Oscar Roundup

From the last several years, I've made it my goal to see and review all of the Best Picture nominees for a given year. I am glad to report that I was able to complete my task for this Oscar season although, I must say, that the competition was considerably more lackluster than usual, which is a shame given that there are at least two movies that should have been nominated but which weren't.

Babel

Last year, my favorite nominee was Crash, which was a complex ensemble movie with a multitude of intertwined stories all dealing with the subject of racism. Babel is another ensemble movie but, where I found Crash to be an innovating cinematic fugue, Babel failed to impress me. Babel tells four different stories in four different countries (although two of them take place in Morocco and one spans the United States and Mexico). I felt that each of the stories could have made a decent short story (with one of them potentially worthy of a short story nomination) but that the whole didn't hang together well.

A big part of the problem I have with Babel is that many of the threads are thin. The Japanese connection to the rest of the stories is especially thin to the point of being practically non-existent. If one were to excise the Japanese tale, none of the rest would have either gained or lost a thing. One might also make the same claim of the Mexican/American story. Beyond that, whereas Crash had a central theme, Babel seemed to me largely pointless. I suppose that there's some message about how our actions extend beyond the horizon of our perceptions but, honestly, it's a stretch. It doesn't help that of the four stories, two of them had rather unsatisfying endings.

The Queen

The Queen focuses on the week following the death of Princess Diana. It's an exploration of the complex relationship between the British populace and their monarchy. Diana's death was both a national tragedy as well as a personal tragedy complicated by the fact that the Windsors weren't, in any sense of the word, fond of Diana. Elizabeth's instinctual response, which is to strive for privacy and dignity, is at odds with the populace's desire for public and official displays of grief, which causes immense conflict within the royalty as well as the government of a young Tony Blaire.

It is an interesting study in politics and privacy and the acting was superb. Never the less, I felt that the movie lacked a certain critical spark. When I see a best picture nominee, I want to feel wowed. When I left The Queen, I felt like I had gotten my money's worth but not as though I had experienced a work of landmark cinema.

The Departed

Martin Scorsese's latest bid for the statuette is a bloody and convoluted film that covers his favorite subject: organized crime. The story is very nearly Shakespearean in complexity as well as in sum violence. I suspect that it will be the movie that finally gets Scorsese a best picture award in part because he's due and in part because, of the nominees, it arguably is the best movie of the bunch. Given that this is a weak year, however, I think that the praise must be measured.

As a movie goes, it certainly has the characteristic Scorsese touch and, I must admit, Leonardo DiCaprio and Scorsese make a good team. Never the less, I feel that it's a fairly standard Scorsese entry. It does not ascend to the quality of The Deer Hunter or GoodFellas (which is my favorite gangster film) and I think that it would be a bit of a shame if this were the one of his movies singled out for official distinction. Be that as it may, it is certainly the best of the bunch and does deserve to win on that basis, alone.

Letters from Iwo Jima

I try to anticipate which movies will get nominated so that I can see them well in advance. Of the two Eastwood movies, I guessed that Flags of our Fathers would be the one nominated which means that I had to see two depressing World War II movies in a single year.

Letters is the story of the battle of Iwo Jima told from the side of the Japanese defenders. I do applaud the movie for having the courage to show history from the side of the losers, especially given that the majority of American produced movies about the war treat the Japanese combatants as mere props. Be that as it may, I do think that Flags was the better movie given its insightful exploration of how we alternately create and then dispose of our heroes. Letters was poignant but I feel that other movies have covered that same ground, if not from quite the same angle. Be that as it may, I do think that it is worth seeing, especially in the context of the larger Iwo Jima epic that Eastwood has created.

Little Miss Sunshine

I am delighted that this movie got a nomination. It is a rare thing for a comedy to get nominated and, generally, when one does get recognition it's the sort of depressing black comedy that makes you want to cry more than laugh.

