Some legendary directors today. I guess there’s going to be legedary directors on most days, but I had to say something today.

64. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (John Ford, 1962, USA)

Ransom Stoddard is a US senator from a former frontier town. He returns to the town he made his name in to take part in the funeral of an old friend. This arouses the interest of the local newsman, who comes around to interview him, as the dead man was largely forgotten by everyone else. Stoddard shares his story on what happened decades earlier.

Stoddard is the titular Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Liberty Valance was a notorious bandit, who was hired by the local cattle barons to scare the local farmers off of organizing the territory into a state. However, it was actually Tom Doniphon, the man who has just died, who fired the shot, but he decided to leave the fame to Stoddard, so that they could have a decent senator.

That wasn’t the only sacrifice Doniphon made. He had been eyeing a woman for some time, but as it happened she went with Stoddard. This is in its way a tragedy as well. She was an independent woman, but became a prize in the competition between the two aforementioned men, because that’s what happens in a Hollywood movie. The major reason for women to move west back in the day was specifically to find freedom, but Hallie isn’t given that option. While the men respect her, the movie still treats her like an object. Her spirit was what drew these men to her, but that spirit has to be crushed in order for her to play her role in the larger story.

And this has made her miserable. She has enjoyed the cushy life of the wife of a senator, but at the same time it would seem that it wasn’t for her. Even her husband seems to understand, or at least he finally realizes, that she might have regrets about their marriage.

I don’t think you should read this as she thinks she would have fared better with Doniphon, but she does clearly entertain the idea and also hints at wanting to return to this town. However, I wonder how much the egos (and agents) of the two leading actors affected the script. Some modern movies, like the Fast franchise, has these weird clauses in the contracts of the major actors, where the movie can’t make them look bad. Was there something similar here back in the 60s? Did they have to write it this way so that both James Stewart and John Wayne could look good for their fans?

Doesn’t really matter here, because it does work. Even though Hallie is pushed to the side by the bigger names, her story is in many ways the most interesting one. She goes out west to find her fortunes as an entrepreneur, but has to give that up in order for her husband to do his work. It just happens that having marketed the movie based on two of the biggest stars of the screen finally coming together to do a movie, her role is just going to be overshadowed by the situation.

Then we have Lee Marvin. At this time he was a known character actor, but not really a movie star yet as his best known movies like Dirty Dozen and The Big Red One were still on their way at this point, although he had been the star of a few seasons of a police drama in the late 50s. In movies, he was mostly what was known as a “heavy” or an especially menacing villain. That’s what he is doing here with the help of two other similar character actors, Martin Strother and Lee Van Cleef.

Marvin is a good presence. He is a looming figure and it’s understandable why the whole town is afraid of this one guy. He mostly just let’s it be known that something might happen if things don’t go the way he wants them to go. In the end, even though he is the titular villain, he is still just a henchman, who was hired to do this.

63. Rear Window (Alfred Hitchcock, 1954, USA)

L.B. Jefferies has been locked up in his apartment for six weeks because of a cast on his foot. He isn’t really built for this life, so he starts to watch the other people in his apartment complex, coming up with condescending nicknames for many of them, because despite being neighbors, he doesn’t really know any of them. Soon, he becomes convinced a murder has happened in the building on the other side of the block. Being strapped to a wheelchair, he ropes in other people around him to do the legwork (although he doesn’t really want his girlfriend, Lisa, to do any of it, but she volunteers and he can’t really stop her either).

There is a voyeristic aspect to this movie. All of it was shot from or within one apartment and the whole apartment complex was built on a sound studio for this purpose alone. Many of the apartments are fully functional. Hitchcock sat in the apartment with Stewart, looking into the other apartments just like the character does. He would direct the actors outside of the apartment through their earpieces.

I wonder how much Hitchcock’s sex life affected what was going on here. He was apparently celibate after having had sex once with his wife (which produced a daughter). He was still obsessed with sex. The people Jefferies watches might be a symptom of this obsession. Besides the couple with the murdered and the victim, we have Ms. Torso, an amateur dancer, who dances around in her apartment in a bikini, we have Ms. Lonelyhearts, who is actively dating men, but also actively keeping a safe distance to them, and there’s the Newlyweds, which is self-explanatory. There is also a songwriter and a dogowner, but they are not paid much attention to.

The men are sexist here. Jefferies’ detective friends talks a lot about “female psychology department” and “female intuition” straight to Lisa’s face, even though she is a successful and independent woman (not that you should be successful to be taken seriously). Both of the men in the apartment ogle regularly at Ms. Torso and it is seen as something you can do, but you have to be coy about it. It’s a weird dynamic. You can think about sex, but you can’t act on it, nor can you acknowledge it. This was of course partly due to the attitudes and censorship around movies at the time. You had to dance around the subject in a sense and they can only acknowledge their desires through humor in a way the audience would feel was safe. Even Lisa staying over is depicted in a very safe way. There is clearly sexual tension there, but Jefferies is weirdly dismissive of the whole situation, although he does have his reasons for this. He is afraid she couldn’t take his lifestyle of a travelling photographer. There is no consideration for her having enough money to provide for both of them, of course, because that would have been way too emasculating for a male star in the 1950s.

Sometimes it’s hard to watch Hitchcock movies, when you know of his personal predilictions, but he was still one of the most important directors of all time, despite being seen as somewhat second-rate in his own time, because of his genre leanings.

And he was very good at this. He knew what made scenes suspenseful and he knew how to make people uncomfortable (in a good way). It’s just so sad that we now know what we know and thus the source of the uncomfort is different.

