COSMOPOLIS (David Cronenberg 2012)

David Cronenberg: COSMOPOLIS (2012)

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ROBERT PATTINSON IN COSMOPOLIS

Crossing Manhattan in a limo while the world crashes down

Cool, conceptual, elegant, David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis is such an accurate adaptation of Don DeLillo's novel (the director wrote it all himself, rarely deviating from the scenes and words of the book) that anyone who condemns the film we have to assume would simply not like the book either (as I do, very much). Cosmopolis is a smart movie. It's also the second time the Canadian director has done a book adaptation revolving around a car -- but this is restrained compared to his kinky, surreal film version of J. G. Ballard's Crash. It's a delicate and stylish and thoughtful as well as subtly ironic movie. Many will find it chilly and offputting. Maybe they'll come back to watch the star, Robert Pattinson, give his best film performance; his pop matinee idol status helps keep the film from seeming too arty. And this is a very timely piece of work. "Though DeLillo wrote the novel a few years after the tech collapse of 2000," as David Denby declares in his expository New Yorker review, "it now seems prescient about the much greater collapse of 2008," and its "anti-capitalist theatrics in the streets seem a very accurate anticipation of the Occupy Wall Street movement." Cronenberg has also perhaps made the movie more timely by switching from the yen to the yuan as the currency the protagonist disastrously bets on the decline of, China being a scarier economic adversary these days than Japan.

But this isn't just the novel. Needless to say Cronenberg has added elegantly appropriate visuals, bright and psychedelic, dp Peter Suschitzky making distinctive use of that beautiful light-defying real-unreal effect of the digital camera even in the somber interior of protagonist Eric Packer's white stretch limo. And there are the actors, meaning Robert Pattinson and a steadily unrolling series of others, mostly one at a time, and the smart, deft, angular editing by Ronald Sanders that jumps us into Eric's switches from limo to diner to hotel, from in-car prostate exam to in-car sex to diner and bookstore visit with his constantly appearing but rather distant new wife; encounters with a bodyguard outside a basketball court and with a raging enemy in a half abandoned building, each scene as mercurial and ironic as all the rest. It's spectral and unreal, in-your-face and withdrawn. It's quintessential Cronenberg, and yet it's DeLillo too. It's not sci-fi; it's futuristic reality. It's faithful to its source but it sings: Cronenberg knows the key this is written in. Tweeting at Cannes, Mike D'Angelo wrote "Demands an incredibly precise tone that Cronenberg nails about half the time. Thrilling when he does." I'd say he nails it much better than half the time, though some scenes just work better on the page than on the screen.

Pattinson, his vampire cult-series celebrity helping to stand in for his character's power, wealth, and bravado, is lean and understated, keen, supple, withdrawn, a minimalist like DeLillo's style. This protagonist is filled with appetites (sex, thick and solid food, danger, power, wealth, victory, defeat, violence). On this day when he rides across town to get a haircut in a barbershop his father went to, he watches world markets on multiple screens at his fingertips and has his daily medical and prostate exam, talks to people and has sex with them or joins them for a meal, including, not in that order, his head of security Shiner (Jay Baruchel, who looks a little too weird), his chief bodyguard Torval (a colorless but believable Kevin Durand), his plyaful boy currency whiz Michael Chin (an amused Philip Nozuka), his jogger-consultant Jane Melman (Emily Hampshire) his sex partner and art dealer Didi (a slightly worn-out Juliette Binoche), his ruminative philosophical consultant (a widened and commanding Samantha Morton), his new wife from a megarich European dynasty Elise Shifrin (Sarah Gadon, meant to be not quite beautiul) several other women he works with or sexes with, the barber and his driver and the deeply embittered employee (Giamatti) who wants to kill him. Mathieu Amalric gets to do a quick street rug-chew as a conceptual artist-cum-political protester who's so much not a credible threat he's allowed to walk away, after Eric has personally punched him in the groin. He also talks and weeps a little with the associate of a Sufi rapper he admired who has died of natural causes, Brother Fez (K'Naan).

All this non-action is a lot of action, conceptually and cinematically quite fresh, while whirring around the still point of the protagonist's silent car -- because in the movie it is shot as silent inside the limo, to highlight the chaos and movement outside its one-way windows and bullet-proof frame. (In the book it has Carrara marble on the floor, but the movie leaves that detail out. In the book we also get to hear more of Eric's private ruminations, which also unfortunately must be left out.)

