Like a lot of people I go through the annual ritual of trying to see every Oscar-nominated movie before the actual Oscars are awarded. Also like most people I always fail, but this year I did better than in other years. In any case, whether I’ve actually seen all the films never prevents me from determining who should win Best Picture, Best Actor/Actress, Best Director, etc. Explaining exactly why that is would take far too long. Due to time constraints (and without disclosing too many spoilers) I’ll just deal with the Best Picture category.
In that category I’ve seen Barbie, Maestro, Oppenheimer, The Holdovers, Zone of Interest, Anatomy of a Fall, Poor Things and American Fiction. With the exception of Maestro, all of these are great films. I won’t spoil the legacy of Leonard Bernstein by drawing further attention to Maestro; anyone can glean my sentiments on that one here. I did not see Killers of the Flower Moon or Past Lives so I’m leaving them out. From what I understand, Killers will probably do well, and from everything I’ve read about its treatment of the terrorism towards the Osage nation I wish I’d seen it, but there’s little chance I’ll be able to before Oscar time. Apparently it’s now only available for renting on Apple TV.
So without further ado, here we go.
Zone of Interest: Superb and groundbreaking use of sound in conveying what it must have been like to live directly next to a Nazi death camp, without ever actually seeing what is occurring in the camp itself. It’s beyond disturbing, obviously. German Actress Sandra Huller does an amazing job conveying the character of Rudolf Hoss’s (the longtime Commandant of Auschwitz) wife. Like her husband she is completely unconcerned with the staggering horror they are perpetrating, and is more concerned about obtaining “goodies,” such as fur coats and other luxury items, stolen from the Jewish prisoners before they are gassed or otherwise executed. She is unhappy when her husband is ordered to transfer to another camp, and urges him to find a means for them to stay, even if it
means she stays and he goes away. Playing a truly horrific human being, it’s not clear to me why she wasn’t nominated for this film (she is nominated for Best Actress in Anatomy of a Fall). It’s a unique movie with some echoes of Andrei Tarkovsky’s directing style, but it probably won’t win Best Picture because its heavy reliance on sound in this context to convey the horrors of the Holocaust is, for some reason inexplicable to me, “controversial.” It’s also subtitled which apparently is too big a lift for some people.
Poor Things: Strange movie, definitely worth seeing but if intended to convey a metaphor about female empowerment I think it will leave a lot of filmgoers scratching their head (Be warned,Spoilers follow on this one). Emma Stone plays Bella, whose origin owes itself to a brain transplant, with the brain obtained from a baby/fetus, back into the corpse of a young woman, the baby’s mother, who committed suicide. Got that? Bella proceeds to see the world (Europe) with fresh eyes, discovers orgasms and spends the better part of the film satiating herself with various men, none of whom are particularly nice people, and all of whom behave in ways displaying their innate sense of entitlement, some quite sadistically. There seems to be a “statement” here, one highly uncomplimentary towards men and the institutionalized patriarchy they’ve forced women to navigate through, which is fine, but as Bella develops she exhibits traits not particularly distinguishable from a sociopath, so it’s not clear a lot of people are going to “identify” with her. Towards the end she starts to develop empathy. Well, it won’t bore you, that’s for sure. Beautifully filmed, lots of sex and colorful costuming and art design, but kind of jarring. I can’t imagine this gets the Best Picture nod.
Oppenheimer seems to be the favorite for Best Picture. It is a good film. But if we’re talking Christopher Nolan films I’m partial to Inception and Interstellar. Both of those films left a seriously lasting impression on me, but for some reason Oppenheimer (beyond the atomic explosion scene) just didn’t carry over for me the way some of Nolan’s other films did. But it may win, because Cillian Murphy is very, very good, and its got a lot of historical cred (so does Killers, I understand). As I’ve noted elsewhere, for me Robert Downey Jr. for me it just seems like he’s playing Tony Stark all the time now, just in different guise. Your mileage may vary. It’s a great film, tells a really important historical story but it was a bit overhyped and just not as memorable as some of Nolan’s other work, at least to me. But the Academy may feel like its time to give Mr. Nolan his due.