Little Miss Sunshine does have its dark moments but it's also a genuinely funny movie. I've actually seen it three times (dragging friends in my wake) and each time I saw it the entire theater was in stitches through the best parts. The interesting thing about the movie is that it's using the same basic formula as National Lampoon's Vacation – dysfunctional family takes a road trip to a coveted destination and has trying and humorous experiences along the way – but it manages to utterly transcend the formula by making the characters feel like fleshed out beings with genuine inner lives.

Be that as it may, as much as I liked it, I don't think that it quite manages to deserve the award. Mind you, it's a close call and I really won't be upset if it does win, nor can I articulate what more I would want out of it. Perhaps, like the Academy, I do have a subconscious bias against the inclusion of comedies.

Honorable Mention: Pan's Labyrinth

It has long struck me that the Best Foreign Language Film category is something of a ghetto (much like the more recent Best Animated Film category) that often prevents deserving films from getting a Best Picture nomination. I think that Pan's Labyrinth is a perfect example of this phenomenon, which is further exacerbated by the fact that Letter's from Iwo Jima is, for all purposes, also a foreign language film.

The movie is an exquisite tale set during the Spanish civil war that deftly interweaves the mundane and the fantastic in the style of Magical Realism. The end result reminds me of some of Neil Gaiman's better work. It's the sort of mature fantasy work that's so very rare and yet so wonderful when it's done well. I would encourage everyone to take the time to see it.

Extraordinary Mention: Children of Men

The deep snubbing that Children of Men received is proof that the world lacks justice. I have heard rumors that the reason it didn't get recognition, beyond a handful of minor awards, is that the studio that produced it simply didn't know that they have a masterpiece on their hands and, thus, didn't do the sort of critical direct marketing that's necessary to get inclusions for the major categories.

That said, the film is magnificent. Most great movies have one, or maybe two, potent scenes that stick with the viewer long after he's left the theater. Children of Men, which is a dystopian tale about a world falling apart at the seams and the persistence of hope in spite of despair, is filled with such scenes. Week's after having seen it, I still find myself thinking about it. It is, in my opinion, the best movie of the year and, perhaps, of the entire decade. Its omission is heartbreaking. I hope that it will eventually develop a cult following and that it will eventually come to be seen as a science fiction and sociological classic.

Oscar Evaluation: Good Night, and Good Luck

Awhile back, Ann Coulter, the unofficial fluffer for the neo-conservative movement, started arguing that history had mistreated poor Joseph McCarthy who, she claims, was actually a true patriot doing his level best to fight an actual menace.

While I don’t think that anyone would deny that Communism was a genuine threat to the free world, and I don’t think that many would deny that there was a legitimate concern with regards to Communist agents trying to infiltrate the government, it astonishes me that anyone would insist that McCarthy’s tactics were anything less than a politically motivated witch hunt of the first order.

Good Night, and Good Luck is not the first movie to address the McCarthy era, nor is it the best (I would suggest that The Crucible deserves that honor, in spite of its careful obliqueness), but the simple fact that there are those who would try to portray McCarthyism as a good thing does indicate that it is a necessary movie. Beyond that, there are strong resonances between the days of the HUAC and our own times when people are -- to my utter horror and astonishment -- insisting that there are merits to domestic spying, detention without trial and, even, torture as a legitimate tool of interrogation; facts which I am certain influenced the production of Good Night, and Good Luck.

The film details the very public battle between legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow and McCarthy. In a stroke of absolute genius, McCarthy isn’t played by an actor. Instead, they use actual footage of McCarthy, including his infamous on-air rebuttal to Murrow. An interesting film anecdote is that studio executives who saw an early screening were concerned that the guy playing McCarthy was a bit too over the top.

