Handicapping The Best Picture Oscars 2020 – 1917

George MacKay in “1917.” credit: screenrant.com

Imagine my surprise at finding Sam Mendes’ 1917 to be my Best Picture favorite. It has a few things working against it. We just did the elegiac British war epic thing with Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk two years ago – it was very good, but must we dwell? There’s also the make-or-break strategy of presenting the entire film as one uninterrupted shot – Mendes, master cinematographer Roger Deakins and editor Lee Smith (Oscar winner for Dunkirk, by the by…) pull this off with revelatory success – but how much genuine art and drama must be diminished to labor over the elaborate mechanics of the clever visual gimmick? Did they really think that this was such a good idea in Birdman (2014) that they couldn’t resist it here?

From its first few minutes, their visual approach pays off, hooks you, and eventually seems like the best way they could have possibly told this story with these characters in this place. Two very young soldiers, Blake and Schofield, are ordered to traverse a perilously unfriendly, bombed-out stretch of Northern France to deliver a written order to another regiment preventing them from commencing an attack for which the German army have set a trap. Their success will save the lives of 1,600 fellow soldiers, including Blake’s own brother, an officer with the battalion.

We then, through the camera’s eye, follow closely behind, alongside and generally near to everything these two men do, everything they encounter, share a smile over, do battle with, sharing moment-to-moment fears and small victories on their way to fulfilling their mission. The historical template, and the digital trickery, might presuppose a bit of comfortable distance on the action, and, mercifully, it sometimes does. But the overall effect is immersive and emotionally evocative. The narrative isn’t just about what happens – it’s mostly about who it happens to, and since we’re far more intimately connected with them than most films attempt, we soon feel we have our own emotional stake in whatever happens. And, oh my, stuff happens…

The shooting style of 1917, almost miraculously, never feels claustrophobic in that whooshing stop-with-the-Steadicam way that lesser movies fall into. Once or twice the style reminded me of first-person shooter video games, but only fleetingly. They didn’t emulate that here, but you get why first-person video games are so popular. There’s a filmmaking dissertation to be written on how Roger Deakins got his cameras to do that, over and over again.

The best war movies celebrate normal people in extraordinary circumstances, and enable us to share the exhilarations and heartbreaks of our fellow human beings in those situations. Saving Private Ryan (1998) shares with this film a deeply personal subtext to a narratively straightforward war movie plot. But I think this film might even be better, as an experience and as a well-told story. It’s an impressive collaboration between a thrilling story (loosely based on shared stories from Mendes’ own grandfather) and the technology that tells it as well as it can be told. That there isn’t a best actor nod coming out of here is a shame, but I suspect there are better things to come for George MacKay after this.

There’s no aspect of this film I didn’t like, or that I had reservations about. Everyone involved did exactly what they set out to do. I’m gonna keep working on whether there’s a better recent war film out there. Right now I can’t think of it. This is the Best Picture of the 2020 Oscars.

Handicapping The Best Picture Oscars 2020 – Parasite

Yeo-jeong Jo in “Parasite.” credit: screenrant.com

Anyone who has been paying any attention to the South Korean film industry over the last thirty years or so knows that some of the most beautiful, inventive and challenging films of our young century have come from there. Just off the top of my head, the uninitiated could start with Oldboy (2003), The Handmaiden (2016) and Poetry (2010), and observe how the crowd-pleasing elements of sex and violence, triumph, tragedy and redemption and the straightforward telling of a well-written story can be so rewardingly different in non-Western hands.

An eccentric and incisive thriller about inequality, excess and survival, Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite (South Korea, 2019) follows the Kim family – father, mother, son and daughter – as they make their lower-class existence far more tolerable through intelligence, ingenuity, good humor, and, often, outright fraud and criminality. Ki-woo, the teen son (Woo-sik Choi), has a friend who tutors; he’s going abroad, and asks Ki-woo if he’s interested in taking on one of his clients, the rich teenage daughter of the Park family. Ki-woo has a well-honed sense of convincing pretense, and has no problem convincing the girl, Da-hye (Ji-so Jung) and her mother, Yeon-kyo (Yeo-jeong Jo) that he’ll be a great teacher. Da-hye has a precocious younger brother, Da-song (Hyun-jun Jung), whom his mother fancies as a young artistic prodigy. Who better to engage him and release his obvious talents, then Ki-woo’s art therapist acquaintance Ki-jung (his sister, of course, another artful dodger of prodigious talent)? The father, Ki-taek (Kang-ho Song) inevitably becomes the Park family’s valet/chauffeur – ingratiating himself with husband and father Dong-ik (Sun-kyun Lee) – and the three Kims then conspire to displace their toughest competition, the loyal housekeeper and personal assistant Moon-gwang (Lee Jung-eun), with their mother, Chung-sook (Jang Hye-jin). Finally succeeding at that, all four are now doing swimmingly, at abundant compensation, and the Park family is happy with all of them. What could possibly go wrong?

