David
Lynch
After all the discussion, no one
could fault the conclusion that David Lynch is the most important film-maker of
the current era. Providing a portal into the collective subconscious, the
daydream nation conjured up in tales such as Blue Velvet, Lost Highway or
Mulholland Drive is by turns frightening, exasperating, revelatory and wild.
Nobody makes films like David Lynch. He is our spooky tour guide through a
world of dancing dwarves, femme fatales and little blue boxes that may (or may
not) contain all the answers. We wouldn't want to live in the places he takes
us. Somehow, we suspect, we do.
Martin
Scorsese
Scorsese's influence is impossible to
overstate. His red-blooded canon has spawned a generation of copycats while his
muscular style has become a template. That said, opinion is divided over the
man's recent output. Some regard his monumental Gangs of New York as a classic
to rank alongside Taxi Driver and Raging Bull. Others worry that the heavyweight
champion of American movies is no longer quite punching his weight.
·
Joel
and Ethan Coen
Their latest film, Intolerable
Cruelty, may have marked a new, "commercial" phase in their career,
but no one could ever accuse the Coen brothers of selling out. The Coens'
special mix of arch, sculpted dialogue, film-history homage and
scrupulously-framed cinematography has never failed them yet, and through their
associations with Sam Raimi and Barry Sonnenfeld, have exerted a powerful, if
unacknowledged, influence on mainstream event cinema. Until Fargo, they seemed
content to mess about in their own particular corner of the film industry; that
film's stunning popular success suddenly catapulted them into the Hollywood big
league.
·
Steven
Soderbergh
Steven Soderbergh is a one-off: an
independent-minded film-maker who has forged a happy working relationship with
Hollywood. This is thanks to a brilliant balancing act. Soderbergh soothes the
studios with expert, intelligent crowd-pleasers like Erin Brockovich and Ocean's
Eleven then shifts gear for more esoteric, personal projects (Solaris, Full
Frontal). His ongoing alliance with George Clooney, moreover, is the most
reliable director-star double act since Scorsese found De Niro.
·
Terrence
Malick
The lofty ranking of Terrence Malick
just goes to show that it's quality, not quantity, that counts. Renowned as a
ghostly, Garbo-style recluse, this fabled figure has made just three films over
three decades. Even so, the wild beauty of his 1973 debut Badlands casts a
formidable shadow, while his sprawling 1999 war epic The Thin Red Line at least
proved that the master had lost none of his magic. Next up, apparently, is a
biopic of Che Guevara. But don't hold your breath.
·
Abbas
Kiarostami
The highest ranking non-American, and
one of the most respected film-makers working today - by his peers if not the
general public. Operating mostly in rural Iran, Kiarostami has often concealed
potentially life-threatening political commentary within films of simplicity
and compassion. But he has complicated his medium, too, by mixing drama and
documentary, and actors and non-actors, to dizzying effect. His recent in-car
drama Ten provided a daring Tehran exposé as well as a radical new film-making
technique - one that almost does away with the director entirely.
·
Errol
Morris
Morris is the joker in this top 10,
in that his position is solely down to his documentaries. Put simply, Morris is
the world's best investigative film-maker. He possesses a forensic mind, a
painter's eye and a nose for the dark absurdities of American life. High points
include The Thin Blue Line (which unearths the nightmarish truth behind a
Dallas cop killing), Mr Death (a treatise on execution-device inventor and
Holocaust denier Fred Leuchter Jr), and the forthcoming Fog of War, his
compelling autopsy on the war in Vietnam.
·
Hayao
Miyazaki
It's about time the rest of the world
came to appreciate the genius of Japanese animator Miyazaki, whose films have
been breaking box-office records in Japan for years. He's now in his 60s, but
as this year's Spirited Away proved, the work just keeps getting better. His
films create the world anew, literally. Each is set in an intricate,
self-contained fantasy world that's been built from scratch and drawn with
devotion. Miyazaki's stories are frequently considered children's fare but they
are deeper than they look - like the best fairy tales, they conceal dark, very
adult themes beneath their surfaces.
