Directors on Directors: Filmmakers Analyze 2021 Favorites From ‘In the Heights’ to ‘The Harder They Fall’

Being the Ricardos

Directed by Aaron Sorkin
Essay by Gary Ross

There is such an urgency to Aaron Sorkin’s film “Being the Ricardos” that it would be easy to blow past the scope of his technical achievements. The period is impeccably rendered, the performances are dazzling (Nicole Kidman becomes and informs Lucille Ball in a way that is almost inexplicable). The script sparkles, and darts and dashes as Aaron’s always do. His collaboration with cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth and production designer Jon Hutman is a beautiful tone poem that underscores the subtext of the piece.

But this is all in service of something larger that is sobering and feels remarkably of this moment. A chill hangs in the air. The film tells the story of a momentous week in the history of “I Love Lucy” when America’s biggest star was accused of being a Communist. It simultaneously investigates Lucy’s pregnancy, which threatened the show, and Desi’s philandering, which threatened their marriage.

“I Love Lucy” was part of our collective mythology. The show revolved around an axis of American domesticity — tweaking but fundamentally reinforcing a postwar vision of ourselves: that we were OK, that our shattered men returning from war were strong, that our women who had held two and three jobs during the war must now be ornamental. But Lucy challenges those precepts. She insists on the truth: from Desi’s philandering to her insistence that he not whitewash her past Communist affiliations (he did) to the fact that babies, even those on TV, were not the product of Immaculate Conception.

By compressing these events into something he knows so well — the life-and-death stakes of a single week of TV production — Sorkin is forcing us to confront the gap between who we are and who we say we are. Or to paraphrase one of his more famous lines: Can we handle that truth?
Now, the insistence on objective truth should not be a stirring or relevant concept, but Lord knows it is these days. If the 1950s were one long decade of gaslighting, we should be studying them right now with a magnifying glass. And in that respect, “Being the Ricardos” is a warning from another era.

Oscar-nominated writer-director-producer Ross’ credits include “Seabiscuit” and “The Hunger Games.”

Belfast

Directed by Kenneth Branagh
Essay by Simon Curtis

I have admired Ken as a director for as long as I can remember, and having worked with him as an actor, I marveled at his profound knowledge of every aspect of filmmaking. But as brilliant as his work always is, nothing prepared me for the breathtaking experience of “Belfast,” which is by far his most personal film to date. The film is an account of a family caught up in the center of the horrifying events in the city he grew up in, and yet the picture manages to be a love letter to family, his family and the city of his birth.

It is a film about pain that comes with emigration, but there is a joyous quality to “Belfast,” and seeing so many of Ken’s frequent collaborators on both sides of the camera, the sense of a family making the film bounces off the screen as well.

Jim Clay’s meticulous design re-creates the neighborhood perfectly, and Haris Zambarloukos’ black-and-white photography (“The actor’s friend” — Orson Welles) elevates every angle and face. All the performances are sublime, and the ensemble features many recognizable faces from Team Branagh productions over the years, which enhances the sense of a community.

As the parents faced with the most challenging of choices, Jamie Dornan and Caitriona Balfe are pitch-perfect. Surely Jude Hill gives one of the performances of the year, all the more remarkable given his age, and his shift from joy to abject terror in the opening sequence sets the tone of the film. Dame Judi Dench gives one of her greatest performances as the beloved grandmother, and her heart-wrenching close-up at the end as she watches her family leave is a scene for the ages. And we get a new song from Van Morrison as well.

Director-producer Curtis’ credits include “Downton Abbey: A New Era,” “Cranford,” “The Woman in Gold” and “My Week With Marilyn.”

C'mon, C'mon

Directed by Mike Mills
Essay by Kirsten Johnson

Mike Mills, I mean, come on. You have really done it with “C’mon, C’mon.” Your bold and playful film is so full of love as it really is that you give us an invitation to reconsider how all of our own most treasured relationships could be more alive. There’s something about your luscious palette of grays, blacks and whites that lifts us into another dimension. And suddenly we can see possibilities we couldn’t see before.

