2023 in Film, Part 3: REALITY

In this series, Jimmy Lanyard explores the relationship between 2023 film releases¹ and what happened in real life that year. Part 3 looks at the way cinema in 2023 reflected the epistemological crisis that everyone seems to have recently started paying attention to.

Fargo is a franchise that, since the 1996 film, has always had a playful relationship with truth. Each episode of the TV show, like the film, opens with text reading “This is a true story” (it isn’t). Partway into 2023’s fifth season, set during the height of the Trump years, a villainous attorney tells the policeman investigating his client that “We have our own reality.” The cop, a loyal defender of the liberal order, responds, “That’s not a thing.” 

What this article predisposes is… maybe it is a thing.

Public servant hero: the good cop Witt Farr (Lamorne Morris) stands in opposition to a Trumpian e-crisis in Fargo.

¹ Full disclosure, my favourite films that I saw as new releases in 2023 were: 1) The Settlers, 2) Killers of the Flower Moon, 3) The Old Oak, 4) Afire, 5) The Eternal Daughter, 6) The Boy and the Heron, 7) May December, 8) EO, 9) Babylon, 10) Poor Things, 11) Mars Express, 12) Autobiography, 13) Monster, 14) All of us Strangers, 15) Showing Up, 16) M3GAN, 17) How to Have Sex, 18) River, 19) Tar, 20) Talk to Me

If you asked a western liberal why nobody seems to agree on anything anymore, they might say that we had a shared understanding of reality until the advent of neoliberalism, until 9/11, until the election of Trump, or until January 6th. In Byron Clarke’s Fear, also released this year, he points to 2014’s Gamergate as a pivotal moment in this phenomenon. Regardless of when you think it started happening, most people will admit that we’re losing our grip on commonly accepted truths. This epistemological crisis (or e-crisis) is everywhere you look. There is a genuine fear, particularly among those who have an interest in the status quo, that misinformation, disinformation and conspiracy theories are flourishing now that we don’t all get our information from the same place. 

The clownish lawyer (Antoine Reinart) pretending to care about the truth in Anatomy of a Fall.

Two of the best films that competed at Cannes deal with the unknowable nature of truth. Justine Triet’s Palme d'Or-winning Anatomy of a Fall follows Sandra (the always magnificent Sandra Hüller), a woman who may or may not have killed her husband. While the ambiguity is never resolved, it’s nonetheless the type of film that inspires viewers, starved of certainty in an uncertain world, to ask each other “so do you think she did it?” I liked the film a lot; it’s a thrilling legal procedural with an impeccable use of a P.I.M.P cover, but when it comes to audience sympathies, it certainly stacks the deck in Sandra’s favour. Isolated by language and gender, the likable German woman must navigate the misogynistic and theatrical French legal system (I am dismayed to hear that the depiction of French lawyers is reportedly accurate). Meanwhile, the supporting cast is packed with character actors who have some of the most aggressively French faces committed to film. Whether or not you think Sandra did it, the viewer is probably going to be on her side, which in my view undercuts its effectiveness somewhat.

Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Monster deals with a similar theme. Beginning with a mother seeking answers when her young son starts acting strangely, it revists its series of events again and again, each time through a different character’s eyes. Its revelations of abuse, homophobia and Autism Speaks-style ableism each bring with them more questions. Comparisons to 1950’s Rashomon, the urtext of subjective cinematic storytelling, are unavoidable, if a little too easy; none of the retellings explicitly contradicts one another but the point of view adds additional context. This is a complex, devastating film where, even if the truth can be reached, it is buried under layers of secrets, misunderstandings and the language of children.

Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore performing truth in May December.

My favourite variation of this theme can be seen in Todd Haynes’ May December. In this film, the truth is actually obvious from the start (not a spoiler): that Julianne Moore’s Gracie, groomed her husband Joe (Charles Melton) when he was a child. However, this truth is buried under layers of abstraction and self-denial. Gracie and Joe need to delude themselves into thinking that their relationship is based on anything other than a lie in order to keep it together, even as it drives away their children and community. Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), the actor who insinuates herself into Gracie and Joe’s life in order to better portray the former in a film, deludes herself into thinking Gracie is a complex person instead of just a narcissistic predator. The biggest lie of all is the idea that the shitty film that Elizabeth is preparing for is worth all the probing she does during the film (this depiction of an actor psycho-analysing her undeserving subject is a highlight). The throwaway line, that Gracie’s mother was a professor in epistemic relativism is key here. Haynes is the king of having his cake and eating it too– May December is much better than the film within the film but between its heightened performances and showy score, it gleefully dabbles in the trashy.

