1. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
This is arguably the most critically celebrated film of the 1990s, and rightly so. The plot is so deceptively simple, the characters so rich and complex, that Anthony Hopkins won the Best Actor award even though he’s only on screen for slightly over fifteen minutes. Thomas Harris, through his novel, and Jonathan Demme, through his direction, work together to bring such a sense of dread to this picture… everything feels dark and claustrophobic, even when the characters are outside.
Like I said, the plot is so simple I’m stunned that no one used it to such awesome effect before: A serial killer is murdering women, and rookie FBI agent Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster, perfect as always), is sent to interview the most deranged killer in captivity, Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), to see if he can offer any insight, any method to the new killer’s madness. What follows is a constant back-and-forth relationship between prisoner and guard, as Clarice and Hannibal verbally spar with the grace of a fencing match, as he teases her with clues and coaxes out her innermost secrets, delighting in her emotional pain like fine wine. All the while, the clock counts down as the daughter of a prominent Congresswoman is held by the serial killer at large, surely to be the next victim.
I don’t know of any other villain since Darth Vader that has so quickly ingrained itself in the national consciousness as Lecter (and that was even without having his face on bed sheets or Big Gulp mugs). It’s easy to see why: he’s elegant, cultured, and will eat your tongue if given half the chance. He is the antithesis of everything we think we are able to control in the modern world, a seamless veneer of civility hiding a snarling wolf underneath. Just as the end of the 20th century made us question our own basic humanity, Lecter embraced the dichotomy, made his own raging madness as much a part of himself as the classical music and Renaissance architecture that he admires.
What impresses me most about the film is how tawdry the whole thing could have been. Serial killers on both sides, women being killed, skinned, and having moth cocoons stuffed down their throats… it could have been very exploitive and gross. But what raises it above pure Grand Guignol is the recurring theme of the promise of transformation. Even though his methods are animalistic and grotesque, new-killer-on-the-block Buffalo Bill is striving to become more (in his eyes, a woman is the pinnacle of humanity), and even has a love for his moths, caring for them and guiding them on their own paths of change. He sees what he does as inevitable, powerful. Clarice mentally goes from troubled child to strong, confident FBI agent, being challenged at every turn by emotional, mental, and physical puzzles and finding in herself the strength to meet them.
And who, then, is the truly frightening one in this movie? Hannibal, the one who doesn’t change, the one who knows who he is and sticks with it, no matter how elegantly horrible it may be. There are some films that build up their villains so effectively you feel that, if such a thing were ever to get out into the rational, sane world, that would be it. There would be no place to hide, and no mercy to be found (the Alien films come to mind as another example). The fact that Hannibal does get out in the end makes the ending credits some of the most disturbing I’ve ever seen.
2. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
I’ve never been to war. I was lucky enough to be born at a time when it was never necessary for me to consider having to hold a rifle and take someone else’s life. For me, and any other child in the 70’s and 80’s, war was always something that someone else threatened to do to us… we knew the fear of someone pushing a button somewhere and turning the entire world into dust. But at least it would be neat, clean. A flash of light, and that would be the end. Survival would be the horror, not death itself.
With that background, you can imagine how jarring the first half-hour of Saving Private Ryan is for me. With its flawless, almost stream-of-consciousness depiction of the horrors of Omaha Beach, it proves (as if there were still any doubt) that Steven Spielberg is the premiere filmmaker of the twentieth, and quite possibly twenty-first, century.
Once the initial shock is over, and the stakes of war have been established, we are thrust into a situation as bizarre as the premise of war itself. Tom Hanks, the man through whose eyes we experienced the opening carnage, is the leader of a band of troops driving deep behind enemy lines for a single purpose: to retrieve the titular soldier and send him home. The reason for this sudden reprieve is that all four of his brothers have died in the war, and the US government has determined that there is a limit to the sacrifice that one family can make.
The beauty of this story, cruel and unfair as it is, is that it’s a microcosm of war itself: on a personal level, every action in war seems brutal and pointless, even counter-intuitive, whether it’s jumping off a amphibious troop carrier into a blaze of German machine-gun fire, and attempting to overwhelm a held beach by sheer numbers, or sending a whole squad of men into mortal danger to save the life of one.
But the mastery of the film is in the characters of the men themselves. There are no John Waynes here, no hell-bent patriotism. These are all everyday men who have heard the call of duty and answered it, despite their misgivings. It’s said that courage, by nature, has to work against fear. And I believe this film is the closest we will ever get to seeing into the very heart of courage, and understanding it.
