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Source: Sundance
The COVID-19 pandemic may have caused extensive delays in the film industry, but that doesn’t mean plans have been outright canceled. With the year 2020 having finally come to a close, the time has come to look back and determine which films – or what few were released – are worthy of being considered the year’s best. Although nomination announcements for the major awards ceremonies, including the Golden Globes and the Oscars, are not expected until later on in the year, several smaller institutions have stepped up to make their selections. Most of these consist of local organizations like the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, groups that may not necessarily reflect the views of the nation as a whole, let alone the entire global landscape. But then there is the American Film Institute (AFI for short), a nonprofit organization dedicated to honoring the art of the American motion picture. Each year, the AFI releases a list of films that its members have agreed upon as being the best of a given year (it also does the same for television programs), and just recently, the list for the year 2020 was announced.
What makes AFI’s Top 10 list unique among others is the lack of any ranking among the films listed. Whereas other lists will rank each of the films included from least good to most good (or vice versa), the AFI makes no distinction as to whether or not one film is better than the other, simply listing the films in alphabetical order and presenting them as if they were of equal quality. Given how controversial declaring which film is the best of a specific year can be, it makes perfect sense that the AFI would not want to show preference to one film over any of the others. This can be especially helpful for “genre” films and those created by minority filmmakers, which might otherwise be deemed “inferior” to more conventional fare. It’s not a perfect system – limiting the list to ten will mean some films will be omitted despite how well acclaimed they are – but the AFI’s list can be useful in determining which films best defined the year as its most honorable achievements, and this most recent list could most certainly do just that.
There’s a lot that can be interpreted from this year’s selection of films, but perhaps what’s most respectable is the diversity of the individuals in front of and behind the camera. While four of the films’ directors – Pete Docter, David Fincher, Darius Marder, and Aaron Sorkin – are white males, the demographic whose films have long dominated “Best Of” lists, the remaining films can be credited to those outside this group. Three directors – Regina King, Shaka King, and Spike Lee – are African American(four if you count “Soul” co-director Kemp Powers), and two – Lee Isaac Chung and Chloe Zhao – are of Asian descent. In addition, most of the films selected have a main character, if not a majority of the cast, that comes from a minority background. Four films – “Da 5 Bloods”, “Judas and the Black Messiah”, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”, and “Soul” – all have predominantly black casts, the main characters “Minari” are played by actors of Korean descent, and Riz Ahmed, a British actor of Pakistani descent, is the lead of “Sound of Metal”.
What may be even more noteworthy about this year’s AFI list, however, is the overwhelming presence of films released through streaming instead of theaters. Of the ten films listed, four have been distributed by Netflix, and two were released by Amazon, both of which have premiered their films through their respective streaming services. In addition, Disney has made “Soul” available exclusively through its platform Disney+, and its subsidiary Searchlight Pictures will release “Nomadland”simultaneously in theaters and on its other streaming service Hulu, much like how Warner Brothers will release “Judas and the Black Messiah” in theaters and on its service HBO Max at the same time. Even “Minari”, distributed by A24, was given a one-week release through virtual cinema, though it will also receive a theatrical release on February 12th.
It’s easy to blame the COVID-19 pandemic for there being so many films released through streaming, especially considering that “Soul, “Nomadland” and “Judas and the Black Messiah” would have all been given proper theatrical releases under normal circumstances. However, this would ignore the presence of streaming giants Netflix and Amazon, whose films have taken up the majority of the AFI’s list, and could very well do the same when it comes to the upcoming announcements for the major awards.
There’s a lot to take away from the AFI’s Top 10 Films of 2020 – some aspects worthy of praise, others a bit more concerning – but as a reflection of the year prior, it certainly does its job.