The two worlds that Bong creates for his characters are wildly disparate in both amusing and horrifying ways. The Kims’ semi-basement apartment has windows with a focused street-level view of local squalor. They use the billowing blasts of neighborhood fumigation to de-bug their apartment as well – by opening the windows. But thunderstorms, and subsequent flooding, are no joke. The Parks, on the other hand, are so secure and content in their home that they’re oblivious to how much advantage can be taken of the privileged trappings of their life. And, as the Parks languish and the Kims hustle, everything underneath, figuratively and literally, slowly starts to conspire against both of them in eventually astonishing ways.

Socio-political smarts, inventive black comedy and nerve-wracking chaos and vengeance all make their inexorable way through Bong’s great narrative. But Bong has a grip on everything else, too – the film looks great, his nomination-worthy actors work well with him, and he’s entirely aware of how much our loyalties shift from character-to-character as the film moves forward. Of the nine nominated films, this one is arguably the most entertaining. Even if you decide it was a bit much, or went on a bit long, you’ll be very happy you saw it. It’s my personal number three.

Handicapping The Best Picture Oscars 2020 – Little Women

Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Saoirse Ronan and Eliza Scanlen in “Little Women.” credit: Sony Pictures

Like most American men, I must confess to this being my first survey of Louisa May Alcott’s classic 1860s-set American novel, Little Women (USA, 2019), in print or film, but Greta Gerwig’s rigorous and resourceful filmed adaptation is richly observed and profoundly universal. The four March sisters are starting their lives from four distinct perspectives, but their sense of charity, tolerance, self-possession, propriety and graciousness is foundational, whether it’s being indulged, expressed, critiqued or outrightly rebelled against.

We meet Jo March (Saoirse Ronan, fiercely engaging), teaching in New York, where she delivers a short story she’s written to the publisher Dashwood (Tracy Letts); not content to rely on the world of men to determine her fate, she’s hoping to start her own independent career as a writer. Meg (Emma Watson), on the other hand, looks forward to marriage, children and domestic life in hometown Concord, and has married the poor but honest John Brooke (James Norton) – they have two girls themselves. Our introduction to Amy (Florence Pugh) occurs in Paris, where she’s studying art and keeping company with her rich Aunt March (Meryl Streep). The youngest, Beth (Eliza Scanlen), is a reserved homebody (but still open and friendly) who’s happy to stay in and help around the house. She’s also the musician of the house – all of them play piano, but she most avidly.

We’re not too far into the film when we get the intertitle “7 Years Earlier,” and we launch into that earlier timeline just as enthusiastically as what’s preceded. Personalities, events and revelations start to connect and criss-cross, and Gerwig even uses the time structure to cheat the narrative a bit here and there. We’re in Concord, then back in New York, now we’re in Paris; we meet other characters who coexist in all three places and timelines, most notably Teddy Lawrence, aka “Lauri” (Timothée Chalamet, very good here), their young neighbor in Concord with a reputation for self-centeredness, but a seasoned heartbreaker’s wit, charm and appetites. He lives with his grandfather (the reliable Chris Cooper), a wealthy but generous widower who has also lost a daughter. Lauri is a contender for Jo’s affections, as well as Friedrich Bhaer (Louis Garrel), another teacher/professor in Jo’s New York boarding house. (The casting overall is wonderful.)

Gerwig’s directing (and writing) chops are undeniable – I’m baffled by Todd Phillip’s directing nomination over hers. Yorick Le Saux’s photography is excellent, and gorgeous, as always, but Gerwig clearly controls the visual narrative with a firm hand, employing an impressive command of composition, camera movement and even some subtle-but-effective slow-motion. The camera is in almost constant motion, but always motivated, always purposeful. I’ve found most of the films this year about twenty minutes overlong – this one feels just right at 135 minutes.

The top six are honestly interchangeable – it’s as solid a card of contenders as we’ve had for Best Picture in quite a few years. Odds-wise, I’d put Little Women midpack with Marriage Story, Parasite (not likely for Best Picture) or The Irishman, but I honestly have to say this was my personal number 2. It’s superb work.

