Best Films of 2023
No criteria here except that they’re recent films that became available to me (through wide release, festivals, screeners, or wherever) for the first time this year.
1. Earth in the Mouth (Ewelina Rosinska)
This film has stayed in my mind all year, and I’ve watched it more times than any other film this year. Ewelina Rosinska is a major talent and in a world that cared about experimental art the appearance of her two films would’ve been a leading story in film circles and led to programming at many other festivals. I’m limiting this list to one film per artist or Rosinska’s other film, Ashes By Name Is Man, would also be on here. Here’s an excerpt from what I wrote about the pair of them for Tone Glow’s coverage of MoMI’s First Look, where they both had their US premiere:
…Rosińska arranges her material more in the manner of musical forms than of narrative, crafting rich but ambiguous layers of meaning from their harmonies and dissonances. She invites the audience to engage with that meaning actively and critically rather than to share in a lived history.
The films are musical in more than just the metaphorical sense. Sound is key to their confident rhythm and formal cohesion. A piece of audio will last through a number of cuts, tying a sequence together and shaping its inflection. In Earth in the Mouth, sound and image have a contrapuntal relationship which is largely syncopated but allows for added emphasis when they sync up. Frequent changes in the source and character of the sound create a soundscape on equal footing with the photography. Sometimes the music is diegetic, as when a choral piece begins and a few shots later the film cuts to the choir singing it, but other times the sound is independent from the images, or even sharply contrasts it, as when a synthy new-wave song plays while the camera shows an organist playing for a church service. In one stunning sequence, the film goes completely silent while a rock band is shown rehearsing.
2. May December (Todd Haynes)
The closest thing to a perfectly constructed film this year, a masterclass in tonal and generic sophistication. My first post on this blog was a review of May December.
3. ALLENSWORTH (James Benning)
I think this is Benning’s best film in maybe a decade. Here’s part of what I wrote for Tone Glow’s coverage of the Berlinale:
These are some of Benning’s best compositions in years, a reminder of his near-miraculous ability to capture and develop subtle changes through duration. Images are recomposed in real time through the shifting of sunlight through changing cloud cover. The experience of a static shot is altered subtly but profoundly as a noisy train passes through the background, refocusing our attention such that the “silence” of background noise emerges as a complex soundscape in its own right and the dividing line of the horizon gains emphasis from the lingering vision of the train.
This gradual development of deceptively simple materials informs not just sounds and images but the thematic material and overall structure. The film’s first shot is of a tree in an empty field; it could be anywhere. The next several show buildings framed in relative isolation with nothing to identify the place or time beyond architectural style. ALLENSWORTH slowly reveals its own artifice. A building, which in one shot appears alone, reappears in the background of a subsequent shot; it becomes clear that it’s one in a row of buildings, one piece of a bigger place and history.
4. Laberint Sequences (Blake Williams)
More than any other film this year, Laberint Sequences suggests how avant garde visual art might find exciting new directions that still clearly build on tradition. I have more words about this film coming out soon in another outlet.
5. EVENTIDE (Sharon Lockhart)
6. Here (Bas Devos)
I wrote briefly about this (and a few other films on this list) as part of my coverage of Film Fest Knox for In Review Online.
7. Our Body (Claire Simon)
8. Mechanisms Common to Disparate Phenomena: #59 (Joost Rekveld)
I have a review of this coming out soon in Tone Glow’s coverage of Light Matter, where the film had its US premiere. Here’s an excerpt:
Rekveld’s latest, Mechanisms Common to Disparate Phenomena, is a huge conceptual leap forward that retains the beauty of his visual patterns while deeply interrogating their seeming abstraction. After a prologue detailing key discoveries that led to chaos theory, the bulk of the film uses sound—including music, field recordings, and found sound from mid-century sci fi B movies—to create a web of meaning nearly as intricate as the geometric patterns on screen.
Technology and scientific theory are placed in historical and political context, shown as inseparable from these forces that structure human perception and use of them. The film investigates the military origin of many computer technologies…
9. Fallen Leaves (Aki Kaurismaki)
10. Solmatalua (Rodrigo Ribeiro-Andrade)
Fale (Antoni Orlof)
Human Flowers of Flesh (Helena Wittmann)
The Taking of Jordan, All American Boy (Kalil Haddad)
I wrote about this for a piece in Tone Glow on experimental horror film.
Pacifiction (Albert Serra)
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (Radu Jude)
Slow Shift (Shambhavi Kaul)
Yaangna Plays Itself (Adam Piron)
Dry Ground Burning (Adirley Queirós, Joana Pimenta)
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt (Raven Jackson)
Last Things (Deborah Stratman)
Disappearances (James Edmonds)
If You Don’t Watch the Way You Move (Kevin Jerome Everson)
Enys Men (Mark Jenkin)
Unabridged Maneuver (Bruno Delgado Ramo)
Mangosteen (Tulapop Saenjaroen)
Les Illuminations (Isao Yamada)
The Secret Garden (Nour Ouayda)
Cellula Filia (Piibe Kolka)
An Evening Song (Graham Swon)
Sunflower Siege Engine (Sky Hopinka)