How I Remember Movies | How Movies Remember
(2018 Edition)

Every year, I do a little experiment. Amidst the hustle and bustle of Awards season, I take time to think about what was hustling & bustling 5 years ago.

I do this for many reasons — each more didactic than the last: (1) I want to remember; (2) I want others to remember; and (3) I want to see if I can capture the relationship between consumption and forgetting.

We consume; we award. We move on: consuming and awarding.

5 years may sound arbitrary, but I think it’s a pretty valuable span of time. Examining pop-cultural phenomena with just a little bit of distance can get at some interesting questions — often exposing what’s focused or blurred in the interceding years.

It’s “common knowledge” that classics emerge; that truly exceptional songs, movies and books survive while the slop ends up in “the dustbin of history.”

But this, in itself, is a dustbin idea. Such thinking denies the fact that social and political forces (not to mention savvy marketing ploys) have a lot to do with what and how we remember.

• A book picks up a powerful fan after it’s been out (or ends up on 100 college syllabi) and it becomes a classic;
• A song plays in a movie and reenters the public sphere (did you see that scene at the end of Saltburn? “Murder on the Dancefloor” is having the same rebirth that “Bohemian Rhapsody” had after Wayne’s World came out in 1992);
• Nothing explains why The Sandlot (1993) is still in circulation and so widely admired (pro; con).

On a more serious note: ideas (and the people who have them) are often wildly suppressed. Things get banned; people get canceled. Beyond the scope of our own times, thinking through what makes/breaks the memory of our art is worthy of (re)consideration.

It has become the lifeblood of many organizations to revive what we’ve lost in books, films and music. Sometimes we hope to correct the sins of the past; sometimes we’re just trying to make a buck.

Those goals are a bit beyond this blog post. But I am very interested in how my own thoughts evolve within a short-ish period of time. In my quest to crown new champions, what former victors have I forgotten?

Films can be snapshots — look at them a few years later, stripped of their original context, and new feelings and interpretations can emerge. They became silly sometimes. Often, they seem prescient.

This experiment usually takes the form of a top-10 list (my attempts to understand 2017, 2016 & 2015, for example). Trying for objectivity: waiting a while removes many of the urgent, sentimental and sensational things that informed my original interpretation.

I’m trying something new this year. First is my Top 5 of 2018. This is me revisiting and reintegrating films into my present. While cramming to understand what the hell is happening at this year’s Oscars, we’ve totally forgotten about the 2018 race (and rightly so! More on this later).

Instead of prioritizing reacting, I’m reflecting.

Second, I explore a few themes from the 2018 filmscape. I look at movies that had a noticeable impact at the time (e.g., won the box office, won the Oscar, won critical or popular acclaim), trying to pinpoint what the movie-verse, across genre, style and acclaim, collectively had to say.

Part I. How I Remember Films

(My Top 5:)

For reference, here’s a handy-dandy list of the films that came out in 2018. Feel free to debate me in the comments!

5. Cold War (Pawel Pawlikowski)

Sensuously rendered, meticulously shot, this Polish film shamelessly prioritizes the elements of filmmaking (music, blocking, framing, editing) in what amounts to a thoughtful and invigorating celebration of film aesthetics. Some have called it overwrought; I think it’s a stunner — still swinging with vitality.

I wouldn’t teach it in a history seminar; but I’d put it in a film class. It’s an accessible and powerful way to show-and-tell the bridge between technical and artistic aspects of movie-making.

4. Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse (Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman)

At the time, I think everyone who saw this movie knew it was special. But we couldn’t quite grasp why. Now I get it: we were struck by an original, self-contained and dramatically potent film. Moreover, it was clearly distinct from the other, self-aggrandizing specimens in the so-called Marvel Universe. Superhero movies kept getting bigger ($), more boom-y ($$) and more star-studded ($$$); and Spiderverse was a grounding antidote.

2018 was also the year of Avengers: Infinity War (not to mention Ant Man and the Wasp). And I bet there were hordes of people like me who collectively breathed a sigh of relief when the credits on that $40 ($50?)-billion-dollar phase of a franchise rolled through its final credits. As the box office has borne out over time, appetites for films like Spiderverse are outperforming stuff like The Eternals and The Marvels. And they give half the heartburn!

