All for Nought
Until the Times of London decided to publish their list of ‘The 100 Best Films of the Decade’, I hadn’t actually noticed that the current block-of-ten was winding to a close. I mean, we haven’t even settled on a name for the damned thing yet. ‘The noughties’? No one seems too comfortable with that nonsensical, and inadvertently saucy, phrase. I shouldn’t imagine there’ll be a fancy coffee table book called Cinema of the Noughties coming out any time soon.
Especially not if the films the Times cites are truly the best of the last ten years. The Devil Wears Prada? Really? One of the 100 best films of the decade? I’m surprised Failure to Launch isn’t listed. Granted, Prada only scrapes in at number 100, but things aren’t much more impressive up the pointy end. Number two is a tie between the last two Jason Bourne films! At least in the first one you could actually see what was happening in the car chase, but if the Bourne movies are meant to be this decade’s equivalent of the Godfather, then I think it’s fair to say the ‘noughties’ have been punching below their weight. There were terrible movies made in the seventies that are better than The Bourne Supremacy. Freebie and the Bean, for example.
So, if Matt Damon in a shakycam double-episode of MacGyver was the second-best film of the decade, what, you ask, was the best? The Times, with tedious predictability, has plumped for Hidden. No, not The Hidden, with Michael Nouri and Kyle MacLachlan as a mismatched pair of cops (one’s an alien, the other isn’t), a film that I would rate higher than over half those on the Times list, including Hidden itself, although The Hidden is exactly the kind of movie that Hidden’s director, Michael Haneke, has been railing against for most of his career.
Haneke, a severely bearded Austrian, seems to be under the impression that when you or I go to see, for example, a Hollywood action film, we leave the cinema convinced that what we have just seen is a documentary. Haneke, due to his superior intellect, is able to discern that many of these films present scenarios that would never actually happen in real life, whereas you or I, whenever we see an interview with, say, John Travolta, are constantly distracted by the possibility that he might, in reality, be Nicolas Cage wearing Travolta’s face. Haneke has made several films that point this out, and in one instance, made it again, in case nobody was paying attention the first time. In fact, I understand he has promised to remake Funny Games every year until we all get the idea that MOVIES AREN’T REAL. Giant transforming robots chasing Megan Fox across the pyramids? Sorry, folks; couldn’t happen. In the Haneke version, Fox would receive a series of grainy mpegs, depicting Shia LaBeouf being kicked to death in an undisclosed location. Then, in a long, beautifully sustained wide shot, LaBeouf’s abandoned car would steadfastly refuse to transform into anything. Roll credits.
Hidden is basically a Hitchcock movie with the final reel missing, although to state this publicly is the height of bad manners. Even worse is to ask, ‘So who was sending the tapes, then?’ Do that and you’ll be asked to finish your sav blanc and leave immediately. Who was sending the tapes is not relevant, you ignorant schmo! This is a film of layers and subtlety. Although, when he reveals that his main character, a pretentious nob who hosts a snooty book program on the telly, nightly eats his dinner in a room that looks exactly like the set of his TV show, Haneke makes Spaceballs look understated.
Speaking of nutty comedies, I guess I can’t complain about the large number of them that have made the Times list, given that, going by the Oscars, there hasn’t been a decent one since Annie Hall. Although, Crash (on the list, of course) is pretty funny if you’re in the right mood. It’s great to see In the Loop, Knocked Up, School of Rock and Anchorman in there, but by those standards, Superbad, Galaxy Quest, Napoleon Dynamite and The 40-Year-Old Virgin should also be eligible. All are better films than Wedding Crashers (number 90). And when Borat is at number 11 and Team America at, an equally staggering, number 5, you might be saying, ‘Hang on, these films are okay, but not, I would have thought, Best of the Decade material.’ But on the drama side of the fence, we get The Queen, Gladiator, The Dark Knight, and Slumdog fucking Millionaire. And Casino Royale at number 8! I had to check to make sure they weren’t referring to the original.
We can argue till the cows come home about which titles should and shouldn’t be there. My point is: when a list of the decade’s 100 Best Films features Minority Report at number 28, maybe it’s time for that decade to take a long, hard look at itself.
‘But hang on,’ you say, just as you did in that earlier paragraph, ‘I like Gladiator. And what exactly is your problem with Slumdog?’
‘Just you shortening it to “Slumdog” is enough to shit me blind,’ I respond, backed into a corner and lashing out like a wounded dog.
‘And Our Heath was superb in…’
‘All right, that’s enough! I’m returning to Standard Text.’
I’ll ask my own rhetorical questions from here on in. For example, if these popular and award-winning films, like Gladiator and Crash and Lost in Translation (number 39) and Lantana (number 91), aren’t the Best of the Decade, which ones are?
And, of course, you know which films I’m going to nominate. Most of them have the HBO logo at the front and run for up to thirteen hours. And even though everyone’s starting to turn on Ricky Gervais, I’d stack that fourteen-part film he made about the sad boss up against any of the films on the Times 100 Best of the Decade list. I ask you, which would you prefer: David Brent on the ‘Free Love Freeway’ or Cillian Murphy in The Hand that Shakes the Barley? Me, You and Everyone We Know or EB, Wu and everyone Al Swearengen knows? The Diving Bell and The Butterfly or Stringer Bell and The Bunk? About Schmidt or about Paulie Walnuts?
Next decade, I think I might stay in and watch the telly.
‘Like you ever do anything else.’
Right, that’s it. Out of the pool.
Tony Martin is the Melbourne-based author of ‘A Nest of Occasionals’ and ‘Lolly Scramble’. Podcasts of his radio show ‘Get This’ are still available for free download at iTunes (type in: ‘Get This: Richard Marsland Lives’). He is currently directing new episodes of ABCTV's ‘The Librarians’.
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