These Go To Eleven: The 10 Best Films Of The Eighties

Join us in our decade-based film retrospective, as we delve backwards all the way from 2009 to 1910. Most decade-based best movie lists grant you a whooping 50-100 entries, which makes perfect sense given all the years you have to take into consideration. But what if you were defining a decade in just ten films? Which movies would you recommend to somebody who might only watch a handful from a given decade? This week, we look back at the Eighties.

T.J. Barnard

Published: Nov 28, 2012 10:52 am

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8. Goodbye Children (Au Revoir Les Efants) (1987) (Dir. Louis Malle)

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Louis Malle’s deeply affecting and achingly personal story about a WWII-era boarding school is both beautifully-rendered and ultimately heartbreaking, though Malle never settles for sentimentality and chooses to unfold the story with a natural precision. Goodbye, Children is not a complicated film: it’s a simple tale of two school boys who become friends, although one of these boys is being hidden by the boarding school from the Nazis under a false name because he is Jewish. As we watch these characters bond and grow, the painful realisation of inevitable future events begins to ease in, a notion confirmed by the film’s tasteful, subtle ending. There are many films about Nazi-occupied France, though Goodbye Children reins as one of the best. Its power is extraordinary, and its details will haunt you.

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T.J. Barnard