FILM REVIEW: THE CHRYSANTHEMUM AND THE GUILLOTINE

The Chrysanthemum and the Guillotine (2018) is an eccentric and moving epic film about Japanese women sumo wrestlers and socialist anarchists. Directed by the prolific Takahisa Zeze, who started out making soft core pink films, The Chrysanthemum and the Guillotine is unlike any historical epic you have ever seen. Although it is based on real historical events, Zeze infuses the film with surrealistic touches and characters that seem to exist in a parallel universe.

Set shortly after the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923, The Chrysanthemum and the Guillotine tells the dual stories of a female sumo wrestling troupe and a group of socialist anarchists. The anarchists regularly plot assassination attempts and other violent acts to get their revolutionary messages out. Two members of the anarchist group, Tetsu (Masahiro Higashide) and Daijiro (Kanichiro), befriend two members of the wrestling troupe, Tomoyo (Mai Kiryu) and Tamae (Hanae Kan).  Their lives become disrupted by a group of former World War One veterans led by Daigoro (Shima Ohnishi), who continuously try to shut down the troupe’s performances because they view them as subversive.

This plot summary only hints at the unique vision and structure of Zeze’s film. From the beginning to the end of the film, Zeze has his actors perform at an heightened emotional state; this is clearly not a Yasujiro Ozu film. In this way, Zeze’s performances resemble the almost trance-like hysteria of the actors in the films of Andrzej Zulawski and Sion Sono. There are also many quiet and more subdued moments in the film, but they serve only as momentary breaks before the next wave of grand emotion hits. 

Although at times this tone can be exhausting, especially at the film’s epic length of 189 minutes, it all leads to a climactic showdown between the sumo wrestlers and the military that is unlike anything you have ever seen. This frantic tone of the film is very much a reflection of the youthful exuberance and energy of Zeze’s characters. Revolutionary activity is the province of the idealism of youth, a concept which Zeze explores in his film.

Thematically, The Chrysanthemum and the Guillotine is a neo-feminist defense of female empowerment, although not in an overly obvious Hollywood manner. Many of the members of the women sumo wrestling troupe have escaped from oppressive marriages, and find solace in a sisterhood of strong women whose very existence is a statement against the traditionally male world of sumo wrestling. 

When the troupe gives their first performance, the male members of the audience mock them and hope to see them wrestle nude. However, the troupe is able to win over the male spectators with their skill as professional sumo wrestlers. Soon, the troupe becomes a mini-sensation in the many villages they visit, which draws the ire of the group of war veterans, who find any opportunity they can to harass the troupe.

Zeze contrasts the discipline and skill of the female wrestling troupe with the dysfunctional all male socialist anarchist group. Unlike the sumo troupe, the anarchist group is in a constant state of disarray. They carry out bungled assassination attempts, and are never able to draw the wider public to their socialist utopian ideals. Instead, Zeze reveals that many members of the male anarchists group are more interested in sleeping with prostitutes then actually carrying out revolutionary acts. This is a direct foil to the success and determination of the female wrestling troupe.

Ultimately, The Chrysanthemum and the Guillotine is about outcasts from society who are able to successfully form their own unique society of sorts. The female wrestling troupe becomes a respite for their members from the overly oppressive and controlling nature of the wider society. The film’s exploration of the battle between the wrestling troupe and the outside forces that threaten to break it apart is cinematically liberating and exhilarating.

FILM REVIEW: A TIGER IN WINTER

A Tiger in Winter (2017) is a beguiling and incisive portrait of the artistic process of writing. The practice of writing is a solitary and not exactly cinematically dynamic process, but with A Tiger in Winter, Lee Kwang-kuk is able to really get at the essence of the struggling artist. Lee is not necessarily concerned with the actual ritual of writing, but with the writer’s inability to fit into society and function as others do. By focusing on the dysfunctional life of an artist, A Tiger in Winter offers an often bitterly funny view of the creative life.

