Richard Linklater names his favourite movie of the 21st century
The 1990s were a decade when independent cinema thrived, with Quentin Tarantino rising to the fold with such revolutionary films as Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Elsewhere, Richard Linklater typified the slacker aesthetic of the era with a collection of indie movies that spoke to deep-thinking adolescents yearning for a poignant mirror to their increasingly complex lives.
Announcing himself to the industry at the very dawn of the decade, Linklater released Slacker in 1990, a film that captured a day in the life of Austin, Texas, with the director following social outcasts and peculiar personalities. He capped off his era of dominance with a double bill of two coming-of-age classics, Dazed and Confused and Before Sunrise, two films that captured the ephemeral nature of youth.
Linklater carried this bohemian sensibility into the new millennium, too, creating two subversive rotoscoped animations in the form of Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly, as well as the 12-year coming-of-age project Boyhood. To this day, Linklater remains one of the most versatile filmmakers, capable of making unique indie projects and bigger-budget audience favourites.
As one of the greatest directors of contemporary cinema, Linklater is in the perfect position to be able to judge the best movie of the current century, naming a ‘Best Picture’ nominee and Palme d’Or winner in an interview with The Guardian.
“For its vast ambition and meditative grace,” Linklater names Terrence Malick’s 2011 masterpiece The Tree of Life, a film regularly cited as one of the most visually spectacular of modern cinema. “It somehow manages to be both an intimate memory film while taking on the notion of all of existence,” he adds, “And I love the way it confounds and challenges perception itself”.
Starring Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain, Tree of Life is an epic odyssey that tells the story of the son of a family in 1950s Texas who changes as a result of his parents’ conflicting relationship. Going on to be about a whole lot more, Malick meddles with the entire timeline of human history, even taking things back to the very dawn of the universe with a divisive dinosaur sequence.
Malick, who rarely makes movies, followed Tree of Life up with a string of poorly-received films, including To the Wonder, Knight of Cups and Song to Song, but revived his career in 2019 with the fantastic Hidden Life.
Take a look at the trailer for Tree of Life below.
