American cinema has good years and bad. A lot of film enthusiasts point to 1939 as the medium’s historical high point, but for me the best year there ever was is probably 1999. A quick glance at the year’s most creatively successful works reveals the likes of Fight Club, American Beauty, Toy Story 2, The Matrix, Man on the Moon, The Insider, Boys Don’t Cry, Magnolia, Being John Malkovich, and many other acclaimed, arresting, and otherwise memorable film works. Nestled among the more famous titles is John Sayles’ drama Limbo, starring David Strathairn and Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio. I sense that a lot of moviegoers missed it, and that remains their loss. This is a phenomenally written drama. It is intelligent, patient, thoughtful, and effective.

Strathairn plays former fisherman Joe Gastineau, who works a quiet life as a handyman in Port Henry, Alaska. While working at a wedding reception he meets lounge singer Donna (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), and the two begin a tentative, potentially ill-considered romance.

It does not sound like a particularly gripping basis for one of 1999’s greatest films, and that actually is critical to how the film creatively excels. There is honestly no way of forecasting the film that makes up Limbo‘s second half from watching the first. It transforms its focus, tone, and to be honest its entire genre halfway, and it does so without any moment of shock, or a narrative twist, or even an unexpected surprise. The agility with which it redirects its characters and reframes their surroundings is genuinely masterful. Everything moves in logical ways. Every narrative choice is quietly earned.

Sayles’ film centres on character more than story, and allows the story to be shifted and provoked by those characters. That, to be honest, makes it an actor’s dream to perform, and the entire cast rise to the occasion with a series of universally interesting, well-motivated turns. David Strathairn made a career out of these sorts of understated parts, and in his hands Joe becomes fascinating and immediately believable. Mastrantonio tackles a particularly flawed, emotionally brittle character, and from time to time even seems comfortable making Donna slightly unlikeable. Kathryn Grody and Rita Taggart are delightful as a bickering, warmly humorous couple for whom Joe does most of his work. Kris Kristofferson, at first, seems to be playing little more than an extended cameo, but it turns out to be a critically important one that needs an actor of his calibre to land so effectively.

The highlight for me among the cast, however, will always be Vanessa Martinez as Donna’s teenage daughter Noelle. She already knows Joe when he begins to date her mother. She already has an impression of him. She is already struggling beneath her mother’s seemingly erratic and whimsical behaviours. The screenplay gives extraordinary room for Noelle, and her emotional struggles, and as with other parts of the film those struggles are treated with respect, patience, and deep emotional intelligence. Martinez is marvellous in the role: like Strathairn as Joe, she simply feels real.

While watching Limbo for the first time it seems a little strange, as if its structure is a little out of shape. On reflection, every dramatic choice is the right one. Every creative choice in the first half is justified by actions in the second. Every observation of character becomes necessary. Then the film ends, not necessarily where the audience will want it to, but where the characters and the story need to. It fully justifies that rarefied descriptor: masterpiece.

There are many good films released around the world every year. Masterpiece celebrates the best of the very best: genuinely superb works of cinema that come with FictionMachine‘s very highest recommendation. If we had our own Criterion Collection, these are the films we would want it to include.