Monday
22Dec2008
The Big Picture's Top Ten Directors of 2008
Monday, December 22, 2008 at 4:24PM
One of the things that strikes a lot of Oscar viewers is
when a movie is nominated for Best Picture but the director isn't nominated for
Best Director. There's usually a lot of symmetry there, but a couple of years
ago, Ang Lee won Best Director for Brokeback Mountain even though the
film didn't win Best Picture. 
That's fine, if the direction of the film stands out as clearly being that far above what everyone else is doing. I'm not sure in that case that awarding Crash Best Picture helps either move make sense, though. Paul Haggis had a lot more to do as a director, yet Brokeback is the more powerful movie.
1 - David Fincher - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
I mean it as a compliment when I say that I don't think this looks like a David Fincher film. He's a tremendous talent, and he's made some of my favorite films, but Benjamin Button just has an aura about it that doesn't line up with Fincher's previous work. But when you step away from it for a minute and think about how meticulously this film had to be constructed, you begin to realize that Fincher is one of the only directors who would have the intensity and courage to make this film this way.
To achieve all of that over the course of nearly three hours, David Fincher has to work with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett as characters viewed over many decades together and apart, he has to adjust the look of his film to fit each of those years, and he has to be exacting in his demands from a visual effects and production design crew that numbers in the many hundreds. He has to orchestrate. And for whatever failings the movie has emotionally, it is a towering achievement technically.
2 - Danny Boyle - Slumdog Millionaire
Similar to Benjamin Button, Slumdog Millionaire is a love story that spans many years and many hardships. We are drawn through the lives of three people event by event. Rather than take a languid approach like Button, however, Slumdog works at a fast pace, driven by the game show structure that reveals so much about the unlikely story of Jamal Malik.
With Slumdog Millionaire, Boyle has found a way to tell a localized story universally. And he has done it without compromising his story or his vision of it.
3 - Andrew Stanton - Wall-E
There has been a world of discussion about whether or not Wall-E will be nominated for Best Picture. And, yes, even though Best Picture and Best Director aren't always joined at the hip, I don't see how you can keep Andrew Stanton out of the discussion for Best Director.
The me, if the litmus test is "look at this," and Wall-E passes that test with flying colors, and the primary reason it does - perhaps many times more so than for the other films on this list - is because of its director, then Andrew Stanton without question makes the grade. How else would this movie be made without him?
4 - Christopher Nolan - The Dark Knight
This is the biggest movie of the year in more ways than one. And if you look at the non-Batman films on Christopher Nolan's résumé, you might not think he'd be a good candidate for it. Memento, The Prestige, Insomnia - they're all relatively small (or really, really small), but thematically, there are certainly connections between his central characters and Bruce Wayne.
The Dark Knight has its problems, and I won't go through them again here. But Nolan has made the biggest event movie in at least a decade. I'd argue it's the biggest movie since Star Wars, and wouldn't you know it, that has a lot of problems, too. When you're creating something on this large a scale, you can't really undersell it. There's not much need for subtlety here, something that usually serves the director very well.
5 - Tomas Alfredson - Let the Right One In
I don't, as a general rule, go in for vampires. I think it's all a bit silly. The Anne Rice stuff? No thanks. But Tomas Alfredson has made a huge impression on me by changing the world the vampires occupy and changing our view of vampires in Let the Right One In.
Oh, and the film's climactic scene? Probably the best 90 seconds I spent at the movies all year.
6 - Ron Howard - Frost/Nixon
So what? All it is is two guys bitching back and forth. Two guys just sitting down for an interview. It's a recreation of television. How can there be anything to that?
Ron Howard broke Frost/Nixon out of its mold and made it cinematic. He gave it a pulse like a movie, he gave it close-ups - Nixon's dreaded close-ups - and he gave it a frame of reference within pop culture, oddly enough, the pop culture of which Howard was a product himself in the 1970s. The screenplay by Peter Morgan is astonishing. But it could still be DOA on screen in the wrong hands. It definitely needs someone who knows how to make a film, and here, Ron Howard makes his best.
7 - Clint Eastwood - Changeling
I have been puzzled over the past couple of months by reactions to Changeling. People think it's depressing, which they should've known going in. But they seem caught off-guard by the fact that Eastwood doesn't give them a dozen roses at the end of the movie. That's not what Eastwood does. Ever. As a director, he's addicted to complications. Like so many films before this, Eastwood has preoccupied himself with justice. And justice sometimes must be the reward when happiness is unattainable.
And we haven't even broached the subject of how authentic to the period Changeling looks and feels. I could write a chapter on that, too.
8 - Darren Aronofsky - The Wrestler
The thing I love most about Aronofsky's direction in The Wrestler is that I'm never aware that somebody is making a movie. As talented and as intelligent as he is, watching The Fountain, Pi, or even Requiem for a Dream leaves little doubt that somebody is seriously pulling the strings. And that's OK. I mean, I didn't get The Fountain as a movie or a compelling story, but it looked really cool. Pi's certainly unique, and Requiem for a Dream still manages to grab a hold of you pretty thoroughly.
Aronofsky will find mainstream and critical success for this film and it should lead him to making whatever he wants to make in the near future. I hope he chooses something close to this, because I know what he can do as a big thinker. Now I'd like to see him explore more personal stories.
9 - James Marsh - Man on Wire
Documentaries are funny beasts. They're almost given a pass when they're not really arresting viewing. It's as if the message is bigger than the medium. And I don't know if I'll ever accept that. Bob Dylan's best protest songs are still the ones you can sing along with. Documentaries should be as engaging as they are thought-provoking, and James Marsh has made a film in Man on Wire that can stand up to anything released in 2008 in terms of entertainment value, cinematic depth, and because of its subject matter, even special effects.
Marsh has combined interviews with archival footage and recreations to fully capture the event, but he becomes just as interested with the people involved in this unequaled feat as he does the wire walk himself, analyzing how these 90 minutes in the air changed the way they all saw their own worlds.
10 - Mike Leigh - Happy-Go-Lucky
I'm not sure I could ever work the way Mike Leigh does. Talk about an organic experience: He presents ideas to his actors, never letting them know each other's motivations, and builds the scenes outward from there. It works and it doesn't work, depending on the picture, but that's part of the process. In Happy-Go-Lucky, Leigh's rather peculiar way of working pays off in a big way.
And it's monumentally tough to shoot two people talking in a car from inside the car. Leigh manages to do it without it ever seeming boring or taxing, and beyond the technical proficiency he shows, he also intrudes on two lives and paints a more complete picture of them for us.
Reader Comments (1)
Kudos to recognizing Stanton and your reasoning behind it. What most people don't conciously realize is that one of the reasons Pixar films are so brilliant is that they are composed as if there were an actual camera. An animated shot that is clearly not possible with a live action camera would be distracting to the eye. Many big budget "money shots" in live action films fail precisely because of this. Take a look at Spiderman 3 as an example. Camera angles that exist solely in the virtual world distract you out of the film. Sometimes you can't quite put your finger on why, but that is one reason.