Public servant hero: Sydney Sweeney plays defender of reality, Reality in Reality.

This tension between a lie agreed upon and an uncomfortable truth is at the heart of liberalism and an earnest, naive belief in institutions is the bread and butter of the dire Reality. With a script that adheres closely to the transcript of the 2017 FBI interrogation of whistleblower Reality Winner, you may expect a cosier relationship with objective small-r reality. However, if Anatomy of a Fall has taught us anything, it’s that a recording of a conversation is still an abstraction. Reality starts off strong, with more naturalistic filmmaking and casual smalltalk effectively dramatising the banal evil of American state violence. However, as the film progresses, it is clear that director Tina Satter doesn’t trust the transcript itself to convey the magnitude of the revelations: that Russia interfered in the 2016 US election (how could it?!)! That’s when the film ramps up its overbearing score, You Wouldn’t Steal a Document editing and dramatic appeals to the audience’s patriotism. Once Reality has abandoned its interesting premise, it becomes a really tough watch for anyone who never thought America was that great or who doesn’t believe Russiagate is the worst thing to happen to democracy.

Public servant hero: Shin Ultraman.

The only 2023 film that loves institutions more than Reality is Shin Ultraman. Although it is technically a successor to 2016’s Shin Godzilla (one of my favourite in recent years), its politics could not be more different. In the earlier film, anime royalty Hideaki Anno dramatised the inability of the Japanese government to respond to an environmental disaster. Shin Ultraman instead asks “what if public servants are the true heroes?” Cue applause. Meanwhile, the much bigger kaiju film Godzilla Minus One, takes a ‘lost cause’ approach to Japan’s aggressions in World War 2 where the war wasn’t problematic in and of itself, it was simply mismanaged by institutions.

Poster for the Wellington premiere of River of Freedom.

The media has always lied and one shouldn’t be considered a crank for stating it. One who bemoans the fact that a group of petite bourgeois Floridians can “yes, and” themselves into believing that there’s utility in storming the US Congress would do well to remember that we’re just 20 years from the media credulously parroting a lie that resulted in the death of a million Iraqis. However, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that 2023 was also a landmark year for cooker cinema. Technically, Sound of Freedom owes more to weird Mormon conservatism than Trumpism specifically but with QAnon-enthusiast Jim Caviezel in the lead, this story of child trafficking did gangbusters with those particular crowds. The documentary River of Freedom celebrates the anti-vaxx protestors who occupied New Zealand parliament in 2022. Both films played extensively in mainstream New Zealand cinemas and the former did huge business internationally. I am yet to watch either.

If you can’t tell, I’m very suspicious of the idea that our post-truth reality is particularly new and don’t believe that ‘disinformation’ and ‘misinformation’ are the most useful lenses for understanding reactionary politics. The mainstream media’s coverage of the Gaza genocide (not to mention its coverage of any colonial violence in history) should put to rest the idea that liberal institutions offer any kind of relief in this environment. In this context, one can at least understand why so many people are looking for information from elsewhere. The e-crisis has roots that are as deep as white supremacy, it comes from within our own settler colonies (not just from Russia) and it is precisely because of (not in spite of) liberal institutions that it is able to flourish. However, the idea that other people are being lied to (or that we’re lying to ourselves in the case of Killers of the Flower Moon, The Killer or All of Us Strangers²) is one with tremendous dramatic potential and has underpinned some of the most interesting films this year.

²  If I were to write a fourth of these articles, I would have no choice but to hone in on all the films about parent / child relationships. No spoilers, but I count at least five 2023 films about characters using supernatural themes to contact dead parents.

Jimmy Lanyard is an unexceptional Pākehā public servant from Te Whanganui-a-Tara. While he is not doing Borat impressions for the graduate advisors, he enjoys matching his sneakers with his Barkers suit, drinking almond flat whites and watching supercuts of Air New Zealand safety videos. Listen to Jimmy talk about film on Dinner and a Movie podcast with Nabilah Husna Binte Abdul Rahman.