Meanwhile Eric is losing hundreds of millions of dollars betting on a drop in the Chinese yuan, which persists in going up. He is trying to persuade Didi to buy the Rothko chapel for him to put in his apartment. "It belongs to the world," she says. "Well let them bid for it then," he retorts. The trip crosstown is halted by the Occupy-like demonstration Denby noted and meanwhile the president -- that's of the United States -- a remote figure, merely a vague obstacle -- is in town shifting directions and causing stoppages wherever he goes; and there is a "credible threat," to Eric that is, meaning somebody wants to get him.

Cosmopolis would be nothing without its dialogue and Cronenberg luckilty includes arcane touches like how Eric has "prousted" his car, meaning he's had its interior cork-lined like Marcel Proust's bedroom to keep the noise out, though this may be more a literary gesture (he's well read) than a practical one. "How could it work," Eric says. "The city eats and sleeps noise. It makes noise out of every century. It makes the same noise it made in the seventeenth century along with all the noises that have evolved since then. No. But I don't mind the noise. The noise energizes me. The important thing is that it's there." There's also the dialogue where Eric and boy genius Michael Chin rif on the idea of rats being made a world currency.

"Yes. There is growing concern that the Russian rat will be devalued."'
"White rats. Think about that."
"Yes. Pregnant rats."
""Yes. Major sell-off of pregnant Russian rats."
"Britain converts to the rat," Chin said.
"Yes. Joins trend toward universal currency."
"Yes. U.S. establishes rat standard."
"Yes. Every U.S. dollar redeemable for rat."
""Dead rats."
"Yes. Stockpiling of dead rats called global health menace."

And there is the persistent, somehow distancing use of the word "this." "I did not know this."

The young billionaire's world is both solipcistic and not. The world does not exist outside his head, he asserts early on in the book; but that's a philosophical concept. It's epistemology; it's Leibnitz. But does the world really not exist outside his limo, or isn't it rather just he'd rather it didn't? Wouldn't he just rather that when the limo is covered with broad red and black graffiti (including the giant word "rat" as if to declare him the currency of proletarian hate, a rodent of the 1%), the world of protesters and security threats still might be unable, thanks to his billions, to impinge on him? Or might he rather that they did impinge, to make him feel more alive? Is it not that he's in a downward spiral and that he can only fight it by joining it? He's glad when the head of the IMF is stabbed to death in Nike North Korea on TV, and he sees it; he hates the man; his death livens things up. Maybe he is trying to manipulate the world's economies, their currencies anyway (as Soros once brought anger upon himself for losing while trying to do). But he is also isolated: very powerful, but also in some sense nonexistent, invisible.

This anyway is what the disgruntled outcast Benno Levin (Paul Giamatti, in an overwrought performance) is infuriated about: that he is a nonentity, and Eric has contributed to that. Benno Levin appears in premonitory diary form early in the book, but not in the movie. And the finale of the book, a kind of cliffhanger, after Eric has turned weapons against one of his closest staff members and himself, the abrupt ending, may work there on the page, but seems weak in a movie. Cosmopolis is a beautiful, exotic buildup, creating a world of intense and complex growing expectation, but the finale is a bit of a disappointment. Nonetheless Cronenberg has created something beautiful and surprisingly literary. And let no one damn the movie for faithfullly recreating DeLillo's thoughtful and wholly original novel. As Justin Chang of Variety says in his generally admiring review, "Charges that this study in emptiness and alienation itself feels empty and alienating are at once accurate and a bit beside the point, and perhaps the clearest confirmation that Cronenberg has done justice to his subject." Read the book; you'll see what we mean.

David Cronenberg's Cosmopolis debuted in competition at Cannes in May 2012 with opening days of May 25 (France), June 15 (UK), and August 17 (US).

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FRENCH COSMOPOLIS POSTER

FAN NOTES, COMMENTARY.

COSMOPOLIS has a fan website:

New Yorker Magazine movie blogger Richarg Brody wrote a detailed comment about COSMOPOLIS,

INDIEWIRE has an interview with Cronenberg.

SIGHT AND SOUND ran a cover story on COSMOPOLIS at the time of its Cannes debut. The link will take you to a site that gives scans of the cover and article plus a transcript of the article.