Lee Kwang-kuk was formerly an assistant director for the celebrated Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo. Indeed, Hong Sang-soo’s influence is strongly felt in A Tiger in Winter, with its long, seemingly improvised scenes of uninterrupted dialogue, and its focus on male/female relationships. Like the films of Hong Sang-soo, A Tiger in Winter is about a man who is unable to commit to the women in his life.

The protagonist of A Tiger in Winter is Gyeong-yu (Lee Jin-wook), a struggling writer who leaves his girlfriend and proceeds to wander around aimlessly until he meets his ex-girlfriend Yoo-jung (Go Hyun-jung). Unlike Gyeong-yu, Yoo-jung is a celebrated writer, but her chronic alcoholism prevents her from meeting her publisher’s deadline to complete her next collection of short stories. A Tiger in Winter is about Gyeong-yu and Yoo-jung’s attempts to reconcile their former relationship, while both of them struggle to fulfill their personal and artistic needs.

While the influence of Hong Sang-soo is felt throughout A Tiger in Winter, Lee Kwang-kuk is also a much more visually poetic director than Hong. While Hong is primarily interested in using cinema to explore the relationships dynamics between women and men, Lee’s aesthetic concerns are more oriented towards the visual palette and symbolism. The title of the film itself refers to an actual tiger that has escaped from the zoo, and this tiger is symbolically portrayed by the two main protagonists. Like tigers who are away from captivity, both Yoo-jung and Gyeong-yu are self-destructive forces of nature that devour all those around them.

Yoo-jung is constantly taking advantage of those closest to her, including Gyeong-yu, to fulfill her needs, whether they be her physical needs (through her addiction to sex and alcohol), as well as her needs to be recognized as a celebrated author. Gyeong-yu also manipulates his friends and loved ones to fulfill his selfish desires to remain constantly aloof from commitment; he does so because he believes it will benefit his artistic process as a writer. Throughout the film, Lee explores how his two protagonists destroy those closest to them, like wild tigers escaped from captivity. Near the end of the film, Lee also reveals what appears to be imaginary glimpses of the actual escaped tiger, adding an element of visual surrealism to his mise-en-scene.

There are many delightfully odd moments in A Tiger in Winter, such as when Yoo-jung drunkenly peels some tangerines and places them in a haphazard pile on a table, without eating them, or when Gyeong-yu keeps meeting passengers on his driving route who refuse to pay him. These little moments reveal the eccentric nature of artists, which is what A Tiger in Winter is ultimately about. Lee wants to show us the private, interior lives of real artists, both those who struggle to be discovered, and those whose fame and career may be built upon dubious means.  It will be interesting to see how Lee further develops his talents as an artist himself, and we are all captive spectators to his intriguing work.

FILM REVIEW: HARMONIUM

Like the musical instrument that it references, Kōji Fukada’s Harmonium (2016) is methodical, meticulously constructed, and subtly disturbing. It reminds one of a Hitchcock thriller mixed with a hard boiled Sam Spade film noir. The less said about the plot specifics the better, as part of the enjoyment of viewing Harmonium is seeing how Fukada masterfully peels apart layers upon layers of the plot to uncover a deeply unsettling story.

Harmonium is about a seemingly normal Japanese family, consisting of a hard-working and stoic father (Toshio played by Kanji Furutachi), his wife (Akie played by Mariko Tsutsui), and their daughter (Hotaru played by Momone Shinokawa and Kana Mahiro). This three family unit live a quiet and mundane life until Toshio’s friend Yasaka (Tadanobu Asano) shows up, freshly released from prison. At first, Yasaka seems like a harmless and even gentle person, as he carefully ingratiates himself into Toshio’s family life. However, as Harmonium progresses, Fukada slowly shows how the family gets destroyed from Yasaka’s appearance.

On the surface, Harmonium is a domestic drama about a father and mother trying to protect their family from harmful, outside forces. But, Fukada is more interested in exploring how seemingly normal people such as Toshio are able to hide secrets about themselves from their closest loved ones. Without giving anything specific away, Toshio’s connections with his friend Yasaka’s criminal behavior are closely intertwined, and threaten to completely tear the central family unit apart.