Murrow is played by David Strathairn. It is said that a great actor can so perfectly assume a character that you don’t question the reality of the character. If this is a valid standard, then Strathairn is, indeed, one of the best actors I’ve had the joy of witnessing. He doesn’t look anything like Murrow but he so perfectly captures the mannerisms -- vocal and characteristic -- of Murrow that it didn’t even occur to me that he looked like anyone else but Murrow. To put this into context, it is as if a 5 foot 10 actor managed to not only play Abraham Lincoln, but also managed to convince the audience that he was actually 6 foot 6.

It is a stark movie. The sets are stark. The acting is stark. The dialog is stark. It is shot in a stark version of black and white that makes a typical Noir film seem downright cheerful by comparison. It is the starkness of the film, in fact, that ultimate ends up detracting from it. The film strives for an austere rationalism which it does achieve, but at the expense of emotional involvement. A friend of mine says that it’s almost as if the film has intimacy issues. While I can appreciate the fact that the film is making a strong case for reason in public debate, and showing the power of reason when it comes to dealing with tyrants, the fact remains that the film doesn’t engage the audience as much as it should.

I do believe that it is an Oscar Worthy pick. Indeed, I liked it better than Capote, which is a film that can’t be faulted for a lack of emotion. Never the less, I do wish that the direction was just a bit more emotive and a bit less stark. Creatures like McCarthy should, I think, evoke some emotion. One can rationally condemn monsters while, at the same time, being disgusted as mad as hell at them, too.

Oscar Evaluation: Capote

The first we see of Truman Capote is him at a party of some sort. He's sharing an anecdote with several people who are laughing and, more importantly, focused on him. We quickly learn that this is precisely where Capote wants to be: at the center of everyone's attention.

As the film begins, Truman is already an established member of New York's literary cognoscenti. He's published a number of successful novels including Breakfast and Tiffany's which has already been made into a movie, meaning that he's not only well connected in the writing establishment but he also has in-roads into the world of Hollywood which, in that era, was a still considered a thing of glamour. His best friend is Harper Lee who would eventually become famous in her own right for "To Kill a Mockingbird" (someone asks her about "that bird book" she's working on and asks if it's a children's story).

Our first impression of him is of a small, wispish man with a manner of speech that is so odd that it seems like it must be affected (although, later, he does claim that people used to make fun of the way he talks). He is gay in an era well before even the idea of gay liberation was on the horizon, but he travels through circles where no one gives a damned about that. Indeed, he lives in a rather rarefied world. In some ways, he reminds me of a rare tropical plant. Not a beautiful Polynesian flower, but something that would seem uninteresting and even ugly if it simply weren't so far out of the ordinary.

A pivotal moment comes when he reads about a multiple murder in a small Kansas town. He quickly informs his publisher of his plans and drags his friend Harper out to the middle of nowhere so that she can help him interact with the natives. (Ultimately, Harper will get a credit in the resulting book – as his secretary). His initial plan is to write a story on the impact of the violence. He really doesn't care whether or not the people who did it are caught; a fact that he shares with the sheriff of the town while asking him when he can arrange a personal interview with him. The sheriff acidly informs Truman that, even though Truman doesn't care, he cares quite a bit whether they get caught. Truman is forced to accept mere attendance at a press conference.

Eventually Harper manages to smooth some ruffled feathers and get Truman access to the Sheriff via the Sheriffs wife, who's a fan of Truman's and, more importantly, dazzled by his fame. Once again, Truman finds himself at the focus of someone's attention and he's able to use that focus to his advantage to charm the sheriff's wife and even to put the sheriff, himself, at enough ease that he let's Truman see the crime photos. Up to this point, the audience could be forgiven for wondering whether there was anything that actually made Capote special but, in this scene, we see that behind the affectations and preening, there is a genuinely brilliant mind. He wonders why the killer took the time to wrap a blanket around on the victims, and to put a pillow under the head of the other. Even the sheriff seems impressed by these insights.