 

 

Handicapping The Best Picture Oscars 2020 – Marriage Story

Scarlett Johansson, Azhy Robertson and Adam Driver in “Marriage Story.” credit: newson6.com

Not normally a director whose work I actively seek out, Noah Baumbach’s earlier films tend to highlight the accumulating small disappointments and subsequent bitterness of domestic life, and their depressive effect on families and relationships. He’d reportedly spread out a bit in his following film collaborations with Greta Gerwig (Greenberg, Frances Ha, Mistress America), and woven his customary acid in with broader doses of humor and graciousness. Marriage Story (USA, 2019) profitably draws from both of those wells.

Charlie (Adam Driver) and Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) are separating, and both have a healthy fear of the finality and failure that divorce might represent. Charlie’s a successful off-Broadway stage director, and his career is in a slow but insistent ascension. Nicole is a talented actress, reliable and hardworking, and performs in Charlie’s work. But she gave up a burgeoning film career in Los Angeles in order to be with Charlie and start a family with him in New York, and she’s experiencing a bit of buyer’s remorse. The self-sufficiency that makes him so good as an artist and father isn’t nearly as sustaining for Nicole, and there’s a growing void in her life that she needs to solve. On a trip to L.A. to visit her family, a friend of a friend refers her to a lawyer, Nora Fanshaw (the terrific Laura Dern), who commiserates with Nicole and persuades her that divorcing Charlie will be the best thing she can do for herself, her career and their young son Henry (Azhy Robertson). Charlie is understandably distressed at the prospect of divorcing, even more so when shopping for his own lawyer, and trying to navigate the NY / LA dilemma.

It’s easy to diminish the story as White People’s problems, and you get to do that, but the most admirable thing here, the thing that rang truest, was knowing what nice people they were, knowing how hard they’ve worked to create their family, knowing how loving and supportive they’ve both tried to be for a long time, and ultimately knowing that none of that was going to work for them anymore anyway. That scenario is artfully and expressively constructed, but our admiration must co-exist with the sadness, the inevitability. Then the issue becomes an uncertain partnership to keep their lawyers from eating the both of them alive.

I wouldn’t call Baumbach’s narrative structure here clean or tight – he (and cinematographer Robbie Ryan) set fairly hard boundaries for the actions to occur in, but, like John Cassavettes, he sets the actors loose on the script and in the scene, and the eccentricities and loose ends of the moment become part of the fabric of the characters. Some of the more deliberate character/camera movements feel forced, stagy or obvious, and he’s not good with larger group scenes. Overall, it’s well-shot but awkwardly executed. But his actors are superb here, and clearly like working with him. I need to perhaps backtrack to some of those earlier films I passed on.

Regrettably, I need to put this very good film midpack among the nominees. But the competition is fierce this year – the top six or seven films are all contenders.

Handicapping The Best Picture Oscars 2020 – The Irishman

Joe Pesci and Robert DeNiro in “The Irishman.” credit: collider.com

An autumnal, almost Ingmar Bergman-ish reflection on aging, personal burdens, loyalty and memory, The Irishman (USA, 2019) is, nevertheless, unmistakably Martin Scorsese’s film. The epic length, the seamlessly narrative (both scripted and visual), the profoundly high moral stakes and the bedrock commitment of the performances are what consistently put Scorsese’s films into a whole other rarified league. But he’s also game to test himself in the process, and The Irishman contains a few problem-solving challenges.

The story follows Frank Sheeran (Robert DeNiro), a Philadelphia truck driver delivering meat and food to suppliers in the early fifties. After starting a sideline hustle, skimming inventories and making his own in-pocket sales, he’s sued by one of the suppliers. But union lawyer Bill Bufalino (Ray Romano) gets Sheeran off the hook, and introduces Frank to his brother Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci), a straight-up mob boss who takes a shine to Frank and uses him for increasingly urgent, and violent, errands. Over a few years later, Russell entrusts Frank with becoming Jimmy Hoffa’s personal assistant and bodyguard; Hoffa has mixed feelings about the Mob’s influence on his business, but accepts them as a necessary evil considering the opportunistic capitalists he’s contending against. Hoffa (Al Pacino) is always bigger-than-life, has an ego the size of Nebraska, and is constantly being challenged as union leader by other local labor strongmen, most notably Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano (Stephen Graham); but, like Russell, Hoffa eventually comes to trust Frank, and they become fast family friends.

And that’s just the fifties.