The chain reaction of events that slowly destroys the family unravels in a slow, calculating manner, like an avalanche gaining force until it finally demolishes everything in its sight. The first half of Harmonium deals with Yasaka trying to gain the trust of Toshio’s wife and daughter, becoming an almost father figure of sorts to replace the cold and distant Toshio. A shocking event occurs midway through the film which causes Toshio to break out of his shell, and to take on a stronger role in the care of his wife and daughter. But, by that point it’s too late, as Fukada wants to show how Yasaka and Toshio are closer in nature than we first expect.

This ultimately is what Harmonium is about— the duplicitous nature of men who try to lead normal lives, while trying to hide disturbing truths about themselves from those they love. In this way, Harmonium is similar to Scorsese’s The Irishman, which is also about a man trying to reconcile his darker side with his duties to protect and love his family. Kanji Furutachi gives a chilling performance as Toshio, masterfully portraying how his stoic nature hides a deeper, more disturbing nature. As his wife, Mariko Tsutsui also gives a strong performance as a mother who will do anything to protect her daughter from both Yasaka and Toshio.

Harmonium gradually and inevitably leads to a genuinely shocking conclusion that confronts the viewer with questions about the true nature of the family unit. Fukada neatly connects an earlier image in the film of Toshio’s family happily lying by the lake with a more disturbing parallel image of the same family unit lying by the same lake later in the film, but in much more devastating circumstances. Like the best thrillers, Harmonium trusts its audience to patiently go along with its slow but steady flow, and asks us to look deeper into both ourselves and those around us to uncover deeper, darker truths about human nature.

INTERVIEW: EDMUND YEO

The debut feature length film of Edmund Yeo, River of Exploding Durians, became the first Malaysian film to compete at the Tokyo International Film Festival in 2014. The film was an astonishingly assured debut that used poetic imagery and aesthetically innovative techniques to examine the effects of a rare earth plant on the residents of a seaside village. In this interview, I discuss the making of River of Exploding Durians with Edmund Yeo, as well as his cinematic influences.

River of Burning Durians felt like a very epic film, in terms of the scope of the story and the topics it covers. Can you talk a bit about how long it took you to shoot the film?

The film was shot in 17 days, but in a span of two months. Due to the structure of the film and the schedules of the actors, the shoot was mostly divided into different blocks; three to four days for the Ming/Mei Ann love story, a break during the Chinese New Year, then shooting another seven to eight days for the Teacher Lim/Hui Ling's story, spending another two to three days at the Cameron Highlands so we could shoot in the mountains and the tea plantation for the final block of the film, and so forth. We worked with a very low budget so we didn't have the luxury to shoot too much nor shoot too long.


I noticed, especially in terms of the flow of the narrative and the political revolutionary student recreation scenes, some homages to Edward Yang and even the French New Wave. Can you tell us about your influences for the film?

Thanks. You have definitely mentioned some of my deepest cinematic influences for this film, along with Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Tarkovsky. I didn't consciously try to make a film similar to these masters. But I often watch and rewatch their works to study and contemplate. Due to the profound love I have for their works, it's probably inevitable that, instinctively, the filmmaking grammar and storytelling techniques I used were influenced by them! I was also doing my own Hou Hsiao-Hsien marathon shortly before the shoot, absorbing his masterworks like CIty of Sadness, Good Man Good Woman, Dust in the Wind, and The Time To Live and the Time To Die, so I was probably in a Hou Hsiao-Hsien phase during the shoot.


The acting all across the board was excellent. How were you able to get some of the leads into your film, and how was it like working with them?

I love working with actors, and also give them space to inhabit or embody their own characters so that we can all surprise ourselves with things we never visualized in the script. I take a very spontaneous approach when I shoot. I don't really work with storyboards because I prefer to figure out the compositions and the blocking when I'm on the set with my cinematographer and actors. So it becomes a very open process where everyone gets to discuss their ideas and such.

Among the actors playing the three young main characters, only Joey Leong (who plays Mei Ann) has a long experience in acting. Joey started out as a child actress, and despite her young age, she had an old soul because she had been in the industry for so long, I thought she was very suitable as Mei Ann. 

