Picture: courtesy of Dogwoof
Filmmaker Mark Cousins updates his expansive 15-part series The Story of Film: An Odyssey some 10 years on, examining the impacts, themes and innovations in cinema that have helped define the highly eventful period between 2010 and 2021.
As usual, Cousins’ spirit, insight, passion and enthusiasm for all aspects of cinema from around the world help drive the narrative and bring joy to a film period that might be viewed with scepticism by others.
Examining some of the most powerful movie moments of the last decade, Cousins offers up a refreshing sense of optimism at the end of a decade that has been challenging to say the least, but at the same time has forced filmmakers to invent new storylines and embrace movie innovation.
At the very start of the film he juxtaposes two of the most watched movie scenes from the period in question – the sequence featuring Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker dancing down the street steps in full make-up, and Elsa singing ‘Let it Go’ in Frozen. Both were watched by millions, both feature characters who realised their power and – as he says – “both plays us like a violin.”
Musing on why he had decided to update his series after admitting the original was hard work, Cousins says: “After it was done, I said, ‘Never again.’ Ten years later, I had forgotten about how hard it was. That’s one reason why I did the update. And there was also too much happening in cinema. All sorts of things had changed, from the way we watched movies to who was making them, as well as where they were coming from. So there was a lot to look at.”
He goes on to split his film into two distinct sections, using the two sub-heads as a springboard to delve into and embrace dozens of unforgettable film moments from around the world.
Part One is entitled “Extending the Language of Film” and almost immediately he finds time for one the films he dubs “one of the best films of our time,” Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s 2015 film Cemetery of Splendour, an elegant dive into our unconscious lives, and a film that also reflects these Covid times. He veers between Rajkumar Hirani’s oddball hit comedy PK (2014) and Olivia Wilde’s 2019 film Booksmart to debate comedy; embraces Anurag Kashyap’s 2012 Gangs of Wasseypur to analyse the evolution of the crime genre and celebrates George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road as “the best action film of our times”.
For Cousins, Part One is about new conventions and renewing the language of film. As well as the films already mentioned, he also highlights Lucrecia Martel’s 2017 film Zama and Josh and Benny Safdie’s Good Time (2017) for their tonal inventiveness; cites Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver (2017) and Ram-Leela (2013) by Sanjay Leela Bhansali for their musical references; praises Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight (2016) and Lorene Scafaria’s Hustlers (2015) for their use of the human body; Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (2014) and Ari Aster’s Midsommar (2019) for expanding horror, and Pedro Costa’s Colossal Youth (2006), Hanna Polak’s immersive documentary Something Better to Come (2014) and Norte, The End of History (2013) by Lav Diaz for helping slow movies to become a genre.
Part Two carries the subhead “What Have We Been Digging For,” which examines the films that have perhaps carried a shock, but have also been immersive experiences that have allowed audiences to take a cinematic plunge into something that feels a little new.
Films under examination include Amin Sidi-Boumédiène’s 2019 Abou Leila; Jonathan Glazer’s Under The Skin (2013), Leos Carax’s Holy Motors (2013) and Andrey Zvyagintsev’s 2014 film Leviathan. Documentaries such as Cameraperson (2016) by Kirsten Johnson and Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Look of Silence (2012) showed the power of that medium to challenge and confront, while Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman (2019) and Matt Reeves’ War of the Planet of the Apes(2017) dwelt on how technology had an impact on performance.
But despite worries about cinema revealing the nastier elements in society – as exemplified by Radu Jude’s 2018 film I Don’t Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians and Jordon Peele’s Us (2019) – he also (rather elegantly) ends with a note of real optimism as he talks about glorious titles such as Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019) by Celine Sciamma; Pawel Pawlikowski’s 2018 film Cold War and (appropriately, given its sheer glorious mixture of styles) Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse (2018) by Peter Ramsey, Bob Persichetti and Rodney Rothman. As he describes them, “they are films that have helped us see again.”
As we exit a tumultuous period and as the pandemic hopefully recedes, he debates what will come next in an age where streamers are part of the landscape, and wonders – to quote the press notes – “how will movie-going continue to transform in the digital century, to our collective joy and wonder.”
UK, 2021, 160mins
Dir/scr Mark Cousins
Producer John Archer, Mark Cousins
Production Hopscotch Films
International sales Dogwoof
Cinematography Mark Cousins
Editor Timo Langer
Music Audio Network