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I would never normally do this, but this time I'd recommend for viewers of the film to go out and read Don DeLillo's 2003 source novel, which Cronenberg followed very closely in writing his screen adaptation. The novel is s short, and available in a new paperback for $15. You can get new compies of an earlier edition not adorned with a still from Cronenberg on the cover for $10 or less. (A copy signed by the author will cost you more. Even books the critics initially hated can turn out to be valuable.)

The book's brilliant and reads as a near-perfect companion piece to the film, and vice versa. Rarely in my experience have a book and a movie so nicely and handily complimented each other. The movie will illuminate the book and make it glow in the mind. The book will explain and enlarge upon the movie, and the dialogue of the movie is taken almost completely verbatim from the book; so it reads as an illuminatingly annotated screenplay. Inner dialogue in the book will enhance your perception of the movie's key scenes. If you choose to hate the book or insist the book is better than the movie or feel obliged to prove the movie is better than the book some or all of the pleasures I promise will be lost to you. If you take book and movie as both good and of equal merit, each in its own mode, you will have a swell time.


REVIEWS.


The Guardian critic, Peter Bradshaw, is very disapproving.

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Sadly, the resulting film is as heavy, unmanoeuvrable and preposterous as the stretch limo at its centre; a "day in the life" drama with no satisfying life. And DeLillo's highly charged language, when parcelled up into film dialogue, is cumbersome and self-conscious without the original speck of deadpan drollery. It is possible to read Cosmopolis as a premonition of the economic crash we now know all about, but really it looks like an exercise in zeitgeist-connoisseurship that appears obtuse, self-indulgent and fatally shallow.

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All very well, but the trouble is that Bradshaw's criticisms are just a long string of adjectives. Anyone can opine. It's quite another thing to convince. In fact Cronenberg has rightly sensed that the novel's dialogue will transfer perfectly to the screen, and on the screen it has exactly the effect it has in the book, only more so. What is "zeitgeist-connoisseurship"? How is that a fault, to pinion and delineate the zeitgeist? It is what DeLillo seeks to do and what the movie also does. Since when was "connoisseurship" a dirty word?

The Observer's Philip French, on the other hand, is admiring.

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The central character, Eric Packer, brings to mind two wilful financial anti-heroes, Sherman McCoy of Bonfire of the Vanities and Gordon Gekko of Wall Street. But the 28-year-old Packer is younger, infinitely richer, and altogether more self-knowing. As played with frightening conviction by Robert Pattinson he's a Gatsby-esque figure, remote, inscrutable and doomed.

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The link with Gatsby is an interesting, especially with DiCaprio's Gatsby on the way.

David Denby of The New Yorker provides a positive review that clearly relates the book to the film and the action to post-2008 economic developments and to the Occupy Wall Street movement and makes the movie and the cast, even the interior of the white stretch limo is shown, look good. He describes Pattinson favoably as a "minimalist" actor.

Walter Chaw of Film Freak Central, an online journal, rates COSMOPOLIS four out of four stars : he describes it as a summation of Cronenberg's oeuvre thus far.

As I've noted Mike D'Angelo at Cannes tweeted this (and note in D'Angelo's rigorous system a 59 is a very decent score):

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Cosmopolis (Cronenberg): 59. Demands an incredibly precise tone that Cronenberg nails about half the time. Thrilling when he does.

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I would maintain it is indeed thrilling when it does but walking into the film directly from reading the novel I found he nails it 90% of the time not about 50%.

MIKE D'ANGELO'S AV CLUB CANNES REVIEW.

I'll run the whole short review here now because I like how D'Angelo writes.

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Whether the Competition jury will hand any prizes to Cosmopolis remains to be seen, but Robert Pattinson clearly deserves this year’s award for Best Career Move. Indeed, he’s among the half of David Cronenberg’s eclectic cast that completely nails the very tricky, precise tone demanded by Don DeLillo’s unapologetically inhuman dialogue. Like the book, the film follows affectless billionaire Eric Packer (Pattinson, who’s perfectly robotic) as he undergoes a day-long odyssey across Manhattan in a gigantic stretch limo in order to get a haircut he doesn’t even need, encountering a gaggle of employees, assassins, and random hot chicks en route. There’s no story to speak of, just a series of financial and philosophical conversations delivered at rapid-fire speed; at times I was reminded of Shane Carruth’s brilliant low-budget sci-fi mindbender Primer, in which it’s not important that you understand what’s being said so much as recognize how a particular mode of communication can both reflect and influence the way people think. The more abstract and overtly stylized Cosmopolis is, the more it thrills, as in a lengthy discussion between Packer and his “chief of theory,” Samantha Morton, in which they never acknowledge that the limo is being assaulted by protesters to the point where it’s threatening to tip over. Overall, the English and Canadian actors get it but the Americans don’t quite, which becomes especially problematic in the film’s long final scene, featuring Paul Giamatti at his most irascible. His character is admittedly intended as a contrast to the others, but introducing genuine human feeling into this antiseptic bubble-world doesn’t provide the intended catharsis. Only slow deflation. Grade: B-