·
David
Cronenberg
Few
directors have ploughed such distinctive furrows as Cronenberg. And now in his
fourth decade of film-making, he is still at the cutting edge. Crash set the
entire film world agog with its bizarre sexual constructs; eXistenZ examined
the implications of the virtual world more thoughtfully than most; and Spider
superbly summoned up a bleak, decaying Britishness (largely forgotten by our
own film-makers). His next film, with Nicolas Cage playing a plastic-surgery
fetishist, is already inducing shudders.
·
Terence
Davies
Our highest-placed British film-maker is here because of his
uncompromising and unique cinematic vision; but, with painful irony, it's also
made him the highest-profile victim of Britain's commercial film industry
revival. Emerging from the state-sponsored art-film sector in the mid-80s,
Davies completed a trilogy of short films and two features - Distant Voices,
Still Lives and The Long Day Closes. But, in a more cut-throat environment, the
sensitive Davies has suffered, making only two films in a decade - one of them
the international hit The House of Mirth. So it seems a shame - and somehow
scandalous - that his current project, an adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's
Sunset Song, should be facing major funding obstacles.
·
Lukas Moodysson
You would
assume that the surest way to hobble a young Swedish film-maker is to label him
"the new Bergman". Fortunately, Lukas Moodysson seems immune to such
pressure. His 2001 hit Together - about hippies living communally in 1970s
Stockholm - was warm, witty and altogether disarming. By contrast, his
follow-up, Lilya 4-Ever (about a Russian teen dragooned into prostitution), was
a social-realist vision of hell. Heartfelt and uncompromising, Moodysson treads
his own path.
·
Lynne
Ramsay
Ramsay, the second highest-placed Brit - and
the highest woman of any nationality - has trodden a distinctive path through
the lottery-fuelled sludge of modern British cinema. Her first film,
Ratcatcher, set during the binmen strikes of 70s Glasgow, was the anti-Billy
Elliot; her second, adapted from Alan Warner's novel More about Morvern Callar,
confirmed her promise. Morvern is an authentic modern classic, with an actress,
Samantha Morton, whose blank-faced performance is a perfect complement to
Ramsay's studied camerawork.
·
Bela
Tarr
In just a few years, the Hungarian director
has emerged from obscurity to be revered as the Tarkovsky of his generation,
with his dark and mysterious monochrome parables, shot with uncompromisingly
long, slow single camera takes. His recent Werckmeister Harmonies was a
dreamlike film: compelling and sublime. From 1994, Satantango has cult status
on the festival circuit, not least for its awe-inspiring length: seven hours.
He is now developing a movie at least partly set in London.
·
Wong
Kar-wai
Hong Kong has become synonymous with action
cinema, but Wong Kar-Wai is one of few exceptions. His trademark portraits of
quirky urban longing have influenced Asian film as a whole, but the delectably
sensuous In the Mood for Love proved that Wong is still improving (and that he
has one of the best cinematographers in the business in Christopher Doyle).
Next up he's making a sci-fi movie - should be interesting.
Pedro Almodovar
Post-Franco Spain needed Almodovar like a
desert needs rain. His early films were gaudy, bawdy and loud; drunken
celebrations of the country's new-found social and sexual freedoms. But
Almodovar is much more than some posturing agent provocateur. He spins soulful,
spellbinding stories and creates characters that ring with life. All About My
Mother and Talk to Her were exotic masterpieces that confirmed their creator as
the most important Spanish director since Luis Buñuel
Todd
Haynes
In retrospect, it seems such a simple idea -
take your favourite director (in Haynes' case, Douglas Sirk) and faithfully
imitate their style and meaning, subtly changing things enough to throw a whole
new meaning on an entire historical epoch and film genre. In 1996 Haynes had
made an earlier masterpiece, Safe; few directors could have topped that, but
Far From Heaven managed it.
