Daren in Brief - DECADE'S BEST XX
by Daren Foster

Approaching our final destination on the Best Movies of the Decade list, I must pause to acknowledge an egregious oversight that has just caught my attention. Somehow in the hustle and bustle of compiling this list I managed to miss Punch Drunk Love, P.T. Anderson’s 2002 follow up to what might have been last decade’s best movie, Magnolia. My bad. Mea culpa. While about half as long and in a somewhat lighter vein, Punch Drunk Love was equally as adept in handling light and dark tones as Anderson’s earlier films; a trait glaringly absent in his next movie, the dark, nasty, Johnny One Note, There Will Be Blood. Punch Drunk Love also boasts the remarkable feat of making Adam Sandler tolerable to watch. That alone earns the movie a special note of achievement.

If I had it all over to do again, Punch Drunk Love might’ve cracked the top ten. Because I can’t bring myself to soil the upper tier, let’s mark it down as ranking 11a. If you’re reading this out there, P.T., my apologies.

But without further ado and a drum roll please!

#2) I’m Not There (2007)

After seeing this at a sparsely attended screening, I found myself caught in the middle of a heated debate in the lobby by almost all of the 15 or 20 people who had just emerged from the darkness. Holy shit, I thought. When was the last time this happened, outside of a film festival screening? Movie goers so caught up that they just burst out into spontaneous conversation with complete strangers? I mean, aren’t you supposed to be picking up phone messages and texting friends after seeing a flick?

Granted, not all the post-movie chatter was positive. For those who’d come to see I’m Not There expecting a straight up Bob Dylan biopic, there was a whopping degree of annoyed and justified bewilderment. The iconic singer’s name was never used and the character was played by 6 different actors, ranging from a teenaged African-American kid (Marcus Carl Franklin) calling himself Woody Guthrie to a grizzled Richard Gere. Completely eschewing chronology, I’m Not There was a surreal, (dare I say, Godardian) meditation on celebrity and pop cultural mythologizing.

While this all could’ve been ever so twee and precious especially coming from writer-director Todd Haynes who once did a short film about Karen Carpenter using Barbie dolls, I’m Not There was somehow both dirty fingernails grounded and esoteric. Much of what kept the movie tethered were the performances. Gere seemed genuinely comfortable on screen. Gone were all the tics that oftentimes signal that he is “acting”. Cate Blanchett scorches through her role as the poet prince trying to escape the scrutiny of an ever increasingly intrusive public. And while Heath Ledger received raves and awards for his next role in The Dark Knight, he showed much more nuanced chops here, playing the artist as no longer a young man who realizes the toll his art is taking on his real life.

In its at times obscure and unfathomable presentation, I’m Not There was absolutely faithful to its famous subject. As much about making art and its place in the social fabric as it was about one particular, transcendent artist, I’m Not There toyed with audience (and fan) expectations and seemed to delight in confounding them. While an argument in a movie lobby may not rank with the ugly reception Dylan received for going electric at the 1965 Newport Jazz Festival, I think it an absolute sign that the film hit its exact mark.

#1) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

I have long argued that just because you know your way around behind a camera as a director it doesn’t necessarily mean you can write a screenplay. It only seems fair then that I also take a moment to point out that no matter how brilliant you are in front of a computer, writing movie scripts, genius as a film director isn’t guaranteed. Witness Charlie Kaufman, Oscar winning screenwriter of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, versus writer-director Charlie Kaufman of Synecdoche, New York. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind soars above its sad, bitter, angry subject matter of love lost while Synecdoche, New York wallows in its misery and barrenness. Life and the living of it springs out from Eternal Sunshine… Synecdoche, New York sucks all brightness and light into it out of sight like a black hole. Eternal Sunshine… is a joy to watch and re-watch. Synecdoche, New York is a chore. Charlie Kaufman should write and leave the directing to someone else.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. As seen in efforts like The Science of Sleep and Be Kind Rewind, Eternal Sunshine… director, Michel Gondry fares better when working with another writer. They are two very different crafts, writing and directing, and when two superb craftsmen bring their best to the table, magic can flow forth as it most definitely does in Eternal Sunshine…

Simply put, it is your basic boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girls, boy-tries-forgetting-girl-because girl-deliberately-had-boy-erased-from-her-mind, boy-maybe-gets-girl story but not necessarily in that order. Eternal Sunshine… takes a run of the mill premise and gleefully bends, twists, iterates and reiterates it until it creates its very own genre. Sci-fi rom-com, let’s call it and that still doesn’t fully explain the proceedings. Past and present co-mingle and overlap, forging a future that is tenuous. Exactly like life but much more frightening and fun.

Jim Carrey does not talk out of his ass and is very, very strong as a nearly broken and emotionally devastated leading man. Kate Winslet displays a flakiness and buoyancy that has seldom been on display again since she became a serious Oscar presence (outside her role as herself playing a foul mouthed nun in a Nazi movie in Ricky Gervais’ Extras). Elijah Wood, Mark Ruffalo, Kirsten Dunst and Tom Wilkinson all chip in with able support, lending a full sense of realism to a movie that threatens to careen dangerously out of control throughout but never, ever does.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a mind fuck without ever being pretentious. It’s basic theme, a questioning take on Tennyson’s `tis better to have loved and lost than not to have loved at all, is rigorously put through its paces before arriving at a very satisfying but tentative, yeah, probably. While the script is prone to beautifully showy fireworks, director Gondry uses remarkably down to earth techniques to present a world that is profoundly off-kilter. It is this marriage of talents, on the page and on the screen, that places Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind at the top of this decade’s Best Of list.

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