Richard Brody's Best Films of 2023

The New Yorker

12/12/2023

The film critic discusses the best three films of 2023.

Transcript

00:00 I'm Richard Brody, I'm a film critic at The New Yorker,

00:02 and these are the best movies of 2023.

00:05 The third best movie of the year is "Barbie,"

00:12 one of the most extravagant

00:14 and comprehensive cinematic fantasies

00:16 I've seen in a very long time.

00:18 One of the things I think about when I watch a movie

00:27 is where does the filmmaker stand

00:29 in relation to the material?

00:30 And in this particular case,

00:32 "Barbie," brilliantly and amazingly,

00:34 is a fantasy about fantasy.

00:37 The very subject of the movie is

00:39 what is it for a girl or a woman,

00:42 for a person, to play rough, to play freely,

00:47 to use imagination so drastically

00:50 that it transforms the original object

00:53 into something different from what it originally was.

00:56 So in effect, "The Barbie Movie"

00:58 is a movie about intellectual property.

01:00 It's a movie about how a filmmaker

01:02 should deal with intellectual property.

01:03 It's not just about Barbie,

01:04 it's about how to make a film

01:06 based on Shakespeare or Jane Austen.

01:08 And for all the boring films

01:11 of classic literary adaptations one has seen,

01:14 this movie is not exactly an antidote,

01:16 but it's a prescription for the free play of imagination.

01:19 The second best movie of the year is "Asteroid City,"

01:25 the latest feature by Wes Anderson

01:27 that is a similarly comprehensive fantasy,

01:31 this one rooted sort of in history.

01:34 The story of "Asteroid City," set in the mid-1950s,

01:38 is also centered on America's red scare,

01:41 anti-communist paranoia.

01:43 And one of the things it dramatizes

01:45 is the government's efforts to suppress information

01:48 and the spirit of revolt

01:49 that thrives among its young scientists.

01:52 - I'll fight it all the way to the Supreme Court

01:54 if necessary, and win.

01:56 - This just in from the president.

01:58 - He's furious.

02:01 Thanks a lot, Ricky.

02:02 - At the same time, it's a movie about grief and loss.

02:05 It's a film about parents and children,

02:08 and it's tinged with a powerful romanticism

02:11 that's one of the hallmarks of Anderson's career.

02:14 People think of Anderson as a confectionary director,

02:16 as a mere stylist,

02:18 and indeed he has an exquisite sense of style.

02:20 But for me, his style is akin to that of Ernest Hemingway,

02:24 where Hemingway was a minimalist

02:26 and Anderson is a maximalist,

02:28 but they have the similar idea

02:30 of using their elaborate sense of style

02:33 to conjure quietly but profoundly

02:36 a world of romance, of courage, of danger,

02:40 of moral responsibility.

02:42 The best movie of the year is "Killers of the Flower Moon,"

02:49 directed by Martin Scorsese

02:50 and based on a book by David Graham,

02:53 a staff writer for "The New Yorker."

02:54 The movie is based on the true story

02:56 of the murder of members of the Osage Nation

02:59 by white interlopers who were trying to lay their hands

03:04 on the wealth of the Osage Nation,

03:07 which resulted from the discovery of oil on tribal lands.

03:11 One of the ruses by which that was accomplished

03:13 was that white people married into Osage families

03:16 and then did away with their spouses.

03:19 And that's the basis of the story here.

03:21 - When these women died,

03:22 with how Osage suffered from the illness,

03:24 you have to make it the head rats come to you.

03:27 You see?

03:29 - It's the story of the marriage of a white man,

03:34 played by Leonardo DiCaprio,

03:36 and an Osage woman, played by Lily Gladstone,

03:38 one of the great performances of the year.

03:40 - Show me Cassie.

03:41 That's how you are.

03:43 - I don't know what she said,

03:45 but it must've been Indian for handsome devil.

03:48 - Hey, shit. (laughs)

03:51 - It's one of the strangest, most mysterious,

03:54 and most moving stories of a marriage that I've ever seen.

03:57 It's akin to Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut"

03:59 in that regard.

04:00 And I'm not gonna spoil it,

04:02 but like "The Wizard of Oz,"

04:04 Scorsese, in effect, comes out from behind the curtain

04:07 and implicates himself, let's say, morally,

04:11 even politically, in what it means

04:13 for him to try to tell this story.

04:15 For its furious dramatization

04:18 of a horrific and still unredressed historical crime,

04:23 for its depiction of the terrifying,

04:25 even self-destructive passion of sexual love,

04:29 and for the filmmaker's own self-question

04:32 regarding the responsibility of his art,

04:35 "Killers of the Flower Moon" is the best film of 2023.

04:39 (upbeat music)

04:41 [BLANK_AUDIO]

Richard Brody's Best Films of 2023

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