My Top Ten Films of 2003
by Jeffrey Overstreet | posted 2/23/2004
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I don't claim to have the authority to pronounce the best film of the year. But I can share which titles have proven most rewarding to me.
1. Stevie
I was tempted to choose The Return of the King as the best film of the year. Return captured my imagination, but Stevie blindsided my head and my heart. It's been on my mind since the day I first saw it.
Director Steve James (Hoop Dreams) delivers a powerful piece of work—and it comes from his own home movies, so to speak. This true-life account captures as volatile a conflict as I've ever seen onscreen. It's a war movie, but it's about the war for a man's sanity, spirit, and soul.
It starts simply, with James looking up the young man he mentored ten years ago in a Big Brother program. But when he finds Stephen Fielding—"Stevie"—he finds a man accused of sordid crimes. As Steve James tries to find out what happened to the boy he once knew, he discovers that many of those around Stevie are contributing to his downward spiral towards a miserable doom.
Steve decides to try and salvage something of Stevie's life. He lets the camera roll not so we can see his virtuous efforts, but so we can witness the result of parental neglect, abuse, and poverty. He's also teaching us to look past the alarming exterior of a dangerously aggressive and self-absorbed person.
Stevie is the most beautiful, riveting, heartbreaking documentary I've ever seen. It is a gift of humility and confession, inquiry and insight. It will move you, and it may even change you. Beware.
2. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
Peter Jackson's work is the single most Herculean filmmaking endeavor I've seen. And I credit him and offer my most heartfelt gratitude to him for preserving the power of Tolkien's story as well as he did. The project has fulfilled the greatest cinematic dream of my childhood: that my favorite stories would reach the screen in a way that resonated with my own imaginings of Tolkien's work.
While individual elements are clearly flawed—especially the screenwriters' attempts to make noble heroes flawed, and then ennoble a hero who profoundly fails in the book—their achievement, held up against the work of other filmmakers, dwarfs anything released in my lifetime. They have brought to life an exquisitely detailed world, overrun with powerful parables, profound symbols, and whisperings of the Holy Spirit.
3. Finding Nemo
It's as though all animation has been building to this. Nemo is as visually enthralling as any cartoon ever made. Marlin the clownfish and his forgetful friend Dory are a brilliantly funny team, voiced perfectly by Albert Brooks and the hilarious Ellen Degeneres. Pixar's wizards show themselves to be as confident at storytelling as they are at animation.
While I wouldn't say it's funnier than the Toy Story movies, the story takes on poignant themes for kids and for grownups. There are lessons about being responsible kids and courageous parents. But there's also a love story that sneaks up on you before it's over. Thanks to Pixar, animation as a form of storytelling is reaching a new peak.
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