Ultimately, two men are caught. One seems to be something or an artist while the other is more eloquent. Truman sits through the initial trial and manages to get some slight contact with the more eloquent of the duo via his association with the Sheriff's wife. He becomes intrigued by them. They are quickly found guilty, not least because their public defender doesn't do a very competent job of defending them. Capote quickly arranges to get them a better lawyer who launches an appeal based upon the incompetence of their original defense.

It's important to take a moment to understand why he does this. If this were an ordinary movie, it would be because the protagonist is offended at the lack of good due process. It would have been very easy to make this a movie about civil rights and the ethics of capital punishment. Truman, however, isn't really interested in such things. In these men he sees a story and he needs the time to properly research and write it. He simply doesn't want them to get killed too quickly.

The remainder of the movie Truman develops a closer relationship with the killers (there really isn't any question that they committed the crime), but it is a complex relationship. His closest contact is with Perry Smith, the more eloquent of the two. It's a relationship ship built on hesitant trusts and mutual manipulation. Perry is a smart but largely amoral person who, never the less, as intriguing depths. Indeed, the very same can be said of Capote.

His initial idea was simply a magazine article but he sees, in these two, the potential for an entirely new form of writing: the non-fiction novel. Indeed, when he gives an initial reading (once again displaying actual genius), he is met to thunderous applause (to his immense delight). The assignment, however, becomes complicated. In spite of himself, he begins to experience genuine feelings of sympathy and even empathy towards Perry. Harper tells him that he's falling in love (which isn't fair given that he already has a lover).

These feelings make Truman very uncomfortable, not because of who they are directed towards but because he's having them at all. Actual love is something alien to him. It's also frightening because love demands a shift in focus away from ourselves and towards the ones we love. Truman's position in his own private spot-light is jeopardized by these feelings, which terrifies him and compels him to do some rather despicable things.

Good biographies, of course, won't try to whitewash their subjects, but it’s typical, and not surprising, that they do tend to celebrate them. Capote is a rather unusual biopic. It's less of a celebration than a study. In is, I believe, the story of a flawed, emotionally stunted man who is forced, against his will, to experience moral growth. In a typical movie, such characters eventually achieve a breakthrough that lets to achieve maturity. Truman Capote does not. In fact, the effort and strain breaks him. In the end he is left saddened, confused, and worse off than before precisely because he only ever manages to grow half of a soul – enough to feel guilt and shame, but not enough to achieve epiphany.

Of the five nominees, Capote is my least favorite. It is important that I qualify that, however, by pointing out that this year's nominees represent a season of giants. It is a brilliant, challenging and remarkable film and well worth seeing. Part of the reason I liked it less than the others is that it has those precise qualities. It it is more difficult to love a movie where the main character is so utterly unlikable, so thoroughly pitiable, and so perfectly frustrating. The effort, never the less, is worth it.

Oscar Evaluation: 2006

I have not forgotten that I have to complete my last essay, nor have I decided to ignore that duty. Time and circumstance have, however, considered to make it difficult for me to get down to the task... that and a morbid sense of procrastination coupled with guilt that makes it difficult to start up again.

I think I need a diversion. Fortunately, Oscar season offers me the perfect distraction, and I can even legitimize it by noting that I did capsule reviews of the best picture nominees last year and that I'd like to make it an annual tradition.

That said, this is a very remarkable year. Last year I complained about the presence of undeserving fluff (read: Neverland) whose presence was all the worse because legitimately deserving pictures such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind didn't get nominated. I have no such complaint this year. All of the nominees are deep and serious films. I am, in fact, surprised that there are absolutely no blockbuster nominees -- a situation that I have simply not seen since I've been tracking the nominees. The closet we have to a popular film, this year, is Brokeback Mountain which is a film that most people are aware of but which relatively few people have seen. There are certainly no feel-good movies, and nothing that strikes me as being either lightweight or pretentious.

I am, in fact, so impressed with the nominations that I'm going to be giving each their own individual post over the next several days. Expect the first review by no later than this Friday.

Scout's honor.

