I have always had a soft spot for films about children, whether it be those films which simply allow kids to be kids (François Truffaut's Small Change, Jean Vigo's Zéro de conduit), or those in which children are forced, through circumstance, to confront harsh "adult" truths (Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander, again Truffaut with The 400 Blows). This year, I find myself once more drawn to stories of childhood or the childlike; stories of innocence celebrated, lost, and in some cases regained. From a community of uneducated yet deeply intuitive women to the world's most ingenuous shell, here are my picks for the best* of 2022.
FILM
Sarah Polley's WOMEN TALKING proves that it's still possible to make mature films for mature audiences. Polley's film, which follows a group of girls and women in a tightly-knit religious community as they reckon with relevations of systemic sexual abuse, is intellectually rigorous, religiously fraught, and informed by a profound humanism. Polley, working from the novel by Miriam Toews, offers a sympathetic, nuanced portrayal of a group - illiterate, sheltered, largely ignorant of the outside world - grappling with a crime of almost unimaginable evil. The wonderful ensemble cast, including standout performances from child actors easily holding their own against big names like Jessie Buckley and Claire Foy, makes the most of Polley's screenplay, which wisely refrains from the sort of dramatic (and exploitative) recreations of the acts of violence that form the background to this difficult story. Polley starred in the greatest Canadian film of the 20th century; she may well have directed the greatest of the 21st.
Speaking of great directors, Céline Sciamma's PETITE MAMAN owes more than its fair share to fellow Frenchman François Truffaut. Sciamma's slim, almost fairy tale-like feature (it runs all of 72 minutes, or, if you prefer, 0.4 Fabelmans) follows a young girl (Joséphine Sanz), in mourning after the passing of her grandmother, encountering another girl the same age (Gabrielle Sanz) who looks suspiciously familiar and who lives in an even more suspiciously familiar house. To say more would be to spoil the delightful, intriguing atmosphere. Truffaut homages direct - a callback to the hilarious breakfast scene in Small Change - and indirect - a keen insight into how children think, and the grace to allow them to behave naturally - make this one of the best on-screen depictions of childhood yet.
Dean Fleischer-Camp's stop-motion mockumentary MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON is not, strictly speaking, a film about childhood - despite Marcel's comically high-pitched voice (by actress Jenny Slate), the titular anthropomorphic shell remains of indeteterminate age. Nevertheless, it is a story about a good-hearted, childlike, and hopelessly naïve figure who just wants to enjoy his small-scale life, which involves a pet ball of lint, a bed made out of a slice of bread, and the occasional misadventure by candy-wrapper parachute. When Marcel's googly eyed family goes missing, thoughtlessly packed into a suitcase by one of those big humans lumbering around the house, it sends Marcel on a teeny tiny and altogether heartwarming adventure to track them down. 2022 doesn't deserve a film this innocent.
TV
The exceedingly weird SEVERANCE - a show in which Christopher Walken plays one of the more normal characters - is far and away the best new series of 2022. Alternatingly blackly funny and spine-tinglingly mysterious, it follows a group of individuals who have undergone an operation that effectively splits them into two personalities, each with no memories of the experiences of the other. At the office, these "Severed", including Walken, the always-excellent Adam Scott, and Britt Lower, are entirely ignorant of their outside lives - they cannot remember where they live, who they love, anything at all. Outside, these same people go about their lives, incapable of remembering what goes on during a day at work (or even whether their "other half" likes the job they've consigned themselves to). Why someone would choose to make that split, and what lengths they might go to to undo it, are the central questions in a series that offers up some tantalizing answers, while teasing several more mysteries to unravel in the upcoming Season 2.
As the restaurant industry faces a long-overdue reckoning with toxic work conditions, new dramedy THE BEAR offers an intelligent, honest, and even funny portrayal of the lives of food and hospitality workers. The story - a former Michelin-star chef (Jeremy Allen White) returns home to take over the family sandwich shop following the suicide of his older brother (Jon Bernthal, in flashbacks) - dovetails nicely with broader conversations about mental health, addictions, and (this being the restaurant industry) male egocentrism. Despite the heady subject matter and characters who are not always easy to like - though sometimes they are very easy to sympathize with - it manages to have some wonderful comedic moments while remaining remarkably kind-hearted.
GAMING
The latest adventure for the cutest little pink puff to ever waddle, KIRBY AND THE FORGOTTEN LAND is the best Switch game of 2022, and a reminder of the innocent, kid-friendly and yet universally welcoming design ethos embodied by Nintendo. While it can't hold a candle to that one game where Kirby is literally a ball of yarn, it's a worthy addition to the gosh-darn adorablest canon of family-friendly co-operative video games.
