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The Best Films of the 21st Century
We’re borrowing a page from The New York Times and it’s suddenly-everywhere list of the 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century, we’ll be sharing pairs of our favorites throughout the rest of the century, starting with these two, which are both in the Top 50.
The release of Lucrecia Martel’s La Ciénaga heralded the arrival of an astonishingly vital and original voice in Argentine cinema. With a radical and disturbing take on narrative, beautiful cinematography, and a highly sophisticated use of on and offscreen sound, Martel turns her tale of a dissolute bourgeois extended family, whiling away the hours of one sweaty, sticky summer, into a cinematic marvel.
“Notwithstanding the sweltering Argentinean heat and a herd of noisy children, teenagers, and half-wild dogs, Lucrecia Martel’s La Ciénaga is a veritable Chekhov tragicomedy of provincial life. Making a brilliant debut, Martel constructs her narrative from quotidian incidents, myriad comings and goings, and a cacophony of voices competing for attention” —Amy Taubin, The Village Voice
This visceral take on class, nature, sexuality, and the ways that political turmoil and social stagnation can manifest in human relationships is a drama of extraordinary tactility, and one of the great contemporary film debuts.
The incredible opening scene is something of a gauntlet. If you love it (we do!), then you’re in. If not, well…