Thoughts on the Oscars

NOTE: I haven't seen all of the nominated films, so this list might seem a little, shall we say, incomplete. I'm also only doing the top awards because I don't know how to judge the technical or aesthetic categories.

Best Picture: Argo

I liked Argo, and after it and The Town, I think Ben Affleck’s established himself as a good director. But Best Picture? Of the five nominees I saw (the others being Django Unchained, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, and Zero Dark Thirty), I’d rank it fifth. Lincoln would be my number one of that group. MY pick for the best film of 2012, Skyfall, wasn’t even in the running. Seriously, they couldn’t even manage a token nod for the greatest entry in a storied franchise?

Best Director: Ang Lee, Life of Pi

I haven’t seen Life of Pi, so I can’t comment on the film, but I‘m not surprised that Lee won the award. The film is by all accounts a technical marvel, really showcasing how the newest technologies can be utilized to make a fully optimal visual experience. I thought James Cameron might win for directing Avatar three years ago for the same reason, but that didn’t come to pass (because let’s face it: for all its technical achievements, Avatar’s story was still a little weak; Life of Pi, being adapted from a bestseller, was more suited for one of the most prestigious awards).

Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

Can’t argue with this one.

Best Actress: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook

This was between her and Jessica Chastain for Zero Dark Thirty. Both performances were very good, but it’s hard to compare them because the movies are so different. Film quality aside, I enjoyed Silver Linings Playbook more than the super grim Zero Dark Thirty, so I have no problem with Lawrence winning for the more enjoyable of the two.

Best Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained

Honestly, I was surprised he was even nominated, let alone won, because I thought his role was so similar to his role in Inglourious Basterds, which won him the same award three years ago (if I were to nominate anyone from Django, it would have been Samuel L. Jackson). I’ve actually seen all the movies in this category, and I found Phillip Seymour Hoffman in The Master to be the best of the five.  And Javier Bardem deserved a nod in this category for Skyfall more than a few who actually were nominated.

Best Supporting Actress: Anne Hathaway, Les Misérables

Haven’t seen Les Mis, but judging by her take on "I Dreamed a Dream," she certainly has the pipes.

Zero Dark Thirty

2009’s Iraq War drama The Hurt Locker won six Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director for Kathryn Bigelow, and was hailed as a great film about the Iraq War. I agreed with that assessment. The movie I’d most compare it to is Platoon (my favorite war film), as like Oliver Stone’s Vietnam picture, it eschewed political messages and Hollywoodized sentiment and simply presented an unfiltered look at warfare from the ground level.

The movie was also, according to many real veterans, highly inaccurate in its depiction of Iraq. Now, inaccuracy doesn’t automatically doom a movie (I mean, nobody watches Rambo to get a realistic look at combat, do they?), but when a film is purported to be a super accurate account of what it depicts, do allegations that it's not dim its power at all?

 

I can’t say for certain with The Hurt Locker because I have yet to revisit it, but this thought was there while watching Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty. The film claims to be the definitive account of the search for, and mission to eliminate, Osama bin Laden, and the production’s alleged consultation with the U.S. government suggests the filmmakers strived for total accuracy. And yet, I couldn’t shake the Hurt Locker allegations, and the controversy about this film on top of that, from my mind.

We all know the ending, so let’s get this out of the way: The raid on bin Laden’s compound during the film’s last 40 minutes is a fantastic work of filmmaking. It’s not a flashy Call of Duty-style firefight filled with explosions and extended shootouts with several minions. The killings are quick, efficient, and unglamorous. Women and children are in harm’s way, and some of them are killed, too. The mission’s slow, methodical, no-frills execution, along with perfect editing, gives the whole sequence a freeze-in-your-seat tension greater than any big action sequence in an escapist summer movie. It feels very real.