62. Onibaba (Kaneto Shindô, 1964, Japan)

Fun fact: In Museu do Oriente in Lisbon, there’s a permanent exhibition of Japanese religious rituals and within those exhibits, there’s a small display playing a 25 minute excerpt from this movie. There isn’t much in the way of explanation and it took me a while to even find the description, as it wasn’t really lined with the display, but there it is. I didn’t even see anything supernatural within the time I watched it, so I don’t even know what the point is.

Another fun fact: Willem Dafoe wanted to remake this movie. He went even so far that he had the rights to remake it for a time, but he just couldn’t get it done. He mentions this in his Closet Picks episode on the Criterion Collection YouTube channel.

Even though we never meet him, in a way the central character of the movie is Kichi, as the two main characters are only identified as his mother and his wife (or, like on Wikipedia, Older Woman and Younger Woman). The two live together in a small house during a civil war in Japan in the 14th or 15th century (sources seem to disagree on this, but Onin wars started in the 15th century, so I’m guessing that’s correct), where they trap and kill samurai in order to steal and sell their possessions. When a neighbor returns home after deserting and tells the pair that Kichi is dead, the peaceful coexistence of the two women is broken and the older of the two takes desperate steps to stop the not very secret relationship between the two.

Society has largely broken down here. The multiple warring factions have been taking all the men in fighting condition they can find and forcing them to join their armies, while the women and children are left behind to fend for themselves. This is why the two women have taken on such a risky business as other opportunities are limited.

However, from a feminist point of view, this is not the interesting part of the movie. This came out in 1964. That was before the sexual revolution of the late 60s, but these women are sexual beings. While the neighbor makes the first move, the younger woman also actively seeks a sexual relationship with him. She is the one leaving their house every night to meet with him. Not only that, but this makes the older woman realize she has sexual needs as well. While the older woman does try to stop the relationship between the other two characters, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of judgment of the sex. She just needs the help of her daughter-in-law to survive and doesn’t want to lose that. Their relationship just isn’t healthy enough for them to talk this out.

(I do have to add that I don’t really know how liberated Japan was in this period. Pink Films were popular at the time, so there definitely was a difference to Western attitudes.)

However, in the end the older woman is punished. A shallow reading would say that all those murders finally caught up with her, but even though her eventual demise is linked to one of her victims, you could also argue that the punishment is actually for trying to stop the sexual relationship. After killing a man in an Oni mask (one of those demon masks you will no doubt recognize if you have any familiarity with Japanese media), who seemed to have been punished for something by the mask in hindsight, she uses the mask to scare her daughter-in-law, but the mask doesn’t come off.

This is based on some Japanese folk story, which I am not aware of. However, I do know that the attitudes towards sexuality have been very different historically. Early books, like the Pillow Book, were very open about this and the complications of romantic and sexual life. I should never assume I completely understand what’s going on in any Japanese media (or foreign media for that matter), but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the movie from my own point of view.

61. Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (Cinema Paradiso) (Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988, Italy)

Salvatore is a famous director, who is informed of the death of his old friend, so he returns to his home village for the first time since leaving decades ago. But while he is nominally the main character, this isn’t really a movie about him. Its a movie about film and it’s effects on those interested in the art form.

The movie focuses on a movie theater that is, at least in Salvatore’s mind, the heart of the village. His friend, Alfredo, is the projectionist. They form a friendship specifically over their love of movies.

Women have very limited roles in this movie. There’s the generic mother, who is expected to be a saintly figure and not worry about her own happiness, and there’s Elena, Salvatore’s object of desire.

However, their relationship doesn’t seem to be very real. Salvatore is more interested in the idea of a relationship, like those he sees on the big screen, than her as a human being. He falls in love with her, even though he doesn’t know anything about her. When asked, he can only describe her beauty, not give any information on her likes, dislikes or similar. Even he’s description of her beauty feels like something he learned from another source. Salvatore is just living out the fantasies he has formed by watching movies throughout his life.

Was this intentional? Did they purposefully have this cliché relationship in the movie in order to reveal something about Salvatore, or were they just too obtuse to understand that they were doing and just copied things they saw on the big screen themselves thus making the same mistakes as Salvatore did? I do think it is the former. I would definitely like to give them the benefit of the doubt here.

There is another sort of woman in the movie: Those on the screen. They have a weird role. They are in those movies as sexual beings, but the local priest forced Alfredo to cut anything too sexual from the movies. This does lead to a great climax (pun intended, although obviously the movies don’t go that far) in the movie, as Salvatore receives Alfredo’s cache of those cut scenes he has put together. There is definitely something magical about that.

I visit the local movie theatres quite often. We only have two. One is part of a national chain (which is owned by a Nordic chain, which is owned by a pan-European chain, which is owned by AMC, which is owned by Magda Group), one is just a small arthouse run by a non-profit organization. Neither is ever able to bring in crowds like those in this movie every night. (Okay, there have been times when the screening were actually sold out, but that happens very rarely.)

Would I even want that? Yes and no. I would love it if the movie screening business was healthier, but at the same time I go to the theatre to actually see the movie, not experience them communally. Despite this, the movie theatres here, in this town, are the local epitome of culture, and they combine the interests of cinephiles and the masses seeking entertainment nicely. I do love them despite disliking crowds.

60. Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949, United Kingdom)

Louis is a member of the D’Ascoyne family, but as his mother has been kicked out for running off with an artist (of all people), Louis is not really part of the family and doesn’t know anyone in it either. However, when his mother dies in poverty, Louis decides that since this particular family allows for their title of a duke to be inherited by women, so he can inherit it through his mother, he is going to kill everyone between him and the title. Since the movie begins with him writing his memoirs in prison, we know this isn’t going to go very well.

There is eight people between Louis and the title and they are all played by Alec Guinness (or playing “astonishing eight-role performance as the blue-blooded victims of some wholesome homicide” as the trailer puts it). Of course, to make them distinctive, they are often played in a comically exaggerated, but that is not a problem in a comedy. There is a little bit of feel that eight might have been too many, as some of the people die just off-screen or there isn’t anything cunning involved.

One of the eight is a woman, who can, as mentioned previously, inherit the title. She is described as a suffragette and uses her vast resources to help the cause. This leads to her death, as she is an easy target for Louis when she is ballooning over the city in order to drop leaflets. Louis just shoots her down with an arrow (although I’m not sure it would happen that easy, as it takes a lot of time for the balloon to empty, but it is a comedy).

As the humor in the film is generally quite dry, it’s hard to say whether Guinness’s take on Lady Agatha is supposed to be funny or is it just supposed to be straight. You can easily explain, why he plays her, because he plays each of the other victims as well, so why make an exception? It does seem that out of all the eight, Lady Agatha is the most out there.

Lady Agatha isn’t the only woman in the film. We have Louis’s mother, who dies early. She seems to be only person Louis has any sort of affection for in the story. He does have two romantic interests, both of whom would by today’s standards be somewhat problematic. One is Sibella, his childhood friend, who rebuffs his advances, because she has a better prospect, the other is Edith, the widow of one Louis’s victims.

Of these, Edith is much simpler. She is grieving and Louis is around, so she agrees to marry him.

Sibella is much more complicated. She is out for herself. One could argue that Louis is just a victim of this, but since Louis is no better, this would be a pretty toxic reading of the situation. Sibella marries another man for the money, but also starts an affair with Louis. When Louis starts to do better, she tries to manipulate the situation to her benefit, even going as far as hiding her husband’s suicide note, which is the reason he is in prison waiting for a death sentence at the end of the movie, despite having murdered several people.

On the other hand, can we really blame Sibella? This is the game she has to play to advance in the world. Lady Agatha is the exception. She has special rights, whereas the other women are hampered by both the law and tradition.

Throughout the movie, there is a reverence for aristocracy by the characters. Even as Louis is waiting for his execution, the executioner makes sure he knows how to address him properly (“your grace” for a duke, for the record). According to the trailer, the period is that of good king Edward, whom I assume is Edward VII, who ruled from 1901 to 1910, as Edward VI ruled in the 16th century (he was the only son of Henry VI) and Edward VIII ruled less than a year in 1936 before abdicating in favor of George VI (of King’s Speech fame).

By this point the role of the aristocracy was already in decline. Industrialism had provided the opportunity for many other people to rise in economic power. But the power of the aristocracy was maintained in custom. Even Louis uses his position to have his trial in the House of Lords, because that is his right. Maybe he should have thought this through. He is convicted, of course, because while the lords might have been willing to let him go if he had murdered commoners, they would never let him go for killing one of their own.

59. Mononoke-hime (Princess Mononoke) (Hayao Miyazaki, 1997, Japan)

As Ashitaka is protecting his village from a boar-god turned into a demon, he is wounded and the wound is cursed. In order to save his life, he needs to find a cure, but on his travels he is instead caught up in a war between forest gods and a mining town, which has been cutting down the forest for their own purposes. There Ashitaka meets San, a young woman who was raised by the wolves of the forest.

How many movies tagged as ‘family’ on IMDb are there on the Sight and Sound’s Critics’ Poll top 100 of 2022? Two. Both of them are Miyazaki movies (Spirited Away and My Neighbour Totoro, both of which I saw recently in a theatre as I’m writing this as part of a series of rereleases of Miyazaki’s movies). In a world of media, which tries to deliberately infantilize my generation (constant out of context reminders of things we liked as kids, no more sex scenes in mainstream movies, major companies pushing more and more into collectible markets), Miyazaki has the ability to reach us in a way no one else can, even though he is from a different culture.

The movie is not shy about it’s environmental messages and this isn’t the only movie by Miyazaki with such themes. The mining town, run by Lady Eboshi, has the technology (meaning gunpowder and weapons to employ it) to stand up against the forest gods. In other words, they are doing something because they can without putting much thought into the repercussions and the externalization of those repercussions (where you push part of the costs of your actions to third parties in order to maximize your profits, like when you pollute a river, the people downstream need to pay to clean the water for it to be usable for them).

The villagers are not destroying their environment on purpose. They just see it as part of business as usual. There’s plenty of forest to cut down from their point of view. They don’t see the real effects of all this.

The village is set up in a very specific way. They mine iron ore and smelt it into ore. It’s the women who do the latter job and Lady Eboshi has brought in many former prostitutes for that purpose. That work is very demanding physically, if monotonous. The bellows used for this purpose are huge and the heat is immense. Also, when the need rises, the women do take up arms and protect their homes.

Men do the other work. They fight (although the Lady is working on bringing the women into combat as well), they design weapons and they trade. I assume they also mine, because the village existed before the Lady arrived.

