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Best Films of 1998
In descending order of my appreciation, these are films I both enjoyed
and admired.
Saving Private Ryan. No Spielberg cheats this time. His first great film since
Empire of the Sun. He redeems himself for having made the worst, most
dishonest film of 1997, Amistad (see the essay on the Worst Film of
1998, below). I wonder, though, how much of Private Ryan's honesty
came from the presence of Tom Hanks? I know that the director is
supposedly the "author" of the film -- but maybe the sheer presence of
Hanks in the cast made it so Spielberg didn't feel the need to fall back on
his bag of fakery, as he did at the end of the otherwise admirable
Schindler's List. Because Tom Hanks was in it, Spielberg knew the film
would reach the audience without cheating. But that's just speculation.
What matters is, this film managed to tell the truth about war, not by
denying nobility the way agenda-pushing fakemeisters like Oliver Stone
do, but by showing how heroic such nobility really is, in the context of
the brutality and stupidity that pervade every war.
You've Got Mail. Tom Hanks won't get Best Actor for this role, and Meg Ryan
won't get Best Actress, and Nora Ephron won't get Best Director or, with
Delia Ephron, Best Screenplay. And the wonderful supporting cast won't
even get a wink. But that tells you what's wrong with the Oscars, not
what's wrong with this film -- because nothing's wrong with this film.
It's very telling that in choosing a replacement for the way Anna
Karenina was used in the film The Shop Around the Corner (on which
You've Got Mail was based) the Ephrons went for Jane Austen's Pride and
Prejudice. For what they tell here is precisely the kind of story that
Austen, the greatest novelist of her time, told. Deftly interwoven in a
sweetly ironic love story is social satire that does not so much bite as
ring. It feels true. This film shows the New York of the moneyed class,
and as in Austen's English country society, the contrast between those
with vast money and irresistible power (Darcy/Joe Fox) and those with
only enough to be "respectable" (Elizabeth/Kathleen) is the driving force
of the story. This aspect of You've Got Mail is not derived in any way
from The Shop Around the Corner, and it brings this new movie a
resonance -- a deep, echoing ring -- that makes it even more important
and memorable than the sweet, deft love story that was preserved intact
from the original.
Like Austen, Ephron is fair. The Fox family is no more demonized
than were Darcy and his friends and kinfolks. They cause harm and
have uncompassionate fun doing it, but they feel it as their birthright,
intoning the mantra of immorality in our time: "It's not personal, it's just
business." The film makes us weep, not for the character of Kathleen
Kinney, but for the bookshop, for what it meant in her life and in the
lives of the people of the neighborhood. And yet when we are taken into
its successor, the children's department of the huge Fox Books
superstore (read: Barnes & Noble), we do not see it as a journey into hell.
Instead we are shown a vast selection of books being enjoyed by a happy
group of children -- Kathleen's old clientele, safely transported to the
new setting. Yes, the salesclerk could not help the customer who didn't
know enough information about the books she wanted to allow a
computer search -- but in this story, the well-trained salesclerk from
Kathleen's old store soon rules the children's department and provides
the old level of service.
In short, civilization does not end when the little bookstore dies; it
wasn't the place or its size that made it wonderful, it was the people all
along. And that's what the love story is about, too -- it's not the position
or the power, it's the people, and these two change each other even as
they find each other and come to love each other. The couple who kiss at
the end are much wiser people than the couple who were attracted to
each other at the beginning and who quarreled through the middle of the
film.
Saving Private Ryan will win Best Picture this year, and Spielberg
will win his second Best Director Oscar, and they will deserve it, for the
weight of their subject matter, the honesty of their treatment of it, and
the brilliance of their art. But in the long run, I think Ephron's domestic
comedy is no less weighty, no less honest, and no less brilliant. Mail's
goal is laughter and sweetness; Ryan's goal is catharsis and tears; both
are lofty goals, rarely achieved. Both will live on.
And one little note about Tom Hanks. Both films depend on his
ability to project decency and love and honor. But it's You've Got Mail,
not Saving Private Ryan, that gives Hanks the greater acting challenge,
as he shows a character who is ebulliently cruel change into one who is
compassionate and deserving. Hanks is an icon in Saving Private Ryan,
and no other actor could have done it as well. But Hanks is an actor in
You've Got Mail, even though, because it's a comedy, he will get less
admiration for his art. Here's the secret: comedy is harder, and realistic
domestic comedy is hardest of all. When the Oscars roll around, the only
regret I'll have is that Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks will not be nominated
for their work in this film. Still, they'll have another kind of award: We'll
go see their next movie together, and the next, and the next, because we
love the characters they play, because we don't believe they could play
such good people if they didn't have a core of goodness and wisdom
themselves. That's the one place where I think it's fair to muddle the
boundary between the artist and the art.
Deep Impact. My kind of science fiction. Instead of starring the special
effects, this one starred the human beings. I'm glad they got rid of the
love-affair-with-the-cameraman subplot -- stupid sex scenes weren't
needed in a film about the end of the world. In fact, this is the first
intelligent, well-filmed, well-performed, well-directed end-of-the-world
film ever. Not one embarrassing moment. I liked it so much, I even
granted them the incredibly fast motorcycle ride from Virginia Beach to
the highest Appalachians. I hope that when my own science fiction is
filmed, it will be done with this level of integrity and intelligence. It made
one-third the money of the laughable Armageddon. But nobody has to
be ashamed of their work in it.
Meet Joe Black. Sure it was long. Some of us remember when it was OK for
movies to take their time. And yes, now and then the dialogue said it all
... three times. What mattered to me was that Brad Pitt and Anthony
Hopkins made a magnificent pair. It's sad that so much budget was
spent on irrelevancies like lavish sets, when the heart of this movie was
in these two actors, each of them perhaps the finest of his generation.
Because of the profligate budget, this movie is being registered as a flop;
but apparently this director did not have the courage or the sense to
trust his cast to deliver the movie the way Spielberg trusted the ensemble
of Saving Private Ryan. Never mind. The movie may go down in the
books as an expensive "failure," but for me it absolutely worked. Then
again, I thought Wyatt Earp was wonderful, too. Maybe I'm just not
impatient enough. Or maybe there's room in our lives for some films,
now and then, to take their time.
The Mask of Zorro. It isn't just that Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones are easy on the eyes. And heaven knows it wasn't the convoluted
plot. The fact is, I turned off my brain and enjoyed this pleasant period
action movie from beginning to end, and I wish there were more like it.
So sue me.
Ever After. There were holes here and there in the storyline, and gaps in the
characterization, too. But this realistic mud-and-all retelling of the
Cinderella story enchanted me, despite the fact that, as an actress, Drew
Barrymore is more engaging than believable. Everything came together
in a delicate sort of dance that worked beautifully. OK, so there was one
morally false moment at the end, where Cinderella does not forgive the
stepmother, but instead gives her an absurd and meaningless
punishment -- far better for her to forgive, and let the punishment come
from the stern monarch, who knows that wickedness must be punished
for good order to survive. But one quibble does not mar my overall
affection for this film.
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