My favourite films of 2021 malaymail.com/news/opinion/2021/12/25/my-favourite-films-of-2021/2030964 Saturday, 25 Dec 2021 07:29 AM MYT By Aidil Rusli
DECEMBER 25 — So many films, so little time. That’s more or less what I feel every year, when it’s time to compile my list of favourite films of the year. The pandemic meant that for the second year in a row, I’m unable to make my annual trip to the Singapore International Film Festival to catch up on most of the festival films I wanted to see from major festivals like Cannes, Berlin, Venice, Locarno etc. The pandemic also meant that there are films that played festivals in 2019 that are only now getting released in cinemas or on VOD, which also means that it’s just impossible to be able to catch up with everything. As usual, please don’t take this as a “best of 2021” list, because as the title clearly implies, these are, from the hundreds of films I saw in 2021, the films that I’ve loved the most, for a variety of reasons, some emotional, some cerebral, and some purely visceral. ‘Martin Eden’ It took almost two years for this jewel from the 2019 edition of the Venice Film Festival to finally be released in the UK, but the wait is totally worth it, because this latest film from Italian auteur Pietro Marcello is a real game changer in the world of European art cinema, and instantly places Marcello’s name at the forefront of that scene. A very free adaptation of Jack London’s 1909 novel, Marcello places the story in Italy instead, and uses every filmmaking tool available to tell the story, including anachronistic touches like using vintage stock footage (and even “fake” vintage stock footage) and pop songs, with results so powerful that this tale of a working-class sailor rising above his station thanks to the power of his words and his tragic subsequent disillusionment after becoming a literary sensation, is one that will haunt you for weeks after seeing it. ‘The Disciple’ One of the most heartbreaking films of the year, this second film from Indian writerdirector Chaitanya Tamhane (who first caught attention with his brilliant debut Court) is one of the most perfect embodiments of that oft-asked question — can you love someone/something that doesn’t love you back? In this case, that something is music, and even though our hero Sharad (an astounding Aditya Modak) is deeply in love with Indian classical music and harbours ambitions of becoming a master vocalist, no matter how hard he practises and perfects his technique, it becomes more obvious as the film goes along that he simply doesn’t have “it.”
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