Muriel Award, Countdown to Best Picture: #9 (tie)
35 Shots of Rum [71 points/8 votes]
“Claire Denis’s 35 Shots of Rum begins simply, with a man and a woman. He is driving a train; she is shopping for a rice cooker. The man and the woman are connected, yes. The train IS symbolic, and the rice cooker WILL figure prominently in the film. All of this is obvious enough. But no matter how perceptive or familiar with Denis you are, no matter how right you are about what each of these things means, by the time the film ends (with a shot that ranks among my favorite cinematic moments of the year) you will have discovered that you weren’t all the way right. There’s nothing in this film that I would call a “plot twist,” but no other movie released last year is as full of surprises.
35 Shots of Rum is, I think, as much about how the movies have conditioned us to jump to conclusions about things as it is family, movement, or the passage of time (to name three of its other themes). For that reason I’m loath to tell you much about it, but I want to convince you to see it, so I’ll just say this: 35 Shots of Rum is the work of a master director fully in control of every aspect her craft. Each of its sounds and images – all of which are individually beautiful – works together to create a magical, sophisticated film that is much greater than the sum of its parts. It is, for that reason, the one film from Movie Year 2009 that I believe is destined to become a classic: this is the kind of film you watch again and again, discovering something new each time. It’s the kind of film you can grow old with.” - Andy Horbal
