his own safety. The trouble is that we don’t get enough of O’Barry. Here is a truly fascinating man. He trained the dolphins for the original Flipper, including his favorite, Cathy. However, he came to realize that it is cruel to harvest dolphins for entertainment, by manipulating them as slaves. He feels deep regret for having taken part in popularizing this form of punishment. He also keeps mentioning, in some sort of disgusting, ironic glee, that if he weren’t an activist out to save Dolphins, he could easily be making millions of dollars by capturing them.

What Psihoyos does get from O’Barry is a direct challenge to Aristotle. O’Barry insists that Cathy willingly committed suicide. He claims that dolphins are cursed with the appearance of always smiling so that we cannot detect their inner pain. The film makes a case that dolphins are potentially smarter than humans. They actively engage in fun and entertainment, understand sign language, and communicate with each other. This depiction of dolphins as being self-aware provides a significant level of empathy that contributes to the overall impact of the entire film.

Unfortunately, Psihoyos is not interested in a deep exploration of O’Barry’s inner psyche and life philosophy. He merely skims the surface of a complex human life. I believe that an opportunity has been missed. In the hands of a great documentarian like Errol Morris, O’Barry would become a film subject to rival the likes of Robert Crumb and Robert S. McNamara, providing a deep meditation on the human experience. Instead Psihoyos makes the same error as This Film Is Not Yet Rated. He centers the film on how their information was obtained. Just as This Film Is Not Yet Rated became more of a private detective procedural than an examination of the MPAA, The Cove settles for being a nighttime, espionage thriller. It’s a well done thriller, but it dilutes the purpose and distracts from important, and frankly more interesting, issues involving mercury content and Japan’s bribing of third world countries. To compliment the tone of a thriller, Psiyohos provides a standard, manipulative score, which both hypes the moments of suspense, and attempts to create tears out of the quiet, gentle passages. Ideally, the film doesn’t need a score at all. The images speak for themselves and what we lose are the sounds of nature. Using the theme song to Flipper proves to be an exquisite musical choice, as the more we hear it, the more grotesque and soulless that little melody becomes. But then Psihoyos uses “Smile” in a similar way. It’s not appropriate to potentially link Chaplin’s life affirming tune with the image of slaughtered dolphins. On the other hand, the use of David Bowie’s “Heroes” serves as the perfect note to end the film.

What makes The Cove special, transcending past the likes of An Inconvenient Truth and Fahrenheit 451 is the image of the slaughter. It’s a shocking, despairing scene: the fulfillment of God’s first plague on Egypt. A bold and striking depiction of the carnality of man. An almost unbearable spectacle, only made palatable by Ric O’Barry’s following coup, which represents hope, triumph and personal reassurance in the civility of the human race.

-Jason Bardin

Paul Giamatti has a wife (Emily Watson), but all we know about her is that she shares a bed with him and is at least somewhat concerned with his well-being.  Watson’s talents are completely wasted—the material written for her throughout this entire screenplay doesn’t allow her to do a fraction of what she was given in her small role in Synecdoche, New York.  Nina (Dina Korzun) is called a “mule” because her job is to serve as a host for souls and smuggle them from Russia to the U.S.  For a woman who has experienced so many souls, she has a shocking lack of insight into the human condition, and the most interesting thing she does is put little stickers on her fingers so that she can get past a bioscan at customs.  Dr. Flintstein (David Strathairn) runs the soul-swapping business and gets in a few good lines, but he doesn’t leave much of an impression in your mind when he’s not in a scene or after the movie is over.  Oleg (Boris Kievsky) is the leader of the Russian smuggling business, and his wife Sveta (Katheryn Winnick) is a star in Russian soaps.  Both behave exactly as you’d expect them to.

Especially given the ample creative opportunities granted by a script that deals with souls, the movie’s visuals fail to hold the viewer’s interest.  When she wants to get emotion out of the camera, director Sophie Barthes rapidly brings it out of focus and then back into focus.  Getting your soul sucked out looks an awful lot like getting an MRI.  When we do get a brief glimpse at Giamatti’s inner soul, all we get are some images of mother and child and strange, powdered white creepy-looking people.  I had no emotional or intellectual response to these images to speak of.  If you did, please comment and tell me what I was missing.

The plot is as follows: Giamatti’s soul is stolen and taken to Russia, and then he goes to Russia and retrieves it.  That’s all there is to it.  While movies can certainly succeed without intricate plots, this one drags horribly.  Still, this movie had its moments.