The Lady is formidable character. As one of the men notes, she is not even afraid of the gods (although, it should be noted that their relationship to these gods is very different from how we think of these things in the west, as there is a character who embellishes a pardon from the emperor for killing a god – I don’t think western emperors would have thought to do anything similar). She has carved herself this little fiefdom. Sure, it is always on the brink of destruction, but they are getting by and even growing under her leadership. She inspires loyalty and it is completely earned as she prioritizes the good of the village as whole instead of looking for personal profit. Sure, she could be seen as a villain in this story, but if that is how you choose to see her, you need to acknowledge that she is misguided rather than evil.

And she is a godkiller, a status not even many fictional character have. Not just one. She kills or is otherwise responsible for the deaths of multiple gods. She is the embodiment of people losing their traditional ways as technology progresses. As the gods in this world are just incarnations of various aspects of nature, you could argue that she is the incarnation of something new and thus a god herself.

San, on the other hand, is a great ally to the wolves as she has those human abilities not many animals have, such as hands. She can climb and at one point she removes a shot from the wolf-god’s flesh. Her movements have been animated to be very animalistic. After Ashitaka has gained her trust, she becomes much more human in her behavior, which is somewhat disconcerting and doesn’t quite feel right, but sure.

Ashitaka is the point-of-view character. He is on a heroine’s journey. He has lost his community and is now is trying to build another one. He is not trying to take on the villains on his own, but instead tries to reason with everyone and tries to find common ground between the war parties. He seeks allyship from both the villagers and the forest dwellers, and it is this new network that ultimately helps him save everyone (well, those he can).

Here’s a recurring theme from Miyazaki’s movies: It is not immediately obvious who are your friends and who are your enemies. People are complicated and sometimes loyalties shift or people are willing to work for you on something, but oppose you on other things. This happens so often in Miyazaki’s movies that there must be something personal to him about this. I wonder what that is.

58. Ed Wood (Tim Burton, 1994, USA)

A loose and romanticized bio of the infamous director Ed Wood, who made the maybe even more infamous Plan 9 Out of Space, at times smeared as the worst movie of all time (no, it’s not – that designation came from a critic, who clearly wasn’t very well versed in the world of movies).

Ed Wood’s career was rough, because there was never any money and he wasn’t particularly talented. In this movie, what he lacks in those departments, he makes up for with enthusiasm. It’s easy to see why someone like Burton would take such an affectionate approach to this weird cult figure so derided by the mainstream.

Ed Wood was an outsider and there is value in outsiders making art, whether the result is good or not. And no, Ed Wood’s movies are not good, but there’s a difference between valuable and being good.

The first movie Wood makes in the film is a lesser known movie called Glen or Glenda. It’s a about crossdressing. Because Wood himself was a crossdresser, the movie is not just cheap exploitation such a movie would have been under different circumstances. Wood even plays the starring role, although in real life he used an alias for the role even though he both wrote and directed the movie under his own name.

The making of this movie tells us quite a bit about Wood’s personality, at least in the movie. He is the kind of guy who doesn’t have the time or the patience to focus on quality. He just takes what he can get and make the best of it… which isn’t very much.

Even though reality comes crashing in at the very end, it’s the movie as a whole is a sympathetic piece as Burton is clearly sympathetic to Wood, because he recognizes a fellow outsider. There are other similarities between them. Both have a retinue of collaborators, who they like to bring with them from movie to movie. I mean, this wasn’t the first time Johnny Depp. a professed outsider himself, starred in his movie, having played the titular part in Edward Scissorhands, and he went on to appear in six other of Burton’s movies, thus overtaking the secondmost common actor to collaborate with Burton by one movie (that would be Helena Bonham-Carter). Of course, Wood’s collaborators aren’t the top of the line. They are has-beens or people who never actually had a career.

But returning to the crossdressing. In our society, we are fine with women dressing like men, but men can’t dress like women. Sure, they can, but it is often seen as a taboo and inherently sexual, even though the reasons behind Wood’s decision to do this doesn’t seem to be sexual at all. He just feels more comfortable in women’s clothing.

At the same time, if men can’t wear women’s clothes, but vice versa is okay, that would imply that being a man is aspirational, while women are somehow less than men. I mean, it seems that the basis for transphobia is just misogyny.

Even Wood’s partner at the time finds this crossdressing humiliating for her, not really addressing Wood’s feelings on the matter or understanding where her own feelings come from. Again, it’s just misogyny, but of an internalized kind.

However, he did meet another woman, who did accept this part of him. They were later married (in both the movie and in real life) and remained so until his death (which, granted, wasn’t too far away).

There’s also a reminder that transitioning is not a new thing. One of the people surrounding Ed Wood is Bunny Breckinridge, a fictionalized version of a drag performer of the same name. Like the Bunny in the movie, the real Bunny was gay openly in a time when such things weren’t generally appreciated… or legal. Both versions also deliberated transitioning, but never did that, because there were complications (not with the operations, but a legal matter prevented his first attempt, as he couldn’t leave the country, and the second attempt was prevented by an accident on the way). Despite all of this, Bunny actually had a family. I don’t think this comes up in the movie (or I’ve just forgotten), but he was still a father.

(Perhaps, I should refer to Breckinridge as a woman, but as far as I know, he never did that himself, so I’m not sure how I should approach this.)

These things aren’t always straighforward and we shouldn’t expect them to be. As a society, we should be willing to help these people out when we can.

Finally, the appearance of Jeffrey Jones early in the movie in a prominent role is somewhat off-putting, because of his crimes, but what can you do? His arrest came eight years after the releae of this movie, so I assume no-one here actually knew.