The Holdovers is fricking awesome. It’s funny and heartbreaking which is not an easy thing to pull off. It’s a story about a troubled kid forced to holdover at a tony male boarding school during the Christmas break, away from his mom and her new husband who are off on vacation somewhere for their honeymoon. Paul Giamatti is the teacher tasked with supervising him during this time, and he’s an equally troubled soul, having obtained his job teaching there under a bit of a cloud after a bad personal experience at Harvard (the nature of which we won’t disclose here). He’s a jerk initially but we get more insight into his personality as the movie progresses. Da’Vine Joy Randolph is the head of the school cafeteria and is also holding over for the break. She will probably (and deservedly) win Best supporting actress. What I loved about this film is the same thing I loved about American Fiction: these are actually linear stories with a lot of character development. For that reason they’re easier to empathize with the characters. Of all these films, I think this may be the one I actually liked the most. Giamatti and Dominic Sessa who plays the kid, are both awesome. But because it’s basic, straightforward conventional storytelling it probably won’t win Best Picture from an Academy that lately seems to be enamored of incomprehensible “profound” digital montages and “modern” cinematic flamboyance like “Everything, Everywhere All At Once.”
American Fiction is also a terrific film. Like Origin (which probably deserved to have been nominated) it takes its audience seriously in addressing race issues in this country. But it’s also quite funny, and Jeffrey Wright and Sterling K. Brown (who plays Wright’s character’s brother) are riveting. It’s about a serious writer who reluctantly obtains success by anonymously writing “popular” Black “street” fiction, which he considers to be basically a dodge for assuaging White guilt and conforming to White assumptions and stereotypes. Like the Holdovers, it’s a real story with real continuity and character development. There’s also a realistic portrayal of dementia (which, thanks to the aging demographic is soon to be the dominant social concern in this country, to the extent it’s not already). It naturally appeals to writers who will recognize a lot of the issues it brings up. Will it win Best Picture? Doubtful, but it’s definitely worth including in the top tier.
Anatomy of a Fall is an intriguing mystery about a death that occurs in a relatively isolated mountain chalet in Grenoble, France. It’s a neat peek into the French legal system which is far more freewheeling than our own, with lawyers on opposing sides talking to each other a lot in the middle of a trial, as it gradually peels back the layers of the mystery revealing a couple’s psychological issues. You don’t know what happened until the end so I’m not going to reveal more about it, except to note Sandra Huller (again) is very good, as is Milo Machado Graner, the boy who plays her son, and Antoine Reinartz as one of the prosecutors. Again, more than half of it is subtitled (but you’re all watching Shogun, right? So you’re used to that!) and it’s basically a focused snapshot of a relatively circumscribed event, so it’s very unlikely going to win Best Picture.
So which of these should win Best Picture? Of these alone, Barbie should (with the caveat that I haven’t seen Killers or Past Lives). Not because it’s the most successful of them financially, but because I think it’s going to resonate with each generation of young girls in particular as the years go by. Practically everyone has seen it, so I’m not going to go deeply into the plot here. All of the other films discussed above are great in their own right, but I think Barbie is just going to last longer in the public consciousness. It has the quality of being a cultural marker that I think may display itself over time. It’s not the best “story” among these nominees, but it may have the most durable theme (Zone is obviously durable in its subject matter but it’s always going to be regarded as an experiment). It’s certainly not as “deep” as the other films (it’s been criticized as being “feminism light” and I disagree), but it shouldn’t be mistaken for a glitzy live-action cartoon either. There’s a lot going on in that movie that doesn’t initially sink in, and its really the most subversive explication of toxic masculinity in this country that I’ve ever seen. Having seen it four times, it also continues to make me laugh (particularly the last hour), which is unusual.
Of course that would mean that the director of the best picture of the year, Greta Gerwig, wasn’t even nominated for Best Director. That phenomenon (for those interested in such trivia) has occurred six times. Which is just further confirmation (as if we needed any further confirmation) that the Academy is — yet again — pretty much out to lunch.
I’ll be transporting offspring this evening when this goes live, so please feel free to tell me what I’m wrong about in the comments. My failure to respond does not mean I’m ignoring anyone, it just means it’s not wise to text on I-95 or the Schuylkill expressway.