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Uncle Orson Reviews 1998

Best Films of 1998


In descending order of my appreciation, these are films I both enjoyed and admired.

Saving Private Ryan. No Spielberg cheats this time. His first great film since Empire of the Sun. He redeems himself for having made the worst, most dishonest film of 1997, Amistad (see the essay on the Worst Film of 1998, below). I wonder, though, how much of Private Ryan's honesty came from the presence of Tom Hanks? I know that the director is supposedly the "author" of the film -- but maybe the sheer presence of Hanks in the cast made it so Spielberg didn't feel the need to fall back on his bag of fakery, as he did at the end of the otherwise admirable Schindler's List. Because Tom Hanks was in it, Spielberg knew the film would reach the audience without cheating. But that's just speculation. What matters is, this film managed to tell the truth about war, not by denying nobility the way agenda-pushing fakemeisters like Oliver Stone do, but by showing how heroic such nobility really is, in the context of the brutality and stupidity that pervade every war.


You've Got Mail. Tom Hanks won't get Best Actor for this role, and Meg Ryan won't get Best Actress, and Nora Ephron won't get Best Director or, with Delia Ephron, Best Screenplay. And the wonderful supporting cast won't even get a wink. But that tells you what's wrong with the Oscars, not what's wrong with this film -- because nothing's wrong with this film.

It's very telling that in choosing a replacement for the way Anna Karenina was used in the film The Shop Around the Corner (on which You've Got Mail was based) the Ephrons went for Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. For what they tell here is precisely the kind of story that Austen, the greatest novelist of her time, told. Deftly interwoven in a sweetly ironic love story is social satire that does not so much bite as ring. It feels true. This film shows the New York of the moneyed class, and as in Austen's English country society, the contrast between those with vast money and irresistible power (Darcy/Joe Fox) and those with only enough to be "respectable" (Elizabeth/Kathleen) is the driving force of the story. This aspect of You've Got Mail is not derived in any way from The Shop Around the Corner, and it brings this new movie a resonance -- a deep, echoing ring -- that makes it even more important and memorable than the sweet, deft love story that was preserved intact from the original.

Like Austen, Ephron is fair. The Fox family is no more demonized than were Darcy and his friends and kinfolks. They cause harm and have uncompassionate fun doing it, but they feel it as their birthright, intoning the mantra of immorality in our time: "It's not personal, it's just business." The film makes us weep, not for the character of Kathleen Kinney, but for the bookshop, for what it meant in her life and in the lives of the people of the neighborhood. And yet when we are taken into its successor, the children's department of the huge Fox Books superstore (read: Barnes & Noble), we do not see it as a journey into hell. Instead we are shown a vast selection of books being enjoyed by a happy group of children -- Kathleen's old clientele, safely transported to the new setting. Yes, the salesclerk could not help the customer who didn't know enough information about the books she wanted to allow a computer search -- but in this story, the well-trained salesclerk from Kathleen's old store soon rules the children's department and provides the old level of service.

In short, civilization does not end when the little bookstore dies; it wasn't the place or its size that made it wonderful, it was the people all along. And that's what the love story is about, too -- it's not the position or the power, it's the people, and these two change each other even as they find each other and come to love each other. The couple who kiss at the end are much wiser people than the couple who were attracted to each other at the beginning and who quarreled through the middle of the film.

Saving Private Ryan will win Best Picture this year, and Spielberg will win his second Best Director Oscar, and they will deserve it, for the weight of their subject matter, the honesty of their treatment of it, and the brilliance of their art. But in the long run, I think Ephron's domestic comedy is no less weighty, no less honest, and no less brilliant. Mail's goal is laughter and sweetness; Ryan's goal is catharsis and tears; both are lofty goals, rarely achieved. Both will live on.

And one little note about Tom Hanks. Both films depend on his ability to project decency and love and honor. But it's You've Got Mail, not Saving Private Ryan, that gives Hanks the greater acting challenge, as he shows a character who is ebulliently cruel change into one who is compassionate and deserving. Hanks is an icon in Saving Private Ryan, and no other actor could have done it as well. But Hanks is an actor in You've Got Mail, even though, because it's a comedy, he will get less admiration for his art. Here's the secret: comedy is harder, and realistic domestic comedy is hardest of all. When the Oscars roll around, the only regret I'll have is that Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks will not be nominated for their work in this film. Still, they'll have another kind of award: We'll go see their next movie together, and the next, and the next, because we love the characters they play, because we don't believe they could play such good people if they didn't have a core of goodness and wisdom themselves. That's the one place where I think it's fair to muddle the boundary between the artist and the art.


Deep Impact. My kind of science fiction. Instead of starring the special effects, this one starred the human beings. I'm glad they got rid of the love-affair-with-the-cameraman subplot -- stupid sex scenes weren't needed in a film about the end of the world. In fact, this is the first intelligent, well-filmed, well-performed, well-directed end-of-the-world film ever. Not one embarrassing moment. I liked it so much, I even granted them the incredibly fast motorcycle ride from Virginia Beach to the highest Appalachians. I hope that when my own science fiction is filmed, it will be done with this level of integrity and intelligence. It made one-third the money of the laughable Armageddon. But nobody has to be ashamed of their work in it.


Meet Joe Black. Sure it was long. Some of us remember when it was OK for movies to take their time. And yes, now and then the dialogue said it all ... three times. What mattered to me was that Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins made a magnificent pair. It's sad that so much budget was spent on irrelevancies like lavish sets, when the heart of this movie was in these two actors, each of them perhaps the finest of his generation. Because of the profligate budget, this movie is being registered as a flop; but apparently this director did not have the courage or the sense to trust his cast to deliver the movie the way Spielberg trusted the ensemble of Saving Private Ryan. Never mind. The movie may go down in the books as an expensive "failure," but for me it absolutely worked. Then again, I thought Wyatt Earp was wonderful, too. Maybe I'm just not impatient enough. Or maybe there's room in our lives for some films, now and then, to take their time.


The Mask of Zorro. It isn't just that Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta-Jones are easy on the eyes. And heaven knows it wasn't the convoluted plot. The fact is, I turned off my brain and enjoyed this pleasant period action movie from beginning to end, and I wish there were more like it. So sue me.


Ever After. There were holes here and there in the storyline, and gaps in the characterization, too. But this realistic mud-and-all retelling of the Cinderella story enchanted me, despite the fact that, as an actress, Drew Barrymore is more engaging than believable. Everything came together in a delicate sort of dance that worked beautifully. OK, so there was one morally false moment at the end, where Cinderella does not forgive the stepmother, but instead gives her an absurd and meaningless punishment -- far better for her to forgive, and let the punishment come from the stern monarch, who knows that wickedness must be punished for good order to survive. But one quibble does not mar my overall affection for this film.

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