Quentin
Tarantino
The jury may still be undecided on the virtues
of Kill Bill, but no one can deny the massive impact the former video-store
clerk has had on cinema across the world. The chewy, minutiae-obsessed dialogue
and abundant bloodletting of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction catapulted him to
era-defining stature and influence beyond the wildest dreams of any director;
had this poll been taken in 1995, he would have been top three, no question.
But Tarantino has since been the victim of his own success: he took three years
to make his third film, Jackie Brown, and another six to make his fourth.
Perhaps inevitably, neither of them made the splash of his first two, but
whatever else, Tarantino can still make the simple act of watching a film seem
oh-so-exciting.
Tsai
Ming-Liang
One of the least well-known names on the list,
but a director who has steadily refined his own gentle, bittersweet style.
Using his native Taipei as a backdrop, Tsai distills the complexity and
alienation of city life into films that are austere, unhurried and emotional,
but also comical. His pre-apocalyptic The Hole included 1950s musical numbers,
for example, while What Time Is It There? paid homage to Harold Lloyd in a
movie about death and loneliness. In his latest, Goodbye Dragon Inn, he has
almost done away with dialogue altogether.
Aki
Kaurismaki
Cinema needs the occasional breath of fresh
air, and you can always rely on Kaurismaki to provide it. Coming from Finland,
he had a head start, but where other quirky directors last a film or two,
Kaurismaki seems to have a bottomless pool of eccentric ideas to draw from. His
films are an acquired taste, but they never pander to good taste. For a
supposed director of art films, he's more interested in the world out on the
street, or in the gutter. And his most recent, The Man Without a Past, saw him
re-emerge into the global spotlight after some years at its fringe.
Michael
Winterbottom
Winterbottom's career presents a study in
motion. His films spirit us from Hardy's Wessex (Jude) to war-torn Bosnia
(Welcome to Sarajevo), and from post-punk Manchester (24 Hour Party People) to
the asylum-seekers' "silk road" out of Pakistan (In This World). As
well as being technically brilliant and a seeming workaholic, Winterbottom is
arguably the most politically astute director in the business, with an unerring
eye for the stories that matter. British cinema would be lost without him.
Paul
Thomas Anderson
There is something wonderfully fearless about
33-year-old Paul Thomas Anderson. His two best pictures (Boogie Nights and
Magnolia) are works of gob-smacking ambition in one so young - lush,
multi-layered ensemble pieces that spotlight the damaged souls of his native
San Fernando Valley. But let's not forget the recent Punch-Drunk Love, starring
Adam Sandler and Emily Watson. Smaller in scale but no less turbulent, this
undervalued effort is like a nail bomb in the guise of a romantic comedy.
Michael
Haneke
No one, perhaps not even Gaspar Noé, delivers
more hardcore horror than the German-born Austrian Haneke - even when his
shocks are happening off camera, which they mostly do. After a long career in
TV, Haneke graduated to the big screen in the early 90s and audiences quickly
came to know they were in for a profoundly uncomfortable experience.The Piano
Teacher, with Isabelle Huppert, was a disquieting study of a musician driven to
agonies of despair and self-loathing. More recently, Time of the Wolf was an
almost unwatchably horrible vision of post-apocalyptic Europe.
Walter
Salles
The godfather and trailblazer of the buena
onda - the "good wave" of contemporary Latin American cinema,
Salles's directorial reputation rests largely on two recent films, Central
Station and Behind the Sun, which virtually on their own put Brazilian cinema
on the map. Salles has just finished another road movie, The Motorcycle
Diaries, based on Che Guevara's book, for Britain's FilmFour, and is finally
going Hollywood with a remake of Hideo "Ring" Nakata's Dark Water.
But Salles is equally notable as a facilitator for other Brazilian projects -
most importantly the sensational City of God, which he co-produced.
