Best of the Decade #9: The Son

If the Dardennes are indeed the premiere narrative film artists of our time (as this writer believes them to be), this is not because they make Story sovereign above all else, but because they use their unerringly exact calibration of narrative progression—in the movement from scene to scene and the movements within scenes—to activate every corner of the world in which it transpires. Even more than a revelation, theirs is a re-enchantment of the real, endowing even the most utilitarian elements with an almost talismanic significance.