Best Foreign Films, 2008

Best Foreign Films, 2008
I have a simple formula for deciding the best films in a year. I see at least 100 films in a year, most of them in movie theaters, and at least 25 of them at the annual Toronto International Film Festival. I make a note of films, and, as the end credit titles unfold, think of seeing them all over again, if possible, at the next screening. These films also prompt me to send mail to my friends announcing that I had indeed seen a fabulous film. Like many others who love the movies, my taste is also eclectic, as the list below shows. New York is a great city for seeing films from all over the world and the list reflects that advantage.

My top 10 films this year come from three continents. The best film of the year, Slumdog Millionaire, which I saw for the first time at Toronto in September, was shot entirely in India. The movie has grossed over $20 millions in North America and is still going strong -- last week, it made over $7.5 million. It has endeared itself to critics across Canada and America, and has been declared the best film of the year, even by critics' associations in Phoenix and other cities.



The best-selling horror master Stephen King, who had his own 10 best films of the year written for Entertainment Weekly, named it the year's second best; the list was led by The Dark Knight, the enormously successful and expensive (over $185 million) film that has grossed worldwide nearly $1 billion.



The list is limited to films made in non-Indian languages.



Slumdog Millionaire
For all the darkness and cruelty it portrays, the film is full of hope. Its final minutes including the rousing dance in a train station in Mumbai is a testimonial to its theme of love conquering it all.
Anil Kapoor as the sly quiz show host, Dev Patel as the contender who uses the show to look for his lost girlfriend, played by Freida Pinto, and Irfaan Khan as the police inspector, all deliver smart performances. But the best work comes from the three unschooled actors who play the slum kids forced into slavery.

Moving, suspenseful, and romantic, this is an old-fashioned story directed with a modern sensibility by Danny Boyle from a script by Simon Beaufoy. Briskly edited and embellished by a pulsating score (most of it by A R Rahman), this film, in the final reckoning, is an uplifting piece of art that can touch sensitive moviegoers worldwide.
Boyle has been making films for over a decade. He was best known till now for his cult hit Trainspotting. Now that he is a genuine mainstream success -- the film is doing very good business in Italy and Australia as it awaits release worldwide -- he has a big monkey on his back. Now his next film needs to be really remarkable. The expectations after Slumdog Millionaire are very high indeed.

The Dark Knight
Christopher Nolan (Memento) proves that even while directing a mega buck film he knows to pay attention to human sensibilities. Even more impressive than his Batman Begins, Nolan's dark and pulsating adventure is made richer by the absolutely riveting performance by Heath Ledger as the maniacal and sinister Joker. Like a handful of epic films, including The Godfather, Nolan's film also deals with obsessions, hunger for power and duality in human beings, with the redemptive nature around the corner. It was the event film of the year but what makes it memorable is that it is multilayered, and repeated viewing help us better appreciate its intrigue -- not to forget the big lesson that a huge film can also be very good cinema, and that it can have a heart and a moral center, too.
Nolan, who also wrote the script, elicits very good performances from the other artists. Christian Bale is outstanding as the conflicted superhero.
'I don't want to **** you,' Heath Ledger's Joker tells Bale's stalwart Batman. 'You complete me.' Those two sentences amply explain the complexity of this film.


WALL-E
One of the best animated films ever made, this huge success features two robots whose courtship takes place on a planet destroyed by the humans, thanks to the dangerous trash they leave behind. A story with a moral, this is also a film with endearing romance, gentle humour and many intriguing and clever turns.
Director Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo) gives the film a fast tempo but it is never overloaded. He has proved that imaginative writers and directors can put stunning technological inventions at the service of a thoughtful, inspiring and smart film that does not lose focus. There are about half-a-dozen issues, ranging from environmental pollution to the discovery of true love at work here. And yet the film is cohesive, well paced, and sets a high mark that would be difficult to best.
It has grossed an impressive $500 million across the world but it could be earning much more in DVD sales and rentals. With its wit and impressive technology, and subtle moral lessons, the film appeals to different generations. For once, you won't be thinking that you are sitting through a film because of the kids.

Milk
A screen bio of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to a major office in an American city, this movie disturbs and uplifts. Milk, who was assassinated in San Francisco in 1978, has galvanised the gay movement across America. Yet, newspaper and television headlines from time to time show that prejudices against gays and lesbians occasionally takes a lethal turn in America.
Sean Penn who plays the title character under Gus Van Sant -- arguably the first openly gay director in Hollywood -- gives a magnetic performance. His work alone has made the film memorable, and given it quite a push at the box office, turning it into a modest hit ($15 million and climbing) in North America.
Van Sant, who directed the much praised Good Will Hunting, doesn't turn Harvey into a saint. He, thanks largely to writer Dustin Lance Black, offers us a complex personality. But what the film offers most is the persistent attempt by one man (Harvey Milk) to be himself.
The film has several good performances. Watch out for Josh Brolin playing the tense and conflicted former San Francisco city supervisor who sets himself up as God. There are many scenes in the film that are stirring but the most powerful of them is the actual shot -- and it comes at the end of the film -- showing thousands of people, gay and straight, in a candlelight march honouring the man who defied society and convention in the name of tolerance.