Alexander
Payne
Payne came to prominence in 1999 with his
stunning high school satire Election, the Animal Farm of American sexual
politics in the Clinton era. From here, Payne went on to direct About Schmidt,
which gave Jack Nicholson the best role of his late career. With these two
movies, Payne has established an auteur distinctiveness: amplifying the disappointment
and regret lurking within the peppy, can-do civic culture of middle America,
while acknowledging the sweetness and innocence that is still there.
Spike
Jonze
Born into millionaire stock (and heir to the
Spiegel mail-order catalogue fortune), Spike Jonze has installed himself as the
genius jester in the court of King Hollywood. His 1999 debut, Being John
Malkovich, was a delirious satire on celebrity culture, while Adaptation led
the viewer on a slaloming joyride along the border between truth and fiction.
Inevitably, though, one cannot celebrate Jonze without also crediting his
scriptwriter - the ingenious Charlie Kaufman.
Aleksandr
Sokurov
The veteran
Russian director is inexhaustibly prolific, making both features and
documentaries, with 31 credits to his name over a 23-year career. His movies
are powerful, poetic, often severe, and at their most accessible when they
meditate on the nature of Russia. Sokurov had his biggest recent success with
Russian Ark: a staggeringly ambitious single-take 90-minute journey through the
Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. His latest movie, Father And Son, is an
enigmatic and often baffling study of a father-son relationship between two
soldiers. His work gets a lively, mixed reaction in the west, but Sokurov's
admirers revere the haunting, occasionally austere power of his films.
Ang
Lee
He may have
taken a bit of a stumble with The Hulk, his elevation to blockbusterdom, but
the Taiwanese-born Lee clocked up plenty of brownie points over the preceding
decade for his dazzling versatility, if nothing else. Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon (a record-breaker for a subtitled film), The Ice Storm, The Wedding
Banquet and Sense and Sensibility are all testament to a career of wonderfully
fertile cinematic cross-pollination. Lee's proficiency at swapping genres, but
retaining a purposeful humaneness, is his hallmark.
Michael
Moore
You could say it's Moore's blend of humour,
righteousness and persistence that has made his documentaries so successful,
but his political commitment would be nothing without the film-making skills to
back it up. Bowling for Columbine has been one of the most influential films of
recent years, affecting the public in a way that most directors on this list
will never know, but it would never have become such a cause had it not been so
rigorously researched, painstakingly constructed and broadly entertaining.
Wes
Anderson
No less an authority than Martin
Scorsese recently tipped Anderson as the brightest hope for American
cinema.
Scripted in tandem with his actor buddy Owen Wilson, Anderson's work is
literate, quirky and
unexpectedly moving. His breakthrough picture, Rushmore,
amounted to a poignant salute to high-school
losers everywhere. More recently,
the vibrant, Salinger-esque The Royal Tenenbaums charted the decline
and fall
of a precocious New York family.
Takeshi
Kitano
Few directors have ever made themselves look
as cool as Kitano has. His shark-eyed gangster persona became a fixture of
Japanese action thrillers in the 1990s, but behind the camera his controlled
blend of visual slapstick and sudden violence has become a distinctive style.
Recent efforts have seen him trying to diversify. Dolls was a subdued art film,
but next year's Zatoichi is a sword-swishing crowd pleaser.
Richard
Linklater
Linklater is
the grunge philosopher of independent cinema. Hailing from Austin, Texas, he
casually defined an era with 1991's loose-knit, haphazard Slacker. The
uproarious Dazed and Confused and the seductive Before Sunrise extolled the
joys of footloose youth, while his animated Waking Life spun a woozy,
bong-smoking rumination on dreams and reality. Incredibly, Linklater recently
graduated to the big time when his School of Rock hit number one at the US box
office.
Gaspar
Noé
Not bad for someone who's only made two
features, but Noé has made as much impact as you can with them. There's nothing
pretty about either his carnal debut Seul Contre Tous, or last year's
backwards-told rape-revenge drama Irréversible - both have challenged boundaries
of decency and induced reactions as extreme as nausea and vomiting. In a
supposedly unshockable age, that's some kind of cinematic achievement.
