The 10 Best Films Of 1993 - Page 2 of 2

Schindlers-List5. “Schindler’s List”
Roman Polanski, Sydney Pollack, Martin Scorsese and Billy Wilder had been among the directors interested in bringing Thomas Keneally’s novel “Schindler’s Ark,” about the German businessman who saved a thousand Polish-Jewish refugees from the Holocaust, to the screen. So when Steven Spielberg, who’d initially passed on the project (before relenting to a rise in neo-Nazism and Holocaust denial: probably time for another one, Steve), was the one to bring it to the screen, it raised some eyebrows, given his usual association with blockbuster fare. But Spielberg, and critics, shouldn’t have worried: the director raised his game with an extraordinary film of true artistry and rare power. Those who feared that Spielberg would turn out something sentimental or sensationalized were put to rest: it’s a nuanced portrayal of Schindler (thanks to a career-best performance by Liam Neeson) that doesn’t ignore his flaws but immortalizes his acts, and few films on this subject have caught the horror of the Holocaust so effectively, with Spielberg’s stark black-and-white, almost documentary-like approach a real formal leap forward from him. It’s a monumental piece of work, even by the director’s standards.

groundhog-day4. “Groundhog Day”
Comedy never gets the credit it deserves. Anyone who’s straddled both genres will tell you that comedy is much harder to do than drama, and yet when we get a truly great funny movie, it’s often seen as lesser than more high-minded works, shunted out of awards season and left off Top 10 lists. That’s certainly true of Harold Ramis’ “Groundhog Day,” which was ignored completely by the Academy after its release, although it’s now acknowledged as about as perfect a studio comedy as has been made in the last half-century. Ramis and Danny Rubin’s screenplay sees Bill Murray, in the Platonic ideal of a Bill Murray role, as a grouchy, sleazy weatherman who finds himself living the same day — a terrible day, when he has to go to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, to cover the Groundhog Day festivities — over and over again. Copied repeatedly ever since on film and TV, it’s an ingenious conceit, one that allows the film to get in some truly deep philosophical and moral territory. But it’s not that that makes it perfect (though it’s close): it’s the way that Ramis channels Capra, Wilder and Sturges in tone, the way the screenplay proves constantly inventive while still keeping the gags coming thick and fast, the way that Murray plays it like an aria, the way that Andie MacDowell for once doesn’t ruin the whole thing, that makes it a true classic.

The Piano

3. “The Piano”
With its costume-drama trappings, commercial success ($140 million worldwide!) and plentiful Oscar attention, it’s easy to forget what a strange, singular film Jane Campion’s “The Piano” is. Somewhere between a dark fairy tale (“Bluebeard” is an influence) and a “Jane Eyre”-style Gothic romance, but set in a strange, alien world in the Southern Hemisphere, it sees mute Ada (Holly Hunter, cast against type and just remarkable) and her daughter Flora (Anna Paquin, an Oscar winner aged just 11) arriving in New Zealand, where Ada’s father has sold her into marriage to a forester, Stewart (Sam Neill). Ada’s greatest joy, and main form of expression, is her piano, but the brutish Stewart refuses to take one into his home, leading her to form a friendship, and eventually more, with the Maori-adopted neighbor Baines (Harvey Keitel). It’s a heady, often incredibly dark story that, in the wrong hands, could have been a disaster. But (remarkably only making her third feature film) Campion was absolutely the right hands, at once classical and expressionistic, restrained and extraordinarily erotic, literate but deeply felt. People say too often “they don’t make them like this any more,” but in this case, they really don’t.

Naked

2. “Naked”
On the whole, we probably think of Mike Leigh as a filmmaker who specializes in the comedy of manners, gently and sweetly skewering a certain kind of middle-class British life, normally with the help of a great character actor of a certain age. It’s more complicated than that, of course, but it’s still striking how much of a sore thumb among his work “Naked” feels like, and very much for the better: though there are other Leigh movies that come close, we’d comfortably call this his best. A nervy, pitch-black urban howl marking the end of the Thatcher era in Britain and the damage done in the name of the woman who once said “there is no such thing as society,” it sees Johnny (a star-making turn for David Thewlis) flee Manchester after raping a woman to come to London to stay with his ex-girlfriend (Lesley Sharp), wandering the streets of the city, while posh yuppie Jeremy (Greg Cruttwell) circles the city from a different direction. As ever, Leigh’s improvisatory process builds a world and people of meticulous detail and vibrant life, and though this bleak, highly misogynistic view of London is an unpleasant one, it maintains the director’s humanity: no one is without flaw, and (almost no one) without redeeming feature.

three-colors-blue1. “Three Colors: Blue”
If Krzysztof Kieslowski had to go — and his death at the age of 54 continues to make us feel that we were robbed of decades of further work from him, even if he’d said he was retiring — he went out on a high: “Three Colors: Blue” is the second of his films to take a top spot on our ’90s lists. The first of a trilogy that would become one of cinema’s most major works (loosely themed around the French Revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity, and color-coded to the Gallic flag), it sees Juliette Binoche as a woman grieving the loss of her composer husband and daughter in a car accident who escapes her life to live alone in Paris, only to find remnants of her marriage impossible to escape. It’s a film less oblique than the earlier masterpiece “The Double Life Of Veronique,” but equally overpowering on the senses, from the titular color swamping the frame as an inescapable reminder of Binoche’s grief, to Zbigniew Preisner’s all-timer of a score, evoking the work of her late husband, the unfinished remnants of which she’s attempted to destroy. The film’s arc, of a woman coming to terms with loss and finding reason to live anew, had been done before and since, but never better than here.

best-romantic-movies-to-watch-on-valentines-day-true-romanceEven by the standards of some of these other lists, 1993 was a tough one to cut down to just 10. To name but a few honorable mentions, there’s Steven Spielberg’s other output in his greatest year, blockbuster “Jurassic Park;” Robert Altman’s masterfully multi-stranded “Short Cuts;” Martin Scorsese’s atypical but gorgeous “The Age Of Innocence;” the Hughes Brothers’ visceral “Menace II Society” and Tony Scott and Quentin Tarantino joining forces to unforgettable effect with “True Romance.”

short cuts tom waits lily tomlin robert altmanThere’s also Peter Weir’s classification-frustrating “Fearless;” Clint Eastwood’s wonderful, still underrated “A Perfect World;” Guillermo del Toro’s ageless debut “Cronos;” Woody Allen’s delightful “Manhattan Murder Mystery;” and great neo-noir “Red Rock West.” And let’s not forget Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s “The Puppetmaster;” proto-“Sopranos” black comedy “Mad Dog & Glory” with Robert De Niro and Bill Murray; Canadian great “Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould;” Takeshi Kitano’s “Sonatine” and Nanni Moretti’s “Dear Diary.”

Any others we’ve forgotten? Let us know in the comments.