57. The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969, USA)

Pike and his gang of outlaws are getting older, which means they want to be able to retire. An opportunity arises, as they are offered a huge amount of money for stealing a weapons cache for a Mexican general, who is practically a warlord. Things become complicated when one of the members of the gang, Angel, is not keen on the idea of giving weapons to a man, who is in the process of genociding his people.

The titles announce the movie pretty well. It’s the gang arriving in town disguised as soldiers with a lot of quick cuts, freeze frames and children in the middle of animal cruelty, torturing scorpions by having put them on an ant hill and the ants don’t appreciate their presence. The main actors names come up in freeze frames with the faces of these children. I don’t know if this was planned, but later in the movie there’s a member of an indigenous group, who tells them that everyone dreams of being a child again and adds that the worst people probably most of all. Well, these children are already acting horribly.

This is a take on masculinity. Sam Peckinpah made a lot of brutal and cruel movies. His extremely manly men were forced into situations, where values are questioned. Like in this movie. The men have lived in the Wild West and have enjoyed the freedom, but at the same time life has been rough and civilization is encroaching on their territory. Despite being these exemplaries of a certain kind of masculinity, they have to compromise, which eventually leads to their death.

But it is a glorious death. There is no planning or discussion. Pike just goes to two of his men and says “Let’s go.” They already know what he has in mind and one of them just answers “Why not.” The last of them (by that point) has already been sitting outside the house waiting. Just cut four more words from this and they have achieved full Finnish way of communication.

The whole end sequence starts with them just marching through the army they are going to confront without anyone having th courage to stop them, even though it is quite obvious that violence is going to ensue. They walk straight up to the general and when he declines their request (as the man they want is already dead), so the whole thing ends up guns blazing, with both sides completely obliterated.

But is it manly? Certain people seem to think brandishing and shooting guns is always manly, but they do it in a populated area, where there are plenty of women and children. One of them even uses a woman as a shield. In the end they lose, but it is a pyrrhic victory for their opponents and not many of them are left. Vultures ascend to the place after the shooting stops as a sign of meaningless destruction.

When the man, who has been hunting the gang through the movie, arrives at the scene after everything went down, he is almost resentful he wasn’t part of it. He had worked with the gang in the past, but now he is left behind to try to live in this new world, where men like him are not wanted anymore. That battle might have been his last opportunity to reach Valhalla, so to say. (He is soon after represented with an opportunity to die for a cause, though.)

Elsewhere in the world, in 1969 when this movie came out, Vietnam war was going on and the heroism connected to soldiers during WWII was by this time gone. The movie might make the final battle glorious, but in the end, there is no glory to be gained from it. It is just a bunch of has-beens in an unwinnable situation against an army of a local wanna-be dictator. Did anyone here achieve anything? Maybe, but it is just as likely that there will be another warlord taking over the area the next day.

This will be a recurring theme on this list, but women don’t have much of a role here. Angel is looking for his former girlfriend, but she has instead found someone better (the warlord) and is not interested in leaving. At least she won’t say she would, but at the same time, would she acknowledge an interest in leaving the warlord right in front of that very same warlord? Probably not, but there is no indication that she is lying in that moment for Angel’s benefit.

Otherwise, there are some women around. Some are there to represent the threat of civilization, while others are there as prostitutes, but that’s it. The first group are also part of a teetotaller rally, so in a sense they are even a bigger threat to these men, for whom alcohol is probably one of the very few comforts in life (as bad as it is as a comfort). The latter also actually represents civilization in a way, but they are actually giving them some comfort.

56. Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927, Germany)

The titular Metropolis has been divided into two sections: the head and the hands. The head is a group of rich industrialists, who live in scyscrapers far away from the hand, otherwise known as workers, who keep the world above them working. Freder is one of the people above, where he knows nothing of the world below, until a woman, Maria (of course) brings a group of children to see the wonders of the scyscrapers. Security gets rid of Maria fast, but Freder is fascinated and follows her. After realizing how cold the world above is regarding the horrors the people below live in, Freder decides to try to change things.

There are so many iconic visuals here, but the one that works for me the best is Freder’s vision of the workers being fed to the God of the Machine to keep it going after an accident kills a bunch of them. This film isn’t shy or subtle about it’s pro-worker leanings, but at the same time, it is not about burning all the capitalists at the stake either. The whole thing is about finding a compromise between the two groups, but as we have seen in the real world, that doesn’t really work, when one group has more power and the other is hamstringed by the aspirational goal of reaching the other, even if that is practically impossible for most of them. Everyone can’t be part of the 1%.

As I’m writing this (November of 2023), SAG-AFTRA just reached a preliminary new contract with the studios, which is good, but at the same time it should be just a step in the right direction. Right now, it seems like 2023 is the year labor in the US is finally taking back some of the power they lost in the 70s and 80s. In that sense, this movie is very topical after almost 100 years, which I guess is in part just a function of being there early.

Women don’t have much of a role here. They are around, but Maria is the only credited female, although not the only named one, as there is discussion of Hel, who is dead. These two women are motivators for the men. That’s their job. Sure, Maria saves a bunch of children later in the movie, but in the end she is there just so that Freder has a reason to start reorganizing the society. Maria is just this infantilized creature that is the target of Freder’s affections and that is seen as her value.

There are other women. The workers seem to be more egalitarian as there are female workers. There are also women among the people of the capitalist class, but they are only seen in the pleasure gardens. They are beneficiaries of the hierarchy, but as they lack any kind of power, they are also captured by it.