Until that point, the film shows the efforts of the CIA to locate the al-Qaeda leader. It’s a little like an espionage thriller, but fictional spy tales tend to have a set structure and sequence of events and clues for the viewer to piece together. In Zero Dark Thirty, clues and leads are all over the place, with little or no indication whether they’re of any value or dead ends. It’s not very easy to follow, like trying to put together a puzzle with a million fake pieces mixed with the real ones, and makes it seem like a miracle that the agency was able to find bin Laden.

What did find him, according to the film, was a lead pursued relentlessly over several years by a CIA agent based in Pakistan known onscreen as Maya (Jessica Chastain; the real names of those involved are not revealed, and all characters are listed only by their first names). Chastain’s performance consists almost purely of will, and she is a compelling center to the picture as she navigates a near-labyrinthine web of false leads and tips, as well as badgers her superiors and colleagues into following her lead when they believe it’s just another wild goose chase. It almost seems a little farfetched that this one person was so instrumental in locating bin Laden, but then, it also seems like blind luck that her lead turned out to be correct among so many that went nowhere.

Almost lost among the movie’s critical acclaim is a vocal minority chastising it as pro-American War on Terror propaganda. It’s hard to make that case watching the film. It’s very grim, almost hopeless in its tone. If the ending weren’t a foregone conclusion, the movie could be mistaken for a lament on the zero-sum gains the U.S. has seen in the War on Terror, and even when the raid is over and bin Laden is dead, the picture doesn’t take on a fist-pumping patriotic tone, or even offer a sense of satisfaction.

Which leads me to the element of the film everyone’s talking about: its depiction of torture. And yes, it makes it damn clear that what was done to detainees was torture, as what happens to them onscreen is clearly inhumane and cruel. It might be hard to watch for some on a visceral level, but its effect is more sickening and infuriating from a moral standpoint, to see what our country has done to people.

Bigelow has said that “depiction is not endorsement." Judging by her depiction of it, I don’t think she endorses torture. In fact, the main torture sequence seems almost anecdotal, as if to show that torture does NOT yield good results (which it specifically does not in the film). But the depiction of its effectiveness is mixed overall. Other times, tortuous methods seem like just part of the interrogation process. In one scene, when the characters are watching a TV interview with then-President-elect Obama condemning torture (the only appearance by a President in the movie in any capacity), they roll their eyes, either at the naiveté of the new Commander-In-Chief or because his election means they’ll lose support for such interrogation methods. If you were going by this movie alone, it’s hard not to get the sense that torture contributed to getting bin Laden. According to some official reports, that’s not true.

That’s the paradox about Zero Dark Thirty. Like The Hurt Locker, I’m not sure how real it is, but moreover, I don’t want it to be real. I can’t exactly say I liked the experience of the movie, not because of any flaw in the production—it’s technically masterful and quite compelling, worthy of many of the awards it’s been up for—but because of the horrible truths it depicts about what our country has carried out in our name.

Link to my The Book of Mormon review

I saw The Book of Mormon in Chicago this past weekend. You can read my full review of the production here.

I've seen a few plays in Chicago and on Broadway, but I'm not exactly what you'd call a regular connoisseur of musical theater. I am, however, a longtime fan of South Park, so there was no way I was going to miss out on this play. But even if you've never seen an episode of South Park or a musical, the show is fantastic comedic gold.

Nay, comedic PLATINUM!

Django Unchained

I know I’m about to incur the wrath of many a film fan, but I have to be honest: Prior to Inglourious Basterds, I always felt Quentin Tarantino was overrated.

His proponents lavish praise on his dialogue and style, but I always saw through those trappings. Underneath all the endless talking and references to old movies, I never found any substance. What little plot his films had just seemed like ways to loosely tie together pieces of excess just for shock value, or to drop a lengthy dialogue exchange that has little or nothing to do with the story (I mean honestly, who cares what they call a Quarter Pounder in France?). For all the flash, his films were empty and shallow.

So what changed with Inglourious Basterds? For one, the film actually had a good plot. A purely fantasy plot, maybe (and one that notably alters history), but a compelling and interesting one. But moreover, instead of just aimless babble for dialogue’s sake, the extended exchanges between the characters actually had a point, subtly building tension in some scenes and making for offbeat humor in others. For all the bloody splatter on display, the movie was actually something close to sophisticated.

