Oscar Nominees 2014: Part 8 of 14

The Invisible Woman

1 Nomination

• Costume Design: Michael O'Connor (Jane Eyre, The Duchess)

Director: Ralph Fiennes

Cast: Felicity Jones, Fiennes, Kristin Scott Thomas, Joanna Scanlan, Tom Hollander, Perdita Weeks, Michelle Fairley, John Kavanagh, Tom Burke

I didn't review this movie, although I quite liked it, so I suppose this will have to do. Let me get the Oscar talk out of the way first: O'Connor can't win, and he's already won for The Duchess, so he doesn't need to win anyway. The film is directed by Ralph Fiennes, who also plays Charles Dickens. The film, though, is not really about Dickens; it is about his mistress Nelly, who is a fascinating character, beautifully played by Felicity Jones. The entire film, in fact, is rather excellent. It's a historical excavation – an untold story about a figure familiar to most of us – but it is done without dogmatism, without treating this untold story as a kind of key or solution to all of Dickens' work, and without the hagiography that normally attends such films. In other words, this isn't Becoming Jane or Ray. Not at all. This is, in fact, a story primarily about living with Dickens, about sort of dealing with the mess of loving a famous man in the nineteenth century. It is at times heartbreaking, and the film gives enough attention to Dickens' spurned wife (Joanna Scanlan, in the film's most brilliant performance) that one never comes to believe Dickens is perfect or justified or even right. It is a really excellent little piece. I can see why no one saw it: Fiennes isn't an Oscar-bait actor, and the film was released very late in the season (odd, that). But the film should honestly have been a contender for Screenplay and for Supporting Actress, so it is strange that there was not more buzz about it. Ah well, a good film is its own reward.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #26 out of 80

The Book Thief

1 Nomination

• Original Score: John Williams (Lincoln, War Horse, The Adventures of Tintin, Munich, Memoirs of a Geisha, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Catch Me If You Can, Artificial Intelligence: A.I., Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, The Patriot, Angela's Ashes, Saving Private Ryan, Amistad, Sleepers, Nixon, Sabrina, Schindler's List, JFK, Home Alone, Born on the Fourth of July, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Accidental Tourist, Empire of the Sun, The Witches of Eastwick, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, The River, Return of the Jedi, E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Empire Strikes Back, Superman, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws, The Towering Inferno, Tom Sawyer, Cinderella Liberty, Images, The Poseidon Adventure, Fiddler on the Roof, The Reivers, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Valley of the Dolls)

Director: Brian Percival

Cast: Sophie Nélisse, Geoffrey Rush, Emily Watson, Nico Liersch, Ben Schnetzer, Barbara Auer, Rainer Bock, Carina Wiese, Oliver Stokowski, Roger Allam

Why this movie was made is sort of beyond me. I can't speak for the novel, but the film appears to be attempting to do justice to a novel, but it can't quite manage. The film begins with a voice-over. The voice speaking to us is Death! I mean, it is such a contrivance, but I think perhaps such a thing might work in a novel. In a film it seems so phoney! Any time Death started to talk I tuned out. Also, the voice-over hadn't really figured out what Death actually took from the people as they died. Like, who is this Death guy and what materially happens when he encounters human life? At one point he refers to taking the "soul" of someone who dies. Death takes souls now? I would've been confused if I had actually cared. The acting is fine in this film, but there is no real point to the thing. Good Germans take in a Communist refugee girl. They hide a Jewish man in their basement. She learns to read, and more importantly (and if you didn't think what I've said so far was clichéd enough, get ready) she learns the power of storytelling. Storytelling "keeps her brother alive" when he is in a coma and brings him back from the dead. Storytelling allows her and the other villagers to get through the end of the war. Storytelling allows her to make a living after WWII. All of this is good and well, but if we might examine reality for a brief moment, we might remember that "storytelling" makes all of these things possible because the entire thing was written by a novelist and then by a screenwriter who are telling a story themselves. I don't mean to get all meta on you all, but when storytelling saves lives, it generally only does so inside someone's story. And if storytelling gets people through things it is because the storyteller herself is invested in the value of story. Whenever "storytelling" solves problems inside a story, I always feel vaguely as though I am being had. Now, I've gone and talked this whole time about my problems with the movie and I haven't talked about John Williams' annual nomination. It's a shame that this is here because the scores to 12 Years a Slave and The Kings of Summer could easily have appeared here, but instead the music branch nominates John Williams for the umpteenth time. Sure, the score is pretty, but, like... there is other good stuff out there.
Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #70 out of 80

