I am disgusted by the blatant political shuffling of Berlinale awards. I realise my argument is flawed, because I did not watch the movie that received the Golden Bear, but the fact that both Silver Bears got awarded to essentially the whole cast of the movie speaks a whole damn library about how much more this year’s awards are attributed to political relevance than to artistic merit. Even though the former doesn’t even have to exclude the latter: Remember Tropa de Elite? That was a great marriage of art and political relevance, one that deserved the Bear it got. It is a slap to the face of every honest filmmaker who is not from the Poor, Maltreated People du Jour.
Don’t get me wrong: my hypothetical ideal movie has a strong message, which may be political, philosophical, ethical, whatever really. But it wins awards on its own merits, not just because it is (mildly) related to a current theme. I acknowledge and even support that the Berlinale has always seen itself as a political festival, but does that need to overshadow artistic merit?
Angry ranting aside, here is my personal ranking of this year’s movies, as my commentary in the respective posts does not always offer a clear indication of how much I liked the movie.
- Saranghanda, Saranghaji Anneunda
- Dernier étage gauche gauche tied with The Guard
- Byakuyakou
- Daikon to Ninjin
- Tropa de Elite 2
- Bu-dang-geo-rae
- Chang-pi-hae
- Man Chu
- Kazoku X
- Dance Town
- Cheonggyecheon Medley
- Jagadangchak
Let me outline how I personally rate movies: The two main components, roughly equal, are style and message. For both, besides the fact that I should take a liking to or understanding of them, the execution is absolutely vital. Educational value i.e. helping my understanding of or knowledge about topics I am interested in is a bonus. Emotional connection, as can be seen in this year’s ranking is a big bonus. All this comes together to answer the most important question: How much did I enjoy spending time on this movie?
Also, I need to set the list into perspective a little. In almost any ranking I have a cut-off line below which I consider the time spent with every movie/book/opera/whatever as wasted, where the investment in time did not yield a sufficient reward in enjoyment to achieve a positive balance. This year, there is no cut-off line, in the last years there was always at least one movie below that line. On the other hand, this year was also without a flawless movie, as you can see that even for my number one movie I felt the need for a bit of criticism. All in all this year was above average in my experience.
Thank you for reading my sometimes less-than-coherent ramblings; I hope it helped to add at least one movie to your list of things to watch!
Oh my – I think the politicism of these film festivals is a completely unnecessary evil. Then again, I got the impression that only huge A festivals have this problem; Cannes is a quite political as well, but the smaller festivals like Locarno can afford showing stuff like animation specials, which are typically more artistic or purely entertainment than anything social.
I suppose my impression of the is about the same as you have had as well. And I want to see so many of them! Hahaha. I guess my cut-off would be at Kazoku X (not so interesting)… I am not so sure about the lesbians and the Korean-Chinese love story but all the others sound like must-sees to me. Want? XD