The other two, Koe Shern (Ming) and Daphne Low (Hui Ling) were relatively newcomers. Koe Shern was about to start college, but he had some acting experience when he was a kid. Daphne, on the other hand, I've known her earlier because we worked together in a previous short film of mine. She was actually the first person to join this project. At that time she was a part-time model with some minor roles in some local TV sitcoms. 

Because our industry is really small, all three of them knew each other long before the shoot. So even though I only had one to two days to rehearse, they were able to convey a feeling of familiary among themselves. 

Casting Teacher Lim was very tricky. I first approached a few local Malaysian actresses whom I thought were suitable for the role, but they had to turn me down despite their interest in the script. The subject matter was touchy and they knew the film would not pass the local censors. Also, they could risk getting into trouble with the government. I could empathize with their fears, it is what it is. A few local actors have lost job opportunities and their whole careers for being critical towards authorities. 

At that time, during my struggles to find someone to play Teacher Lim, I have already shot some parts of the film. One evening, I spoke to a Taiwanese producer friend of mine about my frustration, and he gave me the idea of actually casting a Taiwanese actress for the role.

The Taiwanese and the Malaysian Chinese have rather similar accents, so it wouldn't be improbable to cast a Taiwanese actress in a Malaysian role.

The name Zhu Zhi-Ying popped up during my discussion with my friend. I had seen her in Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, and also my friend Jay Chern's Golden Horse-winning short film Thief. So I immediately contacted her via Facebook, and to my disbelief, she replied almost immediately! We spent the night discussing the role, the film and somehow, the works of Yukio Mishima too. The next day, she said yes.

Having Zhi-Ying on the set was great, especially during the classroom scenes. I guess there was a feeling of freshness and slight intimidation because she was a foreign actress. So the kids playing the students were literally treating her like their teacher.

Were any elements of the story based on or inspired by real life events? I’m wondering specifically about the story of the revolutionary teacher Ms. Lim, and the construction of the rare earth plant.

The construction of the rare earth plant was based on real life events. It's an ongoing controversy that remains until this very day. The rare earth plant was built near a coastal village and it generated a lot of protests and anger due to the risk of radiation and such. 

The anger was justified. We had a similar case in the 1980s when a rare earth plant caused lasting damages upon the residents of the nearby town during its operations. It was a national tragedy.

Yet we wondered how could the authorities allow another construction of rare earth plant in the country, whilst disregarding the well-being of the people who live around the area. It's another case of capitalism being our king.


The country of Malaysia was portrayed very vividly in the film, both on a visual and auditory level. Can you talk about how this film was specific to Malaysia in terms of the themes and plot?

Using the aforementioned events as a backdrop, I constructed a fictional story of Malaysians and Malaysia at that particular moment in history. When protesters were not allowed to protest, when the State-controlled mainstream media would function as mere propaganda for the government, when young Malaysians were constantly hoping to leave the country for a better life. Many Malaysian Chinese of my generation grew up with parents who wanted us to leave the country when we could.

I also wanted to question the public education system, which were seldom improved upon over the decades. Generations of Malaysians were taught to be obedient, were taught that academic results were more important than anything else, but they were never taught to ask questions, nor taught to appreciate art and culture, and most importantly, we weren't taught to have empathy. All we had to do was to score As for exams and the school will tell us that we'll have a bright future ahead of us.

The four main characters in my film were extensions of myself. I think the high school students in my films reflected my frustrations during my teens, while Teacher Lim, who was closer to me in age when I was shooting the film, embodied my more recent concerns.

I noticed that the film seemed to be separated into two specific halves, with the first half being about the love story between Ming and Mei Ann, and the second half focusing on Ms. Lim and Hui Ling, and her attempts to start a revolutionary protest movement. How did you go about with structuring the film in these two halves, and was it challenging to put them together for you?

I like to take a more novelistic approach in developing and telling my stories. For Durians, I wanted to tell fragments of stories, from different character perspectives, so that gradually, as the film unfolds, you can put the larger picture together. 