Well, sophisticated doesn’t exactly fit the description for Django Unchained. It’s a very brutal, bloody, messy picture, with more offensive content than you’d think Hollywood would allow these days. But along with the extreme excess, Tarantino again presents an interesting story, depicted with a style reminiscent of the Spaghetti Westerns of old. I must say, the director is starting to grow on me.

The time is just prior to the Civil War, when slavery was still rampant in the Deep South. Against this backdrop, German dentist-turned-bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) rescues the titular slave (Jamie Foxx) from a chain gang in Texas. In exchange for leading him to three fugitives, Schultz offers Django his freedom, and the two become partners in the bounty hunting trade.

Foxx adds a sort of blaxploitation twist to the laconic Man with No Name-like archetype, while Waltz is essentially a good-guy version of his charming but ruthless character in Inglourious Basterds (I got the feeling the character was made German just because Tarantino wanted to work with him again; fine by me, because he’s fantastic). The two play off each other well with quick wit while exhibiting all the qualities of classic Western antiheroes.

In fact, though ostensibly a tribute to old Westerns (the title character is even named after a character in several Spaghetti Westerns, one of whose portrayers makes a cameo), the picture actually stands on its own as a quality entry in the genre, with a few more modern touches. Still, the movie finds some time to humorously send up the genre (the most hilarious scene, featuring Don Johnson leading a dimwitted lynching party, is like a deleted scene from Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles). 

That’s about the first hour of the film. Then, the two leads travel to Mississippi and hatch a plan to rescue Django’s wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) from the suave, psychotic plantation owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), and the tone changes in more ways than one. Here, Tarantino’s penchant for long exchanges of dialogue comes on display, and though some scenes go on a little long, they will please the filmmaker’s longtime fans. More noticeably, though, the picture takes a turn for the unpleasant in its unflinching depiction of slavery, and that’s an understatement.

The human bondage and racism on display is shocking. Not shocking like the uncomfortable feeling you get watching parts of Gone with the Wind in today's world, but turn-your-stomach shocking. In fact, it goes so far in depicting such brutality that it almost seems like it must be exaggerated. Maybe the things onscreen really did happen, and Hollywood has sanitized our vision of what slavery was really like. If that’s the case, Tarantino deserves credit for not holding anything back in depicting a cruel chapter in American history. But it seems like he's not so much trying to reflect the time as just be as mean and vile as possible.

This is especially the case with DiCaprio’s Candie, who crosses the line from a typical slave owner who sees people as property to a sadistic psychopath who takes pleasure in inflicting horrible pain. The actor’s obviously pushing to be as awful a human being as he can (so much that he actually comes to a point where it’s hard to take him seriously anymore because he’s just so over-the-top). The most offensive character, however, is Samuel L. Jackson as an aging house slave so broken that he’s arguably as bad as his master. It’s hard to tell if he’s trying to play it straight or an absurd caricature, as the character walks a razor-thin line being cruelly funny and incredibly sad. Either way, it’s appalling. Jackson deserves an Oscar just for the fearlessness in taking on the role.

So after describing all this unpleasantness, why am I recommending Django Unchained? Because all the racially obscene content makes the violent retribution—and it’s very bloody, indeed—all the more satisfying. Even the most politically correct pacifist viewer won’t be able to deny the basest pleasure in seeing such awful characters get theirs. This one requires a pretty strong stomach and even thicker skin, but for those with both, it's the feel good kill whitey movie of the year. If that statement offends you, see something else!

Best to Worst: Batman

The Dark Knight Rises, which was released to tremendous hype back in July, comes to DVD and Blu-ray today (read my full review). How does Christopher Nolan’s third and final Batman film rank among the others in the series? Here’s a look at the Caped Crusader on film (specifically live-action, full-length features; the many animated films could have their own list), from the highs to the lows.