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The PRIMER comparison is interesting but a bit off-the-wall perhaps; however the point about the affectlessness and the unimportance of any narrative progression is right, as is the criticism of using Giamatti. However D'Angelo might have noted that Eric Packer is cruising toward his probable physical death and also a total meltdown of his fortune through the course of the novel/film, a very considerable trajectory. Nonetheless D'Angelo's point still perfectly holds that "the more abstract and overtly stylized Cosmopolis is, the more it thrills." It is the zingers and the stunning observations that excite and satisfy, and it's essential that they exist in a disembodied narrative ambiance created by the limo -- and the protagonist's obliviousness to immediate surroundings, the street. Many reviews fail to note all that. That D'Angelo has a knack for getting right to the heart of a movie is why he can write a very informative review in the space of a single Twitter entry.

COSMOPOLIS' coming late at Cannes probably meant that it was both a "must-anticipated" "hot ticket" screening and that people were a bit deflated and out of reactions by then. I don't mean D'Angelo necessarily, just the Cannes audience in general.

I would hate to have to write a review of Cosmopolis after a single viewing. Academic critics/film scholars would never dare. But film reviewers do it every day. This is also a film that one may treasure and simultaneously have difficulty recommending to many friends and relatives who are looking for a film experience that is quite different than this film provides. I am struck by how this "sign-of-the-times" film can be so serious and so funny simultaneously. A film that inspires lines like "all this non-action is a lot of action"... There are certain aspects of the film I would have to re-experience and reflect upon to render a more stable judgement. As of now, my strong desire to re-watch is the best compliment I can give it.

Me too, I want to re-watch it. And don't forget to read the book -- the compliment each other totally. I think if you'd read the book you would not have been quite so hesitant to say anything about the movie. But academics/film scholars don't write reviews. That's why they don't dare. Because what they write are articles or studies. Or learned puff pieces like Film Comment. And those you can't write right after first seeing a film.

Non-action is really often a lot of action, even when it isn't (here it is). Movies, plays, or novels with very little overt action can be very hard to describe because every tiny movement has to be narrated. Like in Beckett. COSMOPOLIS after all is a crawl -- stretch limo crawl across midtown Manhattan -- as Beckett's novels are crawls across the earth.

I can't really ever recommend anything to anybody. I can only say I like it; rate it. If I'm particularly enthusiastic, somebody who regularly reads me and respects my writing might want to see it. But I can't guess what other people will like. Unless it's a kindred spirit, in which case I can say they'll probably like it, yeah. I think in the case of COSMOPOLIS a person who reads the book and likes it is almost certain to like the movie, and obviously will know exactly what to expect. When I watched this at the Landmark Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley, the audience was small but about five people walked out early on. They obviously didn't know what they were in for and didn't get it. This is for a sophisticated and cerebral audience. But people are perfectly free to find it pretentious, boring, self-indulgent bullshit. I don't expect most people to love MOONRISE KINGDOM either, but I tell people it's what I think is the American film of the year so far.

At the NYFF I expect to see Leos Carax's HOLY MOTORS, which is another Cannes white stretch limo film. A quite different one I gather, which probably will be much harder for me to tune into, but maybe not; we'll see.

Mike D'Angelo's two current 2012 ten-best lists highlight HOLY MOTORS. I saw and reviewed SISTER in Paris in May. I'm looking forward to seeing the Resnais, Larraín, Garrone, and Haneke titles (all Cannes) at the NYFF. Don't know what PURSUIT OF LONNELINESS or YOU ARE HERE are. I'm curious about LOOPER but I think he just may have gone overboard on it. Note MISS BALA, which you're not so keen on, Oscar, and THE DEEP BLUE SEA, which we both also like. I hated HAYWIRE. I have avoided BRAVE because I don't think I'd like it. It doesn't look up my alley at all. It seems like a left-field choice for D'Angelo but one of his appeals to me is that he's not very predictable.

