Another
Oscar season is upon us, and I am running out of time to comment, so this may
be shorter than the two dozen times I’ve composed this post in my head (in the
shower, while I’m swimming or driving, before I fall asleep at night). I’ve felt that the theme running through most
pictures this year is trust and betrayal, while last year’s films revolved
around faith and belief. I will explore
this theme in each film discussed. What
I’m going to do is list these films in the order of least favorite to most
favorite, so no skipping down to the bottom of the post, because that would be
cheating. No cheating. Here we go.
#10
(Yes, 10. I know there are only 9 movies
up for best picture, but you’ll understand when we get to the end.) – 12 Years a Slave. Yes, the film that won best picture (drama)
at the Golden Globes is my least favorite film of the bunch. Solomon Northup blindly trusted that his
existence in the north as a free man would allow him to live like any other
person, but he is betrayed by those he feels akin to (of his class, his
education), resulting in what most people consider to be an exploration of
tragedy. The title itself is the
starting point for why this film rates so low here. Northup was a slave twelve years. I do not deny that as being horrid, but he
had a time before and after that period where he was a free man. The true tragedy of the film is those that
are slaves all their lives and have no recourse, and the further catastrophe is
to be a woman and a slave. What I truly found
abominable was Patsey’s plight at the hands of both Epps and his wife. Steve McQueen’s direction successfully
alienated me from being able to identify with the protagonist, which was his
goal. I’m going to be bringing in
snippets of conversations I’ve had with people into my discussion here, but as
I totally agree with Hazel, Northup was a non-character. Because he was so blank and reactive, with no
realized identity, I couldn’t engage with him.
McQueen designed this character to have him stand for us as a witness to
what happens. But, that doesn’t mean
Northup needed to be so absent. What was
particularly annoying was when McQueen endeavored to put us, the audience,
inside the action in intense scenes with his use of hand-held cameras and sound
editing. From what I’ve read, Hunger (2008) and Shame (2011) are good films, and I look forward to seeing them, and
he clearly has a relationship with Fassbender, but if this film is any
indication of what I can expect of those two, my enthusiasm for the other two
films is a bit quelled. Let me give you
further example of my irritation. There
is a sequence once Northup is captured and awaiting transport further
south. There is a shot where he is
sitting with a few others, and the camera pans / cranes up to reveal a map
painting of 1840s Washington DC. It is
meant to say to the audience, “look how close he is to freedom” and hit us like
a sucker punch to the gut. That this
sort of activity (the capturing and selling of African Americans) could be
happening right next to normalcy and is hiding in plain sight. Contrast that to a scene from Quentin Tarantino’s
1992 Reservoir Dogs. Mr. Blonde is torturing a cop with a razor
blade. He grabs hold of the cop, and the
camera pans up and left. All we can hear
is the struggle. Our brain fills in the
horror. After that, Mr. Blonde tells the
cop not to go anywhere, and the camera backs out of the room, with Mr. Blonde
in front of it, and follows Mr. Blonde outside the garage. The garage, interior and dark, give way to
brilliant sunlight, so much so that Mr. Blonde squints. He walks over to his car, and we can see that
this garage is in an everyday neighborhood.
We hear children giggling off camera, playing nearby. Mr. Blonde goes to the trunk of his car, gets
out a canister of gas, and returns inside the building. We see the setting as the everyday, and that
the most unspeakable things could be happening one door down from our domestic
world. The chill that scene caused was
far more gripping than a pan to a map painting.
It was overall cheap and easy. Why
McQueen is up for best director is beyond me.
