BEST FILMS OF THE 2000s

The best way to appreciate the lasting power of a film is to see if it withstands the test of time. With that being said, now that more then a decade has passed since the first decade of the twenty-first century, here are my choices for the best films of the 2000s:

1. Love Exposure (Sion Sono)

With Love Exposure, Sion Sono reached a delirious peak in his already electic career. While his previous films such as Strange Circus and Suicice Club delved in the nihilistic realm of brutal degradation, Love Exposure was his first original film to offer a glimpse of hope in the essential benevolence of human nature. Over its almost four hour runtime, Love Exposure careens wildly from one genre to another, and the viewer can feel the passion of Sono in every single frame of this stunning masterpiece.  

2. 2046 (Wong Kar-wai)

2046 is the culmination of Wong Kar-wai's fruitful collaboration with the cinematographer Christopher Doyle. With its labyrinthian plot and aesthetically astonishing set pieces and lighting, 2046 takes all the thematic and visual elements that Wong and Doyle have been working on and honing in their previous films together, and brings it to a masterful level of cinematic brillance. In a way, 2046 plays like a greatest hits collection on Wong's prior films, but it works on its own as a singular vision and meditation on the elusive search for human connection that pervades all of existence.    

3. Devils on the Doorstep (Jiang Wen)

In mainland China, Jiang Wen is a very popular and successful actor, but he has also had an equally impressive career as a filmmaker. His film Devils on the Doorstep is a Fellini-esque dark comedy that was controversial in China due to what was deemed as its too lenient portrayal of the Japanese occupiers in World War II China. However, Wen didn't set out to make a one-sided propaganda war film depicting the Japanese side as cartoonish villains; instead he created a complex and caustic satire of the follies of war during a turbulent time in China's history.

4. Election/Triad Election (Johnnie To)

Although they were released as two separate films, Johnnie To's Election and Triad Election actually comprise a single, epic portrayal of the rise and fall of a Hong Kong Triad empire. In a sense, Election/Triad Election are the Hong Kong equivalent of the Godfather films, as it is the muti-generational story of the intricate power struggles within a mafia clan, and their legal and illegal business dealings. To has created a sweeping, gritty and realistic gangster epic that is not only about action set pieces and elaborate shoot-outs, but about the actual human components of a mafia family and their personal and intimate lives throughout the years.

5. Munich (Steven Spielberg)

Steven Spielberg is best as an instinctive filmmaker dealing with subject matters of primal urges, and this is reflected perfectly in the astonishingly effective thriller Munich. Taking a balanced perspective on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Munich moves at a breakneck pace through an at times unreletingly grim story of bloody vengeance. The violence in Munich is shocking and visceral, and Spielberg portrays each death in the film in such a horrific manner to show how ultimately futile the cycle of revenge-based violence is.

6. Summer Palace (Lou Ye)

Lou Ye's Summer Palace reminds one of Philip Kaufman's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, as both films are about how devastating historical events affect the lives of a close-knit group of friends and lovers. Summer Palace deals specifically with a group of young revolutionaries whose lives are torn apart after the infamous Tiananmen Square protests of the late 1980s. Like The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which dealt with the late 1960s Prague Spring protests, Summer Palalce is a sweeping and powerfully moving portrait of how a single historical event permanently altered the lives of a whole generation. Lou Ye depicts the more optimistic and ebullient pre-Tinanmen Square protest lives of the group of young college students, and fills the screen with scenes of lively political discourse and amorous sexual experimentation. Then, the rest of Summer Palace follows these same students as they struggle to adjust to life in China in the subsequent 1990s and into the 2000s; although they have aged at this point, they still never forgot the youthful idealism that permeated their brighter, more hopeful years.

7. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (Wes Anderson)

It might not be a perfect film as at times one gets the sense that Wes Anderson struggled to portray on-screen his intended vision, but The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is perhaps Anderson's most ambitious and visually complex film so far. Its rogues' gallery of eccentric characters and outlaws, along with the various cladestine societies that they belong to, recalls the equally creatively labyrinthian narratives of Thomas Pynchon. It is this shaggy, filled to the brim quality that makes The Life Aquatic such an endearing and admirably Byzantine work of art.

8. On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate (Hong Sang-soo)

Early in his career, Hong Sang-soo was still experimenting with the cinematic medium to explore how best to implement his improvisational style of filmmaking. His first triumph in finding his voice with was the alternately hilarious and emotionally wrenching On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate. Like Hong's later films, On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate deals with the eternally complicated amorous relationships between women and men. Although he would go on to make even more accomplished films, On the Occasion of Remembering the Turning Gate is still one of Hong's best films because it perfectly depicts the pathos and humor inherent within the drama of humans yearning to connect with each other, but never quite being able to do so. 

9. The Aviator (Martin Scorsese)

Although it's not as highly regarded as his other films, The Aviator is one of Martin Scorsese's most ambitous and dramatically complex films. Not only is The Aviator a portrait of the legendary businessman/filmmaker Howard Hughes, but it also an incisive portrait of mental disorder. From the beginning of the film, when we see Hughes reminiscing about his mother lecturing him about the importance of cleaning himself, to the end when Hughes is isolated in a screening room entrapped by his mental obsessions, Scorsese incisively shows how genius and insanity are intricately linked. On one level, The Aviator is a celebration of the glories of classic Hollywood, as it explores Hughes' various business dealings and his involvement in the film industry of the 1940s. But, on a darker and more dramatically wrenching level, The Aviator explores how Hughes was ultimately unable to overcome his rapidly deteriorating mental condition. This culminates in one of Scorsese's most haunting conclusions to any of his films, as we see Hughe staring uneasily at himself in a mirror, finally realizing that he is unable to conquer his own sanity.

10. Les Destinees sentimentales (Olivier Assayas)

Olivier Assayas is rightly celebrated for his more well-known experimental explorations of cinema, such as Carlos, Irma Vep, and Clouds of Sils Maria, but one of his more traditionally constructed films, Les Destinees sentimentales, is also one of his most dramatically effective and powerful films. Based on a novel by Jacques Cardonne, Les Destinees sentimentales is an epic depiction of the life of a Protestant minister who leaves his wife and career behind to seek a passionate relationship with another woman. What makes Les Destinees sentimentales such a powerful film is Assayas' focus on the everyday details of daily existence, as he focuses on the simple joy and sometimes heartbreak of the relationship between the former minister and his new lover. The film covers a vast expanse of time, and by the end of the film, Assayas has engulfed us completely in his old fashioned, but emotionally resonant film, recalling classic epic films that took their time to tell their story.