D'ANGELO'S 2012 10-BEST LISTS (as of Sept. 2012)

THE "PURE" LIST (2012 premiere)
01. Holy Motors (Leos Carax, France/Germany)
02. Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson, USA)
03. Amour (Michael Haneke, France/Germany/Austria)
04. You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet! (Alain Resnais, France/Germany)
05. Looper (Rian Johnson, USA)
06. Pursuit of Loneliness (Laurence Thrush, USA)
07. Sister (Ursula Meier, Switzerland/France)
08. NO (Pablo Larraín, Chile/USA/Mexico)
09. Reality (Matteo Garrone, Italy/France)
10. Brave (Mark Andrews & Brenda Chapman, USA)

THE "POLLS" LIST (2012 commercial release)
01. Holy Motors (Leos Carax, France/Germany)
02. The Loneliest Planet (Julia Loktev, USA/Germany)
03. Miss Bala (Gerardo Naranjo, Mexico)
04. Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson, USA)
05. Amour (Michael Haneke, France/Germany/Austria)
06. The Deep Blue Sea (Terence Davies, UK)
07. Looper (Rian Johnson, USA) 08. This Must Be the Place (Paolo Sorrentino, Italy/France/Ireland)
09. Haywire (Steven Soderbergh, USA)
10. You Are Here (Daniel Cockburn, Canada)

Just re-watched the SFIFF 2010 Joann Sfar movie GAINSBOURG: A HEROIC LIFE [VIE HÉROIQUE]- I love this movie! It is so brilliant and fun, it has so many great sequences in it, such good and clever casting, and is so French. This time I was aware of things I wasn't when I saw it at the SFIFF. Kacey Mottet Klein, who is hilarious and brilliant as the young then Lucien Ginsburg, is the star of SISTER, with Léa Seydoux (FAREWELL,MY QUEEN) as his immature older sister. The guy who plays the amazing Boris Vian is someone not unlike Vian, also a musician, songwriter, and writer. Likewise Lucy Gordon, who plays Jane Birkin, was an English model who lived in France and became an actress there. I learned that Lucy Gordon sadly committed suicide at 29, before this film opened in France. Eric Elmosino is splendid as Gainsbourg, and he has a light touch that helps keep the real person's alcoholic downward spiral easier to bear in the latter sequences. Of course that is also Sfar's light touch. Too bad his RABBI'S CAT (ND/NF 2012) was so disappointing.

I arrived at the theater to watch Moonrise Kingdom but the film had already started, vowed to come back but didn't find the time. Chelsea agrees it's the best movie of 2012 so far. As good as Rushmore, she says, recognizing Anderson's masterpiece. I had decided based on a decade of evidence, not to expect to match that accomplishment. He is not among the filmmakers that have made the movies that are important to me in the past decade although even Life Aquatic and Darjeeling Ltd have their charms and Tenenbaums and Fantastic Mr. Fox are well worth seeing. I will definitely check out the new movie on DVD.
I have taken notes on films you recommend and anticipate. Not seeing more than 2 films per week in theaters as of late. In December, when I am not teaching, I'll have time to check out all the end-of-year releases...
Bringing up Beckett in conversation about Cosmopolis is quite appropriate I'd say. Thanks for your insightful comments.

Sorry you didn't see MOONRISE KINGDOM even with me and your daughter telling you it was a must-see, but so long as you see it, that's the main thing.

We got notification of accreditation for the Nyff today and I expect to be there, and you'll hear about all those Cannes and other films you know are coming. The press screenings run from Sept. 14 to Oct. 14, they say, but the details of the schedule aren't out yet. I'll publish it on the Nyff thread when they send it to us. I'e got my ticket; I'll be there.

I hope the end-of-the-year US releases contain some gems. It's hard to tell so far. Audiard's RUST AND BONE come out in the US in October and I will definitely see that again. STORY OF PI and CLOUD ATLAS are two potentially important literary adaptations. GATSBY doesn't come till next summer apparently.

Comparing Beckett to COSMOPOLIS is pretty off-the-wall, but I'm glad it clicks for you. Superficially the differences are enormous, but in some cosmic sense there may be an affinity. "Something is taking its course" --ENDGAME.

In the July/August FILM COMMENT'S CANNES reports Amy Taubin has a discussion of COSMOPOLIS. She protested to a detractor that it's a masterpiece and has just been back to see it here and found it "even better" the second time. I bet it is.

