Film picks of '99

Christian Century, Jan 26, 2000 by James M. Wall

BRINGING OUT THE DEAD, director Martin Scorcese's frenetic examination of three days in the life of a paramedic, is easily my choice for the best film of 1999. Most critics have compared this picture to Taxi Driver, Scorcese's earlier venture into the mean streets of New York City, but a better comparison is with his film The Last Temptation of Christ, in which another healer and savior begs to be relieved of an impossible assignment thrust upon him by a demanding supervisor. Bringing Out the Dead is written by

Paul Schrader, Calvin College's contribution to Hollywood and Catholic Scorcese's most valued creative companion.

You don't have to be religious to appreciate the power of this picture, but it sure helps--especially if you are willing to look more deeply into the story of paramedic Frank Pierce's three nights on ambulance duty with three different partners, each of whom has found a different way to avoid the pain of failure: an obsession with food, religion or violence. Pierce feels he is a failure; too many people are dying on his watch. Each night he is reminded of his failures by the haunting face of a young girl who died under his care. Pierce, like Jesus in The Last Temptation, begs to be released from his assignment, but his supervisor can only promise maybe to fire him tomorrow--but not tonight, because "I need you out there."

The film's final image is a classic artistic expression of religious piety: Nicholas Cage, as the suffering servant paramedic, nestled in the bosom of a woman whose name is Mary. There are other signs of a religious sensibility in the film, as when Pierce says: "I came to realize that my work was less about saving lives than about bearing witness."

The second best film of the year is Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, which made only a brief theatrical appearance before disappearing into cinematic limbo, driven there in part because like Scorcese, Kubrick refuses to cater to popular taste. None of Kubrick's pictures--ranging from 2001 to The Shining to Lolita--were initially commercial successes, but they persist in the imagination because Kubrick is an artist with a vision of the dark side of the human condition and the talent to convey that vision. This final film--he died before it was released--is dark throughout its depiction of a married couple toying with infidelity. The picture's unsettling venture into the dream life of an upscale New York City couple is a conservative morality tale, driven by Kubrick's insistence that even if there is no God, we are at least obligated to behave ethically.

David Lynch's first-ever G-rated film, The Straight Story, a joyous celebration of life for all ages, is my choice for third place. Lynch is better known for stronger stuff, especially Blue Velvet, an exploration of evil, and the television series Twin Peaks, a weird descent into the unconscious. In The Straight Story Lynch explores new territory in a lyrical portrait of a 73-year-old man's journey across Iowa on a lawn mower tractor. Richard Farnsworth (who was 78 when he made the film) plays Alvin Straight, an Iowa widower who first learns that he has medical problems and then that his brother is dying.

Straight's journey allows Lynch to linger lovingly on Iowa's landscape of fields of grain and long stretches of lonely highway. But more important, Straight becomes a force for good to everyone he encounters on his impossible trip, from a teenage runaway to a veteran of World War II, who talks about his long-suppressed war experiences. No film in recent memory equals this one in its ability to say yes to life.

The remaining top films of 1999:

American Beauty is a picture that Lynch might have made in his darker period. Like Blue Velvet, it begins as a portrait of the ideal middle-class suburban family, but director Sam Mendes quickly unveils the family's dysfunctions, including a father (Kevin Spacey) whose midlife crisis leads him to lust after his daughter's classmate and a mother (Annette Bening) with her own identity problems. The "American Beauty" in the title is simultaneously the rose of that name, carefully tended by Bening; the blond teenage cheerleader that Spacey thinks could be his; and suburban life. The film's ending is both justified and satisfying, a moment of grace in a cauldron of anger and hopelessness.

A research scientist, played by Russell Crowe, discovers in The Insider that the media-driven culture in which he lives will open doors for him to expose the lies of the tobacco industry and then, just as easily, will slam them shut when another powerful industry, a television network, decides it cannot afford the price of the scientist's courage. No one's integrity emerges unscathed from this examination of the folly of a culture that: continues to tolerate and even abet an industry that sells a dangerous and addictive drug to children.

Death and how to live with it is the central point of The Sixth Sense. Featuring Bruce Willis as a child psychologist, it was directed by M. Night Shyamalan, a 29-year-old native of Madras, India. Shyamalan was raised by Hindu parents and is now a Catholic. This film warrants several viewings. The second time around take note of Shyamalan's use of the color red, which plays an important role in Hindu thought. To note one example, when a mother comes to understand her son better near the end of the film, she is wearing red.