WHEN I STARTED writing this column a decade ago, the Oscars were about to address The Dark Knight not being nominated for Best Picture by expanding from five to 10 possible nominees. Only two Marvel Universe movies had been released, iPads didn’t exist, movies were still mostly shot on film, and #MeToo wasn’t known outside activist circles.
Today, as I write my final regular column for the magazine, the expanded nominations system has delivered one of the least plausible Best Picture awards in memory (Green Book), 22 Marvel movies have been released, people make films on iPads, watching cinema on a phone is second nature, and a new era of respect and accountability is dawning in the entertainment industry and elsewhere.
The last decade has seen women’s cinematic voices asserted like never before. Sarah Polley’s generous Stories We Tell and Agnès Varda’s humane Faces, Places are two of the best films stimulating another surging movement: the widespread reflection on our own personal narratives.
The stories, voices, and faces of people of color are no longer the exception in mainstream movies—from Queen of Katwe to Black Panther, Selma to 12 Years a Slave, Blindspotting to Roma.
LGBTQ stories are not relegated to tragedies: Love is Strange and Moonlight showed extraordinary loves in an ordinary world, redefining masculine stereotypes. On a larger scale, Cloud Atlas, perhaps the most underrated film of the decade, gave us a massive science fiction-mystical future vision that isn’t just trans-inclusive but actually depends on humans being able to transcend binaries of many kinds—especially those to do with belonging.
And most important, the ultimate binary of erasing “enemies” by killing them has been challenged. Even though the Marvel movies are often overdone, at times they allow room for something less than total destruction of the bad guys.
And Inside Out was daring enough to risk making a children’s film with no antagonist at all.
Along with the films named above, my favorites include Wonderstruck, Endless Poetry, Toni Erdmann, Silence, Arrival, A Separation, The Assassin, Embrace of the Serpent, Interstellar, The Great Beauty, Shaun the Sheep, Paterson, Holy Motors, and The Tree of Life.
At its best, it was a decade of transition, moving previously marginalized characters into the center, offering alternatives to lethal violence, and placing story itself at the heart of how we think about ourselves. It’s been great to share it with you here. See you at the movies.
Gareth Higgins is an Irish writer and storyteller based in North Carolina. He is the founder of www.moviesandmeaning.com, and you can also find him at www.garethhiggins.net.
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