Weird, yet fiercely original, the freshness we felt for the Spiderverse in 2018 turned out to be a subtle revolution. As a cross-genre epic that celebrated dozens (hundreds?) of animation styles, the film somehow felt both personal and universal. (Sort of like Spider-Man was meant to be, no?)

It’s lesson — even after the release of a sequel (woe be to those who serialize art) — is that big doesn’t have to be BIGGGGG. Titanic wasn’t really about the ship. Remember?

3. Can You Ever Forgive Me? (Marielle Heller)

The film that gave us the phrase “two-time Academy Award nominee Melissa McCarthy” was an understated comedy with big ideas. Many films try to capture the world’s slow pitch towards un-truthy-ness. Forgive Me does it better.

In 2018, the term “alternative facts” was relatively new. Many films try to push against historical trends in misinformation by defining their TRUTH in terms of black and white (see: The Matrix and V for Vendetta). They showcase clear heroes and villains in tugs of war where the stakes couldn’t be higher. That’s important when living in & through an era of “fake news.”

But what ultimately shakes out of this delightful and poignant film is that we (yes, the collective “we!”) can and should try to hold contrasting thoughts in our heads at the same time. Sometimes “good” people do “bad” things; sometimes “bad” people are redeemed. Blah blah blah — that’s the plot of a thousand movies.

In Can You Ever Forgive Me? there’s something closer to the everyday that we have to evaluate: mediocre people doing bad things that are, ya know…bad. But not that bad. What happens when mundanity gets interrupted by the less-than-principled?

The forgery and fraud in this movie are…bad. Yes. The lies and half-truths bristling in every scene. But characters, relationships and situations light up in those moments of gray. CYEFM? says: we can like people who have been corrupted or who corrupt and we believe in the importance of clear ethical lines. Such plots encourage us to like people who are funny or charismatic; to feel empathy for folks in rough spots. They simultaneously hold to a standard of facts — reinforcing the importance of truth by showing the consequences of straying from it.

This film, muted by its beige sets and costumes, flat hair and bad posture, explores the ethics of tedium. And it’s fabulous for doing so.

2. Roma (Alfonso Cuarón)

This powerful film portrays quotidian stories against a backdrop of grandiosity. Cuarón has always been a painter, dabbling in method — envisioning his canvas anew every time. His aim has always been an alchemic cinema that ties together the personal and the sensational.

Children of Men and Gravity (hell, even his slice of the Harry Potter pie) squeeze sentiment from every explosion (or Whomping Willow). He’s ambitious, inventing new technologies to capture it all.

Then he leaves the gimmickry of sci-fi for sober realism and produces the same thrills through authentic reproductions of the every-day. Y tu mamá también and the “Parc Monceau” vignette in the anthology film Paris je t’aime each articulate something extraordinary, despite their “simplistic” set up. (Its a silly word, “simplistic.” The latter is a five-minute continuous shot that packs as much punch as many feature films).

In Roma, Cuarón brings together all his talents. So many statuesque actors, framed tightly; so many epic tracking shots, exquisitely and expansively filmed. The style is an empathic pursuit of individualized storytelling: we don’t all take out the trash, clean up after the dog, or do the laundry. But for those who do, an eye trained in “simplicity” can capture the sweet spot between the intimate and enormous to become a cinematic marvel and a heartwarming masterpiece.

1. The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos)

And then there’s this film (not really carrying a sweet spot for anything). Lanthimos’s hilarious, surreal and licentious freakshow fails to achieve much balance in anything. And that’s really the point.

The royal opulence (costumes, bravado, provisions, set pieces) supercharges the monstrous nature of the spectacle. Greed, sex and low comedy appear to be out of place coming from the mouths of our “betters.” The joke — of course — is that greed, sex and low comedy come from most mouths.

We are all equal. Except.

Some people are more equal than others.

Within Lanthimos’s carefully reconstructed fever-dream version of the 17th century’s fin de siècle is a powerful melodrama. And, for the historians of performance out there, melodrama is one of the most potent ways to demonstrate moral truths. Melodramas, though often serious, are often quite funny. And this film’s revelry is at its peak when its warnings of probity accompany “real” acts of depravity.