Saving Mr. Banks

1 Nomination

• Original Score: Thomas Newman (Skyfall, WALL·E, The Good German, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, Finding Nemo, Road to Perdition, American Beauty, Unstrung Heroes, Little Women, The Shawshank Redemption)

Director: John Lee Hancock

Cast: Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Annie Rose Buckley, Colin Farrel, Ruth Wilson, Paul Giamatti, Bradley Whitford, Jason Schwartzman, B.J. Novak, Melanie Paxson, Kathy Baker, Rachel Griffiths

I was only so-so on this picture, and couldn't understand why everyone was talking about it or about Emma Thompson in it. Thompson was considered a sure thing as a Best Actress nominee this year, but all the talk amounted to nothing, and the film ended up with only one nomination. The whole thing is quite surprising. It seemed like it was going to get nominations in Costume Design and possibly Adapted Screenplay, as well. Lots of things seemed possible, in fact, including a Best Picture nomination, but one nomination is almost nothing. If people liked Saving Mr. Banks, then (and I think it is fair to say that many did), it wasn't ever anyone's favorite in any category except Score. Newman has never won, and he won't win again this year, but this is his twelfth nomination, and he will have to win soon.

Will Win: N/A

Could Win: N/A

My Rating: #59 out of 80

A Conversation about Nebraska

Because my friend Brian always posts pictures on Instagram and Twitter of all the movies he's seeing, I knew he had recently seen Nebraska. And because I love any excuse to talk to Brian about movies, I asked him to chat with me about Nebraska and hopefully be nicer/smarter about the movie than I am. Here we are:

Aaron: I thought the movie was pretty funny. Lots of comical stuff that I rather enjoyed. But, like most of Payne's movies, I thought it was sort of smug. It's funny watching this guy pathetically beg his girlfriend to move back in, and it's funny watching this woman harass this old man, and it's funny laughing at these brothers who have nothing to say to one another except to sit around and ask about cars that broke down in 1974. But, I get the feeling while I'm laughing at these situations that I'm laughing at how stupid these people are. Or rather at how much smarter I am than they are. Now, this may just be me – and maybe this says more about my own elevated sense of self-worth or something like that – but I felt like Nebraska just outright made fun of these people. The jokes are at their expense, as though Payne is just a bully poking fun at people who deserve just a little more kindness.

The other thing I want to say is that the movie is a good movie. I saw Nebraska in the same week as I saw Saving Mr. Banks and The Desolation of Smaug, and Nebraska is so much more skillfully made than the other two pictures. It is, in fact, expertly done. But it sort of left me hollow afterward. It hit all the notes it was supposed to hit, but I simply didn't connect with it very deeply. (This is, I think, how a lot of people felt about Haneke's The White Ribbon, to stick with black-and-white pictures.)

Brian: There's one tiny moment in the film that I keep thinking of – one which captures everything I liked about Nebraska.