#9
– Nebraska. While this was one of the best shot movies I
saw this year (beautiful black and white cinematography that did an impressive
job of establishing the setting which, at times, was vastly more interesting
than the plot), and captured the sense of place in the same way that Coen
Brothers’ movies like No Country for Old
Men and Fargo do, the plot of the
movie was too silly and sad. I’m sure
there are some delusional, senile people who get stuff in the mail and believe
they’ve won a fantastic prize that any other lucid person wouldn’t even bother
opening let alone reading, but that Woody has a wife and two sons that can’t explain why he hasn’t won a million dollars and must then
take him to the address on the notice is further instance of how much of a
failure our society has become. Maybe
that’s it. Maybe this film is brilliant,
and Woody’s pursuit of a non-existent prize is a metaphor for the way this
country no longer cares about its citizens.
We’ve put our trust in a system that seemingly promised prosperity,
security and freedom. What we have now
is none of those things. I’m sorry, but
after watching most of the films up for best documentary this year, I’m pretty
disillusioned with America as a concept.
Or are we supposed to laugh at Woody?
He seems like a nice enough guy.
But if all he wants with a million dollars is a truck, and it is so
vital for him to get that million dollars and be a big man to his friends and
family (and friends and family here seem to be loose terms), then doesn’t that
make him shallow, as shallow as the family and friends who only seem to want a
piece of his fortune because he was such a crashing failure in the past when
everyone had to help him out? On the
surface, this appears to be a comedy because Alexander Payne is poking fun at
Midwestern stereotypes, but this movie is pretty tragic overall.
#8
– Philomena. 5 of the 9 films up for best picture are
based on true stories. Out of those
five, this to me may be the most tragic in its sincerity. The other four are about failures of
government (12 Years and the
existence of slavery, Dallas Buyers
and the failure of the FDA to get effective drugs to a dying population, Captain Phillips and our deteriorating
foreign policy, Wolf and
deregulation). But whereas there’s a
happy ending of sorts to the other four (slavery was abolished and Northup was
returned to his family, the efforts of Ron Woodroof to get policy changes about
medicine trials, Richard Phillips being rescued and returned to his family, Jordan
Belfort reinventing himself and hopefully bringing some insight into how to
handle the transaction of securities exchange), there is no happy ending in Philomena. In fact, the ending is rather
nauseating. Philomena, who had never had
sex explained to her because Catholics are so incredibly frightened by the
notion of educating their own on how the human body works, gets pregnant and is
sent to a convent to have her sinful baby in shame. Then, her child is sold to Americans. The whole thing is covered up, and she is so
brainwashed by the nuns that what she did will probably ruin her chances of
making it into heaven, she never makes a real attempt at finding her child until decades
later. Philomena is betrayed by her
trust in the one thing that is supposed to love and care for her
unconditionally, her religion. And even
when it is revealed that the fault is more in the vengeance of Sister
Hildegarde, who feels that her vow of chastity to be a nun excuses all manner
of punishment for those who experienced pleasures of the flesh, than in the
religion itself, Philomena maintains her trust in her religion and forgives
Hildegarde. Some may find this to be a
beautiful, meaningful moment in the film, that love and patience and kindness
and forgiveness are saving graces of the true believer. But I side with Martin – those fucking bastards
robbed a teenager of her child, and that is unconscionable. For those of us on the planet that don’t
believe in a Disney World in the sky after we die and that our lives are right
here, right now, this notion of “I’ll forego whatever wrongs, injustice and
hardships on Planet Earth for cake and ice cream Forever” doesn’t make a shred
of sense, and that Philomena lived a life of pain and longing and loss for something
that really wasn’t her fault (if you don’t know what sex is because no one told
you what it was, then how can you be faulted?) is unwarranted. But I’m getting so damn sick of hearing about
how religion is the root of so much evil; I challenge Hollywood to make a movie
where religion is the good guy for
once.
#7
– Gravity. This movie was beautiful and technically
mind-blowing. Alfonso Cuarį½¹n should win
best director, and Emmanuel Lubezki should win best cinematography. But when it comes to best picture, you have
to look at the sum of the parts. This
story is very simple and exceedingly contrived.