Joaquin Phoenix (playing Johnny) is a spot-on proxy for so many of us right now — tired, heavyhearted and overwhelmed. Gaby Hoffmann (playing Viv) evokes all of the exhausted caregivers, service workers, sisters, wives and mothers left holding the bag as the self-absorbed or entitled leave others to clean up the mess. And then along comes Woody Norman (playing Jesse) to shake us all up! Sure, the present is overwhelming, but are we just going to cop out on it and the future too? Couldn’t we all enjoy each other more? Woody (playing the Child) keeps provoking Joaquin (the Grown-up, who hasn’t yet grown up) to find the words instead of avoiding them, to stay instead of running away, to feel uncomfortable instead of pretending to feel nothing. And always, always looking for fun and ready to play. Woody isn’t the only kid in the movie who plays for keeps. Mike Mills, you’ve filled the movie with kids who aren’t “real” actors but people who live in the real world. Your tenderness with them and their openness to you is a wonder to behold. Mike Mills, “C’mon C’mon” inspires us all to be braver, more playful and more inventive in our quest to face the mess of this world we all share.

Director Johnson won an Emmy for directing documentary “Dick Johnson Is Dead.”

The Harder They Fall

Directed by Jeymes Samuel
Essay by Baz Luhrmann

The classic Western has always mythologized the history of the American West, but with his debut film, Jeymes Samuel shows it was an old mythology and not the land’s history that narrowed our vision of the heroic gunslinger to white men.

He has taken the legacy of the American cowboy, a quarter of whom historically were Black, and flipped it into a grand entertainment, so that his point is made with broad appeal. Samuel has collected the fantastical stories of icons like Stagecoach Mary and Rufus Buck, who may never have crossed paths, and translated their spirit through an original, heightened language.

In watching this film, we have the added thrill of recognizing the birth of a fresh storytelling voice, an auteur. The Western, no matter the period or by whom it is made, is not known for employing a heightened use of irony, smashed against shocking, necessary violence; an effortless weaving of contemporary sonics and music; or a subtle-yet-overt connection to issues that are raw and real in the minds and hearts of the audience today.

In “The Harder They Fall,” Samuel creates a new American myth in a fresh, uncharacteristic and highly personal language and telling for that genre. Simply, he’s opened the Western to all.

Luhrmann’s credits include “The Great Gatsby,” “Moulin Rouge!” and the upcoming untitled Elvis Presley project starring Tom Hanks.

Last Night in Soho

Directed by Edgar Wright
Essay by George Miller

Edgar Wright is one of those filmmakers for whom I drop everything and race to watch his films. With Edgar, I know I’m going to get sucked up into the screen and be fully engaged. The experience is always surprising and unique and always enhanced by the wit of its every cinematic utterance and gesture.

Each time I see one of his movies, I come away with the sense that it could have only been made by Edgar Wright and that, somehow, he gained mastery straight out of the womb.

Best of all, I know I’ve seen something I will savor long after I’ve left the theater.

All that said, nothing prepared me for “Last Night in Soho.”

Full of dread from the get-go, it lured me deeper and deeper into realms of psychological nightmare I haven’t experienced in cinema before.

There is so much more going on here than meets the eye.

“Soho” left me contemplating, among other things, fate, grief, innocence, trauma, insanity, reality, healing, ambition, the sources of creativity, justice and retribution.

On top of that, I was exhilarated by Edgar’s palpable nostalgia for a time before he was born. To mark this, in addition to the compelling work of Thomasin [McKenzie] and Anya [Taylor-Joy], he includes Rita Tushingham, Terence Stamp and Diana Rigg — who all arrived on the screen so significantly in the ’60s.

I can’t wait to watch this thing again!

Director-writer-producer Miller’s films include the “Mad Max” series, “Babe: Pig in the City” and the upcoming “Furiosa.”

