On last Friday’s Real Time with Bill Maher, Quentin Tarantino explained one of his reasons for thinking about retiring. (According to this scenario he’ll make one more film and then hang it up.) He said he’d looked into the arcs of a couple of dozen major directors, and that generally the best years of a director’s career are over after the first 20 to 25 years…if he/she lasts that long.
Example: Billy Wilder began directing with Double Indemnity in ’44. His peak period began 14 years later with Some Like It Hot, The Apartment and One, Two, Three. And then it was all downhill (20 years worth of almosts, not quites and flat-out misses) until Buddy Buddy (’81) finished him off.
It follows that many if not most of today’s better known brand names are on their way down. A select few will almost certainly never wither or lose their way (Martin Scorsese, Wes Anderson, Joel Coen, Alejandro G. Inarritu, Robert Eggers) but…I don’t know what I’m talking about. I just started this piece and I’m already exhausted.
15 months ago Complex.com posted “The Best Directors Right Now,” a reasonably comprehensive tally of helmers who seemed most likely to be shaping cinema (or what remains of it) over the next decade or so. I could settle into this for three or four hours and deliver my own assessments, but it would be easier to leave it up to the HE community.
I’ll go this far — I’ll assign one of four categories (ETERNALS, HOLDING FAST, ASCENDING and DESCENDING) to various directors, and then the readership can bat it around. I’m not even sure if I have time to cover the whole crowd. Maybe I’lll do it in installments.
Paul Thomas Anderson / DESCENDING. Reason: Hated Inherent Vice, felt mostly irritated by Phantom Thread, generally disliked The Master. There Will Be Blood, the last great one, was 13 and 1/2 years ago. Is Soggy Bottom a placeholder title? It sounds random and nebulous.
Joel and Ethan Coen / ETERNALS. Reason: Joel and Ethan may have temporarily parted ways over Joel’s decision to make a boomer-aged Macbeth, but knowing them as I (feel I) do it’s my conviction that they’re incapable of crafting anything less than hardcore film art, even when they’re making a throwaway like Hail, Ceasar!.
Park Chan-wook / REGRETTABLY HOLDING. Reason: The Handmaiden, Thirst, Oldboy…elite critics will never stop dropping to their knees over this guy. Then again he’s been at it for nearly 30 years, which means, by Tarantino’s assessment, he has nowhere to go but down.
Ryan Coogler / ASCENDING. Reason: Black Panther, Fruitvale Station, Creed…the sky’s the limit.
Alfonso Cuaron / HOLDING FAST. Roma, Gravity, Y Tu Mamá También….what’s next?
Alejandro G. Inarritu / HOLDING FAST. Reason: Presently shooting Limbo in Mexico/. A solid 20 years of audacious output beginning with Amores perros and on to 21 Grams, Babel, Biutiful, Birdman and The Revenant.
You know what? I’m really sorry I started this article because it’s wearing me down and crushing my soul. I feel like I’m digging ditches. I hate that I even began this damn thing. I’ll start again tomorrow morning and consider the situations of Guillermo del Toro, Claire Denis, Greta Gerwig, Barry Jenkins, Rian Johnson, Bong Joon-ho, Yorgos Lanthimos, Spike Lee, Christopher Nolan, Josh and Benny Safdie (i.e., “the crazy Safdies”), Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino, Denis Villeneuve, Jia Zhangke, Diao Yinan, Wes Anderson, David Fincher, Tim Burton, Clint Eastwood, Edgar Wright, Peter Jackson, Woody Allen, Quentin Tarantino, James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, etc.