The year in reviews
The Saturday Paper’s arts critics look back at the highlights of 2023.
At the close of 2021, Elizabeth Kolbert wrote in The New Yorker about our new era of hyperpartisan identity. Not even television was spared. “By now, party, race, faith and even TV viewing habits are all correlated,” she wrote, explaining how one United States study found the top 20 television shows among Republicans were completely different from those favoured by Democrats.
How that translates to Oz is an open question, but 2023, like its immediate predecessors, gave us too many signs that depolarisation remains a dream in an era that so profitably sells rigid group identities. As in politics, there’s nothing new, or interesting, in oversimplified television where the “other” is the only threat. So while minds will differ on the best of 2023, the following series sustained complexity, contained multitudes and delivered something enduringly edifying in ways that felt effortless and entertaining. Another year, another triumph for
It seemed season one couldn’t be bettered, but season two levelled up in ways that drilled deeper into the central characters’ love-starved pasts, the self-nourishing possibilities of nourishing others and the emotional roller-coaster of collaborative work. Ayo Edebiri continued her virtuosic performance as sous chef Sydney, less as a circuit breaker for the unbearable tension generated by the dysfunctional male leads and more as a worthy character in her own right.
Season three of gave us another Bear (D’pharaoh Woon-a-tai), another triumph. The final season finds him, with friends Elora (Devery Jacobs), Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis) and Cheese (Lane Factor), stranded far from home – but this show has consistently found the closest connections in cosmic distances. It’s also successfully sustained an assured, polyphonic approach to tone, perspective and narrative arc. Like all perfect endings, it felt too soon to say goodbye.
Likewise for the swan song of the astonishingly brilliant, sui generis docuseries,
With help from writers such as journalist and bestselling author Susan Orlean, Wilson’s obsessive collection and resonant collaging of the minutiae of daily life has gorgeously shown that, in the end, it is the tiny things that are the most significant, and the feelings they evoke are universal.
Scraping ourselves towards the end of this year, the finale feels like it occurred back in the Cretaceous period. It was mere months ago that its majestic four seasons closed with each Roy realising their father’s death was not some magical release but the dawn of the next cycle of intergenerational abuse.
Speaking of cannibalistic zombies,
represented the hidden hopefulness of all things post-apocalyptic.
The rage-driven, the fear-driven and the slow-dying stalking its blasted landscapes were recurrence personified: the traumatic past ripping through the present. But Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and little Sam (Keivonn Montreal Woodard) gave pause to consider where we’re headed and what might yet be done. The displacement of pain, alienation and vulnerability into anger was also fertile material for Using the fulcrum of a road-rage unpleasantness between Amy
Lau (the mighty Ali Wong) and Danny Cho (Steven Yeun), the writers lifted the lid off that protective emotion to movingly explore family, community and class conflicts.
The brutal mytho-poetic fairytale
reminded us that while the repertoire of human stories is limited, there are infinite ways to spin them. This is also illustrated in less elevated ways by that jolly form, the Christmas movie. At their best, they re-enact Dickens’ framing of the season as the only time we think of others “as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys”. Even ironically, however, I cannot recommend Netflix’s
I’m embarrassed I watched it. But it led me to Variety’s review: “Its absurdist lunacy acts as a Trojan Horse containing genuinely meaningful sentiments on forgiveness, happiness and bittersweet sorrows.” The same could be said of 2023.
Whatever 2024 holds, it’s unlikely to be weirder than the forthcoming episodes of Nathan Fielder’s And nothing to come will be truly new in terms of the emotions it evokes in us individually, and in our various collectives. Which is why endof-year wraps are important. The fiction of finality is the friend of second chances.
Naomi Stead
For many architectural folk there were two related highlights in 2023. First was
receipt of the
the profession’s highest accolade. It caps off a fruitful few years for Kerstin Thompson Architects (KTA), with the Bundanon Art Museum and Bridge, Melbourne Holocaust Museum and Kerr Street Residences all applauded. Thompson was a popular winner – both respected and liked, she is a thoughtful champion of how architecture can “elevate the everyday” and dignify even the most prosaic place or purpose.
The second highlight was the correction of a historic injustice. Twenty years ago the Gold Medal was awarded to much-lionised Melbourne architect excluding – his partner in life and work, fellow director in Edmond and Corrigan, and equal collaborator. This has finally been made good, with the 2003 medal retrospectively awarded jointly to Edmond and the now-deceased Corrigan. Sadly it’s not even close to the first time a woman architect has been erased and ignored, written out of the credits. What is unusual is for such wrongs to be remedied. Much joy has ensued.
Housing policy is at its most interesting in years – in September the
bill passed, guaranteeing
$10 billion for public and community housing nationwide over five years. It could be a moment of hope in the face of a dire housing crisis, or a big, rolling shemozzle of labour shortages, construction delays and developer greed. But at least there is a national conversation about housing quality, equity and affordability, and politicians have been beating a path to to study its alternative model of design-led, collective and co-operative housing. This can only be a good thing.