A fine short could have been made out of Giamatti’s first scene with Dr. Flintstein and his performance of Vanya while soulless.  Gags and one-liners give these scenes a zaniness that the rest of the movie lacks.  Jokes include a soul that looks like a chickpea, two lovers who are excited that their souls will be stored together, fear of a soul being sent to New Jersey for storage, and the ridiculous contrasts between performances of Vanya with and without various souls.  While I think you’d enjoy watching this short if it is ever made, this handful of scenes cannot hold up the rest.

-Robert Henderson

The year is 1969, and Elliot Teichberg (Demetri Martin) is trying to help his Jewish parents, Jake and Sonia (Henry Goodman & Imelda Staunton) save their dilapidated Catskill motel from being foreclosed.  Jake and Sonia clomp around their property with a disdain for the lifestyle they have chosen to lead.  They both hate their business, and there’s never any clear motivation on any character’s part as to why they didn’t sell the old place years ago and make a living doing something that they both don’t utterly despise.  Then some rather uninteresting things happen, all of which laying a path for Elliot to act as a middleman in getting the Woodstock Music Festival moved to Bethel, NY.  The festival that was supposed to have a little over a hundred thousand attendees quickly has half a million.  Throughout this, we are only privy to Elliot’s experience at the festival (after all, this is based on a memoir).  The memoir is supposed to explore the complexities of leading a double life as a Greenwich Village gay-rights advocate and a straight businessman in the conservative town of Bethel.  The movie virtually ignores this entire theme, with the exception of a minor romantic subplot that has no impact on any other events in the story.

The first half of the film exists solely to establish a range of clichés.  First there are Elliot’s decidedly Jewish parents, an old married couple virtually incapable of showing any affection for anyone.  In one not particularly memorable scene Elliot’s mom extrapolates on life after potential foreclosure with the line: “And then on goes the gas!”  It’s moments like this that complete her Seinfeld-esque transformation into the archetype Jewish parent.  Next we meet Elliot’s childhood acquaintance, Billy (Emile Hirsch), the ex-Vietnam vet who has sporadic (yet somewhat comical) flashbacks.  He spouts such indelible insights as “over in Nam I’m fuckin’ normal!”  There’s also the “variety” of Bethel townspeople, who all seem to hold the same predictable opinions, and act at all times with a terribly un-endearing mob mentality.  There’s the group of cliché hippies running the festival, and their accompanying suits who seem to do little more than carry briefcases and stand in clusters.  It would be nice if the movie went on to force these varied groups to unite and hopefully learn to appreciate one another; a pity no such thing happens.  There might be a single uniting of unlikely characters alluded to, but nothing such happens on-screen.

The main issue with this film is its floundering of purpose.  It’s a movie about Woodstock that never makes it to the festival.  It’s a film about a closeted homosexual that never quite has to deal with coming out.  It’s a movie about a family learning to trust one another for profit.  It’s nearly two hours about varied groups doing nothing with any apparent variety.  Essentially, this movie is about an incredible event, told in a painfully un-incredible way.

It’s a given that any film about the 1969 Woodstock Festival is going to take a lot from the definitive film account of the festival, Michael Wadleigh’s 1970 documentary, Woodstock.  Where Taking Woodstock tries to be about the impact of the festival on one person and his direct acquaintances, Woodstock is a direct account of the festival itself.  Ang Lee has done homage to this nearly 40-year-old film foremost in his cinematography.  While Wadleigh used split screen as a means to emphasize the diverse experiences all happening simultaneously at the festival, Lee has opted for this “multi-ring circus” concept instead as a mean of convoluting the point of view of his lead character.  Woodstock had multiple cameramen shooting multiple actions from multiple angles, therefore split-screens make absolute sense.  Taking Woodstock is about a single person’s perspective, yet split screens persist, seemingly giving Elliot several consciousnesses, all gawking at different things simultaneously.

Lee also has stuck in a few recreations of specific events depicted by Wadleigh.  Sometimes he is just content to show a recognizable image in the background (i.e. a nun giving a piece sign to a cameraman).  These moments aren’t obtrusive, and act as fun “easter eggs” for those familiar with the 1970 film.  There are other times, however, where Lee takes a piece of Wadleigh’s imagery, and attempts to inject additional meaning into it by having a character explain its personal significance.  Before Billy slides down the famous muddy hill, he explains to Elliot how this hill has been a reoccurring object in his life.  His explanation coupled with his proclamation, “I love this hill!” seem to devalue all of the other attendees similar enjoyment of said hill.  This moment isn’t one about sharing an experience with likeminded people— it has been debased so that only Billy seems to have a reason to feel something.  These isolating moments fall one after another, culminating in Elliot’s acid trip in the back of a stranger’s van.  Elliot never bonds with his fellow trippers, or any other specific people.  He exists as a narrator that doesn’t participate in the grand point of the festival.  The emphasis of Woodstock has ceased to be one of togetherness; Lee has ignored the ultimate point of the festival and instead made a movie about vague personal growth.

