Okay we did the mandatory list last time, this is the actually important shit. It turns out that if you compare all the movies made in human history vs the movies that came out this year that I was able to see, all of human history is the winner! I saw way more great old movies this year than new ones, and this was a great year for new movies as previously discussed. I forced myself to trim this list down to ten movies so here they are – the 10 best old movies I saw for the first time in 2023.
10. The Wind That Shakes the Barley
This made the cut over Reds in terms of leftist political epic - both are incredible films, masterpieces, but why I ultimately went with Wind that Shakes the Barley is that it tries to capture the full picture of a revolution, and while it is a detailed portrait of the Irish revolution, and specific to that moment, so many of its hard questions and moments of utter darkness are relevant to any revolution in any place at any time. We follow Cillian Murphy’s Damien on the journey from not supporting the revolution, to joining, to ultimately refusing to accept the treaty with the British when many others do. We’re asked to think about who revolutions are for - they’re fought by the underclass but are often funded by landowners. How hard must you be to win, and how hard can you be before you’re as cruel and arbitrary as the oppressors you’re fighting? What compromises for peace are acceptable, and which are not?
9. After Hours
Absolute fucking nightmare. Thinking about this movie, I reflect on how as an office worker who’s never been a party animal, I’ve often felt like I’m complacent, I never go out and do something exciting, have some fun, get out of my comfort zone. This is a movie about a guy who does that very thing, he takes a chance and goes out for a late night rendezvous far from home and he ends up falling into a twisted alice in wonderland version of New York, where circumstances and coincidence keep compounding and compounding - soon all he wants is to go home, but he just can’t extract himself from this nightmare! It’s a darkly funny film, kind of like Uncut Gems in that it’s an anxiety nightmare that you can laugh at a bit because it’s happening to someone else. Also like Uncut Gems it’s filled with strange and interesting characters - in After Hours they’re the kind of people you only seem to meet late at night, and so much of the charm of the film is the increasingly deranged Paul (played by Griffin Dunne) trying to negotiate with all of these eccentrics until by the end of the film he’s the strange eccentric trying to explain his situation to bewildered locals who are thinking to themselves, “this is the kind of weirdo you only meet After Hours.”
8. Farewell My Concubine
This turned out to be the year of the historical epic for me, and this was one of the best - it portrays an incredibly turbulent 40 years of Chinese history through the eyes of two abused orphans raised in a theater troupe who grow into stars. This movie has both the large scale story of China in the 20th century and incredible melodrama in the relationships of our central characters. The two male leads grow up bonded by trauma and abuse and Cheng Dieyi (played by Leslie Cheung) grows to be dependent upon Duan Xiaolou (played by Zhang Fengyi) - when Duan marries Juxian (played by Gong Li) this is all thrown into disharmony and we’re off to the races. This love triangle is the heart of the film, and the way the characters try and fail to balance the spinning plates of each others needs and desires, or the way they fail to try, gives the film its incredible emotional power. It’s also a treatise on the role of art in the different eras of the Chinese 20th century - who is art for, how should art be, how should artists behave and be treated? The characters have to navigate these boundaries and expectations, which are on just as much of a rollercoaster as China itself is.
7. Solaris
The first of two Tarkovsky films on this list, Solaris lived up to its reputation as a masterpiece of Science Fiction, the Soviet answer to 2001, and an all time great film. This film about people getting devoured by their own fantasies, choosing to live in a misshapen dream rather than return to the hard and conflict filled real world – frankly it’s more relevant that ever. Like all Tarkovsky films its stunningly beautiful, from the Moscow traffic, to the space station, to those iconic shots of water plants in the stream. It’s a non-stop visual feast, and it’s also filled to the brim with pent up emotions that can never be let out, feelings that lead to surrender, to choosing dream over reality.
6. Cure
Fucking harrowing. A movie that questions the fundamental nature of consciousness and free will. How much of what you do is chosen consciously? If something within you was changed, would you even notice? Could you notice?
5. The Lady Eve
This movie is about Barbara Stanwyck being the most beautiful woman to ever live. Henry Fonda lies down next to her and goes cross-eyed like he’s in a Tex Avery cartoon. The point of the movie is that Barbara Stanwyck should be allowed to do anything she wants, and that Henry Fonda should be grateful for anything he gets! And that’s why it’s one of the greatest movies ever made.
4. Wild Strawberries
You can waste your whole life in pent up misery, and yet it’s never too late to come back to yourself. This movie is so beautiful – this grouchy old man takes a road trip with his son’s fiancé and thinks about his childhood and his regrets and the twisted person he’s allowed himself to become. He realizes he can let it go, all the misery and disappointment he’s been holding onto, the stuff that’s been curdling his soul. It’s kind of like a reverse It’s a Wonderful Life in some ways – instead of being about this long suffering good guy realizing how much he means to everyone in his life and how lucky he is, it’s about the frustrated greedy old man realizing that he’s poisoned himself and everyone in his life, and realizing that the only person making his life that way is himself. You are your own jailor.
3. The Abyss
A political and environmental thriller crossed with Close Encounters of the Third Kind all taking place at the bottom of the god damned ocean. It’s a perfect movie as far as I’m concerned. When people talk about this movie they constantly call it a movie about being divorced – wrong! It’s a movie about getting remarried to your estranged wife, who you love more than life itself!!! This movie is about love big enough to undo death, to end war, to save the human race once and for all and forever – and the face of that love? ED FUCKING HARRIS, who I’m beginning to think may be the greatest coolest actor to ever live.
2. The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
“40 years ago… 40 years ago…” – so begins Powell and Pressburger’s tale of the life of a British officer, from his time as a young man returning from the Boer War, through a misadventure in Germany where he makes some lifelong friends, World War I and finding love, and finally World War II and his forced confrontation with how times have changed. It’s gorgeous to look at, The Archers are probably the all time champions of technicolor, but more impressive than the visuals is their master of old time romanticism. It’s something that’s hard to put your finger on but it makes the movie feel as much of a fantasy as any of their explicitly unreal films – it sweeps you off your feet and takes you to another world.
1. Andrei Roublev
You don’t need me to tell you to watch this movie, but I will anyway just in case its widely acknowledged status as a key masterpiece by one of the greatest directors to ever live isn’t enough. I think Tarkovsky might be the greatest director of all time – he makes slowness profound and stillness revelatory. It’s about artists, their art, who pays for it and why. The same men who commissioned the creation of much of humanity’s artistic legacy also commissioned some of the most horrific violence and cruelty you can imagine. The same god that inspired so many of the great artists of years past also inspired horrific persecution of those following other faiths. What do we do with that? What do artists do with that? Well if they’re really talented they make Andrei Roublev, and we watch.