Having written about the films I liked best in 2023 (and there were others I admired, though perhaps more ambivalently, such as Hayao Miyazaki’s possible swan song The Boy and the Heron), what other cups of culture kept me awake and well caffeinated this year?
We did watch a number of series in 2023 that came out in previous years. It’s not like we missed them on purpose, but there’s just so much to watch – and sometimes when a series gets too much praise, it’s difficult for me to give it a fair chance. (So they really love you, The Bear? I’m sure you can’t be all that! I bet you’re not even about big ursine creatures of the kind that are known to use Leonardo DiCaprio as a chew toy!) I will also want to check out some of the stranger things to come out of 2023, such as The Rehearsal, but the moment has to be just right.
One series we only checked out this year was Mike Flanagan’s mournful horror drama Midnight Mass, the best vampire story Stephen King never wrote. It’s not perfect, and like the King novels that heavily inspired it, Midnight Mass stumbles on the home stretch, but its cast and the way it ratchets up its tension are wonderful, culminating in a fantastic penultimate episode. Shame that the final episode falters (I didn’t hate it, but it was by no means satisfying) – but there’s something to be said for creating a character as viscerally hateful as One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest‘s Nurse Ratched, which Flanagan and cast member Samantha Sloyan did in the overbearing, zealous Bev Keane.
Staying with horror – of a sort, at least: our favourite cinema showed Lars von Trier’s oddball blend of hospital drama, spook story, absurdist Danish farce and, well, Lars von Trier-ness, The Kingdom as three Sunday evening blocks, with yummy Danish food served at the half-way point. I’d never seen the series, and Lars von Trier is Marmitey stuff at the best of time, but we thought we’d try it out for the sheer silliness of it. I mean, who goes to the cinema on Sunday evening to binge on an entire season of anything, let alone something created by Lars von Trier? We thought we could always chicken out during the first break or after one season – but no, we stayed the course. Not all of The Kingdom lands, and its particular flavour is unlikely to be for everyone (as I said: Marmitey), but we had a grand total of three great times. The Kingdom is sometimes moody, often silly, it’s inventive and daft and occasionally it prompts major eye-rolls. It’s even poetic at times… and sometimes it’s all of these things at once. While I wouldn’t necessarily recommend that everyone runs out and gets the box set, I would definitely recommend the experience – and the fun of bingeing something at the cinema, with good food and drinks.
What else? Oh yes. The Roys. Over the four seasons of Succession, there were moments when I felt that they were succumbing to repeating the same patterns and story beats over and over. Sure, like some HBO classics (I’m looking at you, The Sopranos), that is a risk when you’re telling stories about cycles, of abuse, of violence, of any number of toxic behaviours – but even then, Succession did at times feel like it should have been three seasons long. Not so in its final stretch, though, and especially not once That Thing happened. It’ll be a while before I will revisit this one, but I will want to get back to it – because the Roys and their disfunctionalities have produced some of the best written, best acted television this side of The Wire. And while the series did at times prompt pity for its damaged characters, it also is a great illustration of the kind of damage the privileged and ultra-rich inflict on the world around them again and again and again – and no, daddy issues are not a good excuse!
Obviously, there is culture beyond film and TV – though once again this has been a year where I spent way too little time reading or listening to music. I feel that I’ve even been playing much less in 2023, though I wouldn’t want to end this look back at the last 365 years without mentioning Pentiment, which is not only the best murder mystery game set in the late Middle Ages (or early modern period, to be more prosaically precise), it’s my favourite game of the year. Just don’t expect action-packed gameplay, and it helps to enjoy reading and history and calligraphy and art and well-written, engaging characters – but if you’ve always felt that gaming was missing something along the lines of The Name of the Rose (or indeed like Albrecht Dürer’s autobiographical writings, at least the fun early parts), Pentiment is it.
While no other game stood out to me as much as Pentiment did (also because I’ve honestly not played all that many new releases), there was another games-related cup of culture that I need to mention, because I loved it. I’m talking about – wait for it – a 20+ hour making-of of a video game, and no, that proposition isn’t nearly as crazy as it may sound. The Double Fine PsychOdyssey is a 32-episode fly-on-the-wall documentary about the making of Psychonauts 2, the sequel of a much-beloved cult classic from 2005 that was first announced in 2015 and that finally came out in 2021. Double Fine, the studio that created these two games, is probably one of the video game developers that has most of a clearly defined personality, which has over the years expressed itself in inventive games with strong narratives and a range of odd, memorable characters, though not always in smooth development cycles. The impression one comes away from PsychOdyssey with is that Psychonauts 2 almost killed the studio a couple of times. The documentary is a story about an industry in crisis, a company that has to learn a lot of hard lessons about itself: how you can be lovely people but bad bosses; how there isn’t always a solution when strong personalities clash and how some people will walk away hurt, even scarred; how it’s both impossible and utterly necessary to reconcile making art and running a business, especially when you’re responsible for dozens of people who have given up a lot to share your dream. In spite of its daunting length, PsychOdyssey is eminently watchable – though at times it also makes you question the ethics of watching the real people whose lives undergo some big, not always very pleasant changes as if they were characters in a TV show – but Double Fine and the makers 2 Player Productions always strive to handle the resulting issues ethically, and the moments when they stumble aren’t just played for drama. PsychOdyssey can be watched free on YouTube and is worth checking out for anyone with a passing interest in how the video game sausage is made.
And finally, let’s end on a medium that we don’t often write or talk about here at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture. In mid-2023, we went to see the Doris Salcedo exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler in Riehen, Switzerland. I don’t often go to see modern art (at least art that isn’t paintings), which leads to something of a vicious circle: I feel I don’t know what to do with modern art, so I don’t go to see it, which means that I don’t learn better how to approach it, which results in me not going to see it etc. etc. However, we’d had a sneak preview of Salcedo’s work when we went to see an earlier exhibition in Riehen, one more focused on painting, and the one work of hers we saw was breathtaking: Palimpsest. My main issue with the modern art I’ve seen has been that my brain responds to the concept, but that’s where it ends. The works by Colombian artist Salcedo that we saw went far beyond this: they gave me plenty to think about, but they also evoked immediate emotional reactions that at times almost overwhelmed me with their intensity. Her art is also immensely political, but without ever feeling like a political pamphlet. They speak of those that had been vanished by those in power, of the trauma left behind, of the erasure that goes on daily in public discourse.
And that’s been it. 2023 has certainly been a year, and I suspect that 2024 will follow in that tradition. I do hope you all have enjoyed many of the films, series, books, games, music, plays, and whatever else is your cup of culture, and I very much hope that you’ve got some enjoyment out of following us here at A Damn Fine Cup of Culture. We’ve got plans for 2024 that we’re already looking forward to, and it would be great if you would join us for them! In the meantime, enjoy what’s left of 2023. Happy New Year, and see you again very soon!
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