It’s a truism that the most sustainable building is the one you don’t build, with some
There’s more subversion and wit to be found in ancient Doris Day and Rock Hudson comedies than anything on display in Barbie.
calling for a total moratorium on new building. In other quarters a culture of disposability persists, making it fine to scrape a carbonintensive building off to landfill just for being “tired” or “dated”. When the then premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews, announced all 44 of Melbourne’s public housing towers would be knocked down and replaced, there was a collective gasp of horror from sustainability advocates. It’s hard to believe every one of these buildings is as irredeemable and irreparable as claimed; architects can do an awful lot with retrofit and refurbishment, they just need to be given the chance. Likewise, currently the most interesting construction industry groups are engaged with re-use: Revival Projects, with its large-scale salvage and custodianship of to-be-demolished materials; and environmental consultants Finding Infinity, who, working with architects Kennedy Nolan and others, have produced
– purportedly Australia’s first “plus energy retrofit of an apartment building”.
Engineered mass timber buildings continue to grow in scale and complexity, a stand-out being for Murdoch University in Perth, by Lyons with Silver Thomas Hanley, The Fulcrum Agency, Officer Woods Architects and Aspect Studios. But this year’s has raised some eyebrows – the first Australian building by cult Japanese architect Tadao Ando, it’s a painstakingly refined space of contemplation, a paean to the sculptural qualities of concrete. But what does it mean to build a supposedly ephemeral, temporary structure out of this most enduring and carbon-dense of all materials?
Elite private schools continue to be fabulous clients, with a strong sense of the value of design. It remains endlessly jarring, however, that the glorious palaces of learning they build are available only to those who are already over-endowed, while the denizens of the public system are largely left scratching in the dirt. I can’t think of a more telling index of the rank inequity of our school system than the disparities in quality of its built environment.
For my money, the building of the year is a tiny-footprint residential tower in Sydney’s Surry Hills, sitting in the weensy “backyard” of a refurbished corner terrace. Designed by SJB’S Adam Haddow for himself and his husband, it has a level of character and delight that we rarely see in residential architecture.
With design as loveable as this, Australian architecture is looking okay.
Christos Tsiolkas
is the author of and
Perhaps it’s a churlish thought, but for me the blockbusters of 2023 all seemed to share an off-putting air of self-congratulation. Given the seismic shifts digital platforms have wrought on cinema attendance, I am glad Christopher Mcquarrie’s
and Greta Gerwig’s put bums on seats – but I found it difficult to stomach the bloated script of the former and the smug a-bob-each-way cultural sarcasm of the latter. Intermittently, some of the action sequences in the new Mission: Impossible were impressive, but the film was as endless and as enervating as its title. Barbieland was colourful, but there was no trace of magic or invention in the rendition of its feminist utopia. When the dolls encountered the “real world”, I found myself staring glumly at the screen: the contemporary world seemed to be a clichéd version of the mid-20th century, with a sprinkling of “diversity”. There’s more subversion and wit to be found in ancient Doris Day and Rock Hudson comedies than anything on display in Barbie.
I was also disappointed by Christopher Nolan’s and Martin Scorsese’s
Nolan’s is the better film, but both strive for moral purpose and intellectual seriousness that isn’t justified by their pomposity or unsophisticated scripting. I expect them to win big at the Oscars next year. There’s nothing Hollywood likes better than slapping itself on the back.
On the plus side, proved Alice Rohrwacher is one of the finest directors in the world today. What is remarkable about her work is she wears her debt to the great directors of Italian cinema so very lightly and joyfully: she has her own confident vision and sensibility. La Chimera is a film about ghosts and memory that dares to be resolutely responsive to the political and the sacred. Carol Duarte and Josh O’connor gave outstanding performances in the film.
Outstanding too was Cate Blanchett in Todd Field’s This is a film that prioritised nuance and complexity in its script, performances and mise en scène. It was exhilarating to watch a film that treated its audience as mature and curious. I felt a similar excitement watching Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s enthralling which with unerring intellectual cogency probed questions of guilt and responsibility. It was also the year’s most visually impressive film.
Filmed in 2021 but only now distributed in Australia through streaming, Stephen
Karam’s was a real discovery.
It is claustrophobic and intense – a genuinely unnerving mixture of horror and domestic noir. Based on Karam’s own play, it is a striking cinematic debut.
I have a soft spot for Emerald Fennell’s
a sometimes bewildering mashup of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley and Pasolini’s Theorem. It is less coherent than her previous film, Promising Young Woman, but also less constrained, less closeted. It is slyly and perversely sexual – unshackled from zeitgeist politics, Fennell indulges the surreal eroticism that clearly enthuses her imagination. Barry Keoghan is terrific in it.
( Rien à foutre) was another highlight. Directed by Julie Lecoustre and Emmanuel Marre, it is an expertly crafted social-realist film about a young woman who works as a flight attendant for a cut-price airline in Europe. The film nails perfectly the wearying struggle of navigating the gig economy. For all the harshness of its subject matter, the film is often buoyant. A large reason is the wonderful Adèle Exarchopoulos, who is fearless and coolly likeable in the main role. She’s also striking in Ira Sachs’s drôle sex comedy from this year,
David Easteal’s was largely ignored by cinema distributors and found a home on MUBI, an arthouse streaming service. This near three-hour film, set mostly in a car driving through Melbourne’s peak-hour traffic, is formally rigorous and exacting yet never less than mesmerising. Within its minimalist structure and framing, it captures both the alienating sterility of contemporary life and our indomitable need for empathy and fellowship. Easteal’s short films throughout the past decade have impressed me immensely. His debut feature is undoubtedly one of the year’s best films. It is superb, and deeply moving.