3. The Green Mile (1999)
The oddest part of making this part of my list is not to find that there are two Tom Hanks films here, but that there are two films directed by Frank Darabont, both based on Stephen King stories that take place in mid-twentieth century prisons. I hope it drives the point home that I didn’t reconsider and take one of them off. In all honesty, I just couldn’t. They’re too different. One is based firmly in reality, the other more supernatural, and one is seen through the eyes of the prisoners, while the other is told from the guard’s perspective.
This one is the more supernatural of the two, an adaptation of King’s attempt at a Dickensian “serial novel”. Knowing that, and that even the author didn’t know how it was all going to turn out, the work itself is even more stunning. Tom Hanks plays the lead guard of a death row cell block, and comes to know its inhabitants: the proudly defiant killer, the gentle soul who keeps a surprisingly intelligent mouse for a pet, and the quiet giant who seems to have the ability to heal people through his touch.
This latter inmate is the center of the story, and as he’s played by Michael Clarke Duncan, is one of the most sympathetic characters I’ve ever seen on screen, even though he’s in jail for the murder of two little girls. This man, soft-spoken and immense, embodies the wounded child that the world outside the prison walls has become, unable to understand its own beauty even when faced with certain death. The scene near the end, when he tells what it’s like to feel the world’s pain every second of every day, is one of the most perfect speeches written.
A lot has been made of the Biblical intimations of the plot (the name of Duncan’s character even has the initials J.C.), and to be fair, they’re well founded. But I think this adds to the poignancy of the film, knowing ahead of time that this hulk of a man will eventually end up being the sacrificial lamb, saving the soul of the other characters in the film, even as they try in vain to save him. In salvation, there’s a steep price to be paid, and the film never shies away from that.
I have to say, this is one rare occurrence where the film is better than the book, streamlining and focusing several themes to crystal clarity, even making the ending happier. I assume this is possible because Stephen King wrote the original book pretty much on the fly, but the fact that it all seems so fully formed impresses me to no end.
4. Fight Club (1999)
I’ve had a more problematic relationship with this film than any other. Even in the theater, forty-five minutes in, I remember thinking, “this is the best film I’ve ever seen!” An hour later, I was practically throwing my popcorn at the screen in frustration. It seemed like the seeds of promise that were sown in the first half were purposefully, methodically being plowed under in the second. It took several years, and several more viewings, for me to come to accept it on its own terms. I’ve come to realize that I found the film’s themes so fascinating that when it came time to get the action, the actual plot going, I didn’t want to let go. I wanted to examine the characters more, to understand what they thought and felt, rather then watch them actually accomplish things.
I shouldn’t have worried, I suppose. There’s a lot of thinking to be done after viewing this film. It raises questions about what it means to be male in a world that seems to tame and feminize everything, and what it basically means to be alive, how to separate yourself from the anesthetization that is civilization.
The story centers around Edward Norton, who plays a nameless, bored middle-management insurance adjuster. During one of his business trips (and a particularly bad bout of insomnia), he meets Brad Pitt, a brutish soap salesman who lives a bohemian life that Edward envies. After a long discussion about the problems of the modern world and how it numbs you to life, Brad floats an idea: “I want you to hit me as hard as you can.” From this humble beginning, the two create an underground society of men getting back in touch with their basic humanity by beating each other senseless.
Now, I don’t think that this is a good idea. I’ve never thought that violence was the answer to anyone’s problems… but then again, these guys aren’t purporting to solve any problems. Their sole intent it to cause them, to wake each other up, to tap back into the primordial core of humanity that lives under the smooth veneer of everyday civility. That vitality, they find, is as alive as it’s ever been, and these men become revitalized and more connected to everyone around them by this unsettling method.
That’s the part of the movie that I found fascinating, and maybe you’ll react to the second half of this movie the way I initially did, not wanting to watch the fight clubs evolve into domestic terrorist organizations, attempting to recreate the world the same way the members have recreated themselves. You also might not like the major plot twist, which certainly wasn’t helped by the fact that this movie was released less than two months after The Sixth Sense. But if you give it time and patience, your appreciation of David Fincher’s artistry (accentuated by some incredibly inspired special effects and visual jokes) will increase, and you might seriously wonder what it’s like to be on the receiving end of a friend’s fist.
6. Pulp Fiction (1994)
Now that the top five are out of the way, how about a film that doesn’t probe the darkest recesses of the soul? True, it’s not for kids, but Quentin Tarantino’s (and his co-writer, Roger Avary) second feature film showcases the pure value of storytelling, with a time-bending structure that is as much fun to try to piece together later as it is to watch.
