As much as any one year can be dominated by a single movie, 2003 belongs to Peter Jackson’s lavish and incredible film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” — not just the final installment of the trilogy, “The Return of the King,” which tops my 10-best list this year, but the entire huge saga that has been unwinding on movie screens for the past three years and now reaches its grand climax.
The movie trilogy began with “The Fellowship of the Ring” in 2001 and continued with “The Two Towers” last year. Each of those pictures ultimately placed second in my year-end 10-best lists — to “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence”(2001) and “The Pianist” (2002). But “The Lord of the Rings,” whether as book or movie series, was always a complete work — and in finally giving it top place, we’re celebrating not just the excellence of the last part but of the entire work, all 10 hours and more, with all its rises and falls, furious battles and jaw-dropping wonders. Now, it’s all of a piece; one of the great adventure fantasy epics in literary annals assumes a similar position in movie history.
“Lord of the Rings,” in part and in whole, would make any movie year special — because it’s one case where the ample technical resources of modern moviemaking are joyously well-used, instead of spent on cold commercial prospects or squandered on outright idiocies (“Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle”). And though 2003 saw its share of follies or disappointments (including the last two “Matrix” movies), it had a number of movies that scaled the heights technically and emotionally: Peter Weir’s spectacular sea epic “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” or Gary Ross’ moving sports history “Seabiscuit” or the latest animated Pixar delight, “Finding Nemo,” and to a lesser extent, the flabbergasting comic book epic “X-Men 2.”
There were smaller, more intimate, less well-advertised triumphs as well, both from America and abroad, exciting foreign language pictures such as Alexander Sokurov’s transcendent one-shot historical phantasmagoria “Russian Ark” or the scorching contemporary Brazilian crime nightmare “City of God” or Im Kwon-taek’s celebration and dirge for a great Korean or artist, “Chihwaseon,” or Aki Kaurismaki’s deadpan Finnish lower-depths fable “The Man Without a Past.”
Those films moved you in different ways, sometimes subtler, often more affecting ways — as did the annihilating true-life Irish expose “The Magdalene Sisters” or Sofia Coppola’s justly praised outsider romance “Lost in Translation” or the surreally disjointed Harvey Pekar comic book bio “American Splendor” or any number of fascinating documentaries, the best of which was Errol Morris’ eye-opening “The Fog of War,” an anatomy of the Vietnam War and one prime warmaker, Robert McNamara. (Others: Nicholas Philibert’s beatific French schoolroom portrait “To Be and To Have,” the deeply disturbing anthology film “9/11” and the scary crime drama “Capturing the Friedmans.”)
Two things that especially marked this year were the resurgence of British filmmaking or British subjects, from “Lord of the Rings” onward, and the number of films that ably used literature and history — untapped regions in the bad, dark movie decade of the ’80s, but increasingly a mine of inspiration since the late ’90s. This year any number of the best films came from books, including “Mystic River,” “The Girl With a Pearl Earring,” the prime Oscar candidate “Cold Mountain,” “The Missing,” “Big Fish” and many others.
Indeed, when people argue that there are no good movies in the theaters, or that film is on a downslide, it’s probably because they’re looking for only one kind of movie, the more popular, heavily promoted pictures and ignoring the smaller films. (The same thing happens in reverse.) But what’s great about the movies is their variety and capacity for wonder, insight and imagination.
“The Lord of the Rings:
The Return of the King”
(U.S.-U.K.-New Zealand; Peter Jackson.) Here, finally complete (at least until the expanded DVD release), is one of the great movie epics of all time — romance, fantasy and adventure compacted, J.R.R. Tolkien’s world of ancient Middle-earth, admirably re-created, full of color and character, terror and magic. Seven years in the making, it was well worth it, altogether one of the major achievements in film history.
“Master and Commander:
The Far Side of the World”
(U.S.; Peter Weir.) Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey novels, set during the Napoleonic Wars and treasured by readers for both style and naval accuracy, are translated by Weir and company into the best of all movie period sea battle epics — with Russell Crowe a pungent Aubrey and Paul Bettany a fine foil as Dr. Stephen Maturin. Surrounding them: a marvelously detailed re-creation of the early 1800s at sea, mixing lush period scenery and explosive action. Unlike most of the year’s best literary adaptations, this one heavily altered the letter of the two O’Brian novels Weir used. But he triumphantly maintained their spirit.
