While I was filling out some information on Facebook, I came across the favorites section, and naturally, they have a section where I get to list my favorite movies. Neat! right? Well, it turned out to be a lot harder than I thought. There is just an abundance of great movies out there and leaving any of them out would somehow imply that they’re any worse than the ones who made it on the list. If I am going to show my appreciation of all these films, I need more space than the tiny box on Facebook. I need some place where I can write whatever I am with no restriction. If only I had… like a blog… or something.
If I were asked the same question five years ago, I would have eagerly answered Fight Club, Donnie Darko, and Memento. They’re mostly these mind-fuck thrillers (pardon my French). Since then, however, I have seen and loved hundreds of other films.
Throughout the history of cinema, there are a number of greats ranging from classics such as, but not limited to, Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, Dancing in the Rain, Some Like it Hot, to pretty much all of Spielberg’s and Lucas’s flimography. They’re beautifully executed and presented, and while I acknowledge their contributions to cinema and their mastery of the medium, I also feel that they are of very little relevance to the world of cinema.
Allow me to explain.
Film is an art. No matter how you spin it, you can’t ignore that films have their foundations rooted deeply in art, though your definition of art would most certainly differ from mine. You see, I have this romanticized notion of what it means to be an artist, that an artist’s ultimate goal is self expression, and the resulting art is the medium of this expression. Even in the case of creative writing and poetry, art comes from the implicit ideology and subtext rather than direct denotation of language. Of course, no immutable meaning can be ever held since they are interpreted based on the state of an individual’s social conditioning and upbringing. This would make the creation of art a rather personal affair, such that when an idea is overrepresented, it loses its meaning, therefore creativity and originality is of utmost concern.
But film is also a commodity, with its value realized with sales at the box office. For the past century, the film industry has coexisted in this fine balance of commerce and art, with enough anecdotes to persuade that leaning too far towards any one direction can be disastrous.
There were those who made films for the public, and then there were those who made films for themselves. Though there are many in the first category who are extremely talented, the films that I am most inspired and connected with come from the latter. These filmmakers are what are generally considered, pardon my french, the auteurs.
The camera to an auteur is as a pen to a writer (or keyboard for those poor kids who will never need to use a pen). The film is the product shaped by a collective effort through the auteur’s vision. Andrew Sarris has written extensively on this subject, and he has derived a more specific definition of auteur in “Notes on the Auteur Theory in 1962″.
1. The director must possess the technical abilities of film making.
2. There must be consistent ideas or motifs throughout the body of the director’s work.
3. The director’s work must display something ambiguous that can only be expressed through film. Astruc (some french dude) calls this mise-en-scene.
Going back to the original question: What are my favorite movies? I guess films made by those whom I deem fit the model of an auteur, starting from the origin of auteur theory, the films of the French New Wave movement. Here, filmmakers such as Godard and Truffaut made a conscious decision to reject the status quo of then contemporary cinema trends, introducing a completely new aesthetic. In Italy, there is Rossellini and Fellini. Elsewhere in Europe, figures such as, Bergman, Bresson, and Buneul emerged. In asia, there is Ozu, Kurosawa, Ray, and the fifth generation Chinese directors. In America, we have Coppola, Altman, De Palma, Stone, Woody Allen, Ridley Scott, Scorsese, Gilliam (he made enough films in America) and Lynch.
And then there are the relatively younger (and more alive) group of filmmakers whose careers took off in the 90′s. (some overlap with the group mentioned above, so I won’t mention them again) These auteurs are responsible for the most memorable of my favorite films. They include Darren Aronofsky, P.T. Anderson, Danny Boyle, the Coen brothers, Sofia Coppola, Alfonso Cuaron, David Fincher, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Paul Greengrass, Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, Richard Kelly (who probably can’t be considered an autuer yet considering his limited body of work, but I love Donnie Darko too much to leave him out), Spike Lee, Kevin Smith, Quentin Tarantino (the writer more than the director), Tom Tykwer, Steven Soderbergh, and Richard Linklatter.
So perhaps citing my influences Isn’t as hard as I made it out to be. As long as the filmmakers really have something to say, will do whatever it takes to say it, and on every step of the way, ask themselves if they’re staying true to this message, I will be more than ecstatic to see their films.