In a way I liked defying expectations. What seemed like an innocuous coming-of-age teen love story gradually becomes a gateway into the darker aspects of our nation. The subjugation of history, the insidious intellectual repression, and so forth.

While I left a lot of blanks in my script for actors to improvise, and also experimented a lot when I was editing, I ended up being quite faithful towards the original structure I've developed. 

I was also trying to tell the beginning of a love story, but the beginning happened only at the end of the film, with the two characters you weren't expecting.

What for you was the significance of portraying the Chinese Lunar New Year Festival at the end of the film?

Chinese Lunar New Year has always been a time of joy and reconnection with friends and family. You contemplate what you have gone through, while hoping for a better future. Coincidentally, I shot the film around the Chinese Lunar New Year period, so I integrated it into my ending as a last-minute decision. I thought that would be the perfect time for my two protagonists, who had endured so much during the film, to meet. It was the first feature film I've ever made, so I wanted to end it with a sense of hope. 


Can you talk about any current or future projects you are working on?

I finished River of Exploding Durians in 2014.  Three years later I made my follow-up feature, Aqerat (We, the Dead).  I'm now finishing up my new film Malu (which means 'Ashamed' in Malay), the film is a decades-spanning family saga set in Malaysia and Japan, with a cast and crew from both countries. It's also an intimate project that I've shot on and off over the span of two years. I will premiere it this year.

I'm also writing the screenplay for the film adaptation of a novella by a well-known Japanese novelist. I'm still rather early in development for that one, but hopefully I'll be shooting the film late this year in Tokyo, after the Olympics!

FILM REVIEW: MAGGIE

Some debut films safely follow traditions set before them, and serve as nothing more than calling cards for making the next big budget Hollywood blockbuster movie. The Korean film Maggie (2018) from Yi Ok-seop, definitely does not fall into that category. Instead, Maggie is an utterly unique and delightfully strange film that seems to exist in a parallel dimension; one that we would all like to visit and enjoy as a respite from the mundane world of studio filmmaking.

The less revealed about the plot the better, as part of the thrill of viewing Maggie is discovering the many new ways Yi Ok-seop plays with traditional narrative structure and the film form. In fact, to even attempt to provide a traditional plot summary of Maggie would ruin the many surprises inherent within the film. However, for the sake of clarity, Maggie is about the wondrous and eccentric chain of events that occur to a young nurse (Yoon-Young, played by Lee Joo-Young), her boss (Lee Kyung-Jin, played by Moon So-Ri), and her boyfriend (Sung-Won, played by Koo Gyo-Hwan) after a compromising X-ray photo of a couple having sex surfaces at the hospital the nurse works at. 

What makes Maggie such an original vision is its complete absurdist disregard for the traditional three act structure of narrative filmmaking. Instead, Maggie freely floats in an almost stream of consciousness manner between the parallel and interconnecting lives of its three main characters. What unites the three characters together are a psychic fish named Maggie and her ability to form sinkholes throughout South Korea. Yi Ok-seop masterfully weaves these various storylines together to create a surreal tapestry of young love (through the relationship of Nurse Yoon-Young and Sung-Won) and unresolved regret (through the story of Lee Kyung-Jin), all observed omnisciently by the all-knowing fish Maggie.

What is the significance of this fish? Maggie the fish serves both as the narrator of the film, and also as a sort of God-like figure that is constantly guiding the lives of the three main characters. Employing the use of constantly changing interior monologues and perspectives in both human and sometimes non-human form, as well as camera angles and mise-en-scene that are slightly askew from the norm, Yi Ok-seop creates a free flowing use of cinematic techniques that truly liberates the medium. In one of the most amazing sequences in Maggie, Yi Ok-seop daringly cuts back and forth between Yoon-Young and Sung-Won as they breathlessly try to meet each other to secure a rental agreement, culminating in a shot on top of a flight of stairs that leaves the viewer in genuine shock. In another inventive sequence, Lee Kyung-Jin and Yoon-Young try to determine the veracity of their co-workers at the hospital with a game of darts using syringes.