Pavel
Pawlikowski
With only
one substantial feature under his belt, Polish-born, British-based director
Pawlikowski has arguably the slenderest claim of all to be on this list. But
Last Resort, with its mix of heartfelt social insight (the then-radical subject
of asylum seekers) and improvisatory, documentary-style film-making, has
exerted an influence of gigantic proportions on a whole generation of British
cinema. Where would In This World and Dirty Pretty Things, to name but two, be
without it?
David
O Russell
Russell's natural habitat is the dysfunctional
American family. He dished up a deadpan Oedipal comedy with 1994's Spanking the
Monkey and then dispatched Ben Stiller cross-country in the freewheeling
adoption caper Flirting With Disaster. Yet this tart, original talent adapts
well to other terrain. On the one hand his big-budget Three Kings was an expert,
high-concept war thriller. On the other, it can be read as a savage assault on
bungled US policy during the first Gulf War.
Larry
and Andy Wachowski
Now that their Matrix trilogy is finally
wrapped up, it's a good time to draw breath and appreciate the scale of the
Wachowskis' achievement. Merging the techno-porn of the contemporary action
movie with the artful ballet of the Hong Kong martial arts film, the sci-fi
paranoia of Philip K Dick with the visual exuberance of Japanese anime, the
Matrix phenomenon utterly redefined the nature of the blockbuster movie serial,
as well as relegating such mid-90s action luminaries as John Woo and Roland
Emmerich to the margins. Like, awesome.
Samira
Makhmalbaf
You could
say Ms Makhmalbaf had it easy, being the daughter or one of Iran's greatest
film-makers, but she's hardly taken any easy options. Her films get bolder and
more confrontational every time - Blackboards took her into the Kurdish lands
on the Iranian border; her latest, At Five in the Afternoon, was shot in the
chaos of post-Taliban Afghanistan - but for all their political currency,
there's still evidence of an artistic sensibility. And she's only 23 years old.
Lars
von Trier
To his fans he's the impish genius who
redefined cinema with his Dogme doctrine. To his critics he's Jeremy Beadle
with a degree in anthropology. Either way, there's no denying the impact of
this phobic, Prozac-popping Dane. His most successful pictures (Breaking the
Waves, The Idiots, the upcoming Dogville) are hazardous human dramas in which
cruelty and compassion come equally blended. Happily there seems little danger
of von Trier selling out and heading to Hollywood. He hates America and nurses
a crippling fear of flying.
Takashi
Miike
If Miike had channelled his energies into
making one film every year, rather than his customary six or seven, he could be
a lot further up the list. Not that you'd want him to change. Miike's casual
technical brilliance and total disregard for taste are what makes his best
films such a joy. Sure, there are plenty of misfires and generic gangster
pictures to his credit, too, but there's plenty of everything when it comes to
Miike, surely that can't be bad?
David
Fincher
Heading the list of the
pop-promo-and-TV-commercial wonderkids of the early 90s, Fincher successfully
brought that world's visual inventiveness into the feature film world. In Alien
3, Seven, and Fight Club, he forged a string of visceral, unforgettable images;
but his subsequent career has been dogged by aborted projects. Fincher's most
recent film, the unremarkable Panic Room, saw him in a holding pattern - it's
certainly cost him a few points.
Gus
Van Sant
A casual observer would be forgiven for
thinking that there are two Gus Van Sants at work within American cinema. The
first makes gloopy studio fodder like Good Will Hunting and the odious Finding
Forrester. The second is the visionary auteur of Drugstore Cowboy, Gerry, My Own
Private Idaho and the Palme d'Or-winning Elephant (an elegant, ultimately
devastating take on the Columbine tragedy). For the record, it is the second
Gus Van Sant who gets the votes here.