The Lost Daughter

Directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal
Essay by Olivia Wilde

During one of the many impeccably acted scenes in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Lost Daughter,” Leda (Olivia Colman), our painfully human protagonist, says about her mother, “In creating me she’d separated herself, like pushing a plate away, if the food’s repulsive.” The moment is achingly profound whilst remaining completely unpretentious, much like the film itself, guided, invisibly and entirely without judgment, by Gyllenhaal’s patient yet bold direction. The adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s novel is unsettling in its humanity, moving us to wrestle with forgiveness and guilt, empathy and rejection. Maggie allows us to slowly unpeel the orange of the narrative without interrupting it, even when it feels like torture. Her direction is fearless when it comes to emotional complexity, daring us to stop pretending we don’t see ourselves in her characters’ ugliest moments.

The performances are exquisite, encouraged, no doubt by their director, to languish in subtext. This unflinching new filmmaker only has time for the most interesting questions, it seems, and will not sanitize the narrative for our comfort. We have been warned: Maggie Gyllenhaal is here to push us to be a braver audience, and I, for one, am lapping it up from the front row.

Wilde is an actor-producer-director whose credits include “Booksmart” and “Don’t Worry Darling.”

A Hero

Directed by Asghar Farhadi
Essay by Mira Nair

After a year of being starved of seeing cinema on the big screen, at Telluride this year I had the privilege of being enveloped under the crystalline skies of Shiraz in the masterful hands of the King of Dilemma, Asghar Farhadi. Like in his previous films “A Separation” and “The Salesman,” an entire culture is revealed in the unfolding story of the imprisoned debtor Rahim and his hapless smile. Part mystery, part tale of moral ambiguity, part tale of social media disrupting decency as a public spectacle, “A Hero” is a beautiful and unexpected drama where each of its deceptively casual parts gradually uncovers a culture wherein we no longer observe “the other” in what is often presented to us as foreign land, instead seeing ourselves in Iran’s kaleidoscopic prism. What is right? What is wrong? What would I do if I were Rahim? Asghar makes me grapple with these questions long after the film is over. The stuttering young son Siavash, played with grace by Saleh Karimai, is unforgettable in his pain and love. The towering statues of Naqsh-e-Rostam remind us that where we are may be ancient, but human dilemmas in the hands and heart of masters like Asghar will forever enthrall and illumine the human condition.

Award-winning filmmaker Nair’s credits include “A Suitable Boy,” “The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” “Monsoon Wedding” and “Salaam Bombay!”

In the Heights

Directed by Jon M. Chu
Essay by Adele Lim

The overriding feeling from the very first scene of “In the Heights” is joy. That word encapsulates so much about Jon M. Chu as a director, from his approach to story, his visual choices, to the exuberant drive of his movies. And nowhere is that more evident than in “In the Heights.”

Chu’s optimism is the connective tissue of Quiara Hudes’ writing, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s music and the impassioned performances of the cast. Having had the privilege of working with Jon, I have seen the way he communicates his excitement for the material in a way that runs like a current through the cast and crew, and manifests itself on-screen.

As storytellers, the first step to getting the audience to embrace an unfamiliar world is by finding our own connection to it. I can’t help but think Jon’s instincts here were informed by his own family background: the experiences of his immigrant parents and his own journey as an Asian American kid in Palo Alto who became a major voice in filmmaking. Chu, like the characters of “In the Heights,” is a Dreamer.

In a world with a seemingly limitless appetite for superhero action or meditations on personal violence, Chu’s vision is an unapologetic throwback to the joyful, large-scale musicals of Kelly, Astaire and George Sidney: a pure, dazzling celebration of the best of us.

Lim is the screenwriter of “Crazy Rich Asians” and a television producer.

The Hand of God

Directed by Paolo Sorrentino
Essay by David O. Russell

If the best movies are graced by something divine as well as profane, this film may prove that there is a God, who does indeed work in very mysterious ways.