Of course, this movie should be understood in context. Hitler had been released from prison after the very stupid failed coup attempt a few years earlier and had published Mein Kampff in two volumes during the two previous years. The political climate was very hostile for any member of a minority and Lang was Jewish. At the same time, his wife was a strong supporter of the Nazi regime later on and they wrote the movie together, so you could easily analyze this movie from a right-wing populist viewpoint as well.

55. There Will Be Blood (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2007, USA)

Daniel Plainview starts out as a prospector. Despite an accident, in which he breaks his leg, he manages to lock in a claim for a silver mine. A few years later, he is still prospecting, but this time for oil, a relatively new accommodity at the time, which he finds in California. The company he establishes for the drilling becomes his life’s center. He also adopts the son of a dead worker in order to appear a family man; so that he is better equipped to approach the small communities he negotiates with. Plainsview is very driven and will not let anything stop him from amassing his fortune, even if that fortune is meaningless in the end.

Daniel makes everyone around him miserable. He does not have friends or family after his adopted son leaves him. At the end of the movie, after fighting for his company many times in various ways, he is rich, but what does that even mean, when you don’t have anything else. We see that he longs for a family, when a man impersonates his lost brother he initially takes him in against his better judgement, but even after murdering him, Daniel cries. Is this because of the lost companionship or that his brother didn’t actually return? Or maybe it’s that he let himself be vulnerable by allowing someone to get close to him.

At the same time, despite this obvious tragic nature of the character, this is the kind of person that is often idolized in our culture, especially in the US with their American Dream. Elon Musk still has his fanboys, even though he has destroyed the idea of meritocracy completely with his utter incompetence caused by completely undeserved confidence. Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud after misapproriating and losing billions, but is still seen by some as the lost savior we needed to reach the next level of humanity despite his ideas on how longtermism being very toxic and dangerous.

Sure, Daniel is very different from Musk and Bankman-Fried in many ways. Daniel started poor. He did not have his father’s money from an emerald mine (which allagedly used slave labor, by the way) or the opportunities provided by two renowned professors. Daniel started from nothing and actually worked for his fortune, so in that sense he is much more sympathetic, but the movie also makes it clear that his is not the way.

Once again, women hardly have any role in this world. They are mostly pushed aside. Of the cast members listed on Wikipedia, there’s only one woman, who doesn’t get much attention. She is Mary Sunday, the sister of Eli Sunday, a preacher, who tries his best to be a thorn in Daniel’s side, which is also Eli’s eventual doom, and also by the end of the movie the wife of H.W., Daniel’s adopted son. I don’t even remember what she looks like. That’s not promising. Despite being in quite a few scenes, she has very few lines.

On the other hand, if the movie is about a certain aspect of toxic masculinity, there is no need to bring in women except in the periphery. Bringing women into the picture might even distract unnecessarily from the point.

Sure, female stories should be told, but at the same time the kind of stories this movie tells are important to tell as well. It’s a hard balance, but no single filmmaker can fix the situation. We just need more filmmakers, who better represent humanity as a whole.

54. Four Lions (Christopher Morris, 2010, United Kingdom)

A small group of muslims want to become suicide bombers. Hijinx ensue.

Okay, that’s not the most funny theme, but that’s the beauty of the movie. They manage to maneuver the whole subject in a way that is at the same time transgressive and thought-provoking. This isn’t actually even that uncommon, but there’s a difference between talking about bad words and terrorism.

It helps that the movie stars Riz Ahmed, a multi-talented and now widely known, but at the time a young actor. I mean, he has an Oscar nomination for acting and a nomination for a short movie. He is also, interestingly enough, especially considering our theme, the namesake for the Riz Test, which is a test similar to Bechdel test, but regarding muslims. Also, similarly to the Bechdel test, this isn’t supposed to be taken as the gospel truth, but it does have a point that movies can make muslims seem dangerous.

The points brought up by the test:

1. If a character is identifiably Muslim, is the character talking about, the victim of, or the perpetrator of terrorism?
2. Presented as irrationally angry?
3. Presented as superstitious, culturally backwards or anti-modern?
4. Presented as a threat to a Western way of life?
5. If the character is male, is he presented as misogynistic? or if female, is she presented as oppressed by her male counterparts?

So, let us analyze. Is Omar talking about, the victim of or the perpetrator of terrorism? Yes. That’s the whole point of the movie. Is he irrationally angry? No. Again, that’s the point of the movie. He was radicalized, because he was pushed into it. The circumstances are just against him

Is he superstitious, culturally backwards or anti-modern? No. He’s actually basically just like everyone else. He likes the modern comforts and has no moral quandries about using modern technology.

Is he a threat to Western way of life (whatever that means)? Yes. He is actively looking to become a terrorist and is bringing his friends along.

Is Omar presented as misogynistic? No. Actually, quite the opposite. He stands up to his more conservative brother and his backwards views on women. Omar also seems to have a very healthy and equal relationship with his wife.

As far as I can tell, Ahmed stands behind the movie and its message. He brought it up on Instagram in 2020 when the movie turned 10. And I don’t see why not? Its a great movie with an interesting take on the problem.

It doesn’t even try to hide the real problems within the community. According to Ahmed, Morris knew the community very well and Ahmed is clearly behind this take. Like the weird way Omar’s brother puts women into a closet, so that he wouldn’t have to defy god by being in the same room with unwed women. Omar and his wife confront the brother about this. And yet, its Omar, who is the wannabe-terrorist.

He is also really rational about it. He doesn’t believe there will be virgins waiting for him in heaven or anything like that, he just sees that his people need help. Until the very end, he seems to have thought everything out. Its only after things get out of hand that he starts to approach everything based on emotion.