Thanks for the link to Taubin's piece. I enjoyed it. I have also had reactions similar to Taubin when someone complained about being bored by what I think is a great movie. I remember getting into a rather heated argument at the MIFF after the premiere of Angelopoulos' Landscape in the Mist. I was younger and more combative then. Hoberman also wrote about his second viewing of Cosmopolis:http://blogs.artinfo.com/moviejourna...8217;s-better/

I also like her comment about Haneke's being heavy-handed (before Amour). A rare criticism, and a valid one, of perhaps the most highly respected director working today and one who figures prominently in my dissertation (primarily because Seventh Continent, Code Unknown, Cache, and White Ribbon do not tie all the knots or answer all the questions elicited by their telling).

Looking forward to your posts and reviews from NYC.

Taubin has a suggestive comment:

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Indeed the entire film is couched like the kind of anxiety dream in which one watches oneself from a distance engaging in a life-or-death struggle from which one feels disconnected until one wakes up screaming. Eric’s dream has lots of sex and lots of violence, all seemingly occurring by remote control. His disconnection is that of a psychopath. When he kills his loyal bodyguard so that he will be able to come face to face with his death on his own, never considering that the man is more than his function in Eric’s life, we know that his action is pathological, that he is entirely lacking in empathy, and yet he is also our Everyman.

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These Cannes bulletins may best though not for any critical perceptions so much as for how they bring to life the excitement of the festival experience, as when she mentions her clash with the person who called Cronenberg's film "boring" and retorting that it's a masterpiece.

How do you mean that SEVENTH CONTINENT leaves things up in the air? I thought it tied all the knots all too clearly and relentlessly.

Guess you were younger when you saw Angeloupoulos' film -- that's almost 25 years ago!

Over on the Filmleaf 2012 Cannes thread I cited four other FILM COMMENT reviews or reports from Cannes grouped together with Taubin's. You might want to take a look at Richard Peña's about the importance of Latin American cinema, which he says has lately supplanted Asian in importance at the festival.

Well, I said that Seventh Continent doesn't answer all the questions/ties all the knots but I get your point, it's clearly "more resolved" than Code Unknown, for instance. My experience with Continent is that, partly because the couple at its center don't verbalize or put their motives into words, their actions are not so easily classifiable as either symptomatic of social pathology or psychopathology. At the level of discourse, the film is very ambiguous.

Pena is great. I read his comments. When he talks about movies, I listen. He was a student of Bill Rothman's at NYU, by the way. Latin America is producing very interesting cinema. I don't know about supplanting Asian cinema, that is saying a lot. But I notice that the great Asian filmmakers, which I often mention as my favorite filmmakers in the world, have not been prolific in the past 5-7 years. Tsai Ming-liang has not made a really great film since I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (2006) Jia's last great film is 24 City (2008), Hou's last masterpiece is 3 Times released 7 years ago. Nothing of interest from Lou Ye since Summer Palace (2006) and that film was a good notch below Suzhou River (2000).

Yeah, I never got why the parents were killing themselves and their kids. Horrible, one of Hanake's rapes of the viewer. Code Unknown is almost too conscious a puzzler, but it is one.

Peña has been wonderful at the FSLC events -- even as an interpreter Spanish-English (and he can do French too if absolutely necessary). Too bad he is leaving, and that's why they're honoring him this time at the NYFF I assume. I don't know who can replace him. Nobody.

He is pushing a bit his agenda saying L.A. is supplanting Asian film, I agree, though both Korean and Japanese have faltered lately, Japanese fof some time, Korean lately. Taiwanese slowing down too, mabey Hong Kong. Or maybe; I don't really know. I'd say Asian cinema is a pretty large field. I have really enjoyed L.A. film the last 15 years or so, but it has not supplanted Asian in my admiration.

Yeah, I don't really know either. Large field and most of us get to see only a small number of films. From my limited experience, Poetry (Chang-dong Lee) and The Day He Arrived (Sang-soo Hong) continue to demonstrate the consistent excellence of these two South Korean directors. Chan-wook Park is immensely talented, as skillful as any other Asian director, although I don't share his sensibilities. There are others who are less prolific and less consistent but I'm still betting on South Korea to continue producing the best cinema in Asia (as far as I can tell, that is). And I hope Hou, Jia, WKW and Tsai get back on track soon.