See the full list here.
The single oddest thing about Zama, to me, was how entertaining it was. Though its critique of colonialism, race, and class is utterly pitiless, Martel treats her characters as human beings. So Zama is often funny, thrilling, and beautiful in conventional ways, but it’s also vicious and precise as a diamond cutter. The tonal balance is so deft and delicate that it’s difficult to think of many films in its weight class (Brazil? All About Eve? Network?) that manage all those things so equally well. This gives what is essentially an intimate portrait of a deeply compromised bureaucratic functionary an epic resonance.
Honorable Mention: Leviathan (d. Andrey Zvyagintsev, 2014)
As I wrote in my capsule review for last December, “Tragic as the story ultimately turns out to be, this is one of those movies that feels oddly inspiring (but decidedly not comforting), if only because one feels hopeful knowing that at least one critical observer has borne witness and has shown us a profound truth with which we may do what we will.”
Categorical Reflections
Both of these films strike me as parables about the corruption of the soul, both individually and in terms of the larger social order. That’s what most good satires are about. In the case of these films, the artists are really speaking to a spiritual homelessness born of being trapped in one’s circumstances. I don’t often find satires to be so emotionally moving, but these are.☕️
Catecinem 