Three Breakthroughs in ’05 by Aaron Dobbs (December 21, 2005)

Every year a few films capture the attention and hearts of filmgoers everywhere. Maybe even more exciting than the discovery of these films, however, is the detection of the new creative voices behind their making. More than just great cinematic works, they become vehicles for their talented actors, writers and directors to attain greater notice both within and outside the greater film community. In the film business, however, those who finally have a breakthrough year may not in actuality be so “new.” That’s certainly the case with the three people indieWIRE has identified as having breakthrough years in 2005: Actress Vera Farmiga from “Down to the Bone,” “Me and You and Everyone We Know” star/writer/director Miranda July and “Junebug” director Phil Morrison have all been successful artists in one form or another for years, but it was their work in 2005 that transformed them into stars of the independent film world.

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Michael Haneke’s “Cache” by Michael Joshua Rowin with responses from Nick Pinkerton and Jeannette Catsoulis (December 19, 2005)

Shock the bourgeois. That rallying cry of early 20th Century European art and art cinema — apres Baudelaire — becomes less effective as each passing year pulls us further from the canonized abrasions of modernity and deeper into the postmodern neutralization of visceral, disarming violence. In retrospect, Austrian provocateur Michael Haneke’s early films, culminating in 1997′s nihilistic “Funny Games,” fall into this trap, brilliantly composed and confrontational as they are. As apocalyptic visions of the bourgeois nuclear family, “The Seventh Continent” and “Funny Games” remain nearly unparalleled in their unrelenting brutality.

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Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain” by Michael Koresky (December 5, 2005)

Even on the eve of “Brokeback Mountain”‘s release, it’s difficult to separate the actual movie onscreen from the media attention that’s been swirling around it for months. Is Ang Lee’s effective tragic romance to be viewed as just another epic love story unfolding under a panoramic azure sky or as a groundbreaking mainstream cinematic evocation of homosexual love? While it’s beyond doubtful that “Brokeback,” even if it proves to be a multi-Oscared box-office success, will open the floodgates for a bevy of studio-financed gay-themed movies, its very conception seems to have created a heavy social burden that the film simply may not be able to carry. And I say this with the utmost respect and generosity of spirit because “Brokeback Mountain” is nothing if not modest–an even-tempered, strong-willed, matter-of-fact drama that has more in common with the evocative American landscapes of John Ford than the bland do-goodism of the American independent film scene. “Brokeback,” by sheer lack of comparable contemporaries, feels fresh, yet Ang Lee’s sturdy craftsmanship does well by not assuming grandiloquence. What’s most lovely here is that, unlike all the chatter surrounding the film’s journey from production to festival to eventual release, Ang Lee lets the story speak for itself.

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