More Film Favorites of 1988

“The Unbearable Lightness of Being”--It was a year of superb novel adaptations, “Little Dorrit” included. But Milan Kundera’s tale of love, politics, sex and repression in ‘60s-’70s Czechoslovakia was fashioned here, by director Philip Kaufman, into a genuine watershed American film: A startling departure--in form, style, psychological and social content--from almost all of the ‘80s’ mainline U.S. studio product.

“The Last Temptation of Christ”--Did most of the people who kicked up the fuss really see Martin Scorsese’s movie--or understand what they saw? From Kazantzakis’ novel, a firmly Christian work of high idealism, beautifully mounted, not intentionally lewd or blasphemous; only Paul Schrader’s street-tough dialogue keeps it from being a masterpiece.

“Melo”--Henri Bernstein’s tense play about a tragic quadrangle in a world of classical musicians: The very title suggests “melodrama,” and director Alain Resnais has defiantly refused to “open it up.” Never moving from an obvious proscenium set, it somehow seems to distill the soul of theater, the beating heart of 1929 Paris.

“Wings of Desire”--Writer Peter Handke, master cinematographer Henri Alekan and director Wim Wenders--cinematic poet of alienated loners on the road--create an eerie, rapt modern fairy tale in which Berlin angels watch over the monochrome world of the lost and lonely and yearn for the bright colored day of passion, circuses and love.

“Who Framed Roger Rabbit”--A monstrous high-voltage audience-hit from director Robert Zemeckis, that, like John McTiernan’s “Die Hard,” was also a technical marvel. I’d like the last trip to Toonvile to be more surrealistic, crazier; otherwise, it doesn’t miss a trick.

“A Taxing Woman”--Through the Byzantine financial catacombs of modern Japan, a piquant tax investigator pursues a swaggering cheat. Director Juzo Itami (“Tampopo,”) gives us a wry, piercing, hawk-eyed view of his country’s new commercialism, its loss of tradition and the samurai heart that seems to beat beneath it’s plexiglass shield.

“The Moderns”--Supposedly it takes place in the expatriate’s Paris of 1926, but actually this movie--drifting along on its cloud of soft jazz, overlapping banter and wine-rich colors--is set in no real landscape at all. A sweet, devious meditation on art, love, life and artifice; the most special and delightful of Alan Rudolph’s films.

“Tucker”--Cars and conspiracies, invention and intimidation, flash and free enterprise; Francis Coppola strongly reclaims his turf. A full-throated shout of American optimism, tinged with fatalism and a canny awareness of the traps awaiting any dreamer.

“Bird”--A jazz lover’s dream: A song in darkness, joy wrung out of grief. No director this year showed more devotion to his/her subject matter than Clint Eastwood in this soulful elegy to Charlie Parker and the world of ‘40s-’50s be-bop.

“Long Live the Lady!”--A neglected little gem, by Ermanno Olmi, that I like as much as the better-known culinary fable “Babette’s Feast” (not to mention its wonderful Danish compatriot, “Pelle the Conqueror”). It’s a community comedy about lower-class waiters at a lavish Italian mountaintop business banquet; a feast that becomes, like Babette’s, a metaphor for all the traps of society, all the divisions of life.