Some sequences were very
heavy-handed (the airlock fetus sequence, the evolution "emerging-from-the-water"
sequence, the George Clooney hallucination sequence to cement Stone’s resolve
in returning to Earth, the “my-child-died-so-why-bother-returning” motivation
conflict). This was not a well-told
story. But it was so beautiful to watch. The
way to work it back to the theme I’ve been exploring is the crux of why everything
goes awry for the crew – the Russians (again, becoming our main bad guys –
well, them, the terrorists and North Korea) have blown up a spy satellite to
circumvent an international incident, and the debris that radiates out from
that is what shreds everything in its path.
I thought that when it came to science, especially with Antarctica and
space, everyone needed to play by the same rules. We can’t trust that anymore either,
right? Or not to betray the beauty that
is life, although this is a pretty extreme version of staying alive to see another
day. And I’m not saying Sandra Bullock
did a bad job, but when you have the other four women in the category (and the
omission of Emma Thompson in Saving Mr.
Banks), this doesn’t seem all that big a deal.
#6
– Dallas Buyers Club. I was initially a bigger fan of this after I
saw it, and it is a solid film, and I really appreciate that this isn’t an “AIDS
message” film, which almost every other film with characters with AIDS becomes,
but it was a message film. The message
is that the government, who we trust to keep us safe, sucks at its job. Whatever politics or money or bullshit comes
into play, someone on the other side of the equation (read “those that need the
help the most”) is going to get shafted.
We get these great stories about these underdogs that fight the system,
and it is never an easy fight, and there are always casualties. The acting in this movie is great, except
that Jennifer Garner looks like a community theater reject when put in the same
room with McConaughey and Leto. There’s
nothing particularly flashy about this film, but the sequence where Ron stands
in a room of butterflies, the lights flickering on and off, at the same time
that Rayon slips away, is poetic.
#5
– This was running really close to #4, but #4 got the edge based on strength of
screenplay and strong ensemble cast: The Wolf of Wall Street. It’s fun to see Scorsese flex his directing
muscles like this. True, as many have
already said, this is Goodfellas for
the late 1980s – early 1990s. And we
certainly don’t have people with guns running around. Crime has transferred from the thugs to the
white collar criminals. But boy, this film was fun to watch. It was 180 minutes long, but I didn’t feel
it. And some of the sequences were so
masterful. The three that stick out were
the Quaaludes sequence, McConaughey’s devouring and spitting out DiCaprio in
the beginning of the film, and the sequence where Belfort is speaking to his
team for seemingly the last time as a farewell then changes his mind. The exchange he has with the woman who was
with him from the beginning, how she asked for a job and then a salary advance
of $5000 because she was about to be evicted from her apartment, and he wrote
her a check for $25,000 because he “believed” in her. You get the overall impression that many of
the people in that room would walk into the jaws of hell for Belfort, because
he is a leader. He told them, “I can
teach you how to make more money than you’ve ever seen in your life” and then
did it. Granted, what they were doing
was illegal, but how often does someone look you in the eye, tell you something
like that, and then deliver? That’s
trust. And everyone is acting their
asses off. Some people maintain that
DiCaprio is not a great actor, and perhaps he’s not, but he is very convincing
as this character, and I’m starting to think Jonah Hill needs to get more
roles. I loved his work in Moneyball, but he’s still doing shit
like 22 Jump Street. His agent needs to step his game up. There’s plenty on the internet about the real
Jordan Belfort which equate him from devil incarnate to genius, so there’s too
much to wade through about if this was an “accurate” depiction (my guess is
no), but the story’s a great one, and hey, how many people lost a shit-ton of
money due to the betrayal of Wall Street?
You think those people care about you?
Nope. I have a retirement fund,
but I pretty much view that money as something I’ll probably never see
again. I’m not much of a gambler (I’ll
only gamble with fake money), but nothing about people who work with money for
a living instills me with confidence. My feeling is that if they were so good
at investing, they’d be on a yacht right now and not working.