-Paul Brinnel

The eponymous character is a humanoid fish, I suppose. One of the wonderful delights in the mythology that Miyazaki has created in this film is that hardly anything is explained. Ponyo’s father, Fujimoto (the voice of Liam Neeson), used to be human but now lives in the sea, guarding and using the magical elixirs that balance the forces of nature. Ponyo’s mother, Gran Mamare (Cate Blanchett), is a beautiful, mystical giantess who glides through the waters. Ponyo (Noah Cyrus) appears to be their eldest daughter and after her there are hundreds of tinier humanoid fish, who look like Ponyo, except with underdeveloped faces. That’s about all of the explanation we get concerning the undersea world. The images are so vibrant and the tone is so lilting that tidy explanations seem perfunctory. After all, background mythology really only obscures the material and condescends. Take Tolkien’s The Silmarillion or all of the excess material revolving around the Star Wars franchise, including the prequels. Those works are supposed to enhance one’s appreciation of the main work, being the original Star Wars films or The Lord of the Rings, but instead lessens one’s appreciation for those works because the universe in which the characters resides becomes more important and complicated than the characters’ emotional and psychical journeys, which appear more simple as their surrounding universe expands. Detailed descriptions of undersea mysticism are less important to Miyazaki than the deeply emotional and subtly profound relationship between Ponyo and Sosuke.

Sosuke (Frankie Jonas) is a five-year old human boy who lives with his mother in a house on a hill. He finds Ponyo, as a goldfish, trapped in a jar. He immediately has a connection with this strange looking fish, and vows to care for her. He protects her and feeds her ham, which begins an insatiable addiction to pork, and truly loves her. Ponyo, as a goldfish, provides instant karma both to a vain little girl and a cynical old woman. She squirts water in both of their faces, causing physical and psychological damage, respectively.  Those two incidents map out the course of a human life. The obnoxiously intrusive little girl who bothers Sosuke at school will one day become, more or less, like the cynical old woman, Toki (Lily Tomlin), who lives at the geriatric home where Sosuke’s mother, Lisa (Tiny Fey), works.

Lisa is an incredible woman. She’s smart, attractive and attentive. In most films about young children the parents are often portrayed as cynical and stupid because they are not as naïve or innocent as their child, including Miyazaki’s own Spirited Away, where the oblivious, gluttonous parents are literally transformed into pigs. Lisa is fearless and open-minded. Bravely, she drives her car through a tsunami-like storm, and when she discovers that Ponyo the goldfish has transformed into a human girl she bypasses the standard routine of denial and immediately explains to Ponyo and Sosuke that, “life is mysterious and amazing.” Fujimoto is the antithesis of Lisa. Ponyo alludes to her father as an evil wizard who hates humans. Fujimoto is not shy about his hatred toward humans, referring to them as “empty, black souls.” He also curses the humans for their lack of environmental consideration (the relationship between mankind and nature is not the main theme of this film as it was in Princess Mononoke, but is prevalent in subtle ways as it was in My Neighbor Totoro). As far as being an evil wizard, Fujimoto is possibly the most inept magician since Mickey donned the sorcerer’s hat in Fantasia. He’s easily insulted and distracted as when Lisa accuses him of using weed killer, and he begins to defend himself instead of rescuing Ponyo. His own daughters routinely thwart his plans to take Ponyo back from Sosuke. Underwater he needs the protection of an air bubble, but on land he has to spray himself with water. The door protecting his elixirs that maintains the balance of nature is broken, and he keeps forgetting to fix it. He can barely get the attention of a group of elderly woman, but then again, his colorful pinstriped suits don’t exactly make a threatening statement. He even wants a return to the Cambrian age. What a human would do during the Cambrian age is beyond my knowledge. His wife is a bit more sensible, relishing the unbalanced state of nature as a return to the Devonian age, the age of fish. Fujimoto an evil wizard? He’s more like a classically trained vaudevillian.

The most beautiful, lyrical, and humorous passages of Ponyo occur when Ponyo is discovering the human world, and when Ponyo and Sosuke travel to look for Sosuke’s mother. Sosuke maintains his bond to protect Ponyo even when his own life appears to be falling apart. He is a wise, perceptible and mature child, which is dutifully acknowledged by his mother. The love between Sosuke and Ponyo is pure and innocent. The first words we hear Ponyo say are “Ponyo loves Sosuke!”

