The Year of Living Dangerously

Cinema 2002 counterbalanced a treacherous world

A A A Comments (0) By Gregory Weinkauf Thursday, Jan 2 2003

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United Artists

With Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore compelled us to loathe and love our gun-crazy country, and catapulted himself to this critic's top ten list.

Pierre Vinet/New Line Cinema

The Lord of the Rings has magic, myth and Viggo Mortensen.

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1. Girl Crazy! At the very, very last minute, Lynne Ramsay's poetic and emotionally revelatory Morvern Callar (co-scripted by Liana Dognini from the novel by Alan Warner) has swooped in to claim the top spot all for itself! (Although it wouldn't be impossible to cram Miguel Arteta and Mike White's The Good Girl in here, too…) Starring current hipster chick Samantha Morton (the primary "pre-cog" from Minority Report), Ramsay's film has delivered an incredible, impressionistic inner and outer travelogue employing pure cinema -- light, color, sound, feeling and their respective absences -- to explore the perceptions and reactions of a miserable, pathetic girl in soul-sucking times. The film features obvious stylistic lifts from Trainspotting and Breaking the Waves, and closer comparisons include Withnail & Ior Last Tango in Scotland and Spain. But however you look at the project (which is open to interpretation), Ramsay (Ratcatcher) possesses rare and unique vision and has delivered this year's winner.