Frost/Nixon
Even those who are familiar with the historic interview between the disgraced president Richard M Nixon and British journalist David Frost will find this film full of surprising twists and in-depth performances. The build-up to the final confrontation in screenwriter Peter Morgan and director Ron Howard's suspenseful drama is utterly riveting. Even those who have little interest in politics could find the duel between a crafty, brilliant and experienced politician and a persistent, younger adversary to be interesting. Nixon had thought he could outsmart the reporter and regain some of the prestige he lost in the aftermath of the Watergate political scandal.



The film achieves near greatness thanks to a very nuanced performance by one of the underused gems in American movies, Frank Langella, who plays the wily and egotistical Nixon. To play Frost opposite a genius like Langella is not easy but Howard has coaxed a brilliant performance by Michael Sheen. The two actors played the same role in the award-winning Broadway hit of the same name. But often good theatre does not translate well on the screen, and the mesmerizing performances on the stage lack luster on the screen. This film will be remembered as an exception to that theory.

The Visitor
A small film emerges from nowhere, suddenly becomes one of the best reviewed films of the year, and runs for more than three months in a handful of theatres in major American cities. This is a film about immigrants, in a sense. It is also about humanity, and the unexpected way people from different backgrounds come together and forge an alliance. It is notable for a slew of performances by veteran but not too well known actors as well as new artistes. The long time character actor Richard Jenkins (North Country, TV series, Six Feet Under) gives his career best performance as a widowed New York professor in a 9/11 world who discovers that a pair of illegal aliens (from the Middle East and West Africa) have been living in his New York apartment.
After the mix-up is resolved, he invites the couple -- a Syrian musician named Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and his Senegalese girlfriend (Danai Gurira) -- to live with him, at least temporarily. The couple has a positive influence on the professor who begins to loosen up, distancing himself from his wife's death.



But soon, the immigration authorities catch up with the couple and we get to explore bureaucratic hell as the good-intentioned professor becomes the guardian angel for the couple.



The situation becomes more complicated when Tareq's mother, Mouna (Hiam Abbass) arrives from the Midwest and stays with the professor. Writer and director Tom McCarthy (The Station Agent) handles a sentimental, humanist drama here but he never goes overboard.





The Secret of Grain (from France)
Also known in Couscous in some countries, the film looks long-winded and it certainly is. But it also offers compellingly interesting portraits of a beleaguered family -- in this case, an Arab family from Tunisia living in a small French harbour. The film, which has won major awards in France and was a box office hit in the US, has several unforgettable performances.

Habib Boufares playing the 61-year-old former shipyard worker torn between the children from his first marriage and the new woman in his life speaks little but his magnetic eyes and gestures bring out the conflict within the character. The most effective of all the performers is Hafsia Herzi, the stepdaughter of the old man, who fights against odds to make her stepfather's dream of starting a fish and couscous restaurant a reality.
The film is written and directed Abdellatif Kechiche, a Tunisian filmmaker who lives in France. He offers not only a vivid portrait of Arab families but also about the subtle and not-so-subtle challenges immigrants face. There is a lot of gentle humour in the film. Watch for the scene in which a desperate mother tries to toilet-train her little girl.



The ending may seem a bit contrived and in some countries, deliberately ***y, but watch young Herzi's painful expression as she stages an act that saves the inauguration of the restaurant turn into a disaster.

Gomorrah (Italy)
Italian director Matteo Garrone's film is about the criminal underworld in Naples that is far more vicious than the old-world Mafia. It is terrifying, suspenseful, brutal and yet it also offers, in the second half, a fleeting but firm situation of redemption when a son stands up to his father. An art-house hit in several European countries, especially in Italy, it will be out in North America in a few weeks. It is to be presented by Martin Scorsese.

The winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes and Italy's entry in the Oscar race, it is based on an international bestseller, the non-fiction work, Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples's Crime System. The book became so controversial and the pressure on the authorities to fight the new Mafia became so intense that writer Roberto Saviano, who worked on it for over five years, had to hide from the new Mafia for several years.



But the filmmakers who bravely forged ahead with the dramatized version of the book (which means the names of the crime bosses were changed) did not face any reported danger. The movie was freely exhibited not only across Italy but also in Naples, where it ran for more than three months in a handful of theaters. The film's title is not only a reference to the debauched biblical city but also a play on the word 'Camorra,' the name of the Mafia-type organisation that rules the huge underground economy of Naples and acts like an alternate government. At the end of the film, we learn that Camorra has investments across the globe, including in New York.











Little Zizou
Shown to great appreciation as the concluding film of the Mahindra Indo-American Arts Council Film Festival in New York in November, the film marks the auspicious debut of the distinguished scriptwriter Sooni Taraporevala as a director. The film received the best picture and best screenplay award at the festival. This film could become a sleeper hit not only in India but abroad, too. A parable that shows the futility of moral certitude, it is never dogmatic. Finely performed by a cast of new and old, especially by the director's children -- Iyanah Battivala and Jahan Battivala -- and Bomani Irani, it is set in a Parsi community that is seeing a battle between reformers and dogmatic elements.



It could be the story of any conflicted community. There is never a dull moment here, and the message that love is the biggest transformer is delivered gently. The title of the film refers to a young boy, who hopes that his long-dead mother would bring his idol and French soccer star, Zinedine Zidane (Zizou), to Mumbai.



John Abraham turns up in a few key scenes, and offers a delightful performance. The confrontation between his character and that of a Mumbai policeman is utterly charming. Mira Nair, with whom Taraporevala has collaborated in several distinguished films, including The Namesake and Salaam Bombay, presents the film.