Never being one to tell a single story within a film, this is essentially three tales told at once, overlapping times and characters. One is of John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson as hitmen on a job that goes mysteriously right and then messily wrong, another has Bruce Willis as a washed-up boxer who double-crosses his crime-boss patron (played by Ving Rhames), and the third has Travolta on a disastrous “date” with Uma Thurman, the all-but-innocent wife of said crime boss.
Pulp Fiction is a master-class exercise in storytelling balance. Even though there are plenty of excruciatingly uncomfortable situations here… near-fatal drug overdoses, accidental decapitations, male rape, etc. … it’s tempered by likable characters, knowing conversations about pop culture, and a general giddiness about never knowing quite what’s going to happen next. I clearly remember the first time I saw Bruce and Ving trussed up in harnesses and ball gags in a redneck’s S&M dungeon, and specifically asking myself, “Exactly what the hell am I watching here?” But I was spellbound to see how it all turned out nonetheless.
The tension is palpable as we watch with sometimes agonizing slowness how things pan out, and the suspense is expertly woven… it’s impossible not to lean forward when Bruce Willis’ character goes back to his apartment for his favorite watch, knowing that there’s someone undoubtedly waiting to ambush him. The only part more impressive is a one-take monologue by Christopher Walken, explaining the origin and importance of that keepsake.
All the while, you feel that there’s a subtext that you’re never quite let in on, and there are several theories out there regarding the glowing contents of a briefcase that many people seem to be chasing after, not to mention the inexplicable Band-Aid at the base of Vhing Rhames’ skull… but I’ve given enough tantalizing bits away. The film’s title is no accident. It’s all about the spinning of the tale.
5. Apocalypse Now (1979)
I first saw this film my senior year of high school in Film class, and have admired it ever since. I know, I’m getting heavily into the war films (and even films that meditate on the absence of war, like Fight Club), but that’s for a reason. Even when war isn’t the central drama of human history, it seems, it still is. But to call Apocalypse Now a film about war is like saying that Heart of Darkness, the Joseph Conrad book on which it’s based, is about ivory trading.
It takes place in the hidden wilderness behind the Vietnam war, yes, but there’s so much insanity going on under the surface that it could be argued that it’s all taking place in the main character’s head. Martin Sheen plays an unstable Marine who’s given a top-secret mission: to follow a particular river to its source in Cambodia, where a former colonel (played by Marlon Brando) has gone crazy and started his own quasi-religious cult. Once there, Martin is to assess the situation and exterminate the renegade colonel.
We follow Martin’s progress along the river, and viscerally experience the episodic adventures he and his boatmates find along the way, each one more bizarre and disturbing at the last. It all culminates in finding the silent, death-filled temple that Brando has commandeered for himself, hiding his hairless bulk in the shadows while the indiscriminate sacrifice of people and animals fills the jungle outside.
It’s the scenes of Brando rambling on in the dark that really fixated me the first time I saw this movie. I remember thinking that I could sit and listen to the master actor improvise about snails crawling along knife blades for hours. What Brando (and Francis Ford Coppolla, through the editing of what must have been tens of hours of footage) has tapped into in these monologues is the basic problem of humanity, and is perfectly summed up by Brando’s final words, “The horror… the horror…” What he means in his ultimate revelation is that we, as humans, are in the unique position of being no more than civilized animals, our baser instincts reigned in by propriety and culture, but at the same time possessing the knowledge that it’s our basic nature to hate, to fight, to kill… in other words, it should come as no surprise that most of the films on this part of the list are about transcending, moving above and beyond that which makes us no better than wolves in suits.
And it’s not just the film itself that makes this bold stride into the darkness of humanity’s inner psyche. From watching the just-as-exciting making-of documentary Hearts of Darkness, you can see how hard confronting these issues makes you question your own intentions, your own sanity. It’s one of the most important companion pieces to any work of art I’ve ever seen. We actually get to watch Coppolla looking into the abyss, and seeing his reaction at what looks back at him.
7. West Side Story (1961)
Musical theater played a huge part in my upbringing, and I’ll get more into that in the Musical Influences part of my list. I’ve already put one musical into my favorite comedies list, so here’s the dramatic flip side. It’s got an astounding pedigree, too… based on Shakespeare, music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, choreographed by Bob Fosse and directed by Robert Wise. How does any other movie musical stand a chance compared to that?
Everyone knows the story (two teenagers fall in love, despite the fact that they’re bound to rival street gangs in the back streets of Manhattan – with tragic results), and everyone makes fun of the idea of thugs and hoods breaking into song and dance at the drop of a hat. But you know what, folks? It works. And the secret is attitude. There’s no pretension here, no camp. Every single person involved plays it absolutely straight and makes it seem natural.