“Mystic River”
(U.S.; Clint Eastwood.) This was the movie many U.S. critics at the last Cannes Film Festival thought deserved the prizes that went to “Elephant” and others: a stark, powerful crime drama, brilliantly cast and acted, taken from Dennis Lehane’s Boston-set novel of three neighborhood childhood friends, whose lives are scarred by early violence and then years later, rejoined by another bloody crime. A complex story, Eastwood’s blunt, easy, expert style and the best cast in any of his movies (headed by Sean Penn, Tim Robbins and Kevin Bacon) blended into his best movie since 1992’s “Unforgiven.”
“Seabiscuit”
(U.S.; Gary Ross.) A great racehorse story told with sensitivity, thrills and compassion, taken from Laura Hillenbrand’s book about the gutty, all-conquering Seabiscuit, with Jeff Bridges, Chris Cooper and Tobey Maguire as the Depression-era champ’s owner, trainer and jockey, respectively. Heavily inspired by the documentaries of Ken Burns (whose narrator David McCullough is borrowed), this film, like many of the best-liked U.S. movies, mixes cynicism, savvy and sentiment, to very stirring effect.
“Chihwaseon”
(South Korea; Im Kwon-taek.) Korea’s greatest filmmaker Im Kwon-taek (“Chunhyang”) gives us a visually gorgeous, unvarnished portrait of Korea’s great, reckless 19th Century painter, the peasant-born Ohwon. A kind of cross between “Lust for Life” and “Pollock,” this film is one of the screen’s most convincing portrayals of a great artist, the legendary, mysterious prodigal and self-destructive genius (Choi Min-sik), told in gorgeous images and a swift, elliptic style that carries us on like a relentless tide.
“The Magdalene Sisters”
(U.K.-Ireland; Peter Mullan.) One of those smaller films that too few people saw, though it was a deserving Venice Grand Prize winner. Based on fact, the chronicle of four women wrongly incarcerated as sexual sinners in Ireland’s now-notorious Magdalene convent laundries, entering a twilight world of servitude and abuse. Relentlessly moving, with a superb cast, headed by memorably nasty and duplicitous Mother Superior, who loves Ingrid Bergman in “The Bells of St. Mary’s” but acts more like warden Hume Cronyn in “Brute Force.” A masterpiece of damning, fictionalized reportage.
“City of God”
(Brazil; Fernando Meirelles.) A blistering crime drama set among teenage hoodlums in the Rio slums, centering on the battle between a psychotic young boss (“Little God”) and his ex-mates, this film recalls “Amores Perros” in its sheer impact and especially in its hypnotic use of violence. But it has a breathless lush lyricism and terrific headlong pace and terror all its own. Few 2003 films generated more tension and kinetic exhilaration. If “City of God” recalls the Brazilian underclass juvenile crime classic “Pixote,” it’s also the modern equivalent of Costa-Gavras’ “Z,” a trailblazing true-crime movie of surging cinematic excitement.
“Finding Nemo”
(U.S.; Andrew Stanton.) A fish story of charm and infectious humor, this was the family movie of the year, capable of beguiling children and adults alike. The story was primal: a dad fish (Albert Brooks) loses his son and scours the ocean. Like all the Pixar movies (“Toy Story 1 & 2” and “Monsters, Inc.”), this one had prodigal delight and wit, along with brilliant computer animation and that seamless childlike vision of alternate dream-worlds we remember from youth, the time when toys and animals talk and happiness does come ever after.
“Together”
(China; Chen Kaige.) From one of China’s modern masters, Chen (“Farewell, My Concubine” and “Yellow Earth”) comes a very different kind of film: the story of a young, impoverished violin prodigy, whose annoying but determined adoptive father takes him to the big city and pushes him toward the career and spotlight that may separate them forever. Told not with the subtlety you’d expect, but in big, broad strokes, with vivid characters, dynamic pacing and cascades of classical music, it’s the sort of movie wrongly dismissed as sentimental, which audiences rarely forget.
“In America”
(Ireland-U.K.; Jim Sheridan.) Sheridan, gutsy Irish writer-director of “My Left Foot,” here gives us moving portrait of his own years in America as an immigrant theater director, struggling to make a life for his wife and young daughters. Packed, burningly alive, with compelling performances by Paddy Considine and Samantha Morton as the parents, Sarah and Emma Bolger as their daughters and Djimon Hounsou (“Amistad”) as their mysterious upstairs neighbor, “America” is a stirring immigrant saga, expertly shifting from comedy to tragedy.