The unions of America, the Kennedy administration and powerful capitalist interests all converge and do battle in the sixties, and the film’s narrative spreads out and ferments accordingly. I think Scorsese and screenwriter Steven Zaillian, adapting Charles Brandt’s true-crime memoir I Heard You Paint Houses, were ultimately happy with giving viewers the choice of big-screen theaters and streaming television. The 209-minute running time can be daunting, but no less rewarding than stalwarts like The Godfather films, Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in America, or any number of prestige releases from the late fifties or early sixties like Doctor Zhivago (1965). Rodrigo Prieto’s visuals are lush and impressive, but doing the whole film in two or three segments, at your own pace, can be just as rewarding. The film also uses digital effects to de-age the faces of the main characters here. Most people seem to adjust to it after a half-hour or so, and think nothing of it, but I must admit to finding it consistently distracting; scenes featuring the older versions of the characters were like little oases amidst the hard outlining and tinted eyes. It’s not a dealbreaker, but it’ll all look alarmingly primitive in five years or so.

Even with reservations, it’s still his best film since The Departed (2006). I myself put it in fourth place here, but any of the top five could win.

 

 

Handicapping The Best Picture Oscars 2020 – Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood

Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie in “Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood.” credit: screengeek.net

Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (USA, 2019) is as fondly nostalgic for the filmmaker’s adopted hometown as anything else he’s done. Lovingly shot by cinematographer Robert Richardson, the downtown streets, high-rent residences in the canyons and the desert scrub just outside of town are unmistakably cinematic. It’s a well-wrought environment for a complex narrative. Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an increasingly insecure professional actor transitioning from glamour-puss TV good-guy stardom to older, more morally-chequered character roles. He’s a nice-enough guy, but he’s also a bit of a small-town lunkhead, truth be told. But he’s smart and has good judgment on who’s advice to follow. His best friend and business partner is Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), who serves as Rick’s stuntman, chauffeur, bodyguard, personal assistant, maintenance man and any other role they can think up on the fly. Cliff’s pretty accommodating, lives in an Airstream out behind a drive-in and has a bull terrier who perhaps gave Brad some nomination competition. Cliff has a secure and easygoing temperament that’s the perfect counterbalance to Rick’s mid-life jitters.

Also figuring prominently are Rick’s new neighbors on lush, hilly Cielo Drive, the Polanskis, Roman and his bride Sharon Tate. The recently arrived couple are the toast of the town, making the scene at a party at the Playboy Mansion West. But the beautiful but modest Sharon can barely believe her luck, bashfully asking a movie theater box-office worker if she can come in to see her own latest film, the Dean Martin spy spoof The Wrecking Crew.

That Once Upon a Time… in the title suggests a fairy tale somewhere in the midst of all of this car culture, pop music, celebrity promotion and movie shooting, and we slowly learn that its monster, named Charlie, may live at the Spahn Movie Ranch outside of Chatsworth, along with a group of communally-living young friends named Tex, Pussycat and Squeaky.

Tarantino’s film hits notes of affectionate comedy and graciousness that he may not have found expression for since Jackie Brown (1997). But in bringing all of his narrative lines together, you just know that retributive violence, laid on fairly thick, will also figure into the revisionist history that Tarentino spins. He saves most of it for the astonishing conclusion, but the film is peppered with unfortunates on the wrong end of someone’s anger, or expertise.

I don’t think it’s my Best Picture favorite this year, but it’s up there, far better than Hateful Eight and Inglorious Basterds, and a bit better than Django Unchained. He’s veering much closer to John Woo’s masculine-centric sensibilities than Robert Aldrich’s or Sergio Corbucci’s, but his storytelling chops (if sometimes long-winded) are still impressive. It’s his best film in twenty years, easily, and well worth seeing even if it doesn’t win an Oscar. (The masterful Richardson will lose to Roger Deakins this time, and rightfully so. Pitt’s a shoo-in for supporting, though – that’s bank.)

Handicapping The Best Picture Oscars 2020 – Ford v Ferrari

Matt Damon and Christian Bale in “Ford v Ferrari.” credit: Merrick Morton/Twentieth Century Fox

James Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari (USA, 2019) is a terrific piece of filmed entertainment. It follows the early days of driver and car designer Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon, solid as always) as he gives up on driving over health issues and starts building cars for the Ford Motor Company’s nascent racing team. Young Lee Iacocca (Jon Bernthal) wants Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts) to merge with Enzo Ferrari (Remo Girone) to race Fords in Europe, culminating in Ford winning the 24-hours at LeMans. But Ferrari turns their good-faith offer into a betrayal. Taking Ferrari’s machinations as an insult, Ford gives Iacocca permission to cultivate an American team, and Iacocca wants the talented Shelby. But Shelby won’t accept the task unless his friend and driver Ken Miles (Christian Bale) is part of his team. Miles is a prodigiously talented driver and engineer, but is conspicuously lacking in people skills.