There is a visual grandeur that appropriately matches the emotional landscape of the characters. In his last three films, Miyazaki used the assistance of computers, which was appropriate in creating a sharper-edged look and sense of speed for those more action oriented films. Miyazaki has abandoned all technology and it suits the film fine. There is a rustic, genuine quality to the film. The pastel colors of the film, which are truly magnificent, are able to blend into one another. There is a painterly quality to the animation that is a wonder to behold. The combinations of pinks and blues open new passageways into the mind’s imagination. Miyazaki has crafted yet another masterpiece that is both visually beautiful and emotionally profound, and all I can think to say is…Jason loves Ponyo!

-Jason Bardin

Sérephine (based on painter Sérephine Louis) keeps a careful guard over her inner life so that she can work as a maid in a boarding house without calling attention to herself.  Her biggest complaint about her job isn’t that it’s strenuous and demeaning, but that it takes up so much of her time.  She wants more time to climb trees, pick flowers, and most of all, to paint frantically late into the night. Wilhelm Ulde (Ulrich Tukur, also based on a real person), who stays in the boarding house, also tries to keep a low profile so that he can have some peace.  Parisian socialites fawn over him because he’s the art dealer who discovered Rousseau and Picasso.  Less sophisticated folks taunt him because he’s German.  Germans won’t accept him for being gay.

Sérephine and Wilhelm can fool everyone but each other. When they first meet, Wilhelm takes a very brief glance at Sérephine’s ankle, almost as if he were aroused by her.  Willhelm tries to get to know Sérephine better and she also seems curious about him, but the social barriers are too strong to overcome.  He tries to make conversation, and she keeps answers as short and obedient as she can.  When he finds out that she’s an artist and sees her work, he thinks that she can become a famous artist in the “naïve” untrained style.  He somehow knows that her paintings of plants have been inspired by past misfortune.  He grows upset with her in a very master of the house kind of way, and sits her down for a lecture.  When he realizes that he is quite literally talking down to her, he bends down, looks up at her, and continuous to talk condescendingly.

Both the boarding house and the woods lack electric light, and there seems to be a clue in every corner, behind every shadow.  As she cleans Wilhelm’s room, Sérephine uncovers the books, papers, and drawings that mark him as at least an intellectual, if not an artist.  While Wilhelm doesn’t hug and sing to trees like Sérephine, he takes a stroll, and finds her bathing in a stream deep in the woods.  These silent moments of discovery, are when the relationship between Wilhelm and Sérephine is at its best.  As a side note, I hate how the word “relationship” has become so heavily associated with romantic relationships.  A romantic relationship ought to be called a “romance”—it sounds much nicer, and it frees up the word “relationship” to describe what there is between Wilhelm and Sérephine, who are very close to each other but are neither friends nor lovers.

Sérephine is a lot of what I wish I could be.  She is simple but wise.  She is a steadfast believer in the God of the Bible.  She is in touch with nature.  And most of all, she is an artistic genius.  As Wilhelm becomes her patron and moves her to Paris, part of me wants her to continue scrubbing floors in obscurity, as if the purpose of her life were to live out my bourgeois fantasy of the starving artist’s life.  This is an unfair expectation.

As A.O. Scott points out in his review, a story about an artist’s response to success runs a huge risk of not saying anything new, but this one does.  Sérephine does have her time in the spotlight, but it’s the type of short stint that makes someone hungry for more attention but only able to get it from oneself.  At first I thought that Sérephine’s newfound self-love was overemphasized.  Her quiet, charming hymns sung to herself become booming off-key oratorios that everyone in the house can hear.  Her thankfulness to God for inspiring her becomes a love of herself for being the inspired one.  She stops making her own paints.  She begins to strike poses, looking the way she thinks an artist should look.  She wants a big house, fancy things, and servants of her own.  Her transformation may seem too extreme to be believable, but this is only because she hasn’t completely lost herself.  When compared with the arrogance expressed by Wilhelm and his protégé/lover Helmut (Nico Rogner), we find that Sérephine’s arrogance lacks nuance because it’s unnatural for her.  No matter how much she changes, she can never get to the point at which she can get lost in it and start spewing nonsense like Wilhelm’s “I sell to collect.  I don’t collect to sell” or Helmut’s “I don’t care about fame—that’s for after I’m dead.”  But neither can she return to her naïveté.  I want to say that she’s been corrupted but I can’t.  Wilhelm may be a bit full of himself, but he treats her very well, providing her with whatever she needs both for her work and for her personal satisfaction.  She may not have been hurt or corrupted, but she has been put into a situation in which there’s nowhere for her to bare her soul with that ambiguous stare.

-Robert Henderson