Special note
“Russian Ark” (Russia; Alexander Sokurov.) Technically released in other markets during 2002, it was impossible for me to include this film on last year’s list. But, this year, I would have made it my second-best movie of the year. A great dreamlike pageant set in St. Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum, “Russian Ark” has a vast theme: how the span of 19th and 20th Century Russian political history was impacted by high culture before World War 1 and the onset of the Soviet era. And it was filmed by Sokurov in a truly incredible technical feat — one astonishing unbroken digital tracking shot executed by the great cinematographer/steadicam operator Toman Butner (“Run Lola Run”), following a chatty French aristocrat/diplomat through the museum’s splendid galleries, inside and out, though vision after vision of Russian remembrance of the past.
The runners-up
11. “The Man Without a Past” (Finland; Aki Kaurismaki.) Tongue-in-cheek Finnish master Kaurismaki returns with a delightfully eccentric new fable about an amnesiac drifter (Markku Peltola) surviving catastrophe and rising from the lower depths. A hip noir comedy, done in brilliantly minimalist style.
12. “The Flower of Evil” (France; Claude Chabrol.) French master Chabrol once again dissects the double lives of the French bourgeoisie in this cutting tale of politics, infidelity, passion and WW II-era guilts. With one of the year’s best performances from Suzanne Flon — as the elderly aunt with a dark secret.
13. “21 Grams” (U.S.; Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.) The Mexican director of “Amores Perros” generates almost as much excitement with this time-fractured tale of criss-crossing guilts, memorably acted by Sean Penn (again,) Benicio Del Toro and Naomi Watts.
14. “The School of Rock” (U.S.; Richard Linklater.) Jack Black rocks on in one of the year’s most absolutely entertaining comedies, as a relentless rocker passing it on to the younger generation.
15. “Winged Migration” (France; Jacques Perrin). In a year which boasted many remarkable documentaries — “Spellbound,” “Amandla!” “Capturing the Friedmans,” “Man of La Mancha,” “The Fog Of War” (below) and “To Be and To Have” — actor-turned-producer/director Jacques Perrin (“Microcosmos”) took the palm with this great rapt study of birds in flight, a lyrical portrait of nature above the Earth, shot with revolutionary intimacy and depth.
16. “Cold Mountain” (U.S.; Anthony Minghella.) A pacifist Civil War tale, filled with images of painful romance and gruesome horror, starring a very romantic Nicole Kidman and Jude Law and a somewhat too cornball Renee Zellweger.
17. “Intolerable Cruelty” (U.S.; Coen Brothers.) The audience didn’t respond, but the Coens, George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones here successfully evoked one of the most sadly missed of American genres, the screwball comedy, in this wickedly amusing look at L.A. divorce.
18. “Spider” (U.S.-U.K.; David Cronenberg.) Ralph Fiennes and Miranda Richardson in one of the year’s grimmest films; an inside look at insanity as a shambling wreck of a man recalls the youthful tragedy that locked him away.
19. “Dirty Pretty Things” (U.K.; Stephen Frears.) A terrific modern multicultural thriller that aptly captures today’s London and gives it classic noir twists.
20. “The Fog of War” (U.S.; Errol Morris). That master of eccentric and off-beat Americana, Errol Morris (“The Thin Blue Line,” “Gates of Heaven”) cuts to the core with this hair-raising look at the strategy and politics of the Vietnam War, as recalled by “whiz kid” Kennedy-Johnson Defense Secretary Robert McNamara.
Honorable mentions
“Girl With a Pearl Earring” (U.K.; Peter Webber). “In This World” (U.K.; Michael Winterbottom); “Big Fish” (U.S.; Tim Burton); “The Man on the Train” (France; Patrice Lecomte); “Lilya 4-Ever” (Sweden-Russia; Lukas Moodysson); “Safe Conduct” (France; Bertrand Tavernier); “Lost in Translation” (U.S.: Sofia Coppola); “Taking Sides” (U.K.-U.S.; Istvan Szabo); “The Barbarian Invasions” (Canada; Denys Arcand); “Matchstick Men” (U.S.; Ridley Scott); “Dark Blue” (U.S.; Ron Shelton); “Kill Bill, Vol. 1” (U.S.; Quentin Tarantino); “The Human Stain” (U.S.; Robert Benton); “Northfork” (U.S.; Polish Brothers); “Whale Rider” (New Zealand; Niki Caro); “Sweet Sixteen” (U.K.; Ken Loach); “Thirteen” (U.S.; Catherine Hardwicke); “X-Men 2” (U.S.; Bryan Singer); “House of Fools” (Russia; Andrei Konchalovsky); “American Splendor” (U.S.; Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini); “The Good Thief” (U.S.; Neil Jordan).
———-
Give us your feedback
What movies made your Top 10 list? Email us your 10 favorite films of 2003 at ctc-arts@tribune.com. We’ll print a sampling of the responses in the Jan. 4 Arts & Entertainment.