Paolo Sorrentino, native of Naples, immersive, sensual master filmmaker of such films as “La grande belleza” [“The Great Beauty”] and “Youth,” makes perhaps his most powerful, personal film yet with an unforgettable story from the auteur’s world of lush, emotional, real Italian lives painted in cinema. Filippo Scotti plays a version of young Paolo as Fabietto, who undergoes an extraordinary double hand-of-God experience that the filmmaker actually experienced himself as a teenager in Naples, which saved his life. Sorrentino, as always, creates his own world of cinematic pace and time. He invites you into the Naples of his youth — marrying the grittiness of the city with a tour de force opening of a fallen chandelier in a crumbling building. This is the emotional interior of the object of Fabietto’s desire — his aunt, Patrizia, an abused, intelligent, lovely woman with whom Fabietto is in love. Sorrentino says that the gods of Italy are beloved to both the sacred and the profane, and this film brims with the love of Fabietto for his older aunt, which unfolds in a very unexpected and original way.

Sorrentino operates from deep intuition in his own poetry, akin to Fellini and his mentor filmmaker, [Antonio] Capuano. Instinctively, Sorrentino’s films follow the same dramatic drives that motivated Chekhov in the sense that if something — if not a gun — is introduced in the first act, it will indeed go off by the third in a startling, shocking, emotional way.

In this film, the ticking event is a new house being built by Fabietto’s parents. This coincides with the arrival of the late, great soccer player Diego Maradona. His trade to the Naples team is like that of a savior or saint, especially to the teen Fabietto.

Fabietto is allowed to travel to a soccer game alone for the first time in his life to see Maradona play. Maradona’s goal, using his hand illegally, is coupled with a family fate and tragedy that changes Fabietto’s life forever. Sorrentino’s cinema of the senses, desire, time, mortality, God and homeland makes for possibly his most stunning work yet.

Oscar nominee Russell’s films include “Silver Linings Playbook,” “American Hustle” and “The Fighter.”

Passing

Directed by Rebecca Hall
Essay by Antonio Campos

Before “Passing” premiered at Sundance and even before the film was made, I felt like I had already seen it because the vision for the film was so clear in Rebecca Hall’s mind.

In anticipation of writing this, I revisited the look book she prepared almost four years ago to help raise financing. It is so detailed, articulate and filled with such carefully curated images and references, it immediately brought the film Rebecca had in her head to life.

Even so, when someone shares their dreams for their first feature, you never know if that vision will transfer to the screen.

But “Passing” exceeded my expectations. It is one of the strongest debut features I’ve ever seen. Rebecca’s grasp of visual storytelling is astounding. It’s one thing to know where to put the camera and compose a shot, but to understand how to convey your themes visually is something that even experienced filmmakers struggle with. Rebecca’s use of negative space, light and shadow, along with her choices in what was shown and what wasn’t to convey not only suspense but her characters’ internal struggles, exhibits such a mastery of craft that it is hard to believe she hasn’t been making films her whole life.

Then again, I’m not surprised. Rebecca Hall, the actress, demonstrates the same attention to detail, the same care and love, and the same command of storytelling as Rebecca Hall the writer-director has shown with “Passing.”

Campos is a producer-director-writer whose credits include TV series “The Sinner,” “The Devil All the Time” and the recently announced “The Staircase.”

Parallel Mothers

Directed by Pedro Almodóvar
Essay by Florian Zeller

He is probably the European filmmaker who best filmed women. And each of his films seems to be a further celebration of femininity. They are mothers, sisters or daughters, and with his incredible talent as a writer, which places his characters at the heart of his scenarios, Pedro Almodóvar builds complex emotional stories, missed appointments and intertwined destinies. It is always about trans- mission, identity, genealogy and love. …

In “Parallel Mothers,” as always, he chooses a great stylistic sobriety: This is what makes the strength of his narration. This simplicity preserves the mystery of the human beings he films. One could watch Penélope Cruz for hours trying to hide a heavy secret from everyone and to contain a painful truth. Everything that matters is left unsaid and held in the shadows, and that is what makes her performance so subtle and so beautiful.