We've been Woody's hometown for some time now, and we find ourselves again in the tv room at Ray and Martha's. The boys are in their spots, and Uncle Ray's in his. But it's the first time we see Aunt Martha joining them. Martha's sitting next to Ray but, rather than facing the tv, she's positioned to face the profiles of her two sons. See, the oversize sectional is way too big for the room, so they've horned the love seat section into the corner leaving just enough room for Aunt Martha's legs in the gap between. It'd clearly be a fuss for her to get up and out of her seat so, as is her way, Aunt Martha (as played with crystalline clarity by stage vet Mary Louise Wilson) just beams with delight to whoever wanders into the room as she hollers her enthusiastic chit-chattery over the blare of whatever rerun she and her men are watching.
 

Rance Howard and Mary Louise Wilson are just left of center in the frame.

The redolent layering of precise detail in this tiny moment captivates me and makes me somewhat inclined to defend Payne against claims of smugness. I like the vertiginous intimacy in Payne's work here. Payne forces us to stare long enough for the gaze to double back, in a way. I do remember laughing (fairly frequently) but not at many jokes at anybody's expense. What I mostly remember (aside from a few shocked guffaws) were abject giggles, mostly from my own embarrassment at my own reactions. In the end, I guess I liked how Payne's directorial hand forced me to notice not only the details of each tightly composed scene but also my own moment-to-moment discomfort in staring.

This queasiness might be why, when reflecting on the black and white cinematography, I found myself thinking not of Manhattan but of Night of the Living Dead.

Aaron: I love what you are saying about the specifics in the scene with Aunt Martha and everyone else watching The Golden Girls. This is when Nebraska is at its best: careful detail and intimate character study.

I think the reason I liked The Descendants so much was that I really felt that Payne cared for the characters in a way that didn't come through for me in Nebraska (or, indeed, in About Schmidt or Sideways). In Nebraska I felt distanced from the characters, even Will Forte, with whom I think the film sympathizes a lot. I saw the film as always just a little above that character, mocking him ever so slightly. I think the genuine warmth in The Descendants probably came from Nat Faxon and Jim Rash. This isn't to say that I didn't laugh a lot in Nebraska. I did. I just felt a little gross afterward. This is probably exactly what you're talking about.

But I love this Night of the Living Dead comparison. Tell me what you mean. Did you feel haunted by Hawthorne, NE?

Brian: Not so much the haunting. More the abject, looming threat of morbidity. (Death's coming for ya, kiddo, and – blecch – it's nasty even in black&white and, yeah, there's no escaping it! Even in static longshots.) Nebraska captures the weird creepiness of returning to your hometown and lacquers onto that discombobulation the horror of seeing the fact of your parents (and, by extension, yourself) becoming old. I think that's why I keep going back to the metaphors of vertigo and queasiness. They evoke Will Forte's (and by extension the film's) guiding disequilibrium. Forte's David loves his father; he loathes his father. David is mortified by this corpse of a small town; he is fascinated by the clues this town might hold for the mysteries of his own life. He wants to be closer to his father; he is repulsed and repelled by his father. He remains his father's child even as he becomes his father's caregiver. Not unlike Woody's lucidity, the film moves abruptly in and out, with a vertiginous swoop. For me, the black and white permitted Nebraska to amplify the uneasy moral ambivalences that I've found so intriguing in Payne's previous films by placing them in starker and more vulnerable relief.

Mr. Odenkirk, Mr. Dern, Mr. Forte, and Ms. Squibb – a polite family drive

Aaron: The acting is great. I loved Will Forte and Bob Odenkirk, especially. But I can't get Bruce Dern out of my head either, and the movie has sort of stuck with me.

Brian: I sorta think the acting (while excellent and masterful and all that) was a bit off. Especially Dern.

Aaron: What do you mean the acting was off? How is it excellent and masterful and also off? Does that mean your favorite performance in the film was Stacy Keach's? Haha.

