Spank You Very Much, Film Comment

The results of Film Comment‘s Readers’ Poll of the best films of 2011 are in and, predictably, The Tree of Life has come out on top (just like it did in their Critics’ Poll). I’m grateful to the magazine, the best in the English language, for publishing my remarks on some of these films for the third year in a row, even if they did misidentify my place of residence as Boston (shudder). Interestingly, I sent them commentary, much of it erudite, on at least ten different movies and what did they choose to publish? My tongue-in-cheek reference to the spanking scenes in A Dangerous Method and one sentence devoted to Lee Chang-dong’s Poetry!

For the record, my comments, a modified version of remarks already posted on this blog, were:

A Dangerous Method (#11):

Some critics have acted incredulous that Cronenberg, who gave us exploding heads and human VCRs in the Eighties, would opt for such a “classical” approach to this material. But I found this to be a surprisingly witty, genuinely erotic (and not just because of the spankings) and, yes, intensely cinematic experience. Keira Knightley’s brave performance came in for criticism in some quarters for being “mannered” but I think she’s the heart of the film; I can’t imagine a better physical embodiment of Cronenberg’s central idea of sexuality as a disruptive force.

Poetry (#21):

For most of the running time I forgot I was watching a finely wrought morality play, until the final scenes when the cumulative force of the previous two-plus hours hit me like a ton of emotional bricks.

If you don’t subscribe to Film Comment, you should. Full results here:

http://www.filmlinc.com/film-comment/article/readers-comments-2011