It might be a stretch to call a Downloadable Content pack one of the best games of the year, but Canada's own CUPHEAD: THE DELICIOUS LAST COURSE is just too delightful to go unacknowledged. A six-level DLC amuse-bouche ahead of Cuphead 2 (if you're listening, Studio MDHR, please make a Cuphead 2), it introduces several new boss battles that may well be the best - and most fair - parts of the entire Cuphead experience. Any video game with a level lifted straight out of the Woodland Café Silly Symphony is essential in my books.
Some video games flirt with breaking the fourth wall; THE STANLEY PARABLE: ULTRA DELUXE stares it straight in the eyes, picks up a sledgehammer, and smashes right through it. The only thing missing from its latest iteration, a sort-of Parable 1.5 upscaled for next-gen systems, is a scene where a hand reaches out of the TV and boops the player on the nose. While Stanley Parable is tough to write about without ruining the experience, it can best be described as the most self-aware video game ever made, one that knows what the player is thinking and is always, hilariously, one step ahead of you. Never have I been so enthralled by the question of which office door to walk through.
BOOKS
Sarah Polley's first book, RUN TOWARDS THE DANGER operates partly as film memoir, from a former indie darling actor turned indie darling director, and partly as a painfully personal diary of life outside of film. In devastating detail, Polley grapples with a series of traumatic moments and periods in her life, beginning with her experiences (and grave misgivings about) her time as a child star, moving on through difficult pregnancies, her experience of sexual assault, and, in the chapter that gives the book its title, the concussion which for years impaired her cognitive function (and which helps explain not only her several years' absence from filmmaking, but also why Greta Gerwig took over from Polley on Little Women). Alternatingly heartbreaking and horrifying - for both, see the chapter about her Stratford "Alice in Wonderland", in which she is stricken by debilitating physical and mental impairments - it also contains the kind of warmth, intelligence, and perceptiveness on fine display in Polley’s other creation this year.
CANCON AWARDS 2022
Wouldn't you know it, the inaugural Four Winds Seven Seas Lifetime Achievement Award goes to... Sarah Polley.
For any other person, forty-three would be far too young for a lifetime award. But Polley isn't any other person; she's one of Canada's singular talents, an actor, screenwriter, director, and writer who has been contributing to the Canadian cultural landscape, in one way or another, for four decades and counting.
As it happens, 2022 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of Polley's best acting role, as the teenaged survivor of a horrific bus crash in Atom Egoyan's The Sweet Hereafter, a film (and role) that happens to deal with a lot of the same themes - the stories people tell themselves and others; the innocence of children and especially the innocence of little girls - as Polley's Women Talking, the best film this year (and one that's sure to earn her her first Oscar nod since 2006's Away From Her). 2022 also saw the release of Polley's debut memoir Run Towards the Danger, which deservedly won her the Toronto Book Award, and which similarly sees Polley reflecting on her difficult youth as a (mostly unwilling) child star.
I've long been a fan of Polley, ever since my personal political awakening which coincided more or less with the moment Polley had her teeth knocked in during an anti-Mike Harris rally. As an actor, Polley has appeared in some of the most iconic Canadian films ever, including The Sweet Hereafter and Don McKellar's Last Night (two contenders for greatest Canuck film ever), alongside a memorable turn in the greatest Canadian TV series of all time, Slings and Arrows (please, just go watch it now if you haven't already). Transitioning to work behind the camera, Polley wrote/directed the Alice Munro adaptation Away From Her (Oscar nominations for Polley's screenplay and Julie Christie's lead performance), the Seth Rogen/Michelle Williams/Luke Kirby love triangle Take This Waltz (2011), and the stellar Stories We Tell (2012), a fascinating family portrait that may well be Canada's greatest documentary.
Back in the 1980s, when a young Polley was already making a name for herself as the star of Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen and CBC's Road to Avonlea - the problematic legacies of which she grapples with eloquently in her recent memoir - it's doubtful anyone could have predicted her evolution from beloved child star to intelligent young actor to award-winning filmmaker and author.
But revisiting her career now - her perceptive, engaging performances; her intriguing and decidely un-Hollywood career choices (let's all imagine a world in which Polley didn't drop out of Almost Famous); her socially conscious advocacy and friendships with the likes of Jack Layton - is it any surprise that she now ranks among the greatest of Canadians?