And it flows like a dream. There are certain works of art that feel like they’ve been dropped from the skies already fully formed, so perfect in how the parts interlock and all the gaps are filled, that it almost seems impossible they’re something that someone (much less a large team of people) has worked on for years. West Side Story is one of those. Even the music, full of syncopation and strange time signatures, dissonances and sometimes five parts going simultaneously, seems entirely cut from whole cloth.
I really can’t say anything more positive about it, so instead, here’s another example of how film can streamline the work it’s adapted from, and hopefully you won’t mind if I go on a bit of a nitpicky rant. I still think it makes absolutely no sense to put the “Cool” number before the rumble, as it is in the stage version. No sense at all. When it’s placed after the rumble, when members of both gangs have died, the whole number is different, elevated. Everything is so tightly wound, the stakes so much higher for the Jets to hang onto the last scrap of sanity they have. It sends the story spiraling down toward its inevitable conclusion, and I could never figure out why it could ever occur any other way.
Incidentally, this was one of my mother’s favorite films in her young adulthood, and she has told me since that it was one of her favorite dreams to imagine that she had her own copy of it in her room, ready to project on the wall opposite her bed any time she felt like viewing it. I suppose the lesson there is that if you wait around long enough, sometimes your dreams can come true.
8. Unbreakable (2000)
There are some directors who you have utter faith in. You know, even before knowing anything about their new work, that it’s going to have a certain effect on you, that it’s going to take you to that place where great films take us all. For me, David Lynch is the most reliable director of that sort. But M. Night Shyamalan has been making up a lot of ground in an awfully short amount of time.
The Sixth Sense? Brilliant. Signs? Flawed, but staggeringly suspenseful, at least up until its last act. The Village? Has some moments of pure genius and beauty in it. Lady in the Water? Well, every rule has to have an exception. But my favorite film of his is Unbreakable, the one that always seems to be overlooked. Maybe it’s because you can’t really explain what it’s about. You can give a plot summary, but it makes the whole thing sound incredibly boring (but here goes… a man comes to terms with the fact that he is, in fact, a modern-day superhero, with his super-power being the inability to get hurt. That’s it, really.) But the way in which Shyamalan goes about getting us to that realization is a slow, dreamlike rhapsody on the issues of responsibility (to both family and the world at large), self-discovery, human compassion, and ultimately the fairness/unfairness of life. It’s a comic-book story, told in simple strokes, but the stream of thoughtfulness running underneath feels bottomless.
It’s beautifully directed, too. It’s full of all those visual tricks that you learn about in Film Theory class, but are woven together so seamlessly that they don’t jump out at you as gimmicky. After you watch this film once for the story, I suggest you go back with the knowledge of what’s going to happen and watch it again for the way the visuals augment the storytelling. The symmetries, the reflections, the inversions, the color schemes… all are methods that Shyamalan uses in his other films, but here they’re so plentiful and every one so meaningful, especially in delineating the relationship between Bruce Willis’ and Samuel L. Jackson’s characters, that it amazes me every time I see it.
9. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
It seems kind of strange, as I mentioned higher up on this list, that I have two Stephen King/Frank Darabont collaborations that take place in prisons in the mid-twentieth century. This one is a horse of an entirely different color, though. While The Green Mile used its supernatural edge to examine the pain of the world, this film uses jail as a prism through which the courage of humanity and the inherent fears of life are split apart.
This is done through the character that Tim Robbins plays, a man who may, or may not, have killed his wife and her lover in a classic case of second-degree murder. Through the brutality, corruption, and desperation of prison, Tim is the one who tries the hardest to hold on to his humanity, and in doing so raises his small group of friends to a higher level as well, becoming the quiet leader the sort of which has been known to change the direction of the world throughout history.
Tim’s character is aided by a wise old inmate, played (of course) by Morgan Freeman, who is the narrator of the story. It’s Morgan’s undying loyalty to the man who made his prison life just a little more bearable that finally results in one of the most satisfying payoffs ever made in film.
Far from being a Christ figure, Tim’s character is the model of patience, a believer in the long view of life. His plot to escape the prison, suddenly and spectacularly, is only part of the decades-long plan he hatches that not only sets him free, but topples those who have wronged him in the past as well. It’s a sweet finish for anyone who has ever felt oppressed by those in authority, and it’s quite evident why this is (according to the almighty IMDB) one of the highest-rated films in American cinema.
10. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
The quintessential American novel becomes the quintessential American film. Every bit of decency that this country ever harbored in its heart is present here, and watching it come up against the overwhelming forces of prejudice is both uplifting and truly heartbreaking.
