This evening the entertainment industry is going to spend three hours and change in a big circle, diddling itself for all the world to see. The ostensible purpose of this nakedly masturbatory enterprise is to publicly recognize the best flicker shows of the year. The actual purpose is for the wealthy and beautiful to congratulate themselves on how wealthy and beautiful they are. That they do this in a televised spectacle that draws more attention from the poor and the plain than anything save the Super Bowl must add a pleasant dollop of irony for the more self aware of the participants.
Like most orgasms, be they of the sexual or media variety, the buildup lasts much longer than the aftermath. The number of articles and stories previewing the thing is far greater than the number recounting it. Along similar lines, most of the movies nominated will fade almost instantly from the cultural memory. Two years from now only industry people and dedicated movie geeks will be able to recall even some of the winners, much less the various nominees.
All that said, there were movies released in 2010 that are worth commending. In particular, one movie would be heaped with awards were I in charge of distributing the phallic golden statues: Black Death. It is not a famous movie; I don’t think it was even released theatrically in America. The only players I recognized were David Beckham’s talented cousin Sean Bean and perpetual bad ass David Warner (who is hardly in the film). But it is a pitch perfect piece, the writing, acting, and filming are all superb, and the story is as haunting and beautiful and horrific as anything I’ve ever seen.
Better than any movie that will have a clip shown tonight in Los Angeles, Black Death portrays humanity without edifice or exaggeration. It is about people whose good intentions drive them to perpetrate acts of cruelty and wickedness far in excess of anything the deliberate commission of evil could ever hope to achieve. The most humane act in the movie is the cold blooded murder of a defenseless woman, and even that beneficence is tainted by psychological brutality of false hope. It is not pretty and it has no hero.
The ending, which by today’s standards involves only mild physical violence, is truly ghastly. Just when you think things can’t get any bleaker, any further from warm and fuzzy, the movie’s parade of true believers make things worse. For a film that has already put the viewer through eighty-five minutes of unflinching looks at torture, the bubonic plague, and misanthropy of every kind, that is a hell of a thing.
Best of all, the climax doesn’t undermine or contradict anything that’s come before it. Quite the opposite, it enhances the rest of the story by revealing that, for all its feints and ploys, the entire tale has been told from a single gory perspective.
Perhaps the best compliment of the unique nature of Black Death is to point out how it defies classification. Is it a horror movie? Not really. Is it a period drama? Sort of, but it would be a bit incongruous to shelve it with Merchant-Ivory offerings and high brow fluff like The King’s Speech. As of this writing, Netflix lists its “Genres” as “Thrillers, Action Thrillers, Satanic Stories, Supernatural Horror”. That last one is certainly inaccurate, as one of the film’s greatest assets is its total rejection of the supernatural. There is no need to conjure spooks and specters to people a movie entirely with villains, well intentioned human beings more than fill the bill.
