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Starting from keywords such as democracy, politics, totalitarianism, and war, as multiple mirrors of the times, how can movies move from social groups to private individuals? How can images be used as anchors to anchor down and define the era? “Key Review Network” invited 10 film critics to select the best movies of the year and write short reviews themselves. The selection rules are new works that can be seen for the first time in Taiwan theaters, domestic and foreign film festivals, or streaming in 2023, and are limited to formal methods, excluding digital restoration. I hope to write annotations for this year’s movies from the perspective of film criticism.
This year (2023) is coming to an end, and the “post-epidemic era” has truly arrived, and the world has resumed the busy exchanges and activities before the epidemic. The atmosphere of the times that has enveloped this year is no longer the epidemic. Instead, the ever-changing war has not stopped. The war between Ukraine and Russia is still at a stalemate, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to be at war, and the world situation continues to be turbulent.
Similarly, we can still see this year that the impact of the epidemic, war, and inflation is comprehensive, and the contemporary world is gradually pushing towards the extremes of the left and right, and may even create a new Cold War era, with the European and American blocs and the powers of China, Russia and North Korea Confrontation seems to be an inevitable trend. Starting from keywords such as democracy, politics, totalitarianism, and war, as multiple mirrors of the times, how can movies move from social groups to private individuals? How can images be used as anchors to anchor down and define the era?
In view of this, “Key Review Network” invited 10 film critics to select the best movies of this year in their own minds and personally write the reasons for their short reviews. The selection rules are new works that can be seen for the first time in Taiwan theaters, domestic and foreign film festivals, or streaming in 2023, and are limited to formal methods, excluding digital restoration.
I hope to look back on this year through images and words in an attempt to define the era.
The order below is determined by submission time.
Wen Wenkai/Underground FilmSelect “Sunrise”, world premiere at Cannes Film Festival 2022, screening in Taiwan theaters on February 10, 2023
In an increasingly rapid era, events occur in a flash, and then disappear quickly before we can understand them. Politics, wars, issues, ideologies, and even the personal self are often fragments broken in the gaps. Therefore, I think ” The relationship between “understanding/not understanding” is one of the increasingly important issues and concepts in contemporary times, and “Sunrise” is a movie about “not understanding”.
What runs through the entire film of “Sunshine” is the image language that emphasizes the “back”. The daughter peeps into the relationship with her father from the perspective of “memory”, and in the wide-angle lens, a large number of shots of the back, The distance maintained by the camera and the reflection of the mirror/glass/water surface all allow the image to create a “reflexive” angle, and even circle an “incomprehensible” perspective.
