Just like with Oscar ballots I'm weighting these with #1 as my top choice and so on down the list.
1. Nicolas Winding Refn - Drive
All the things that made Drive a hot topic last fall were Refn's choices - the neon atmosphere, the clipped, elliptical storytelling, the bursts of shocking violence. He had every element of the production playing together like a symphony orchestra, elevating what could've been a standard crime story into the film of the year.
2. Lars Von Trier - Melancholia
Terrence Mallick took the lion's share of the visionary hosannas this year but I believe Von Trier's darker mix of human frailty and cosmic upheaval was an altogether sharper, more powerful experience. The story is clearly a personal one for him, but even as emotion was messy the filmmaking remained masterfully controlled.
3. Asghar Farhadi - A Separation
When a film hits a ten out of ten on every emotional beat, when every performance is so perfectly calibrated, when the story is richly complex yet deeply relatable, then it's a sure sign there is a strong directorial hand at the helm. Farhadi's name just vaulted to the upper echelons of the world's auteurs.
The success of Meek's Cutoff rests entirely on Reichardt's ability to keep one eye on the grand scope of the story while bringing off the small scale human drama in the foreground. She does brilliant work making sure the film's negative space is filled not with emptiness but with a wealth of unspoken tension and looming dread.
5.Tom Alfredson - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Every frame of Tinker Tailor makes it to the screen packed with detail and nuance. Alfredson has received the most praise for keeping all the disparate strands of the narrative straight but the bigger achievement is not losing track of the human story amidst all the dizzying complexity.
Every frame of Tinker Tailor makes it to the screen packed with detail and nuance. Alfredson has received the most praise for keeping all the disparate strands of the narrative straight but the bigger achievement is not losing track of the human story amidst all the dizzying complexity.
More Worthy Directors
More 2011 Ballots
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