Brian: Oh. Ack. Stacy Keach. No. I don't even want to talk about that. No, I think the performances I liked best were Rance Howard and Mary Louise Wilson as Uncle Ray and Aunt Martha. Both for their simplicity and precision, but especially for the way their performances bridged the stylistic gap that separated the principals from the bit players in this film world. The principal beef I've always had with Payne hasn't been his by-the-book screenplaying but his seeming disinterest in having his excellent actors find a shared style. Going all the way back to Citizen Ruth, Laura Dern, Swoosie Kurtz and Burt Reynolds are all great, but they're just not in the same movie stylistically. And I feel I could make that same claim for every Payne movie I've seen since. Payne clearly loves actors, which is great but, unlike other actor-loving directors (like, say, Woody Allen or Mike White or Almodóvar or the Coens), Payne seems a bit overdazzled by these actor creatures, which ends up stymying him in key ways.

I do think Bruce Dern delivers an excellent portrait of a difficult and complicated man experiencing a precipitous cognitive decline. But I'm not sure he was always playing Woody. I mean, I saw Dern  – vividly, palpably – but I don't know if I ever saw Woody. Likewise, I delighted in June Squibb's brusquely comedic depiction of this terrifyingly tiny tyrant. But I didn't buy it for a second that she was his wife or their mother. Or that she used to be a hairdresser. (Indeed, Squibb plays a version this mini-gorgon much more plausibly and to much greater effect in a recent arc on the HBO comedy series Getting On.) Even so, I still say Squibb and Dern each delivered masterful performances but it was the director's job to make sure their characterizations illuminated the story, and I'm not sure Payne held up his end of the bargain there.

Aaron: Ooo yeah. OK. I see all of that. I think the reason I love Odenkirk's and Forte's performances is that they felt like they were really doing things. Really watching each other, really seeing the things you're talking about vis-à-via mortality and son-hood. There's something about Squibb that I found sort of grandstanding, I guess. I mean, she is funny, but she somehow doesn't seem human. This is a part of what I mean by the director not really loving his characters. She is a henpecking old harridan, but I feel like it would've been nice to be able to love her a little bit. I just never felt like I could. Even when she is sort of badass and powerful – when she tells the one sister to go fuck herself and all of that. She doesn't ever feel like a real person to me, only a cartoon version of a person. She's not rudely sketched, but she's caricatured all the same.

The two sons are so much simpler. They had more opportunity for honesty, I guess. (I really did love Dern, though, even if I think you're right about the actors not being a part of the same movie.)

I love reading your thoughts about things like this. You make me smarter. You want to close us out?

Brian: Thanks for the invitation to gab. And, yeah, Call me JanEEce.

Way More than a Spoonful

I was prepared to quite dislike Saving Mr. Banks. I find it really difficult to deal with performances that look really broad or appear to comment on their characters to an enormous extent. Such is the case with the trailer for John Lee Hancock's tale about P.L. Travers, the author of Mary Poppins, meeting Walt Disney as he tries in 1963 to make what would become the iconic musical film with Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke.

Let's not lie, this is adorable.

Saving Mr. Banks works in an identical way to a cartoon from earlier this year: Monsters University. In Mr. Banks, the film is entirely dependent upon us knowing and loving the 1964 film. Banks can easily assume that we have seen and love that film, and so the film is filled with in-jokes and references, many of which are quite funny.

But the whole thing is so overtly cloying and treacly! Mrs. Travers is an uptight, awful woman who hates everything about Los Angeles and wants nothing to do with the way Walt Disney does business. She hates cartoons, she hates musicals, she hates fairy dust, and she thinks Disney is a money-grubbing capitalist son-of-a-bitch who wants to stuff Mary Poppins into his enormous dynastic machine.

And we're supposed to A) think Mrs. Travers is wrong and B) laugh at her, while also, C) knowing she'll eventually come around to Walt's point of view, and D) hoping she learns a lesson. This for me is the film's most important problem. We know from the beginning what ends up happening. We know they make the movie. And we know the movie turns out to be delightful. We've seen it! In other words, we know that Mrs. Travers is wrong. The whole time. It isn't that she might be right or her fears make a kind of sense or anything like that. We know that she is wrong. And so she deserves our laughter. Walt Disney is right. Mrs. Travers is being an uptight, fun-hating killjoy and we can feel superior to her throughout Saving Mr. Banks.

