Top ten films

Christian Century, Jan 31, 2001 by James M. Wall

Jesus' Son makes an interesting companion to a more highly publicized picture, Traffic. Director Steven Soderbergh delivers a superbly told commentary on the so-called drug war in this country. Three separate but parallel stories--color-coded for ease in viewing--expose the futility of police efforts to win that war, beginning with the story of a new drug czar in Washington who takes the assignment and within a few days discovers the impact of drugs on his own family.

Jack Black, who has a key role in Jesus' Son, plays one of record store owner John Cusack's employees in another film on my top ten list, High Fidelity. British director Stephen Frears takes Nick Hornby's much-acclaimed London-based novel about music-obsessed young people and successfully transfers it to Chicago. This is not a film about music, however, but one that uses music as a thematic counterpoint to certain pivotal personal moments. Cusack organizes his record collection, for example, not by performers or topics, but autobiographically, by when he bought a record and why. Discussing the film's identification of music with youthful suffering, Cusack said, "If you can make pain a little bit transcendent, it means maybe you are suffering for a reason."

The Big Kahuna is a filmed stage drama with a screenplay by its original author, Roger Rueff. Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito star, and Spacey produces, which suggests he liked the play well enough to back it with his considerable prestige. You wouldn't know it from reading most reviews, but at the heart of this drama are intense conversations about God, Jesus Christ, death and salvation. The dialogue is littered with profanity, but it is insightful. Irony and evangelical Christianity battle to a draw, while friendship, commitment and a desire to know God win.

Chocolat is a fable that sets up a struggle between a certain narrow form of religious faith and a belief in love as redemptive. Appropriate to the fable format, even the bad characters are redeemed (except for one). The film begins when Vianne (Juliette Binoche), a wandering mystery woman, arrives in a French village to open a chocolate shop. Since it is Lent and the local mayor sees chocolate as an indulgence that must be put off until Easter, Vianne has few customers.

Except, that is, for her landlady Armande (Judi Dench) and a married couple whose love life is restored by the magic beans dispensed by Vianne.

Soon others are drawn into Vianne's chocolate spell, and good things happen to everyone who succumbs to her tempting fare. Lasse Hallstrom, the director of last year's superb The Cider House Rules, maintains a light touch in a film both uplifting and sweet.

Krzysztof Kieslowski's The Decalogue is a series of ten one-hour dramas originally made for Polish television in 1988-89. Until this year the series was available only at film festivals and special showings. A long-standing dispute over copyright has kept it from general release. Now that this issue is settled, the films have been shown for the first time this year in theaters and are now available on video and DVD, which qualifies them for my top ten list of 2000.