Who “gets” what is a statement about social mores; the settings and powerhouse acting mere fodder for the larger “truths” being disentangled. Who and what audiences root for are meaningless; such sentiment is undercut by the ruthless logic of the story’s target.

The Favourite is the greatest melodrama of a generation, helmed by career-topping performances from Stone, Weisz and Coleman. But, in the end, no matter how wonderfully the film is rendered, it’s still “only” about the message. The ultimate reality about power and l’embarras des richesses, it seems to say, is that only a few of us get them.

Silly rabbit: the Queen will always win. And whomever is her second will always end up being…just…another rabbit.

***

Part II. How Films Remember…

You might remember 2018: alternative facts, fake news and the slow (yet inexorable) slide of the electorate into its quixotic corners? Though kids were in cages, we couldn’t stop talking about an alleged orange combover.

#metoo reached its acme, moving things forward (sometimes change, sometimes backlash). A couple famous people got married — one was a royal, the other became a royal (for a while anyway). And a royal ass was confirmed to the highest court in our land (but don’t worry, just have another beer).

Memory is fleeting. Everything that’s happened since has either bolstered these events or rendered them inconsequential. Even my flashback paragraph above ignores the things we forgot about: Angela Merkel, a still-faint optimism about Syria…Sears. Do you even remember hundreds of thousands of people marching on Washington to protest national gun laws?

I don’t.

You probably don’t remember hurricane Florence unless you lived through it because (1) there have been so many hurricanes since; and (2) the power of a storm stes from its imminence.

Rebuilding means we forget. If you’re staring at a pile of rubble every day, you remember.

Though all art has its own method and capacity to capture memory, I think the visual nature of film makes it uniquely capable of propelling historical interpretations into the future. In a particular time — in a unique political moment — films speak to the times. And the films of 2018 seemed to have a lot to say.

Here are a few things they “spoke” about:

…The Gays:

Despite all its acclaim, Bohemian Rhapsody didn’t really have much to add to the conversation. More a vehicle for acting-spectacle, the Freddie Mercury biopic took a beloved musical icon (much like this year’s Maestro) and stripped him of his mythology to portray a more “real” account of his life.

Ostensibly, the script focuses on Freddie Mercury’s transition from straight to gay to…something else (I don’t know. Queer, I guess?) and was a cause for celebration.

Don’t get me wrong: representation is important. Rhapsody, however, tries to track Mercury’s life in moral terms. On the one hand, unfettered access to his bedroom potentially normalizes queer sexuality for millions of movie-goers. In the long quest for equality, the argument goes, such depiction is important.

But. Much like Maestro, queerness is a cudgel for the character’s “downfall.” Mercury’s descent into queerness (its requisite promiscuity, prioritized sensuality, I-don’t-give-a-f*ck radical approach to the expectations of others) acts as a villain — taking him from his bandmates; giving him AIDS. For this movie, representation doesn’t normalize queerness, it abets an argument that gays should practice normative sexuality.

Bohemian Rhapsody is toted as a prestige “gay film” (alongside Brokeback, etc.); but other representations of queerness in 2018 (e.g., The Favourite and Can You Ever Forgive Me?) avoid this trap. Those characters are gay (or whatever); yet the plot and social arguments of the film don’t necessarily revolve around that fact.

Take another film from 2018, Love, Simon: revolutionary because it depicted a story of teenage exploration within a formulaic genre. (See! Gays can have traditional rom-coms, too!)

The complexity of queer experiences came out in other films — Boy Erased being the best example. These two films wouldn’t have been made even five years before. Their existence shows that Hollywood’s spending formula had begun to make room for queer stories. Prestige films have been exploring such themes for years. Rhapsody was a tired replay of that theme. I’m much more proud that audiences flocked to see a teen [gay] romance and a film about the systematic torture of young queer people by a religious order.

That’s a new kind of progress. And moviemaking in 2023 benefited from that change.

…Race:

That “progress” also came in the form of America’s revived grappling with race. 2018 was no 2020, but it certainly pointedly redirected pop cultural understandings of ethnicity, depiction, representation and political action.

