Johnny Depp plays the Mad Hatter in "Alice in Wonderland."AP/The Associated Press
First, the caveat, or, as the poet once warned: "Take what you have gathered from coincidence."
Seen through a car mirror, objects may be closer than they appear. But in this mirror, the rear-view that journalists traditionally drag out to gaze back at the year, just the opposite is true: Things may not be nearly as close as they seem. What we're determined to identify as cohesive trends are often just random coincidences. This is especially the case in the film world. There, despite all the efforts to ensure predictable returns through sequels and remakes and patented formulas, movie-making remains a largely haphazard, serendipitous business. A myriad factors, from financing to casting to executive whims, affect whether any given project sees the light of day or remains in a locked drawer. And even when a film does get born, gestation periods vary wildly.
Consequently, the cinematic fruit of 2010 is the result of many different seeds scattered at very different times in the past. To seek a pattern in this happenstance is a vain game, but that's obvious. More interesting is our need to try. These rearward peeks aren't just journalistic exercises - it's in everyone's nature to play the look-back game, to impose structure on the formless. In fact, here, we're simply doing what the movies themselves do. After all, its the job of art, and especially entertainment, to carve some semblance of order from life's chaos. So, caveat over, let's carve away.
Two movies will do to start: Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and Christopher Nolan's Inception, twin towers of commercial success from earlier in the annum. One is an adaptation of a Victorian classic, the other is daringly modern, yet both head off in exactly the same direction: They plunge through the rabbit hole into a parallel universe, into the realm of fantasy and the sphere of dreams. Of course, every movie is itself a parallel universe, but this pair digs down to subterranean layers, and thus speaks to a need in today's audience to treat movies as pure escape, to put themselves at ever deeper removes from their everyday reality. In this view, entertainment can be smart or funny or stupid or wacky but, to be "entertaining," it must always be a reprieve from the world and never its reflection. That seems to be a growing public attitude.
Yet does escape have to be escapism? Consider Rabbit Hole, which borrows its title from Alice but explores a parallel universe that runs brutally close to reality's bone - the psychic terrain of unrelenting grief, prompted here by the death of a child.
I found the film exemplary, others less so, and that's an honest difference in opinion. More troubling is the prevalent suggestion that such harrowing subject matter has no place in the movies - it's simply not entertaining, it doesn't complement the popcorn, it's not why sensible folks shell out for the price of a ticket. If that outlook is a trend, it's worrisome.
Two more movies, the duo that already looks to have the market cornered in the awards season: The King's Speech and The Social Network. Each is about a nerdy, isolated guy - George VI, Mark Zuckerberg - who battles innate afflictions to become successful. And each is about the changes ushered in by electronic technology, by the advent of radio and the birth of social media. Now there's a fascinating pattern that only coincidence could provide. A couple of good flicks happen to open in the same year, happen to get bound together in their quest for prizes, and, eureka, we find a link and parallel universes intersect: Who knew that a dead king of England and the living founder of Facebook had so much in common?
Elsewhere, my search for connections starts to get a bit tenuous. Maybe this trio: The King's Speech again, 127 Hours and Buried. The common element is restriction, obliging the principals to play against their natural strengths.
In the first, a mellifluent actor like Colin Firth foregoes his natural eloquence to play an anxious stammerer. In 127 Hours, a kinetic director like Danny Boyle tackles a static premise that leaves his protagonist literally stuck between a rock and a hard place.
And in Buried, a pretty boy like Ryan Reynolds spends the whole picture all mussed up and interred in a wooden box. Whatever this is, don't expect it to continue.
Another linked threesome: Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Shutter Island and Hereafter, made respectively by veteran directors Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese and Clint Eastwood, and all, to varying degrees, a disappointment. Maybe the old lions are losing their roar, but I hope not. Certainly, there are precedents to the contrary: John Huston and Robert Altman did fine work late in their careers. And Eastwood himself made Mystic River at the advanced age of 73. Let's choose to believe this isn't a trend.
Here in Canada, a set of cultural icons came under the lens: Score: A Hockey Musical is a brave, if failed, attempt to turn our national obsession into a populist flick. Barney's Version fares much better with Mordecai Richler, although once again his Canadian prose is powered by an American actor - just as Richard Dreyfuss once did in The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Paul Giamatti does here.
Inevitably, in this and every year, the dominant pattern is easy to spot: Most of the released films, Friday after consecutive Friday, in whatever damn dimension, are either bad or bland. I'd mention the worst offenders but, being forgettable, they're forgotten. Happily, beyond that broad pattern, another - smaller yet crucial - is just as persistent. There are always delights, tiny or vast, that restore the silver to the screen - maybe a formula rom-com that's a little better than expected (She's Out of My League), or an independent pic worthy of the name and so uniquely affecting ( Winter's Bone), or a cartoon that reanimates the kid in you ( Despicable Me), or a very human and evocative face as special as any effect (Mia Wasikowska in Alice).
These found moments are why we go to the movies - yours will differ from mine in name but not in that essential purpose. So here's when my rear-view mirror becomes a crystal ball: As long as the big screen endures, so will its delights, rare perhaps but never extinct. Finally, a trend that's no coincidence.