The story takes place in the Depression-era south, where a young tomboy grows up watching her single father take on the toughest legal case of his career: defending a black man accused of the rape of a white woman. You hardly notice that so many American story conventions and taboos are quietly shattered in this story: single fatherhood, the injustice of Jim Crow laws, racism… and somehow all that darkness is balanced by the way the girl gets to know the reclusive young man who lives nearby, and learns that he’s simply a misunderstood, gentle soul.
I first read To Kill a Mockingbird in ninth grade, that wonderful age where one still believes that a book can not only change one’s life, but change the world itself. I should have expected it when, during a read-aloud session in class, my English teacher chose me to read the courtroom testimony of the man who claims his daughter was raped by a black farmhand. I always felt kind of honored that she chose me to read it, since it’s a very emotionally charged scene. Maybe she just thought I would be less likely to snicker at the crude language…
Anyway, the year was winding down, and over the course of the next few days we watched the film, which was just as riveting as the book was. It hooked me right from the start, not least of all because I had become unwittingly familiar with the theme music… The first play that I did after my family moved to Ann Arbor was a drama about child labor regulations at the beginning of the twentieth century, and the director had used the soundtrack throughout the play. It was incredibly strange, hearing a song that I had heard hundreds of times in an entirely different context.
In the film, Atticus Finch (played perfectly by Gregory Peck) came across on screen just the way he had in the book… a quietly strong man, utterly confident in the direction of his moral compass, making a difference not through brute force but by his wits, a man who knows that the tactic of changing minds through rationality is ten times more effective than using fear and intimidation. Plus, I’ve always been a sucker for a good courtroom drama.
But there’s so much more to this story… these characters live in a world that was so much simpler, but the film never pretends that there wasn’t a large helping of ignorance to go along with the innocence. It resists sentimentalizing bygone days, but points out how far we have come since then, and how far we have yet to go.
Honorable Mention – David Lynch
I don’t remember which of David Lynch’s films I saw first. I think it must have been Dune, although I doubt you’ll find any fan of his work that thinks his adaptation of Frank Herbert’s seminal sci-fi novel is even artistically consistent with any of his other work. I finally realized his true brilliance when “Twin Peaks” came on the air…
But that will come later in the Television section. Right now I’m looking back at my Top Ten Drama list and realizing that he’s not there… how could that be? As I said earlier, he’s one of the extremely few directors whose films I will go and see without any question. His films are like pure distillation of someone’s troubled dreams, and I find them completely fascinating. Even when they don’t make any sense, you get the feeling that everything that happens in them is tied together on a subconscious level. The first time I saw Mulholland Drive, I couldn’t make heads or tails of it, but I felt deep in my gut that it did all fit together somehow. Lynch’s films make me think, make me turn them over and over again in my mind, trying to get the pieces to fit. But I don’t know if I can consider any of them in my Top Ten. So if I find him such a reliable and rich source of enjoyment, why not?
It may be because they don’t really fit the criteria for good drama that I set at the beginning of this section: man confronting the unknown and being changed by it. You can say that Lynch’s films are about that, but his characters usually leave very little for us to identify with… I can’t really say that I feel an emotional connection to Kyle MacLachlan’s character in Blue Velvet, Nicolas Cage in Wild at Heart, or Jack Nance in Eraserhead. Even though The Elephant Man found the humanity in the tragic human oddity of John Merrill, it was still from a distance, taking on a little too much of the chilliness of Victorian England. The closest he’s ever gotten to creating that fragile umbilicus between lead character and audience was probably with Richard Farnsworth in The Straight Story, a G-rated film about an elderly man who drives a riding mower hundreds of miles to see his ailing, estranged brother.
Another reason, I become more and more convinced, is that Lynch is less able to articulate his thoughts than any other artist I’ve known. Any question for explanation for his ideas ends up with his nasal, strangely naïve voice saying “Well, A film has a sort of feel to it, and you just keep working until it feels right”. Even the feature-length documentary to his most enigmatic film, Eraserhead, begins with him saying “I really don’t remember much about writing the script, or any of the ideas I had at the time.” He’s the perfect example of an artist who doesn’t think, but instead just does. And considering that I find his work full of subtext and resonant with something very deep in my subconscious, I find it unendingly frustrating that even he doesn’t know what’s going on most of the time.
Still, I love the work, the strange fascination he has with curtains, parquet floors, and grievous head wounds. As I write this, his tenth feature film, Inland Empire, has just premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where he received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. In a world where the ranks of the auteur are thinning out and it’s become increasingly easy to separate the creator from the creation, it’s nice to know that there’s someone still out there pursuing their own vision, no matter where it leads, or even if they are as surprised as we are by what they find there.
