I went to see The Road (2009) today.  I went to see it alone–a new experience for me that I’m now sure to repeat.  I found it liberating because I didn’t have to come up with an opinion to defend afterward; instead, I let it simmer while I watched another film at the Landmark theater (something only possible when alone).  I kept coming back to the scenes in the underground bunker with all of the food and the cellar stocked with starving people–food for cannibals.  It reminded me of Fallout 3, a video game that I had beaten a month ago.  And then pirates.

When I was six, I buried a LEGO piece in my carpet.  I was delighted by the fact that it was entirely hidden and only I knew its location.  I have always been obsessed with secrets, time capsules, and the ending of In the Mood for Love (2000), but only now do I notice how thoroughly this desire permeates humanity.

Take pirates, for example.  After the enemies are all killed and the treasure is buried, pirates rejoice the fact that no one will find their booty.  In the handful of pirate-themed stories I have read, no swashbuckler has ever pondered: “Why did we bury the treasure?  Why aren’t we spending the riches?”  We derive such pleasure from having a secret that the symbolic value of the secret far surpasses the physical value of the hidden object itself.

In Fallout 3, you are an escapee of the underground Vault 101.  You scour the post-apocalyptic landscape of Washington DC, finding small colonies and trading goods for weapons and food.  The map is a block-to-block copy of the capital, all the way down to the subway system, and items can be found everywhere.  As I reached the level cap at 20, I found myself at a loss as to what to do next.  I had already built most of the weapons (including a Rock-It launcher, a weapon capable of using random junk for ammunition, from dinner plates to teddy bears), I had more than my fill of food and water and stimpaks (health), and any new quest I completed would not reward me with perks or experience points.  I found myself in an underground colony of Ghouls I had just exterminated, emptying all of my “worldly” possessions into a metal box I had found behind a boulder.  Now, mostly naked, I returned to the surface and found myself completely satisfied.  I dropped a marker on the map and quit the game.

I haven’t been back in a month.  I hadn’t even thought about it until I saw Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee climb down into the abandoned underground bomb shelter full of food and water.  That was someone’s buried treasure.  Someone saw this coming and now they’re gone.  It was a physical remainder of someone’s actions, a sign of their existence–and perhaps the only way of achieving physical permanence in this world.  In The Road, the actions of men above-ground leave barrels full of charred human bones behind: here, underground, someone has created something good. When the father and son sit down to eat, they give thanks.  They give thanks for the food; they give thanks for the memory.

The ride’s over.

There went the decade, crawling to a slow halt in the station, and now we disembark.  This decade had its ups (college, technology) and downs (war, hurricanes)–and the world of film was no exception.  Filmmaking went in two directions:  Hollywood films ballooned year by year with increasing budgets and frames, culminating with this month’s Avatar, James Cameron’s all-digital $700 million 3D action romp; Independent Cinema moved into inventive territory with uploads to YouTube and low-fi meditations in Neo-neorealism after many Studio Independent Branches that funded indies (for a period, c. 2003-2007) realized that there was no real market where they believed one to be and abandoned the cause.  Still, large theater chains carried more independent films than ever before, and distribution for independent films was bigger than ever with the internet and VOD cable television bringing cinema to places it never could have travelled in the past.

We forget that in 1999, DVDs were seen as the luxury alternative to VHS tapes (as Blu-Ray is to DVD now) and the local video rental store was the general access point to the cinematic world.  But with this decade came the domination of the disc, and Netflix rose with it along the way.  No matter where you live, so long as you have access to the internet and a DVD player, you can watch nearly any film.  Think about that.

This decade was the era of the superhero.  Television rooted itself in its conception of reality, though gradually began to lose itself to the power of the immediacy of the internet.  Just as the remote control killed the traditional nightly television schedule, so did TiVO and iTunes murder watching television on any predetermined schedule at all.

Here’s the Company List for the top films of the Noughties. These films are listed in chronological order, since the task of attempting to quantify a rank for such a wide variety of films is next to impossible.

2000.  In The Mood For Love  –  (Dir. Wong Kar-Wai)

Perhaps the best love story of the decade (another arguable candidate would be 2008′s Wall-E).  Wong Kar-Wai’s meditation on unfulfilled love sizzles with Christopher Doyle’s unreal colors and cinematography.

2001.   Mulholland Dr.  –  (Dir. David Lynch)

To settle the debate once and for all:  no one, no one, actually knows the “plot” of the film.  David Lynch created a multilayered maze that helped launch Naomi Watts’ career.  Nothing else came close to matching the beautiful terror of a man standing behind a dumpster waiting for us.

2001.   The Royal Tenenbaums  –  (Dir. Wes Anderson)

“…I always wanted to be a Tenenbaum.” From the opening Prologue, set to an instrumental version of “Hey Jude” and a voiceover by Alec Baldwin, to the last slow-motion shot at the cemetery, perfectly synchronized to the serendipitous “Everyone” by Van Morrison, Wes Anderson crafted a great film and a good story made even better from an outstanding ensemble cast.  No one has thought of anamorphic lenses quite the same way ever since.

2002.   Y Tu Mamá También  –  (Dir. Alfonso Cuarón)

Cuarón’s free-form journey to a mythical, idyllic beach with long, flowing shots sits as a permanent cinematic hymn to the confusion of love, the pain of youth, and the hidden beauty of the world.  But–were it none of those things–it still would have made the list for Luisa’s slow dance towards the camera near the end.

2004.  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind  –  (Dir. Michel Gondry)

Because breakups are hard and no one had known quite how to articulate a very old question:  if the end of the relationship is painful enough, would you prefer it never to have happened?  And because only Michel Gondry could irrigate the humanism buried deep within the complex script by Charlie Kaufman.

2005.  Caché  –  (Dir. Michael Haneke)

No other film perfectly encapsulated the Decade’s most prominent themes: a deep sense of uncertainty and the burgeoning digital universe of technology.  Haneke caught a lot of slack for the ending, but the mystery itself — who filmed us? — was the ideal metaphor for this period of time.

2007.  I’m Not There  –  (Dir. Todd Haynes)

I’m Not There represents an unmatched attempt at crafting a truly cinematic biography of a person:  fragmented, refractory, and incomplete.  Todd Haynes travelled down a clear salad bar of auteurs to choose from for inspiration — Fellini, Godard, and Sirk to name a few — in order to give every “glance” at Bob Dylan a new feeling.

2007.   There Will Be Blood  –  (Dir. P.T. Anderson)

The most poetic film of the decade was also the most potent indictment of the Bush-Era political mindset.  It’s not just one of the best because of Daniel-Day Lewis’ performance, which was easily one of the best of the decade, but because P.T. Anderson drew from a dark palette to give us an intense story using a deft economy of dialogue and exposition.

2008.  Wall-E  –  (Dir. Andrew Stanton)

In the opening ten minutes, Andrew Stanton was able to reduce storytelling to its oldest, and best, elements.  Though the entire film is nearly silent, it is easily one of the most emotional and engaging stories of the Decade.  It’s the perfect paradox:  the most artificially created film of the year was also the most human.

2009.  Ballast  –  (Dir. Lance Hammer)

Most people do the same double-take when they find out that the director of the film — a film propelled forward by an entirely African-American cast of non-actors giving intense, unsentimental performances — was white. Lance Hammer was able to reduce filmmaking to its guttural core by spending the better part of three years in the Mississippi delta casting the actors and workshopping the script with them.  Watching Ballast we’re given the clear harbinger of the next wave of filmmaking.