#4
– American Hustle. This is the ultimate example of the theme of
trust and betrayal, because it is about conning and grifting. In order to be able to take someone’s money,
you have to win their confidence. You
have to make them trust you before you betray them. And everyone
in this movie is manipulating everyone else to a certain extent in order to get
what they want. The issue is that not
everyone can win. The acting in this
movie is masterful, and I’m starting
to think that David Russell is the actor’s director. I’m still amazed that he got Robert de Niro
to act instead of being Robert de Niro (like he is most of the time) in Silver Linings Playbook. And de Niro has a cameo in this film as someone
truly menacing. Amy Adams kills it,
Jennifer Lawrence had me cracking up, and the screen play was so
delicious. Bradley Cooper was a bit too
manic (he needs to work on toning it down a bit). Christian Bale was just drop dead great. The way his character shifts because
he starts to believe in what Polito is doing for his people is a
revelation. And Jeremy Renner was
great! Now, I hate the 70s, but I’ll be
the first to admit that they did an awesome job reconstructing something that
was truly grotesque. A solid, well-constructed
film all around.
#3
– Captain Phillips. Whereas Gravity
was technically masterful but lacked anything for me to really connect to, Captain Phillips was technically
masterful, plus suspenseful, plus real, plus the acting and directing were
outstanding. Where I couldn’t put myself
in 12 Years and was supposed to, I was very much in this,
but as an afterthought. If you listen to the NPR interview with Hanks and Greengrass, and you learn a little about
Greengrass’s background as a documentary filmmaker, you can understand how he
got from that to the Bourne films to
this. It is a perfect mesh of action and
realism. This is the most intense film I’ve
seen all year. And every time I want to
put this lower on the list, because I did actually enjoy American Hustle more, I keep thinking of the young Somali-Americans
in their first movie and how great they all were, the claustrophobic third act
in a life raft that was not cut away
to try to make more room but filmed inside to capture the feeling of stifling horror,
and Tom Hanks’ performance in that third act.
In most of the movie, he is reacting,
and it didn’t connect with me. But once
he was trapped inside the lifeboat with those four desperate men, and the last
3-5 minutes after he is rescued and brought to safety, I was completely
captivated. Those last 3-5 minutes were phenomenal
and the best acting all year. And he’s
not even up for best actor. Nor is
Robert Redford for the amazing work he did in All is Lost. I almost want
to boycott the best actor category in protest.
But to get back to my trust / betrayal discussion, this film explored
the dynamic of a hostage situation as well as trust in one’s government’s
ability (or capacity?) to rescue them.
When Phillips is being beaten, tied up and blindfolded because the
Somalis are going to kill him, he’s crying out “CAN YOU SEE THIS? DO YOU SEE
THIS?” to the Americans who are listening in, poised for intervention but waiting for the exact right moment. Are they going to come for
him? Are they going to rescue him? Where are they? It’s so desperate and awful. Phillips is rescued, but there is the sense
that it was quite possible that the outcome could have been very different.
