In the first edition of the year-end program Jump-Cut, Anuj Malhotra elaborates on a personal Top 10 films of the decade, and turns the first page in the diary of the manic cinephile. This feature to be updated as the IA cinephiles

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# 1

10) Let the Right One In(2008) Dir:Tomas Alfredson, Sweden

Exceptional is subversion of the formulaic love story between a fairy and a normal human, that transcends minor issues of eras and time periods, that culminates in an assured reunion at the end. It takes all of these tropes and twists them in a manner that the vampire story is no longer just a vampire story. That Alfredson places it in a Swedish town somewhere that like its topography, is frigid and unwelcoming to outsiders, often bullying them into literal captivity or a human one, is a feature of the film that permits it another level of greatness altogether.

9)Deep in the Valley(2009) Dir : Atsushi Funahashi, Japan

A digital video that is a bow to the medium of film. It is the realization of an artist of his defeat by the beauty of the tradition of his own medium, its acknowledgement and its celebration; all rolled into one. It is a contemplation on the nature of cinema that is a filmic manifestation of Bazin’s The Ontology of the Photographic Image, and is, in its results, as potent a statement on cinematic form as The Man with a Movie Camera or Presents.

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead (2007) Dir : Sidney Lumet, USA

And we are happy to announce that the legend hasn’t lost it. His film is an unremitting and unforgiving depiction of the frailty and feebleness of human greed. It is not as much a statement on humanity, as it is on its complete imperfection. It is as great a tribute to the force called circumstance as will ever be committed to film. It is a film less about failure as about how the forces conspire to bring it about. By relocating the jigsaw pieces of the traditional bank heist film, Lumet ensures that it is not a crime caper that you watch, but a tragedy. In the world of his film, no one is a criminal, but everyone is a victim; at the hands of fate.

8)  Elephant(2003) Dir:Gus Van Sant, USA

When violence is exempt from a moral dilemma, when it is only one in a series of activities that take place in a high school, when it soaks into the daily routine, or when it is deemed as being as normal as a bespectacled girl walking between the aisles created by library racks, a boy walking alongside a girl, and students queuing up in the cafeteria for daily lunch; then what do we have to hold onto? What elaboration do we then rely on to proclaim the distinction between right and wrong? Van Sant tells us not to bother with moral indictments of the trivial sorts. His film is an anti-thesis of the media that seeks its sadistic pleasure in delivering conclusive enunciation of popular sentiments. He does not attach a stigma to an incident that is still a wound in many memories. He attaches a serenity to it. And stops just short of sympathizing with the shooters, instead presenting them as being as conflicted as any other elephant in the room.

7) Finding Nemo(2003)  Dir:Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich, USA

And they talk of immersion; they talk of the creation of an alternative universe – but there universe is one where the aliens behave like humans, and not like aliens. Here, they do not. We are asked to get endeared to fishes. We do. Yes, it is a simple film with a simple message; but when the message is allowed to recede in the deepest recesses of the ocean in favour of the central cause; that of a being discovering its ability to discover, of losing its eternal suspicion of the entire world, of the eventual placement of its trust in the oddities of the world – we know it is a great film. Pixar peaks with it. And go uphill since.

6) 4 Months, Three Days and 2 Weeks(2007)  Dir:Cristian Mungiu, Romania

Rarely is a film as much an act of absolution, as much an act of exemption, as much an act of forgiveness as this one. Rarely is a film all that without being sympathetic or condescending. Rarely does a film renounce a position from which it can absolve, exempt, forgive or sympathise. It is a great story of relentless humanity that thankfully, does not seek moral or spiritual returns. Otilia is not humane for she seeks gratitude. She is humane because she is human.

5) Spirited Away(2002) Dir:Hayao Miyazaki, Japan

To call Spirited Away a message oriented film is as great a disservice as calling the Eiffel Tower a cantilever; because above all, it is a work of a great artist – scientific categorization may be applied later, but not now. That Miyazaki is an artist of the old-school type, for whom the paper is his mistress and the tips of his fingers are bristles is a fact we all know. That Spirited Away is not a series of drawings, but a series of caresses; not an admission of genius but an admission of love tattooed on the body of the mistress is something we will know in due course of time.

4) Hazaron Khwaishen Aisi(2005) Dir: Sudhir Mishra,  India

One may be at a shortage to ascribe one word of description to a film, the greatest statements of which are hushed whispers, and the most harsh melodrama of which are feeble touches – it is handled by master director Mishra with a touch as delicate and cautious as that of a man who walks in a dynamite factory with burnt matches in his hand. And yet, if one were compelled to find such a word – it would have to be volatile. The greatest love story this side of Aandhi. Volatile, and yet so delicate. So vulgar, and yet so sensory. The film about a period which documents have almost been unkind to – until this film came about. No other film maybe a more telling study of an India that remains divided between forward-looking capitalism, and mistaken idealism. A sequel to Garam Hawa.

3)Cidade De Deus(2002) Dir:Fernando Meirelles, Kátia Lund, Brazil

It is at once the evocation of some of cinema’s greatest classics, borrowing its atmosphere from Goodfellas , its violence from Mean Streets and The Wild Bunch and its narrative structure from The Killing; and unique, in its almost too particularistic focus, that has as its subject a Brazilian favela where the film lives its entire life. At the end of it, as the central protagonist, the photographer clicks photos of the murdered gang leaders, you cannot but be amused at the irony of it all – he seeks to preserve the memories of a past that will most definitely be replicated in the future.

2) Oldboy(2003) Dir : Chan-wook Park, South Korea

The most gloriously constructed cinematic epic of the generation, which like the film that follows, is a sweeping swipe at the fallacy called obsession – the subject of the obsession being the feeling of vendetta. It is a feeling that is unceasingly and unyieldingly depressing, as it consistently rebukes the point of its own central narrative, and almost functions as a film that is in a constant state of argument against its own characters. It is almost sadistic, for it declares the very point of its leads’ existence futile, and unlike the greener predecessor in the trilogy, Sympathy of Mr.Vengeance, attaches no redemption with revenge.

1) There Will Be Blood(2007) Dir : Paul Thomas Anderson, USA

A worthy successor to the Sergio Leone masterpiece, Once Upon a Time in America, as a film that is so brutal and unrelenting in its attack on the perils of capitalism. The film is rendered political by the era in which it is produced. Helmed by the greatest film director alive, Paul Thomas Anderson, the film is at once a political statement, an indictment, a tragedy about human greed, and the most elaborate picture of narcissistic obsession since Aguirre. It also features the best wide pans this side of Ritwik Ghatak, and the greatest acting performance of the new millennium at its center.

Tags: Decade, Jumpcut, Top -10

Posted By Anuj | Monday, December 28th, 2009 | Filed under Film Education, News