Getting back to the women in the closet (actually, not metaphorically), Omar’s brother says he appreciates the women and that they are equal, but at the same time, when there’s a need for a sacrifice, in this case just the different sexes having to be in different spaces, it’s the women who need to take the bullet and there is no other consideration. Omar’s brother just automatically assumes that whatever he is doing is that much more important. However, at the same time, Omar doesn’t believe this. They make sure to tell us that not all Muslims are like this.

As a Finn I don’t meet that many Muslims, as they are a very small minority with just over 2% of the population. However, as I teach in an English language program in a University of Applied Sciences, we do have a lot of international students, some of who are Muslims from various parts of Africa and Asia and I can tell you they are not a homogenic group. Some are very religious, making sure they have their regular prayers, while others live a life that isn’t very different from Europeans.

53. Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975, United Kingdom)

Redmond Barry is a young man (played by a 34-year-old, which is understandable, as the movie covers a lot of time) in mid-1700s Ireland, who has fallen in love with his cousin Nora (as was pretty much the custom). When the cousin meets a rich English officer (as officer’s tended to be, because you had to buy your rank), Redmond is quickly pushed aside in favor of the better prospect. Redmond will not take this and ends up in a duel with the officer… and wins, but has to flee to Dublin. On the way, he is robbed, which leads him to enlisting in the army himself, which leads to various adventures around Europe, including finding his new name, Barry Lyndon, joining another army, career as a professional gambler and so forth.

Barry is not a sympathetic man. I guess anyone can sympathize with his young love, but besides that he is just a selfish and spoiled brat, who just happens to know when to take the opportunity when he comes across it. He does indeed lead a varied life.

The women don’t have much in the way of agency. Nora responds early on to Barry’s feelings, but changes her mind when he meets someone richer, because she has to. She is a pawn in a larger game, who needs to find a rich husband, because her family is in debt. While she doesn’t seem to have any problems with this, she still doesn’t really have a choice. She has accepted her role. And when Barry tries to win her over, her opinion doesn’t matter. Instead, he tries to rid himself of his competition as if murder is a good path to a healthy relationship.

Later, Lady Lyndon, Barry’s wife, from who he gained his fortune, is pushed into isolation by Barry, who wishes to maintain his earlier freedom, except now with more resources basically stolen from his wife, which he squanders freely, as his wife doesn’t have a say in any of this. And her fortune is such that is requires quite a bit of work to go through.

The only woman to have some say in the movie is Barry’s mother… Obviously. Her husband, Barry’s father, died in a duel and she maintained her freedom by not remarrying. That did also mean that she lives in poverty. Perhaps not abjectly so, but considering that her brother is apparently quite wealthy (at least after marrying Nora off), she initially lives alone in a small house with her only child. While it is portrayed as a sacrifice for her son, it would seem that she sacrificed both her and her son’s well-being just to maintain some autonomy (even if she is still relient on her brother’s monetary help).

Later on, she does join Barry in his new life and takes part in manipulating the situation to her own and her son’s advantage. She is very much at fault when Lady Lyndon attempts to kill herself, as Barry’s mother actively tried to remove Lady Lyndon’s connections to the world, including her son, who Barry sees almost as competition.

Of course, all that money the Lyndon’s have came from somewhere. They stole the value of someone’s work to get it, even if Lady Lyndon was not actively part of that. Not that that kind of thinking was present in this environment.

52. 24 Hour Party People (Michael Winterbottom, 2002, United Kingdom)

The story of Factory Records, a small, but influential independent record label in Manchester. We follow Tony Wilson, a local TV presenter, who sees potential in local bands, but as he himself likes to tell us, he is not the main character of his own story. That role is shared by Ian Curtis (of Joy Division), Shane Ryder (of Happy Mondays) and Martin Hannett (the producer for those bands).

When I was a teenager, MTV Europe (which at the time actually covered most of Europe before splitting into local channels) would often have theme weekends and one of those themes would every now and then be a Joy Division/New Order. While I was somewhat undecided on New Order at the time, the few Joy Division songs they had a video for (Transmission, Atmosphere and Love Will Tear Us Apart) were seminal experiences for me. Not quite on the level of Head Like a Hole by Nine Inch Nails a few years before this (in my timeline, obviously Joy Division was gone way before NIN started to record anything and NIN’s music and aesthetics owe a lot to Joy Division, including several covers of Joy Division songs), but that teenage me loved the weird New Wave gothic take on punk. A prophet of urban decay and alienation, as the movie puts it, when discussing Curtis after his death, although at that point they are trying to make sure that’s not the only way he is seen, as he had a lighter side as well. That is a bit difficult right after someone killed themselves.

I was never into Happy Mondays in the same way, but they are a very different band in many ways and Shaun Ryder is definitely a very different character. On the other hand, they are similar in their self-destructive nature, even if that manifests itself very differently.

Ryder is hedonistic to the extreme. To him there is no tomorrow, there is just this moment and how he can get the most of it. That’s why the band has it’s own chemist, Bez, who has since become a concept all of his own (although it would seem that his role as a dancer was key to the band’s success).

The two are very representative of their respective times, which is probably why they were so big at their respective eras, although as I see it, Happy Mondays is now more of a footnote in the history of music, while Joy Division is a key band in many musical movements.

In the end, this is still Tony Wilson’s story. He might be a supporting character in the stories of these musicians, but he is still our point of view and he is still a key figure in Factory Records.

