Plus, the century’s truly best films challenge the paper of record’s unreliable poll.
The recently published New York Times list of “The 100 Best Films of the 21st Century” is that paper’s most significant cultural diktat since the 1619 Project, and it’s equally fallacious. Compiled from votes by more than 500 influential filmmakers, actors, and other film-industry “professionals,” these Times rankings pretend to reflect the films that have left a significant artistic, cultural, or emotional impact since January 1, 2000.
By widening the poll to assay 100 films, when a narrower list would ensure judgment and discretion and specify taste, the Times purports the misleading idea that there were as many as 100 notable motion pictures during this era of cultural decline. Everyone except the paper’s game players knows better. But one look at the Times-endorsed titles and you can’t help but notice signs of political emphasis.
Ignore the poll’s wide net and focus on the top dozen films: Parasite, Mulholland Drive, There Will Be Blood, In the Mood for Love, Moonlight, No Country for Old Men, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Get Out, Spirited Away, The Social Network, Mad Max: Fury Road, The Zone of Interest.
These are not great choices; they’re political choices — whether the pollsters admit it or not. There’s a problem with using “artistic,” “cultural,” or “emotional” as classifications; it’s so varied that it’s unreliable, untrustworthy, and, of course, so personal that it’s solipsistic and class-based, even tribal. (The participants have seen the same movies and share the same tastes.)
In Millennial journalism, it’s often the case that what’s presented as fact is usually a matter of group identity and agreement, i.e., ideology. The Times list distracts from the era’s failures by highlighting its deceptions. These are the films that the liberal institutions — from the Oscars to the Golden Globes and critics’ groups — have acknowledged as “best,” actually meaning that they’re socially engineered signposts. They’re all dystopian narratives. The Times also held a parallel readers’ poll where the top choices repeated the industry poll with only a few exceptions: The public favored Christopher Nolan films (Interstellar, The Dark Knight) while the industry favored race films (Get Out, Moonlight).
Like the 1619 Project, this list could be adopted as an academic and political standard. It already signifies how the industry limits its perspective on the world to cynical, liberal sameness — a threat to moral and artistic standards. In the end, this list presents a distortion of cultural history as fact.
Perhaps a Better-Than List, comparing the top twelve films in terms of quality, can illustrate the originality and imagination overlooked by both the Times and the industry.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence > Parasite
Spielberg’s exploration of how soul is manifested versus Bong Joon-ho’s sadly popular communist notion of social envy: property as theft.
Femme Fatale >Mulholland Drive
De Palma presents an erotic tour of the film noir psyche while Lynch tours Hollywood’s exploitation of same.
War of the Worlds > In the Mood for Love
Spielberg’s vision of modern apocalypse surpasses Wong Kar-Wai’s intoxicating escape into romanticism.
Man of Steel > Moonlight
Zack Snyder’s idealized study of masculine endeavor surpasses Barry Jenkins’s myth of the pathetic black queer.
Wild Grass > No Country for Old Men
Alain Resnais’s exuberant panoply of human will outclasses the Coen brothers’ struggle with hipster nihilism.
Vincere > Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Marco Bellocchio’s operatic view of history dismantles Obama-era politics while Michel Gondry dismantles indie-movie solipsism.
Broken Sky > Get Out
Julián Hernández’s modern romantic epic is also a sensual, ethnic breakthrough, but Jordan Peele turns miscegenation into an unsolvable American nightmare.
The President > There Will Be Blood
Mohsen Makhmalbaf examines the national tragedy of fascism while Paul Thomas Anderson claims its inheritance.
Being 17 > Spirited Away
André Téchiné views the social and romantic tension in the maturation process while Hayao Miyazaki’s animated film encourages escapist fantasy.
The Darjeeling Limited > The Social Network
Wes Anderson’s finest family drama argues for social and spiritual connection unlike David Fincher’s hagiography of antisocial archenemy Mark Zuckerberg.
Dragged Across Concrete > Mad Max: Fury Road
S. Craig Zahler probes the depth and breadth of social tragedy while George Miller celebrates dystopia.
Munich > The Zone of Interest
Spielberg’s awesome Israeli history lesson embraces the moral test that Jonathan Glazer’s Nazi fetishism avoids.
These Better-Than oppositions, being non-topical, contrast signs of superior artistry with signs of petty political preference. Other good films from Todd Solondz and Neil Jordan; the last, great films of Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard, Terence Davies; and the ongoing films of Rude Jude and Michael Bay — all have brought distinction to a century that too often resists inspiration.