There is a second story haunting Mr. Banks and that story is P.L. Travers' childhood relationship with her own father. These sequences take place in Australia where the family is basically penniless. Her father is a wonderful dreamer of a man, who is (as it happens) also an alcoholic. Little P.L. Travers adores her father and wants to save him, but being a child, she of course has no idea how to do that. I actually loved every single sequence in Australia. In contrast to the hyper-Disney point of view of the main story, these Australia sequences have a nostalgic feel but also a kind of weight. There are stakes in this storyline: the love of a daughter for a father, a mother's relationship with her children, the ability of a man to take responsibility for his choices even though he is a free spirit. And Colin Farrell as the real "Mr. Banks" is just perfect. It is one of my favorite performances of the year. (Incidentally, I love that Farrell is playing character roles instead of leading men these days: it allows him to show off his considerable talent without the burden of carrying a film by himself.)

In other words, the movie isn't without things to love. Even in the 1963 sequences, there is some fun stuff: Jason Schwartzman and B.J. Novak as the Sherman Brothers are lovely: just the right note of cartoon and earnestness (perhaps because they are a pair). They are a nice contrast to the exhaustingly absurd performances of Bradley Whitford, Tom Hanks, and Melanie Paxson. And by the end of Mr. Banks I sort of loved Mrs. Travers even if she was a cartoon. I love the book, and so I want to love her. I had come around to the film so much that near the end when Mickey Mouse appeared at the Mann's Chinese Theatre, I found him charming. But then during the screening of Mary Poppins, Mrs. Travers tells Mr. Disney that "she can't abide cartoons" and I thought to myself and yet this whole film is more of a cartoon than the original Mary Poppins. Saving Mr. Banks gives us a whole cupful of sugar when only a spoonful was needed.

Blind Sides

I found The Blind Side rather charming. I was ready to hate it—The Blind Side is, after all, recycled neoliberal Hollywood treacle about a good white family who helps a good black boy achieve his dreams—but I found the film hard to hate.

This mostly has to do with Sandra Bullock. I have never been a fan, but she is truly a delight in the film, and I won't feel the least bit bad if she wins the Oscar this year. The performance reminds me of Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich more than anything else. It's the performance of a star at the top of her game who doesn't really need to work very hard to carry a film anymore, but who is willing to do so and has become so good at carrying films that she makes it look easy (sort of like, say, Brad Pitt in Oceans Eleven).

My favorite performance in the movie, I should say, is Adriane Lenox. She plays the young boy's mother and has a single scene that she simply tears up. It is a fierce, heartbreaking little performance that I found devastating and brilliant.

Let's be clear, though, The Blind Side mobilizes the same, tired, racist ideas that we have come to expect from a Hollywood movie. So the film makes it really clear that there are "bad" black people, who live in the projects, do a lot of crack, have children out of "wedlock" (people still actually use that word--at least in the film), drink forties and carry guns. Mostly, though, the "bad" black people don't do anything; that is, they are not trying to do anything to get out of the projects. Contrasting those "bad" black people are the "good" black people (there are only a couple of those in The Blind Side) who are protective of white people, non-violent, shy, grateful, and sensitive.
There are "bad" white people and "good" white people, too. The film shows us people who are overtly anti-black, and these "bad" white people are chastised by the "good" white people at the film's center. We need the "bad" white people, of course, so that we are very clear as to what white racism looks like. (Turns out, it looks like snobby rich white bitches or bearded uneducated country folk.) Racism in the film is represented by these two groups of people. Or rather, these groups of people are described clearly as racist groups so that we can understand better that the film's central characters do not have racist ideas.

The Blind Side, then, isn't exactly harmless entertainment, but it is a charming little fairy tale, and the film's central performance is delightful and spunky.