Notoriously (and ignominiously), in the pursuit to portray themselves as relevantly progressive, the awards season tipped toward Green Book: a film about a white person, made and funded predominantly by white people, with a script largely drawing inferences about black people. It was an embarrassment. The Oscars anointing such a film within a few years after the towering masterpieces of Moonlight and 12 Years a Slave seemed to undermine the legitimacy of those crownings.

Instead, much like the win of Crash in 2005, the Oscar seemed to suggest Academy voters are often too busy congratulating themselves for congratulating films about race. Green Book is problematic in the ways that Moonlight is revelatory. GB addresses race as superficial elements of a person’s life (as opposed to fundamental) and spends more time extolling white people who deign to treat black people like human beings.

Look at the recent fallout over The Blind Side. In 2009, plenty of people warned about its white saviorism. Now it’s pretty obvious how problematic that film was. With GB, it didn’t take long for the problem to be revealed.

To crown that film was to overlook the nuanced and messy nature that discussions about race usually take. And 2018 was an incredibly rich year for movie-goers dissecting such intricacies. Spike Lee, whose films (even when they are boring, strange or poorly made) are always excavations, made BlacKkKlansman. Black Panther and Into the Spiderverse upheaved the narratives driven by Marvel. And teen dramas (themselves a harbinger of stripped down, unnuanced depictions of hard topics) gave us the insightful and hugely popular The Hate U Give.

One of the best documentaries of the year, Hale County this Morning this Evening managed to show the effects of generational discrimintation just by showing a day in the life of an Alabama community.

There was plenty of prestige films better than Green Book that focused on racial dynamics. The best was If Beale Street Could Talk.

But perhaps the highlight of the narrative shift in 2018 (in addition to Black Panther returns) was the hugely successful comedy Crazy Rich Asians. I have never seen the word “incredible” anywhere near a discussion about that film; but who cares when “game changer” gets thrown around with full abandon?

The big changes in the 2018 filmscape was not a rerouting of the discussions surrounding race — its historical precedents or contemporary inequities. The powerful change was the regular and significant increase in stories about and helmed by people of color, and the box-office domination of these films.

So-called prestige cinema should take note.

…The Past:

2018 had few significant historical epics. There were many movies set in the past, but depictions of the distant past seemed to take a backseat to those about the more recent past.

I’ve already talked about many of these films (Rhapsody, BlacKkKlansman, Green Book, Beale Street, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Roma, Cold War, etc. etc.). They use more recent events to set their critical arguments. Many seemed to generate niceness nostalgia.

As a likely reaction to the state of political discourse of 2018, films seemed to be saying: “Let’s be nice.” The epitome came with the documentary Won’t You be My Neighbor? Mr. Rodgers, who had already be dead for fifteen years, reignited a memory in order to create a movement.

Hollywood is notorious for providing a surfeit of apolitical schlock; and 2018 was no outlier (see: Solo, Jurassic World, Mama Mia! Here We Go Again). But there was something different about what played as blockbusters for kids. Peter Rabbit, A Wrinkle in Time, Christopher Robin and Ready Player One all revived beloved classics — book-into-film arguments based in an adult nostalgia that generationalized soft feelings.

The moral of most of these? Kindness and friendships are the real answers to our biggest problems.

And while talking about the past, I wanna highlight one more film: the Coen Brothers’ collection of punchy, poignant vignettes. The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. The most problematic (and psychopathic) genre in American history is the Western. In addition to its traditional depictions of “the old west” and indigeneity, westerns have unscrupulously reified a problematic nostalgia: an American love for a fictional version of itself. Buster Scruggs, however, with the Brothers’ typical acerbic and sardonic wit, deconstruct that false love. It’s the best western critique since The Treasure of the Sierra Madre — John Huston’s 1948 scorcher with a classic Bogey, drenched in iconic hatefulness — showing that good comedy can be as much of a skewer as despondent melodrama.

It’s significant enough that 2018’s historical epics were indies, sparse and understated. The focus on the recent past, beloved classics and skewering satires worked together to suggest that recent history can be the best teacher.

The result: an ascendent rhetoric of niceness.

I’m looking forward to the 2024 awards season. I loved The Holdovers and Saltburn. I was delighted by Barbie, intrigued by American Fiction and fatigued by Killers of the Flower Moon.

I feel many things about them all. But I can wait until 2019 to say, for sure.