The Best Films of 2006 – Part I

The first part of this list is foreign movies (Hollywood et all) and some really good ones miss out (Blood Diamond, Apocalypto, The Illusionist, The Prestige, The Departed, Letters from Iwo Jima, The Fountain) but for what it is worth, these are for me the top of 2006.

 

 

El Laberinto del Fauno – Guillermo del Toro’s surreal modern day fairy tale, peeks into the deep abyss that is human psyche to understand the root of our fears and desires, and our notions of good and evil. The first time I saw this movie, I was tempted to describe it Magic Realism on film. Ofelia, an eleven year old girl travels to the countryside with her pregnant mother so that the son her step-father, a maniacal army general fighting the rebels, expects can be born in his presence. Here she discovers (creates??) an alternate world where she is the long lost princess Moanna. She has to complete three tasks in order to return to her kingdom and true self. The narrative seamlessly alternates between the brutality of the ongoing Civil War and the horrors faced by Ofelia in her tasks. The viewer soon begins to wonder, what is that which is real, fully knowing which is which and yet wishing that it was the other way around. The shot where Ofelia tells a story to her yet unborn brother takes us smoothly from the real world to the realm of dreams and without any apparent effort brings us back, encapsulates the basic themes of the movie. Set in the post civil war era in General Franco’s Spain, this movie can be read at once a trenchant indictment of Fascism as well as the beauty that lies in Innocence that is often forgotten in the dark days of humanity. Spellbinding story, beautiful images and unobtrusive special effects that add to rather than overshadow the story make this a brilliant piece of cinema and by far the best movie of the year.

 

 

 

Children of Men – There is something about Mexican directors this year. Alfonso Cuaron’s last directed movie was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. This one could not have been more different. The movie starts with the news of the youngest person on earth being killed and that it was more than 18 years since the last person was born on this planet. The entire human race had suddenly turned infertile. Scarcely, has the importance of this piece of information sunk in that the viewer is taken head-on into a dystopian Britain of the future, where all immigrants are being evacuated (the scenes reminded me of Schindler’s List, though this time in colour) and a group of “terrorists” are fighting the oppressive regime. Clive Owen plays a disenchanted government servant, and is entrusted the task of escorting Kee, the first pregnant woman in nearly two decades safely to Human Project, so that secrets of procreation might be known again to humanity. The yet unborn baby, however, is being viewed as massive propanganda tool for the terrorists and they have managed to convince the mother that the government will never accept that the first baby in so many years was colored. There is, on the other hand, a mother’s love and her concern for the safety of her child where the cause of the government or the terrorists are of no concern. Completely different in treatment from El Laberinto del Fauno, another movie that delves deeply into what it means to be human in the first place.

 

 

Volver – Pedro Almodovar returns with this sweeping epic drama across generations to his first love, Women and the colour Red. It is in filming the stories of women, their joys, fears, trials and conquests, that Almodovar truely finds his forte (Talk to Her, Women on the Verge of Nervous Breakdown, All About my Mother). Volver is story of Raimunda, her mother Maura and her daughter Paula. Each generation of women cannot escape the actions of the other, forcing Maura to come back from afterlife to tie the loose ends up. Deaths happen, corpses are hidden and parties thrown as if they were merely just another ritual in the daily monotone of the female protagonists. Penelope Cruz as Maura and the entire cast do a brilliant job of infusing life into the script. With the theme, Almodovar also returns to his standard pallete, brilliantly filming the reds and the browns of the dresses, landscapes and the spilt blood, almost making colour as a separate voice in the film. This is not a film with a twist. Or a message. It is merely a superbly beautiful rendition of a story on film by a master.

 

 

V For Vendetta – The Wachowski brothers return to the silver screen with their rendition of Alan Moore’s classic graphic novel. Directed by James McTeigue, this movie has all ingredients to become a cult movie. Chock full of quotable quotes (V’s memorable introduction comes to mind) and cross referencing works across ages and genres, V for Vendetta presents an almost savage rebuttal of the fascist state, that preaches a return to chaos and anarchy rather than tolerating repressive order and rule of law. While, the politics of movie would clearly the unpalatable to those inclined otherwise, it is almost impossible for anyone, having a pretense of concern for the affairs of the world today, not to be affected by it. Topped with Natalie Portman’s brilliant acting (and British accent) and the almost comical madness of Hugo Weaving as V, V for Vendetta is at the very least a very intense film.

 

 

Babel – The final installment of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s trilogy on death, Babel was probably the most awaited movie of the year for me. The narrative structure of Babel is similar to both Amores Perros and 21 Grams which preceded it. However, while in the first two movies the separate storylines transpire in a limited space (same city) but are widely varying in their temporal occurence, Babel’s story spans across four countries and no less than six families, but a very limited time span. The denouement with the revelation of all the connecting threads leaves something to be desired. It does not really shock the viewer as it did in the earlier two movies, with the threads appearing tenuous at best in some cases. That the director was able to hold together such an ambitious script finally leading to a conclusion, is a feat in itself. Babel primarily deals with fear; the fear of an individual in an alien land, neither trusting nor trusted, with an overarching scepter of death looming in the horizon. While the previous two movies kept away from socio-political messages, a clear message is sent out in this movie in terms of trying to understand those who are not the same as us, rather than immediately stereotyping them. While this does not add to the cinematic quality of the movie as such, it does provide a clue to the gradual progress of Inarritu’s work.

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