Movie Reviews

TERENCE MALICK’S return to the fray was one of the highlights of 2011’s film year.

By a comfortable distance the most ambitious mainstream film offering, The Tree of Life took a family’s grief over the death of their young son and extrapolated it to incorporate all the wonders of the universe from the beginning of time. An occasionally bewildering tale, then, but a bewitching one too, decorated with fine performances from Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain (and a show-stealing turn from debutant Laramie Eppler) and featuring some of the most jaw-dropping imagery from the natural world this side of a David Attenborough box set.

Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was panned by some critics who deemed it not thrilling enough to qualify as a proper spy thriller, those critics obviously unaware that such is the very point John Le Carré’s novels make. Gary Oldman put in a potential Oscar-winning turn as George Smiley, the retired spymaster who returns to London’s ‘Circus’ — or MI6 — to winkle out a Russian double-agent. Colin Firth, Toby Jones, Tom Hardy and Ciaran Hinds were among the superb cast who contributed to an excellent psychological thriller, set against the marvellously grimy backdrop of 1960s London.

Meanwhile, debutant Irish director Juanita Wilson opened the year in some style with As If I Am Not There, a harrowing tale of how women prisoners suffered in rape camps during the Bosnian-Serbian conflict of the 1990s. Tim Fleming’s beautiful cinematography served as a counterpoint to the sexual slavery inflicted on Wilson’s Muslim protagonists, with another debutant, Nastasa Petrovic, delivering a flawless performance. Elsewhere, renowned photographer Anton Corbjin directed George Clooney in the small masterpiece The American, in which Clooney plays a retired hitman meditating on his own mortality while hiding out in the Tuscan hills. Brutal, beautiful and poetic, The American was the most underrated film of the year.

Honourable mentions are also due to the Clooney-directed political tragedy The Ides of March; Midnight in Paris, which saw Woody Allen return to form; Red State, a fascinating, low-budget tale of religious and political fanaticism; Jane Eyre, which featured a superb performance from Mia Wasikowska as the eponymous heroine; Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the best of the summer’s blockbusters, due in no small part to a wonderful turn by Andy Serkis as the intelligent ape Caesar; the hilarious comedy Bridesmaids, starring Kirsten Wiig; Red Hill, a terrific revenge-noir from Australia; a clever Winnie the Pooh; Duncan Jones’s sophomore sci-fi thriller Source Code; and the brilliant animated tale Rango, starring Johnny Depp.

It was also a fine year for art house film, with Daniel Mónzon’s Cell 211 a strong thriller from Spain about a prison riot featuring a portrait of hatred by Luis Tosar. Kill List was a British film written and directed by Ben Wheatley, a tale of post-traumatic stress disorder. Another British film, Treacle Jr, starred Aiden Gillen playing a simple-minded soul who opens his home to the homeless Tom Fisher; a quirky, dark story, it marks its writer-director, Jamie Thraves, as a talent to watch. Finally, Nanni Moretti’s poignant tale We Have A Pope goes behind the pomp of a papal election to reveal the fears of the man (Michel Piccoli) who has a breakdown when his peers decide he is the man to lead the Catholic Church.

In Ireland, 2011 was arguably the finest year for film in living memory. The inventive Snap directed by Carmel Winters, PJ Dillon’s neo-noir Rewind, John Michael McDonagh’s The Guard and Conor Horgan’s post-apocalyptic drama One Hundred Mornings joined Juanita Wilson’s As If I Am Not There at the top of an impressive list of films.

The year surely belonged to Ryan Gosling and Jessica Chastain, however. Gosling came of age as the finest actor of his generation with several interesting roles, including Blue Valentine, Drive, Crazy Stupid Love and as the neophyte political innocent fired in the kiln of election battle in The Ides of March.

Chastain went one better, starring in five films released this year: The Debt, The Tree of Life, Take Shelter, Coriolanus and The Help. As luminously beautiful as Gosling is handsome, she displayed a canny understanding of the actor’s craft in films that ranged from Shakespearean tragedy to contemporary thrillers.