“Paris, Texas”
One could argue that Wim Wenders’ “Paris, Texas” has ultimately become more reputed for its aesthetics than for its story. Certainly, if there was ever a film to earn the title of Tumblr Movie, it’s this one. And yet, we forget what an insightful, painfully human film this is. Yes, the cinematography from the legendary Robby Müller captures the badlands of America in all of their washed-out beauty, and yes, the score by Ry Cooder is one for the books. Yet, when all’s said and done, “Paris, Texas” is an eerie, lingering look at how many of us can grow estranged from our families and eventually become isolated in cocoons of our own misery. Wenders gets a lot of mileage out of Harry Dean Stanton’s face, one of the gloomiest in American movies, and the scene where his drifter protagonist attempts to talk to Natasha Kinski through a one-way mirror is one of the saddest things we’ve ever witnessed. – NL
“Red Desert”
Michelangelo Antonioni is a master of films that center around dissolute, detached people drifting through life. The characters in his elusive “Red Desert” are no different. They are purposeless, perpetually rudderless, without an anchor. Even by the standards of this challenging director, “Red Desert” is both A) a potentially tough film to find one’s way into and B) an indictment of living in a capitalist society that’s simultaneously lush and scathing. Antonioni and cinematographer Carlo Di Palma turn the landscapes of Northern Italy into a mesmeric wasteland: an alien surface dwarfed by harsh, looming, man-made structures that act as symbols of industrial dependence. Antonioni has made other, excellent movies that dissect the 20th-century existential condition, “The Passenger” and “L’Eclisse” among them, but in this writer’s opinion, he’s arguably never given us a vision as thrillingly alienating as “Red Desert.” – NL
“The Road”
Is a world laid to waste a world worth living in? Such is the central question posed by “The Road,” John Hillcoat’s grisly but faithful adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s post-apocalyptic novel. In recent efforts such as “Lawless” and “Triple Nine,” Hillcoat has found himself perhaps a bit too enamored with macho gangster theatrics. “The Road” sees the director working in a more humane register without sacrificing the gloom and grit that his fans love him for. Viggo Mortensen stars as a man traversing what’s left of a ruined Earth with his son. If the two encounter a fellow weary traveler, it’s bound to not end well. “The Road” is anything but an easy sit, and parts of the film feel too depressingly on-the-nose in a COVID-afflicted global landscape. That said, the movie’s entrancingly ambivalent denouement suggests a sliver of hope in an otherwise pitiless and uncompromising world. – NL
“A Serious Man”
Poor Larry Gopnik. He’s a good man, a family man, an Everyman, a “Serious Man,” and yet the befuddled protagonist of Joel and Ethan Coen’s lethally funny Midwestern-Jewish morality play just can’t ever seem to catch a break. As played by the terrific Michael Stuhlbarg, Larry is a modern-day Job who is perpetually perplexed at the litany of injustices he’s forced to endure: an unfaithful wife, disrespect from his teenage kids, a student trying to bribe him at work, and that’s just the start of it! The Coens have always had a pronounced authorial interest in despair, but “A Serious Man” might be their most explicit exploration of the topic: it’s a bitter, philosophically loaded tragic farce about the centuries of persecution that Jews must wear as both a burden and a badge of resilience, and how even the noblest among us are not immune to life-upending cosmic mishaps. – NL
“Solaris” (2002)
Frankly, Steven Soderbergh is a filmmaker who we take for granted. One of our most prolific, shape-shifting directors, Soderbergh has redefined himself successfully for over three decades now. Riding on the goodwill of his Oscar win for “Traffic,” as well as the box office success of “Erin Brockovich” and “Ocean’s Eleven,” Soderbergh cashed in his blank check and arguably made his riskiest film to date when he remade Andrei Tarkovsky’s widely beloved sci-fi epic “Solaris.” Soderbergh stripped Tarkovsky’s dense narrative down to its essentials, shaving an hour off the original’s 166-minute runtime and thrusting us right into the mix of widowed psychologist Chris Kelvin’s (George Clooney) quest for reconciliation in deep outer space. Against all odds, Soderbergh managed to build off of Tarkovsky’s original vision with new ideas about how men, in particular, process loss. Simultaneously minimal and epic, the 2002 update is no longer a curiosity in Soderbergh’s filmography: viewed today, it stands as one of his finest accomplishments. The film is beautiful and haunting; an examination of second chances, and an affirmation that even love lost is love worth remembering. – MR