But the strength of the film is also due to the mixture of genres. In the background, another story appears about the Spanish Civil War. The intimate and the collective meet, and this gives the film all its poetic power. The character of Penélope Cruz wants to find the place where some victims of the war were killed and buried in order to offer them a decent burial. Suddenly, the whole film resonates as a symbolic invitation to dig up our corpses and face the truth. For one of the main themes of this vibrant film is the search for truth. In a mesmerizing way, it praises the courage to tell it, to not run away from it and to love it, however painful it may be.

Zeller is the award-winning writer-director of “The Father” and a novelist, playwright and theater director.

Red Rocket

Directed by Sean Baker
Essay by Bette Gordon

Sean Baker’s films possess a genuine immediacy from which fragments of real life erupt right off the screen. There are moments that simply exist, yet these moments are presented with great visual precision. Baker has a keen sense of observation, often focusing on deeply flawed individuals. Mikey Saber, a washed-up, aging porn star and seasoned hustler in Sean’s film “Red Rocket,” is no exception.

Simon Rex plays Mikey with masterful charm, finding something in himself to offer up to the camera. Mikey may be a narcissist who needs constant sexual reassurance from the women around him, but he’s also a people-pleaser, with verve and energy, which makes him impossible to hate. We even find ourselves rooting for him in his struggle to stay relevant, not unlike the refinery workers confronted by impending obsolescence.

More than just a backdrop, Texas City is front and center, most strikingly when Mikey rides his borrowed bike through the empty streets, passing industrial smokestacks, telephone poles and electric wires. Baker never lets us forget where we are. Low-angle shots frame the omnipresent refinery against a desaturated gray sky. Splashes of color and warmth — the luminescent Donut Hole and Strawberry’s red truck — burst through this landscape as if generated by Baker’s empathy for his characters. At night, the refineries glow like the constellations in the sky. Baker is clearly captivated by this environment, and through his lens, so are we.

Like [director Michelangelo] Antonioni in “Red Desert,” Baker frames the looming shadow of industry, guarded by factories and industrial sites that are beautiful and terrifying. Drawn to the hues of contemporary American color-field artists like Frank Stella and Barnett Newman, he gives us scenes of pink low-slung homes, blue skies and everyday people. Instead of a predetermined story, “Red Rocket” flows organically due to Sean Baker’s love of discovering place and his desire to listen to the voices of the community of people who live there.

Gordon’s films include the acclaimed “Variety,” “Luminous Motion,” “Handsome Harry” and “The Drowning.”

Respect

Directed by Liesl Tommy
Essay by Allison Anders

It would have been enough if Liesl Tommy had only taken me to Muscle Shoals to peek in the door of Fame Studios … if she’d only let me catch a glimpse of Spooner Oldham turning his keyboard to face Aretha Franklin as she played the piano opening of “I Never Loved a Man” over and over again until she got it. Until they got it, together. If Liesl had only let me experience that, I’d have been deeply grateful. That is, after all, what I came for. Little did I know that was only the beginning.

Four minutes into her film “Respect,” I realized, “Oh, my God, music is the primary language of these characters.” And just as that thought came into my head, the brilliant find Skye Dakota Turner as Young Aretha sits at the piano with her warm, self-possessed, deeply talented mother, Barbara (Audra McDonald), and they literally carry on a mother-daughter conversation while they play and sing together. This is not a “burst into song” moment — it’s completely organic and of the earth of these characters.

Again, this would have been enough: music-driven moments moving the characters’ journey forward as I’d never seen before (and I’ve seen just about all — it’s my obsession). But no, then I get to be blown the F away by Jennifer Hudson taking me the rest of the course. The minute she comes on the screen, I’m fully in — swept away by her spectacular voice (who else could ever have played the Queen?) — but then I’m like, “Wait — is she singing live? She has to be, right?”
Now I’m going to fess up: Generally when people say they plan to shoot live singing/playing for a movie, I’m not automatically optimistic. Often, they will have bought themselves nothing but heartaches in post, and it’s ironically so hard to get a live performance to even sound live, much less good, and best of luck on making it sound great. Hands down this is the best I have ever seen and heard. Not only does Liesl Tommy shoot all the live music beautifully so we’re seeing what’s going on emotionally behind the song in Hudson, but she hires Stephen Bray, who commits himself to make sure he has all the right gear and microphones of the era on hand for these songs to sound and look completely authentic.