Oscar Evaluation: 2005

For the last couple of years I’ve been making a special effort to see all of the movies that have been nominated for a best picture Oscar. Yes, the Oscars are as much about politics as about art and have often had a deplorable record when it has come to actually identifying the picture with the most artistic merit in a given year. Never the less, I’ve found that, more often than not, the best picture nominees have, at least, been worth seeing. I will also freely admit that I get caught up in the hype and pageantry of the Oscars. Beyond that, I’m the sort of person who can’t resist offering my two cents (and if you haven’t noticed that, you clearly haven’t been reading this blog). So, with that, here is my impression of this year’s current nominees, arranged in alphabetical order as a salute to the fundamental arbitrariness of the awards.

The Aviator

Everyone and his duck knows that this is the odds on favorite. Really, it’s hard to object to the idea of giving the award to this one given how many of Scorcese’s legitimate masterpieces have been overlooked (I’m still bitter that at the thorough and undesered snubbing that the academy gave to Goodfellas, which I consider to be the best film of the 80’s).

The sad fact, though, is that this is a mediocre Scorsese film. Mind you, mediocre Scorsese is better than most directors could ever hope to aspire to (as a point of calibration, mediocre Scorsese is equivalent to very good Spielberg). The movie has a hell of a lot of worth and if this were a weaker year, I could easily see it meriting what it’s probably going to get. I will also say that this is the film that has finally convinced me that Leonardo DiCaprio has genuine talent. I don’t think that DiCaprio has quite finished maturing as an actor, but it’s clear that great things are still ahead of him… even if he personally annoys me.

Finding Neverland

Okay, here’s the pitch: we’ve got a charming Victorian eccentric who won’t conform to societies norms, a wife who simply doesn't understand him, a struggling widow and mother to three lovely boys, one of whom has lost his ability to “believe”, and her uptight mother-in-law who doesn’t think that it’s appropriate that they associate with our eccentric protagonist… oh, did we mention that he’s the man who created Peter Pan? Why, the script practically writes itself. Unfortunately, it is all to apparent that that is precisely what happened. It’s a by-the-numbers heartwarming drama that resembles nothing so much as a Lifetime special with a Hollywood budget.

About the kindest thing that I can say about this movie is that it had some really wonderful actors (forced to play some amazingly one dimensional characters) and lavish production value (squandered on an entirely predictable and simplistic story). Given that this was the same year that produced Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Hotel Rwanda, its actually painful to consider that this entirely pointless exercise in schmaltz took a slot that should have gone to one of them.

Million Dollar Baby

Like most people, I still think of Clint Eastwood as being Dirty Harry and/or the High Plains Drifter. As such, seeing him in the role of director is about as astonishing as it would be if that damned orangutan from Any Which Way but Loose were to direct. Really, though, this isn’t a fair perspective. Not only has Eastwood made three films worthy of Oscar contention (including this one), to say nothing of winning an Oscar for Unforgiven, but he’s directed over thirty films. He’s more than paid his dues as a director and it is unfair to think of him as being some sort of sideshow curiosity.

As for Million Dollar Baby, it is simply one of the best films I’ve ever seen, period. When I dragged my girlfriend along with me to see it, she was, like myself, expecting a kind of female version of Rocky. When the movie ended, her hand on my arm was faintly trembling and she found herself speechless. Although the milieu of the movie is the world of boxing, it would be as wrong to say this it was a boxing movie as would be to say that Watership Down was an just a book about a bunch of bunny rabbits. It would, however, be entirely accurate to say that it is the movie that should, in a just universe, win this year.

Ray

How often do we see a biographical movie being promoted with the line “X is Y”, e.g., Nick Nolte is His Holiness Pope Pius III! It has become a Hollywood cliché. Never the less, in this movie, Jamie Foxx so thoroughly assumes the character of Ray Charles that I had to wonder if the real Ray Charles found himself displaced into a state of quantum limbo while Foxx was doing his job.