Once again, there aren’t many women here. Basically only Tony Wilson’s wives, but they are only around, not necessarily very visible in the larger story. Part of this is because women have never had as many opportunities in music as men. Even now, even though they seem to make more good music, women make less in the industry. Also, there aren’t very many of them in technical roles.

Historically the situation has been even worse. Women in the punk scene have reported that they were expected to be more sexually liberated then they wanted to be, radios in the US wouldn’t play two songs with female singers in a row up until the 90s and Kate Bush owns all of her music, because when she signed her contract in the 70s, no-one thought her music would have any lasting value, because – according to the music execs – music by women never does. And that’s just the top of the iceberg.

So, it’s no surprise women don’t really have a presence here. They are around. Happy Mondays added Rowetta to sing in their lineup at some point and when Joy Division became New Order, they recruited Gillian Gilbert on keyboards, but even these are exceptions. Most bands were just men.

51. Limbo
 (Ben Sharrock, 2020, United Kingdom)

Omar is a refugee from Syria seeking asylum in the UK. He and others like him have been placed on a remote island off the coast of Scotland with nothing to do but wait.

Even without the refugees, the island, despite its remoteness, is quite multicultural. For example, the people responsible for educating them on the intricacies of British culture are themselves immigrants, as is the owner of the only local shop. Some of the white people are not happy about this situation, but that is not the main focus of the movie even if at one point one of the locals tries to talk Omar into taking a job at a local fish processing plant, because he knows it is going to be inspected soon for illegal workers.

The main focus is just the killing of the spirit of these men (and they are all men). They have clearly been sent there to discourage them from staying in the country. Their application process is taking overly long. One result of this is that Omar, who is a musician, has not played his instrument for a while.

He also feels guilty of leaving, while his brother chose to stay and fight. This is something that I was thinking a lot about a couple of years ago when Russia attacked Ukraine. As a Finn, that reminded us of the constant risk of war from the east. I am in the reserves, but it would be highly unlikely that I would called into service early in the war if at all, but there’s a chance that I would have to make a similar decision and it would not be easy. I don’t want to lie to myself that I would be ready to go, but at the same time I would feel responsible for this country.

Omar has had to make that decision and he is not sure how to feel about it. He probably made the right decision, as he doesn’t seem like a fighter and from an individualistic point of view, you should be able to not risk your life deliberately in a war.

While the movie doesn’t say anything about this, I wonder whether the officials see him as a coward and that is the reason he is kept in this limbo. The more probable reason is just racism. UK has a history this. Remember that scheme to place people seeking refuge from them to Rwanda to wait in horrible conditions to discourage them from waiting for bureaucracy to do its thing.

The movie itself is very dry comedy, but it also has very dark moments. That made me like it, but in the end it stepped up a notch just by simply revealing that not everything is bad. The islanders might have a tough time accepting the refugees, but they do accept them. At least enough of them for Omar to feel a little bit at home.

Although, you could argue that that is part of the tragedy. Will he just be torn away from this community right when he is finally accepted as part of it?

There aren’t any women in among the refugees. This is quite common. Men often have more opportunities to leave and also often have more incentive to leave, if they don’t want to fight.

However, they are seen as risks to women. Part of their education is about respecting women. And yes, that is important part of this kind of training, when these men arrive in countries, where women are in a much better position than in the countries they come from, but it still does feel weird and awkward.

50. El Ángel exterminador (The Exterminating Angel) (Luis Buñuel, 1962, Mexico)

A group of rich people are having a lavish dinner party. At the same time, the help starts to leave one by one, even though threats are made about the future of their employment. Somehow they just feel obligated to do so. While this is going on, the guests at the party find themselves mysteriously compulsed to stay. This extends to days on end as the supposedly better folk bicker among themselves and their carefully maintained social structures begin to crumble. (There’s also a bear roaming around the building. I forget where it came from.)

The only hint at what might be going on is in the title of the movie. So, if we assume that the title is more than just a random name or someone’s interpretation of the what’s going on within the movie, let us assume that indeed, an angel has arrived and is there to punish the upper class of this society. This would be an interesting approach to punishing them.

Killing them isn’t enough. There is a message here. Any veneer of civility is just that: a veneer. They are no better than anyone else or actually, since they have the money to fall back on and there’s an incentive to keep their secrets hidden by the people around them as well, they are generally much more depraved than the lower classes, whom they look down upon.

The only member of the staff, who remains with them, is the butler, who is still expected to serve them all to the best of his abilities, even though soon enough they have nothing. He is trying to figure out solutions to problems, while the others just lay about. There is a strong expectation that only the remaining help should do what he can for the people, who can’t really do anything useful, because they have never had to.

The women maintain their vanity. The men are more ready to shed their uncomfortable suits, but the women and one younger man still groom themselves with whatever tools they have available. This is often going on in the background as the characters have dialogue. Some of them so discuss the possible religious repercussions of the situation, but that’s more out of self-pity than any kind of self-awareness.

While they are enclosed in a small part of huge mansion, the whole town is aware of what’s going on (at least to a point). The execution of these people is very public and has the attention of everyone.

Except that it doesn’t happen. Instead, they are suddenly free, only to be shortly thereafter imprisoned again in a similar way, this time in a church with other people as well. Is this a sign that nothing was actually learned from their predicament, or is that they are now spreading this problem?

There’s one possible major flaw here, but it might as well be planned: I can’t really distinguish between the partygoers. I couldn’t name any of them and since they all wear pretty similar clothing (well, dependent on the gender), they look pretty much the same. Again, this might be planned. Maybe they are not supposed to be that distinct. I don’t know.