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Still, with 2007’s example to spur him on, the A.V. Club’s Noel Murray has decided it’s once again time to reflect on what the greatest year in movie history might be. “To qualify as ‘the best ever,’” he argues in what’s mostly a semantic circle, “a movie year needs to be both bounteous and pivotal,” which in his own considered view means 1974—the year of Godfather II and Chinatown and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (not to mention Celine and Julie Go Boating, which Murray confesses he hasn’t seen yet). What mainly disturbs me about all this isn’t so much the choice of year, on which I’ve little to add one way or the other, as the writer’s nomination for the year’s best film—actually two best, since it’s a double-decker toss-up between Robert Altman‘s Thieves Like Us and California Split. “Minor miracles” is how Murray describes this critical perfecta, though I’m wondering if alleged “bests of the best,” however miraculous, shouldn’t be more than minor works. Because look at Steven Spielberg in 2002, who gave us both Minority Report and Catch Me if You Can. On a par with Altman’s twins, I think, as well as among the director’s most precision-crafted and/or thoughtful films, at least of recent vintage—also, not coincidentally, released during my own “favorite” year for movies, if not of all time then at least of the last 15. Arguably nothing groundbreaking about 2002, but there’s a lot of rigorously calibrated niche work, like architects’ surgical “interventions” in a building-wall facade, pushing the visual and thematic energies as far as they can go. Some career “bests” too from the filmmakers involved—Iosseliani, P.T. Anderson (in keen-edged pre-There Will Be Blood mode), Cuaron, Tian, maybe even Godard in an objet d’art sense—which is arguably a weasel’s way of measuring, since even a relative “best” from, e.g., Spielberg might not be all that significant or enduring.
Not to neglect other ’02 faves, like Takashi Miike’s The Happiness of the Katakuris, Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (arguably best in the cycle), Jia Zhang-ke’s Unknown Pleasures, Im Kwon-taek’s Chihwaseon, or James Benning’s completed “California Trilogy.” Or ’02 releases that didn’t show up for another year or so: the Dardenne brothers’ The Son, Guy Maddin’s Dracula: Pages From a Virgin’s Diary, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Distant, Olivier Assayas’s Demonlover, Bill Morrison’s Decasia, Claire Denis’ Friday Night … Or Catherine Breillat’s contentious, ineffable Sex Is Comedy, about which I’ve already blabbered on more than enough.