Throughout the film, Yi Ok-seop symbolically explores the concept of falling into pits, both literally through the sinkholes that are seemingly controlled by Maggie the fish, and the subconscious holes that the characters find themselves falling into. Nurse Yoon-Young becomes obsessed with finding out if her boyfriend is capable of violence after she learns from his ex that he may have hit her at one time. Lee Kyung-Jin can’t escape the memory of a traumatic childhood event that still affects her adult life on a personal and professional level. Sung-Won starts to suspect his co-workers of theft and deception after he loses a ring that Yoon-Young gave him. Maggie explores how each of these characters struggle to dig themselves out of the subconscious pits they have fallen into, leading to a surprising climax that neatly ties together Yi Ok-seop absurdist vision.

In an era where so many filmmakers start their careers off with routine, mundane films whose sole purpose is to impress the gatekeepers of the traditional Hollywood studio film machine, it’s refreshing to see a debut film like Maggie which unapologetically adheres to its own unique worldview.  Although Yi Ok-seop is influenced by masters of surrealism like Dali, Bunuel, and Maya Dern, at the same time she has created a personal vision that heralds the arrival of a new voice in cinema. We need more debut films like Maggie to move the language of film forward, and remind us of the many joyful possibilities within the medium that still are waiting to be discovered.

FILM REVIEW: RIVER OF EXPLODING DURIANS

River of Exploding Durians (2014) is the astonishingly assured debut film from Malaysian director Edmund Yeo that heralds the arrival of a major new talent in world cinema. The film is a complex and poetic portrait of youthful love and idealism, and the struggle for personal and political revolutionary change. The film River of Exploding Durians most recalls is Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day, and like that film, it explores how a country’s history shapes the course of the growth of a group of youth.

Set in contemporary Malaysia, the central event in River of Exploding Durians is the construction of a rare earth plant in a small, coastal community, which leads to fears of radiation poisoning among some of its residents. The three main characters whose lives are most affected by this plant are Ms. Lim (Zhu Zhi-Ying), and her two students Hui Ling (Daphne Low) and Ming (Koe Shern). There are two central stories in River of Exploding Durians which parallel and intersect each other: the troubled love affair between Ming and Mei Ann (Joey Leong), and Ms. Lim and her leadership of a group of revolutionary students, which includes her students Hui Ling and eventually Ming. These parallel stories lead up to an emotionally devastating yet hopeful conclusion that recalls the similarly tragic ending of A Brighter Summer Day.

Like Yang’s film, River of Exploding Durians is an epic yet intimate portrait of a country and its people. Throughout the film, Yeo focuses on breathtakingly beautiful images of the lush, verdant tropical landscape of Malaysia, whose environment is very similar of that to Yang’s native country of Taiwan. Not only does Yeo highlight the visual beauty of Malaysia, but also the rich auditory soundscape of the country, with the calming and vibrant noises of crickets at night, and the lush flows of its many waterfalls and lakes. Indeed, the audio and visual components of Malaysia almost become another main character on the film.

Aesthetically, Yeo constantly experiments with the narrative form, flowing in and out of the interior thoughts of his many characters, in an almost James Joycean manner. In a particularly inventive scene, as Ming and Mei Ann are traveling together on a bus, we hear various snippets of dialogue from them which appeared from another time, but interlaced with them sitting silently in the bus, enjoying each other’s company.

Yeo bifurcates the film neatly into two halves— the first half is an intimate portrait of young love, as Yeo explores Ming’s and Mei Ann’s burgeoning romance, while the second half portrays the attempts by Ms. Lim to lead her students into increasingly violent and unstable protests against the building of the rare earth plant. Both halves of the film begin with the characters filled with hope and promise, but eventually succumbing to tragedy.  Yeo masterfully weaves the two halves of the film together in a touching coda set during a Chinese Lunar New Year Festival, as two of the youthful leads from the film briefly reunite in a moment of pure hope and optimism.