The Best: The Dark Knight 

When it was announced that Heath ledger was playing the Joker, I was a little apprehensive at first, because he was more known as a romantic leading man at the time. My fears turned out to be unwarranted; the late Aussie was absolutely perfect. And so was the rest of the picture, elevating the comic book movie to a level of drama and craft that was unprecedented. This is the benchmark by which all comic book adaptations should be measured.

Batman Begins

Hard to believe it now, but prior to Nolan’s foray into the franchise, the Bat had fallen on some pretty hard times (more on that later). Even just an average flashy superhero action flick would have been an improvement. Instead, Nolan gave us the Batman movie we’d all been waiting for, sticking true to the comics while giving his own modern-day spin on the character’s origin, and casting a plethora of strong actors. Not only did this bring the series back from the dead, it  more or less started the "reboot", and several other series that had past their prime would follow in its footsteps and start fresh.

The Dark Knight Rises

It’s not without its flaws. There are a few too many plot points for even a two-and-three-quarter-hour movie, and some of them don’t work that well (and I personally would have liked to see at least one more movie in Nolan’s arc before he gave us an "ending" story). Also, Batman is out of action for much of it, leaving the hero duties to Gary Oldman's Jim Gordon and Joseph Gordon-Levitt's John Blake (both fantastic performances, by the way). Having said that, the movie is still highly satisfying, if just for the sheer bigger, better, brutal-er spectacle. If The Dark Knight was the series’ The Empire Strikes Back, this is a solid Return of the Jedi of a finale.

Batman Returns

This one seems to get a bad rap from some viewers. I can't explain why, because it’s actually the best of the pre-Nolan movies. True, the storyline about The Penguin (Danny DeVito) running for mayor of Gotham is ridiculous, but the film has more excitement than Tim Burton’s first entry. And while DeVito’s Penguin is quite different from the comics, he still creates a memorably creepy villain (and let’s face facts: The Penguin is a pretty lame character in the comics, anyway). Then there’s Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman.

She's more than twice my age, but still....MEOW!

Batman

To be sure, this movie gets a lot of things about the Caped Crusader right. The look of Gotham City is the best of all the movies, and Danny Elfman’s score will always be the definitive Batman theme for me. There are also some very good individual scenes, such as the hero’s reveal early in the picture and the famous “mirror” scene. Yet, the film as a whole misfires, as Burton seems to be straining for dark comedy, and it just falls flat. Michael Keaton is good as Batman, but his scenes as Bruce Wayne romancing Vicki Vale (Kim Basinger), no so much. And Jack Nicholson seems less like the Joker than just typical manic Jack Nicholson, only in clown makeup.

The other Batman

A lot of people might not know this, but the 1960s TV show with Adam West and Burt Ward actually got its own big screen adaptation way back in ‘66. In this one, the Dynamic Duo takes on the all-star villain cast of the Joker (Cesar Romero), the Penguin (Burgess Meredith), the Riddler (Frank Gorshin), and the second of three Catwomen that this version of Batman would see (Lee Meriwether). If you can tolerate the incredibly campy tone, silly storyline, and bad puns, the picture can be enjoyed as kitschy comedy. Still, it’s more a historical footnote than a necessary entry in the evolution of the character on film. Even the lightest Batman comics were rarely this goofy.

The Worst: Batman Forever and Batman & Robin (tie)

The nipples! The horrible nipples!

Everyone seems to agree that Joel Schumacher’s run is the low point of Batman in cinema (Schumacher himself actually apologized...kinda). And yet, I’ll always have a soft spot for these two, as they were my first exposure to the character on film. That’s not to say they’re good, though; they’re every bit as silly, illogical, and badly acted as you’ve heard (though arguably so bad they’re funny).  

Which one’s worse?  Well, Batman Forever gave the world that Seal song. You can decide how that breaks the tie.