And since it’s live, we get to see these songs being created. We get to see the Muscle Shoals
musicians who live in my DNA — Spooner, David Hood, Roger Hawkins and Jimmy Johnson — portrayed here as essential players while Aretha takes the lead bringing the songs into form. And then Liesl takes this creative process a step deeper; after a degrading and harrowing beating from her husband (Marlon Wayans is superb, and like we’ve never seen him, as Ted White), Aretha rouses her sisters out of bed to help her shape her cover of Otis Redding’s “Respect.” What can I say — I was crying from that scene on into the next at Fame Studios when she further molds that song with the band; it’s here that Hudson lets us in on Aretha’s commitment to herself and her value and her talent as her promise unfolds with this song.

When we love music as much as I do, and clearly as much as Liesl Tommy does, you have to be careful not to stop the story or the character’s journey for a musical number. And from beginning to end, the music is driving these characters and this powerful story of a woman finding her voice and self-respect. And what a voice. And I’m not just talking about Aretha. Thank you, Liesl Tommy, for yours.

Anders is an Emmy-nominated film and TV writer-director whose credits include “Gas Food Lodging.”

Tick, Tick... Boom!

Directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda
Essay by Rob Marshall

The moment I finished watching Lin-Manuel Miranda’s riveting new film, “Tick, Tick … Boom!,” I texted him saying, “Is there nothing you can’t do??!!”

Apparently there isn’t. …

What an astonishing directorial debut.

I was struck by how authentic, original and deeply personal the film is. Clearly Lin connects intensely with the urgency, frustration, passion, struggle and heartbreak of Jonathan Larson’s creative process. You feel it in every frame.

With the recent loss of the musical master Stephen Sondheim (a pivotal character in the film), this intimate exploration becomes an even more relevant window into the soul of a musical genius.

I was particularly impressed by the framing device that Lin uses of the “stage concert” to help launch the audience into the musical itself. Lin knows that film musicals are incredibly fragile — easy to go off the rails or dismissed as parodies if there is not a clear concept in place that justifies why and how someone breaks into song.

This seamless storytelling device gives the audience license to be taken anywhere and everywhere — and we follow happily.

Smartly, Lin has placed this emotional journey in the awesome hands of Andrew Garfield, whose fearless and breathtaking performance is given the space to soar under Lin’s inspired guidance.
My personal experiences with Lin to date have been collaborating with him as actor-composer-writer.

Well, obviously that relationship is now redefined. …

I will forever see him as the visionary auteur that he is.

Marshall is a film and theater director, choreographer and producer who was Oscar-nominated for helming “Chicago.”

Bruised

Directed by Halle Berry
Essay by Gina Prince-Bythewood

When the credits rolled on Halle Berry’s “Bruised,” I felt the sensation I chase as an audience member: that a story and its characters would stay with me. But as a filmmaker, I felt a different sensation. Knowing what it’s like to stand toe-to-toe with your first film, the pressure that mounts, the chaos that you have to bottle and serve up as art and expression — I felt pride. Halle took her first shot in the chair and came out a winner, and though I know it was anything but effortless, that is the quality she achieved on screen. That’s a tall order for even the most seasoned director. The film was so impeccably cast as well. To build an ensemble the way she did with folks so many of us didn’t know before but need to know now is an incredible testament. And she has such deep love for each of her characters, the heroic and the frail alike. Halle has clearly paid close attention to the great directors she’s worked with, but it’s one thing to be a sponge. It’s another thing to actually do it, and for me, with women in action roles, I’m hyper-critical because I’m an athlete. But you could see the work Halle put in here. It wasn’t just the choreography. It was the intention behind the punches. I believed the swagger, that this fierce Black woman, Jackie Justice, could step inside the ring and find the will to win. That goes double for director Halle Berry.