While the first half of River of Exploding Durians very much focuses on nature and youthful love, the second half deals more with the growth of youthful idealism into adult bitterness and disillusionment, as embodied by the character of Ms. Lim. It is in this second half of the film that Yeo employs some of his most radical cinematic experimentation. He stages a series of scenes of students recreating historical events rooted in revolution that recalls the film of Jean-Luc Godard from the 1960s, such as Le Petit Soldat, La Chinoise and Week-End. The use of color and the staging of these student revolutionary recreations most directly recalls similar scenes from La Chinoise. Like Godard, Yeo is exploring how cinema can portray history and revolution in more dynamic and innovative ways.

What makes River of Exploding Durians such an aesthetically accomplished work of art are its poetic moments of pure and at times shocking visual beauty, such as a field of burning durians that morph into a burning pig, a paper lantern rolling into the frame under flowing white curtains, and a flurry of papers on fire that turn into burning books. It is refreshing to see a film such as River of Burning Durians which so confidently combines so many innovative cinematic elements into a seamless, coherent whole. With his debut film, Yeo has breathed new life into cinema, and it will be exciting to see how he continues to expand the language of cinema in future films.

BEST FILMS OF THE DECADE

Now that the second decade of the twenty-first century has officially come to a close (although some still argue that the decade doesn’t begin until year one instead of year zero), it is now time to consider what I think are the best films of this decade. Of course, all these lists are by nature subjective, so instead of thinking of this as the best films of the decade, feel free to re-word it as my favorite films of the decade. My list consists primarily of late career masterpieces by cinema legends, and also two debut films from a pair of promising filmmaker. So, without further adieu, here are my choices.

1. Shoplifters (Hirokazu Koreeda)

Throughout his career, Hirokazu Koreeda has explored the nature of family, and has questioned traditional notions of the family unit. Shoplifters is perhaps Koreeda’s purest distillation of this inquiry into the family unit, and it is definitely his most powerful and emotionally impactful film since Like Father, Like Son. Shoplifters is a searing portrait of a family both brought together and ultimately torn apart by the demands of a harsh, uncaring society. I chose Shoplifters as the best of the decade because it’s the film that most resonated with me on a purely visceral and emotional level, and it also makes us think of what it means to be a family in modern society.

2. Silence (Martin Scorsese)

Martin Scorsese has made plenty of cinematically powerful films throughout his career, but Silence is the most effective of his recent films (although The Irishman was almost just as incredible, but more on that later). What makes Silence such an accomplishment is Scorsese stepping outside of his comfort zone to tell a less flashy and more creatively disciplined, pared down film. By reigning in his more extravagant impulses, which can result in admittedly great but also exhausting films like The Wolf of Wall Street, Scorsese is able to make his themes and dramatic gravitas more incisive in Silence.

3. River of Exploding Durians (Edmund Yeo)

River of Exploding Durians is a modern day A Brighter Summer Day. Like Edward Yang’s masterpiece, Edmond Yeo’s film is a complex and poetic exploration of how a country’s history shapes and affects a group of youth. With homages to Godard and the French New Wave, and various other cinematic allusions, Yeo creates an astonishing work of art that is also entirely his own, unique creation. Like the greatest works of cinematic art, River of Exploding Durians envelopes the viewer in a completely new vision of reality. The fact that it’s the first film from Yeo is even more astonishing.

4. The Dance of Reality (Alejandro Jodorowsky)

Alejandro Jodorowsky is most well-known for his highly surrealistic, hallucinatory early films Fando and Lis, El Topo and The Holy Mountain, but nothing he has made so far matches the dramatic impact of The Dance of Reality. The Dance of Reality, along with Endless Poetry, is Jodorowsky’s most personal film as it deals with his own youth. However, what separates The Dance of Reality from his other films is the unbridled passion felt in each and every frame. Watching The Dance of Reality almost puts you in an altered state of consciousness, as its poetic and powerful barrage of incredible set pieces and imagery flows in front of your eyes in a trance-like rhythm. I have seen many films throughout my life, but I have not really thing anything quite like The Dance of Reality.