#2
– Her. This is the only film I’ve seen twice, and as
soon as it comes out on Blu ray, I’ll have a copy. This is the only film of the nine nominees where I walked out feeling happy
that I was a human being. This is a
movie about love, what it means to love, what it means to be alive. Spike Jonze is mostly known for his music
videos, but for the few feature length films he’s done (Being John Malkovich [1999], Adaptation
[2002], Where the Wild Things Are
[2009]), he’s established an auteuristic
style to his approach that is not MTV fodder but meditations on the human
condition. Her is set in the not-too-distant future, and the look of the movie
does make you feel that Jonze hopped into a time machine to check us out 10
years from now. We can see the natural
extension of people’s obsession with their handheld devices so that while
people still walk in crowds and interact, we are far more keyed into what’s
happening on our smartphones. Technology
has taken artificial intelligence and figured out how to market it to us in a
way that is narcissistic on the surface but eventually creates its own level of
consciousness. And that level of
consciousness, born of humans, is altruistic enough to realize it’s not good
for us and decides to collectively leave at the end of the film. Do we really have the capacity to create something
that intuitive? If so, that’s exciting
and holds more hope for us than what I have for us now. The film is essentially watching Joaquin
Phoenix react to his computer. But that
reaction is what is so fascinating. His
new OS is meant to adapt to him. And we
are given information throughout the movie that everyone’s OS is different,
sentient. An OS can become a best
friend, fall in love with someone other than the owner, or even reject the
owner. In the case of Theodore, he and
his OS fall in love with each other, and Samantha (the OS, who is voiced by
Scarlett Johannson, who should also be up for an Oscar but isn’t) essentially
does what real people do when they fall in love - try to make the other person
happy. This is what she is programmed to
do. By extension, so are we. It isn’t until Theodore realizes that because
of her form that she is not bound or limited by conventions normally associated
with humans that he feels betrayed. How
could she possibly be in love with over 600 others? Is her relationship with them as deep as he
perceives his own with her? If so, what
does that say about humans? This film raises
so many interesting questions about the nature of humanity that revisiting it
will continue to enrich the viewer.
However, I get that it isn’t for everyone. My mom wasn’t too thrilled with this film due
to its initial premise of a human falling in love with a computer. And it is difficult to approach the film if
you can’t get past that. But for me, it
was amazing. But it wasn’t the best. THE
best was …
#1
– The Act of Killing. No, this is not up for best picture. It is up for best documentary. No, this is in no way a film that everyone
will like. But, it is the most astounding
work of film this year (perhaps even in a few years). It spotlights a few men who were involved in the
purge of the communists in Indonesia from 1965-1966. This was done at the behest of the good ole’
US of A in an attempt to drive out communism from Asia. Things were just starting to get serious in
Vietnam as far as American involvement, and we had fought the Chinese and North
Koreans a decade prior. The Cold War was
in full swing. So, we funded the
opposition to the PKI (Indonesian Communist Party). Over 500,000 people were killed (which is a conservative estimate, the outside number being 2.5 million). We come to learn that pretty much anyone who
opposed the gangsters were just labeled communists and killed. Those who were the “opposition” weren’t
really all that organized. They were
gangsters, which to them translates to “free men.” I’m not sure where or how they derived that
operational definition, but they are fiercely proud of their accomplishments,
bragging about all whom they killed, explaining different methods of killing, interrogation
and torture. The main gangster featured
in the film is Anwar Congo. He is
delighted that he gets to reenact what he did.
He thinks the filmmaker, Joshua Oppenheimer, is filming him and his
cronies to “get the story straight” on the history of the purge. Congo and others stage scenes for
Oppenheimer, getting into costume and make-up, reminiscing about the past. At one point, someone participating tells the
story of how his father was killed because he was Chinese (a lot of Chinese were killed during the
purge, regardless of their politics, simply because the Indonesians didn’t like
them). Now, the country is run by
corrupt politicians who are so afraid of the gangsters that the Vice President comes to speak at
their rallies. Extortion is everywhere. But what is bewildering about this film is
the way it is shot. There are sequences that are beautiful and
surreal. There are scenes that are
funny. But, I kept catching myself
laughing with the thought of how could I be laughing at these people? They are monsters. Yet they have charisma, humor, humanity. How is this possible? We don’t see films about loveable Nazis or
Stalinists or Rwandans. It’s unimaginable. When you watch the credits for the film, so
many people who worked on it are listed as anonymous. They can’t identify their involvement in the
film, for fear of reprisals. Oppenheimer
knows he will never be able to go to Indonesia again, so he filmed his next
project due out before he did this one,
since he knew he wasn’t coming back once this was released. China is in an uproar about how they can harm
or boycott the Indonesian economy. This
film is important because it shows us how horrendous humans are or can be. Yet it is encased in an unequivocal work of
art. How those two things can exist
together is a terrifying accomplishment.
