Top Ten of the 2010s ☕︎ Mystery: Winter’s Bone (d. Debra Granik, 2010)

See the full list here.

For my extended thoughts on this film, you can click here. Very few films in the last ten years have stayed with me the way this one has. It’s not so much a matter of specific scenes (although the scene with the army recruiter is just devastating), but of the way Granik sediments loss and despair in such granular ways throughout. This was a justifiably star-making performance for Jennifer Lawrence, and though she’s racked up an incredible filmography in the last ten years, Winter’s Bone is singular for being such a perfect match for her at just the right time.

Honorable Mention: Burning (d. Lee Chang-dong, 2018)

If you don’t know the plot of Burning, my strongest recommendation is that you procure it, set aside three hours, and immerse yourself without looking up anything more specific about the plot. What I will say is that it is sad and angry, and it bleakly, sensitively explores what it means to be sad and angry and hopeless. Whether the film itself is devoid of hope, I haven’t yet decided, but it identifies a particular social truth that dovetails well with Parasite, which came out the following year. However specific those films are to South Korean society and culture, they speak to globalization’s impact on what kind of future young people expect to experience. As I said: sad and angry.

Categorical Reflections

When I first jotted down a shortlist of my favorite films from the 2010s, I was surprised to find how many of them hinged on missing persons. Then it occurred to me that the trope of the missing person creates a high-stakes pretext to explore the myriad social and psychological problems that contribute to the cases of people who are likely to go missing. In the last several months, I’ve made a point of seeking out mysteries about missing persons; I’m not sure if it’s going to turn into a larger project or not. What I’ve found, though, is that there can be a lot of astute critique packed into the space whence a person has vanished.☕️