Much of what transpires here is inspirational sports-movie boilerplate – the extreme disagreements and competitive fires between two dog-loyal friends, and their combined efforts to deliver for Big Corporate despite their disgust for the hands that feed them, has all been seen before. Athletes vs. management, lone wolves vs. family, ingenuity vs. danger. In the plus column, it’s genuinely joyful to watch pros Damen and Bale “pass the ball” back and forth, and Mangold’s visual schemes and execution of the racing sequences is thrilling. On the other hand, I’m not sure where they’d trim it, but I must say that 152 minutes is far too much running time. It’s just too long. I’m delighted to see the talented Caitriona Balfe get feature film work as Mrs. Miles, Noah Jupe does just fine as Ken’s son Peter, and the intrigues perpetrated by Shelby and Miles’ corporate vice-overlords (Iacocca, and the vindictive Leo Beebe, played by Josh Lucas) are predictably compelling, but Mangold and his three editors needed to make a few more hard choices where they’re all concerned. It’s also a very male movie; besides Balfe, the female cast is entirely bit-part secretaries and extras. That was the racing world in the mid-sixties, but half of the moviegoing audience may have less interest here, understandably.

I heartily recommend the film. I’m glad I saw it, it’d be great on a big screen, and I like it much better than many of these others. But aside from technical awards, I don’t think you’ll hear much from Ford v Ferrari on awards night.

Handicapping The Best Picture Oscars 2020 – Jojo Rabbit

Scarlett Johansson and Roman Griffin Davis in “Jojo Rabbit.” credit: Larry Horricks/ Twentieth Century Fox

Following in the comedic footsteps of Charlie Chaplin, Ernst Lubitsch and Mel Brooks (to name only a few), the dark and funny New Zealand satirist filmmaker Taika Waititi brings us Jojo Rabbit (USA, 2019), a compact but eventful World War II bildungsroman that follows ten-year-old Jojo Betzler (a well-cast Roman Griffin Davis) as he starts his first days of training with the Hitler Jugend, or Youth Corps. With his father fighting on the front, and his loving Mom, Rosie (Scarlett Johansson) keeping the home fires burning, Jojo is eager to do his youthful duty and unleash the soon-to-emerge storm trooper within. Luckily, he’s guided and advised by his attentive imaginary friend, Der Fuhrer himself, Adolph Hitler (Waititi, cheerily goosestepping and pontificating con brio).

Training, however, reveals our young aspirant to be less than ruthless – he acquires his nickname from failing a test of supposed fortitude, commits a little boo-boo with a potato-masher grenade, and starts quickly losing confidence in himself, despite Mom, Adolph and his new buddy Yorki’s (Archie Yates) fervent support. Furthermore, he discovers a secret that Rosie’s been keeping from him – a young Jewish girl, Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie) has been hiding in a secret room in Mom’s bedroom. An uneasy détente is established, with the older girl presenting Jojo with a kinder-yet-cautious perspective while gamely helping Jojo with his Jugend homework on why Jews are scary and evil.

It’s easy to fathom the tone Waititi’s going for here, even if he’s only intermittently successful. Atrocity is always lurking around the edges, yet Jojo, Rosie and the other inhabitants of fictional Falkenheim move through their lives as uninterruptedly as possible, keeping their head down when things get uncomfortable and maintaining inventive good humor. Rosie, as played by Johansson, is an unceasingly optimistic force in Jojo’s life, adroitly turning awkward moments into games, fun lessons or pep talks, and is genuinely funny. But the other sequences that should keep the comedic tone percolating just aren’t executed with much energy or commitment. It’s assumed that once we figure out it’s supposed to be funny that we’ll just go along with it. But, especially in the sequences with Captain Klenzendorf (Sam Rockwell) and his semi-hapless support officers (Rebel Wilson and Alfie Allen), there isn’t enough script or direction to support their credibility. The dichotomies of noble provincials against the willful monsters, and the absurdities that might make the barbarity survivable, just don’t balance out.

Much of it is a mess (the Wes Anderson-esque compositions; the muddled early sequences with anachronistic Beatles and Tom Waits music that made me actually wonder if this was supposed to be the 1940s, which I’d expected), and some of it works (Johansson richly deserves her nomination – she’s the hardest-working person in the entire film; Jojo’s later bomb-strewn reunion with Yorki is hilariously touching; and Rockwell later redeems with melodrama what he had earlier phoned in as comedy), but the overall ebb-and-flow of humor-to-horror, beauty-to-terror, just isn’t consistently orchestrated. When the emotionally resonant parts do happen, they stand on their own, almost dissociatively. Waititi’s point, bless ‘im, is Love And Humanity Will Out, but it’s an unfortunate 148-minute slog to get there.