Lincoln

It would be incorrect to call Lincoln a biopic on the 16^th President. The major flaw of the biopic genre (and the reason I’m generally not a fan of it) is that many films seek to merely present the cinematic equivalent of a bullet points list of the major events in their subject’s life, rather than tell a full, solid narrative. Thankfully, Steven Spielberg’s long-awaited project opted not to take this route. Instead of just giving us a rundown of all the moments everyone knows about Abraham Lincoln from history class (the Lincoln-Douglas debates, the Gettysburg Address), the film instead depicts a small portion of his life. This makes for a more complete narrative, but also gives us a stronger, more in-depth portrait of the man.

The timeframe depicted, aside from a few scenes at the beginning and end, is January 1865, after President Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis) had won reelection, but before the start of his second term. The Civil War was coming to a close, and the South was seeking to make peace. It’s during this window, before the war ends and his second term begins, that Lincoln pushed the House of Representatives to pass the Thirteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery. This meant reconciling the more conservative faction of the Republican Party with the radical abolitionist faction, and also courting several Democrats who opposed such an amendment, all while keeping the news of a Confederate peace delegation a secret.

Day-Lewis, known for his incredible dedication to his roles, delivers one of the great performances in film history as Lincoln. Not only does he get the look right, but every element we know about the man from history is there, too. He was a man of great conviction and ideals, but understood that he had to work with his political rivals. He was soft-spoken and even humorous, but had the iron will to see his vision through. He was reviled by many from all sides and faced the greatest crisis the nation had seen up to that time, and yet managed to lead the country through it with cool-headed reason, intelligence, and uncanny political savvy.

With a lot of great performances, we can observe and admire the particulars of how actors perform and bring their role to life. That’s hard to do here because from the first few minutes, we forget it’s a performance because it seems like we’re watching the real Abraham Lincoln. We’ll never know exactly what Lincoln was like in person or how his voice sounded, but Day-Lewis embodies the man as perfectly as anyone imaginably could. He defines Lincoln the way film footage of the real John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, or Barack Obama define those Presidents, an achievement above and beyond the normal bounds of acting.

There are a few of the standard biopic trappings pertaining to Lincoln’s family life. Sally Field plays First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln as a loyal companion who struggles with personal demons (some historians believe she suffered from bipolar disorder, and the film briefly hints at this) and family drama, while at the same time giving some human, rather than political, counsel to her husband. She brings a veteran presence to the role that is convincing, reminding us that even some of the most revered historical figures were also family men. Less impressive is Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who’s not bad in the role of oldest son Robert Todd Lincoln, but seems to be more tacked on than a major part of the story.

The more engrossing part of the picture is the political drama, as we get to see all the great lengths Lincoln and his allies went to in order to pass the Thirteenth Amendment. It depicts the wheeling and dealing that we all expect from politicians, as well as the sharp-tongued barbs traded between the parties on the House Floor. But it also shows the appeals Lincoln made to his rivals’ humanity and intellect, and the delicate balance he had to strike between seeking an end to both the Civil War and slavery. It is here that the movie becomes a compelling, sometimes funny political drama, and by the time the Thirteenth Amendment passes onscreen (I don’t think I’m spoiling that for anybody), even the most cynical person might have their faith in the system restored. It is also here that the picture drops the semblance of a biopic and becomes an ensemble piece. Great performances shine from David Strathairn as Secretary of State William Seward, Hal Holbrook as influential Republican Francis Preston Blair, and especially Tommy Lee Jones, who brings an entertaining zeal as the radical abolitionist Congressman Thaddeus Stevens. He might have stolen the show if not for Day-Lewis’ performance, but Jones still manages to hold his own when the two are onscreen together.

Coming so soon after this year’s election, could Lincoln teach us any lessons about today’s political climate? Well, not directly; the issues debated onscreen are long gone, and the Democrats and Republicans in the film are near unrecognizable from their present-day counterparts. But the film does present the timeless truth that in order to do anything of importance, you have to work with people you disagree with, and that you can do so without compromising on your ideals.

Political insights aside, Lincoln is one of the best (and apparently most accurate) films ever made about American history, and one of the best movies in Spielberg’s career.