Best of the 2010s: 51 - 60

Check out the entire series here.

The ordeal. What better way to test a hero's commitment than to run them ragged? An ordeal can be mental, physical, or spiritual, but it must reveal a character's interiority. How do they respond to strenuous circumstances? What is their fear response? Do they feel trapped? Determined? Or has a long life of ordeals worn them through?

The form of the ordeal refracts the needs of the protagonists. If a character seeks meaning in life, their ordeal may situate them as a cog in a narrative beyond their control. If a character seeks control, their ordeal may require perfection. If a character seeks perfection their ordeal may require surrender, surrender requires vulnerability, vulnerability requires violence. When a subject and an obstacle strike against each other, an entirely new being is formed.

A QUIET PLACE PART II: Aural Sects

Director: John Krasinski
Writer: John Krasinski
Cast: Millicent Simmons, Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, John Krasinski, Noah Jupe, Djimon Hounsou
Runtime: 97 mins.
2021

The out of nowhere barn-burning success of A Quiet Place was the moment that people began to see director and lead John Krasinski as something more than 'that guy from The Office.' Krasinski has since used that recognition to position himself as a bastion of conservative values in Hollywood while staunchly denying that he is doing so. The actor campaigned for Elizabeth Warren in 2012 (herself a former Republican), but his recent roles are either heroic men at the locus of the American military-industrial complex, or A Quiet Place, which many took to be a paean for 'traditional family values.'*

*It's worth mentioning that the indistinguishability between conservative and liberal values in Krasinski's career may have less to do with him being good at hiding his politics and more to do with the frequent indistinguishability of conservative and liberal values. (pro-military, pro-police, pro-heroic individualism)

This not-so-subtly features into the opening scene of A Quiet Place Part II, which exists only to feature Krasinski despite his character's death in the previous film. Krasinski's Lee is always the first to be suspicious and the first to take action-- and he is absolutely justified in his paranoia-- a model for the 'governments and aliens are coming to take my guns' crowd. The tone-setting scene also makes a big goddamn deal of highlighting his positive relationship with a local Black cop, who pointedly gets the Big Hero Moment of the prologue.

The scene is electric with tension, and probably the best filmed sequence of the movie, despite adding nothing of import to the story beyond a chance to see Our Hero Lee again. In effect the whole movie takes its shape from Lee's absence. The major new character is Cillian Murphy's Emmett, who is positioned as a father figure to Regan (Millicent Simmonds) and a husband surrogate to Evelyn (Emily Blunt) not because they share any chemistry, but because he is an Adult Man. Indeed, Emmett is compelled to regularly express his impotence in comparison to the late Lee, something that everybody seems to agree upon.

Best of the 2010s: 61 - 70

Check out the entire series here.

In certain moments of clarity, our self-destructive urges can be operationalized to accomplish great things. One word for this is commitment-- the trait of our finest heroes, and our most reviled villains. 

Full throttle commitment can take root at any level of our hierarchy of needs: commitment to survival, commitment to a loved one, commitment to a great work, commitment to having the most fun you can possibly have. Cinema is a psychologically external medium, meaning that although we are rarely party to the inner thoughts of our subjects, we see the results of their interiority play out. This often takes the form of spectacular tension as the subject does battle with their environment to accomplish their goals. These ten films show what can become possible when a person gives it all they got.