5. The Great Buddha + (Huang Hsien-yao)

Sometimes you discover a great film which comes out of nowhere with little to no fanfare, and The Great Buddha + was one of those films. Although it was shortlisted for the Academy Awards Best Foreign Film category, The Great Buddha + never got a wide release or even much notice outside of its native country of Taiwan. This is unfortunate because The Great Buddha + is one of the funniest and most poignant films I have seen all decade about class consciousness (yes, I think it’s even better than the similarly themed Parasite). If you can find it, please seek out this film, as I’m sure you’ll be pleasantly surprised. It mixes dark comedy and social critique like the best films of Spike Lee and Billy Wilder. Huang Hsien-yao is surely a new talent to keep an eye on.

6. The Irishman (Martin Scorsese)

Martin Scorsese is well-known for making brutal and powerful gangster films, but no mafia film he has directed before has been quite like The Irishman. Unlike his previous crime films, The Irishman is a much more introspective and reflective film. While films like Goodfellas and Casino were almost celebratory in their depictions of gangsters (albeit in a cautionary way), The Irishman is Scorsese’s first film in which the lead character actually attempts to come to terms with the errors of his ways. In this way, The Irishman is Scorsese attempting to move away from the violent world of his prior films, and into a more enlightened realm.

7. Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow)

Throughout her career, Kathryn Bigelow has proved herself to be among one of the best action directors of all time. With Zero Dark Thirty, Bigelow has found a real life story that provides an epic backdrop for a harrowing tale of a woman determined to complete a single, history making mission against all odds. In this way, Zero Dark Thirty is like the Moby Dick of war films, and like Herman Melville’s epic story of obsession, Bigelow’s film is a labyrinthine, complex experience that has the feel of classic literature. Zero Dark Thirty culminates in one of the best action set pieces of all time, and solidifies Bigelow’s position among the pantheon of greatest directors of visceral cinema.

8. A Tiger in Winter (Lee Kwang-kuk)

Lee Kwang-kuk created one of the most realistic and bitterly funny portraits of the artistic process with A Tiger in Winter. Like the literal tiger that has escaped from the zoo of the film’s title, the two protagonists of A Tiger in Winter are self-adsorbed artists who destroy the lives of everyone in their paths. Lee understands that oftentimes great art comes from unpleasant and self-destructive personalities, and he both skewers and celebrates this bitter truth in his mordantly funny film.

9. Gone With the Bullets (Jiang Wen)

Gone With the Bullets, along with Let The Bullets Fly and Hidden Man, forms a trilogy of films by Jiang Wen that is probably the closest thing to modern day Federico Fellini that we are likely to see. Wen has proven himself to be a formidable filmmaker, and with each successive film, he has honed and developed his voice further. With Gone With the Bullets, Jiang Wen finally made perhaps the purest distillation of his claim as our new Fellini (along with Emir Kusturica). Like Fellini, Wen’s Gone With the Bullets is a carnivalesque celebration of life that is filled with exuberant set pieces and over the top characters. Wen’s outrageous characters and situations almost resemble commeddia dell’arte, with their delightfully rendered absurdity. This may also be the reason why Gone With the Bullets was not well received when it was released, as Wen is making films that recall an earlier time when art was more pure and less polluted by pointless cynicism.

10. Hanatagami (Nobohiku Obayashi)

Nobohiku Obayashi shocked the world with his debut film Hausu, which broke all cinematic conventions in the horror film genre, and his late career masterpiece Hanagatami is just as explosively innovative. Hanagatami is about a group of youth in a coastal Japanese village, and the effects of World War Two on their lives. However, the way Obayashi tells this intimate story is quite unlike anything you’ve ever seen. Hanagatami is pitched at a frenzied pace, and for over three hours Obayashi constantly experiments with narrative structure and visuals, creating a surrealistic portrait of youth that would have made Dali proud. Its experimentation with cinematic form reminds one of Seizun Suzuki’s Taisho Trilogy (Zigeunerweisen, Kagero-Za, and Yumeji), and like those films Hanagatami forms Obayashi’s own trilogy of films (along with Seven Weeks and Labyrinth of Cinema) which expand the language of cinema in exciting ways. From films like Hausu, Sada, and Hanagatami, Obayashi shows us the possibilities inherent within cinema for new methods of narrative form.