A time for anxiety, comfort

Where does one look for comfort, then, but to the past? Films like “The Artist,’’ “Hugo,’’ “Drive,’’ and even Steven Spielberg’s “War Horse’’ and the 24-hour museum piece “The Clock’’ mined the images of movie history to give us a better sense of where we’re rooted and where we might go from here. That yearning was felt everywhere. “Midnight in Paris,’’ in which Owen Wilson magically time-travels to hang with the literati of the Lost Generation, was Woody Allen’s biggest hit ever. 1994’s “The Lion King’’ made millions in a 3-D re-release; it will be followed next year by “Titanic,’’ “Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace,’’ and more Disney/Pixar favorites. Commercial entertainments like “Super-8’’ and “The Muppets’’ traded on a nostalgia for a time when kids could hit the vacant lot with dad’s movie camera or stay home to watch Kermit on TV.

Those kids are now parents themselves, wondering how their own children will fare in a society increasingly lived in the digital ether and on screens big and small. Can a mass medium like the movies survive when its audience has dwindled to millions of individuals each staring into his or her own hand-held? The better films of the year worried over this conundrum, luring us in with style, or staking a claim for unvarnished realism, or finally turning new technologies like 3-D to artistic ends in Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo,’’ Werner Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams,’’ and Wim Wenders’s “Pina.’’