It is clear that Ray is a work of love. For a film like this, that can be a disadvantage. A good biographic can be sabotaged by too much love for the character. Ray, however, manages to celebrate the life of Ray Charles without descending to a fawning admiration. Charles is portrayed as a complex person with faults as well as virtues. Like a good biography should, it leaves us with the impression that we understand the man more than we did and that there’s something there that is worth understanding.

Ray isn’t epic, like The Aviator, nor does it dazzle us with special effects, like Finding Neverland, but it does make us care about the man and makes us feel that we have come to know him. If that's not enough, it also has some marvellous music, too.

Sideways

Sidewise wants to be an intelligent comedy. I love intelligent comedies. Unfortunately, I didn’t think that it was either. To understand my disappointment, you should understand that, although I’m not a wine snob, per se, I am certainly a dilettante. I swirl my glass, I’ve been known to use the word “nose” to describe the scent of the liquid, and I have been in the company of otherwise sane adults who have, in all earnestness, proclaimed that a given wine had hints of blackberry, tobacco and mahogany. Yes, mahogany. In other words, I’ve been close enough to the world of dedicated wine snobbery to be able to fully appreciate how sublimely ridiculous it really is. Given this, I should have been the perfect audience for Sideways.

I hated it.

You may have noticed that film critics loved this movie. There’s a scene where one of the protagonists is explaining to a potential romantic interest why he’s so into pinot noir. He goes into this little monologue about how the grapes are delicate and difficult to nurture but that if you give them the appropriate attention, the reward more than makes up for the effort. It’s obvious that what he’s really describing is himself. Film critics eat that kind of crap up with a spoon. It’s the sort of narrative trick that makes you feel smart for spotting it. Unfortunately, a movie needs more than clever rhetorical devices to have worth. At the end of the movie I was left with two characters I couldn’t have cared less about, a set of circumstances that seemed perfectly banal, and a comedy which provoked me to laughter twice. Again, in a year where two excellent movies were snubbed, I can’t see the justification of including this other than the fact that it’s the kind of movie that appeals to erstwhile film students (i.e. critics).

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Okay, this wasn't a nominee (nor am I putting it in alphabetic order) but, dammit, it should have been. If, like most people, you haven't seen this movie, go out and rent it. Never mind that it's a Jim Carrey movie and that, nine times out of ten, he's an annoying goofball. Never mind that you aren't going to be able to find someone who can summarize the plot into a short, declarative sentence. The movie is worth it. It is, easily, one of the most original and brilliant films that I've ever had the fortune to see. It it surreal but it is also about things that are basic and fundamental to our humanity. I won't do the film an injustice by trying to explain it or even to summarize it. All I can do is implore you to go and give it a fair chance.

Hotel Rwanda

About the only bad thing I can say about Hotel Rwanda is that too many people are going to see it, feel bad, and then, later on, pat themselves on the back while they feel good about having felt bad. Be that as it may, and as sad as it is to say this, for most people this will be the only time they will have so much as heard about the genocide that happened in Rwanda.

Like many films about difficult subjects (e.g., Schindler's List which is the film that Hotel Rwanda is most prone to being compared with) it deals with a difficult and heartbreaking subject by placing the focus on a person who attained virtue in the midsts of incredible evil. Okay, let's come out and admit that it's derivative. In spite of that, it does a good job of illuminating a very dark, and very real, episode in our recent past. So long as man continues to be inhumane to mankind, it is important that we remind ourselves of the times when we lapse into atrocity. While it could have been better (because of its low budget, the movie has a hard time convincing us of the actual scale of the genocide), I think that it's more than good enough to accomplish this necessary task.

Go see this movie, please.

So, to sum it all up, here's my ordering from best to worst (including the movies I think should have been nominated):

1. Million Dollar Baby
2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
3. Ray
4. The Aviator
5. Hotel Rwanda
6. Finding Neverland
7. Sideways
   

Have fun on Oscar night.