BEST OF 2017
AS HOLLYWOOD ABUSES WERE EXPOSED THIS YEAR, THERE WERE ALSO GOOD MOVIES
Seasons greetings from the Sunken Place.
Hollywood, I mean. Of course, I’m referencing the state of paranoid, helpless limbo from the best — and still most ridiculously prescient — movie of 2017, “Get Out.”
But if any metaphor stands in for the state of the movie business as this gobsmacking year comes to an end, it’s the Sunken Place.
Film folks, the great majority of whom, I think we can agree, are politically liberal, started 2017 in horrified disbelief that a reactionary reality TV host was the country’s new president.
Life seemed even more upside down as the crucial summer blockbuster season turned, with a few well-made exceptions, into a box office bust. A few hits — “It,” “Thor: Ragnarok,” “Wonder” — have emerged since then, but they haven’t counterbalanced fall’s theatrical disappointments yet.
And anyway, the pop culture center of attention shifted more than ever in recent months from movies to what’s on streaming services such as Netflix, which has threatened to make more feature-length films next year than any major Hollywood studio.
Even a combined Disney/Fox operation — and where the hell did the possibility of that megamerger come from? — would be hard-pressed to match Netflix’s commitment, and that outfit is just the most aggressive of multiple subscription streamers that are ramping up original production.
Warner Bros. reluctant to invest in another bunch of Tolkien movies? No problem. Amazon’s “Lord of the Rings” series is on its way. Maybe it’s more appropriate to swap out the Sunken Place for the Upside Down from “Stranger Things” — the hit Netflix series that’s been consistently the best ’80s movie ever remade — to describe Movieland’s mood.
That’s a good word, appropriate. More than anything, Hollywood’s disorientation this year had to do with learning what it means.
The swift obliteration of indie film mogul Harvey Weinstein’s awards-hauling career amid an avalanche of sexual misconduct
allegations was soon repeated with other powerful movie men — from Kevin Spacey and Brett Ratner to beloved figures like Pixar’s John Lasseter — and spilled over into not only TV but such showbiz-like fields as news media and politics. Exposure of this high-profile power abuse may have begun with Bill Cosby and at Fox News, but the template for such inappropriate behavior was established around a century ago by the movie business, and has thrived there ever since.
Until now. The rapid implosion of this system of exploitation may never entirely eradicate harassment and worse, but it’s hard to believe it’s not changing Hollywood culture in a seismic, still highly unpredictable way. And while that should be universally encouraging, there’s no denying that it’s making a lot of people nervous, too.
As has happened before in times of high anxiety and head-spinning transformations, though, the movies of 2017 were better than they had been for a while.
I’m talking about the good ones, which there were more of in the past 12 months than in that complacent, long ago era of, what, 2016 or 2015? Of course, most of these films were conceived of and made well before our current upheavals. But as also often happens with the movies, maybe something was in the air.
Whatever the reason, this year yielded a bumper crop of fine films by people of color (“Get Out,” “The Shape of Water,” “Columbus,” “Okja,” “The Glass Castle”), women (“Raw,” “Prevenge,” “Meagan Leavey,” “Wonder Woman,” “The Beguiled,” “Detroit,” “First They Killed My Father,” “Novitiate,” “Lady Bird,” “The Breadwinner”), LGBQT folks (“A Quiet Passion,” “Wonderstruck,” “Call Me by Your Name”) and artists who are all of the above (“Mudbound,” “Strong Island,” “Professor Marston and the Wonder Women”).
In a number of cases, their films wouldn’t be around if it wasn’t for Netflix, which gives you some idea of how a paradigm shift is not necessarily something to get angsty about.
Of course, white male directors still dominate the filmmaking field. Many did great work in 2017, and we still can’t assume any of them will turn out to be predators. But as this year kept proving, anything can happen and things are certainly changing. What will get the industry through whatever is to come will be, as it always has been, making movies worth seeing.
Nah, that’s too optimistic. Probably better for everyone in the industry to take “Get Out’s” lesson to heart: It’s sink or swim, guys.