I would say my best movie experience of the year was The Aerial. It may not have been the overall best movie I've seen, but it was so uniquely, creatively its own thing, so clearly the unadulterated expression of one person's weird vision, it was marvelous. The story is about a city where no one has a voice, literally. The film is essentially a silent movie and uses a lot of stylistic elements from classic silents, but it takes them to new places, and borrows other influences. For example, the subtitles aren't sub- at all, but tend to appear in the frame almost like a comic book, often expressing their content (shouting is BIG) or interacting slightly with characters (one pushes his words out of the way angrily). And of course the movie is about words and speaking; its form and content are linked.

The reality of this voiceless city is beautifully realized. For example, no one has a voice, so people read each others' lips. A megaphone, therefore, is a funnel shaped thing with a tv on one end that shows your mouth extra large, so people can see what you're saying. Much of the city is run by some kind of evil mogul, who has his own plots going. One slight flaw is that the movie is a little heavy-handed with the fascist symbolism; for example, a completely gratuitous swastika appears at one point. Anyway, it all leads to a climactic moment, the realization of an evil plot in the voiceless city, that has to be one of the most beautiful and imaginative moments I've ever seen in film. I wonder if that scene wasn't the single vision from which the writer/director constructed the entire story. It was literally fantastic. Everyone should see this movie if they can. I saw it at SIFF; I don't know if it's going to be released to theaters or DVD, but I will see it again as soon as I can.