Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Oscar Picks and Movie Loves




Hey, the Oscars are coming! We don't know who really won in the Writer's Strike, but we know that any attempt to derail the Oscars has come out unsuccessful. Which is good, because the people that are clear to win every category and have been since the nominations were announced are probably pretty excited to show up.

That said, there are some great nominees in the bunch, and great movies not nominated that are also around. I haven't seen them all, and maybe I'll update this later this week before the show - Eastern Promises this week, but maybe I won't, and I did catch Michael Clayton in the midst of writing this, which, honestly, changes my entire perspective of this years awards for the better. In any case, it won't keep me from talking about all the great work Hollywood did this year to prove - successfully - that it was relevant this year.

Best Actor:




  • Will Win: Daniel Day Lewis There Will Be Blood


  • My Preference: Johnny Depp Sweeney Todd


Daniel Day Lewis was bound to win an Oscar even before his rather insane bowling-pin climax in There Will Be Blood, which this year proved to be the arthouse equivalent of Jack Nicholson in The Shining or Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs. Say what you will about it being over the top: it is. But it's also unforgettable.



That said, I just liked Johnny Depp better. Johnny sang, Johnny stared with purpose, and damn it, I will gladly sit through the gleefully bleak Sweeney Todd again before the puzzling, ass-busting artfest of There Will Be Blood any day. I know I'm not supposed to say that in this year when There Will Be Blood earns comparisons to Kubrick (some of them justified), but it's how I feel.



I confess I'm also less enamored with George Clooney and Viggo Mortensen than I'm supposed to be. Clooney gives undoubtedly his best performance in Michael Clayton because so much fear and rage sneak into his slick, salesman eyes, but the same-ol smooth George Clooney junk is the movies only weak point (and it's barely weak). Tommy Lee Jones was also extraordinary in In The Valley of Elah, a surprise nomination in a so-so film (not Jones's fault. Possibly Charlize Theron's fault. More likely Paul Haggis's fault.). But he's nothing next to Johnny. There are no fewer than four performances I like more than all the nominated performances here this year - Steve Carrell in Dan In Real Life, Christian Bale in Rescue Dawn, and Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke in Before The Devil Knows You're Dead, but that speaks more to our current generation of extraordinary actors than it does to the category they represent. It was a good year.



Best Actress





  • Will Win and My Preference: Julie Christie Away From Her


I loved Away From Her as a fan of so many extraordinary women - well, three of them anyway. Sarah Polley, the writer/director, did wonderful understatement to the great short work of Alice Munro, whose details are so precise and evocative of the full capability of human behavior. And Christie is the perfect embodiment - gorgeous and stately bordering on pure lunacy. One extraordinary scene of Christie's Alzheimer's patient, Fiona, wandering lost through her own home, only to mutter a vague koan to her past, is a scene of haunting ambiguity, and I'll be happy for her to win an Oscar for it.



The other nominees are certainly are all deserving, except that besides Ellen Page in Juno, I haven't seen any of them. My personal favorite performance of the year, Molly Shannon in Year Of The Dog, is not one to receive a nomination - perhaps because Year Of The Dog makes Away From Her seem famous (to say nothing of my second favorite, Ashley Judd in Bug). Still, it was the most varied, understated, human work I saw all year. Also, twice as funny and spastic as Ellen Page in Juno, but Page was spritely enough to make that sort of thing work where it shouldn't in Juno, so I'll avoid the Juno bashing.



Best Supporting Actor:





  • Will Win and My Preference: Javier Bardem in No Country For Old Men


I've written my complaints about No Country For Old Men on here before, but none of those ever had much to do with Bardem, who is capitol-T terrifying, and whose mere presence elevates the brilliant cat-and-mouse scenes of that movie to unbearable and traumatizing - I mean that as a compliment. The other nominees are probably terrific, but - ack - two of the rest of them. There's Charlie Wilson's War, of which Hoffman's performance - brilliant as it is - seemed to me far less interesting thatn Tom Hanks', and Tom Wilkinson in Michael Clayton, who is also brilliant, but overshadowed by the other great performers around him. I have a feeling that I'd love Casey Affleck's work in The Assassination of Jesse James, but I'll have to return to that at a later date.



I might have liked to see, say, Steve Zahn from Rescue Dawn, or Christian Bale (of course) in I'm Not There listed amongst these performers, but those are performances only recognized in the land of my brain, where Bale already has a supporting actor Oscar for his work in The New World two years ago. George Clooney didn't need the Oscar he won in that category anyway.



Best Supporting Actress:





  • Will Win and My Preference: Cate Blanchett I'm Not There


In the only category for which there seems to be an actual race going on, I think early lead contender Blanchett's deeply uncanny performance as Bob Dylan in I'm Not There has to be rewarded, both in its wounding accuracy, and as a referendum on the most original work and voice to be uttered at the movies this year. I also loved Amy Ryan in Gone Baby Gone, who was the early favorite, but more due to my sentiment after her work on The Wire. Ruby Dee for American Gangster could win, as could Tilda Swinton for Michael Clayton, but those votes will probably all have the caveat of blaming Blanchett for being in a movie as strange as I'm Not There - but perhaps I'm trying to justify an impending Blanchett lost as some sort of compliment. But I would like to say that if anyone else wins, I sure hope it's Tilda Swinton, who, I think, is actually the reason Michael Clayton is so good - playing a corporate shark who's just as twitchy and anxious as she is capable and adept at corporate treachery, it's her anxiety - obvious and genuine, in that it nearly undoes her but is kept quiet - that reminds us of the real people playing out a corporate-thriller script. Stuck almost beyond herself to be a woman in the amoral world of corporate law, you can see her soul eating her as she's driven to be evil in spite of herself - the astonishing scene where she, in pure corporate jargon, orders a hit, you wind up thrilled not out of that scene's malevolence, but it's unintended pity.



One word, quickly, on what has to be the most obvious snub in this category, Jennifer Garner in Juno, a performance universally louded for its tender portrayal of Vanessa, the type-A mom-to-be who crumbles at the possibility of finally fulfilling her destiny as a mother. Mary Elizabeth Williams, eloquently writing for Slate, says Garner "is cheerful and perfect, fanning magazines on her coffee table and eagerly throwing herself into nursery color schemes. Only a woman who'd been so cruelly disappointed in the quest to have a child, one whose marriage is so painfully strained, could possess such steely desperation to make it all right." I disagree entirely - the fanning of magazines and obsessing over color schemes is who Vanessa is - the desperation is Williams' judgment. Garner is so astonishing in Juno because she finds the love seething underneath her compuslive Stepford actions, her desire to make up for her fear of parental inadequacy and emptiness through gestures meant to make an eventual baby feel welcome and loved. I think if Garner were nominated in this category, she would win, and it's because we all love Vanessa because of how much we recognize her, and how we need Juno's happy ending for Vanessa more than we need it for Juno.



Best Director





  • Will and Should Win Joel and Ethan Coen No Country For Old Men


I think of this category not as the best direction of a movie this year, but as a career retrospective referendum. What I mean is I find something a little offputting in every nominee, so we should award the Coens for following their instincts to make their steps minimal, about cinematography and room tone, and for maximizing No Country For Old Men's terror in effect. Tony Gilroy was sleak for a first-time director in Michael Clayton, but I think that movie's strength derives from outstanding scripting and casting.



Now, I really believe that Todd Haynes should be winning in this category for the originality of his vision - for making I'm Not There a true director's picture of voice and ambition. I also think that of Paul Greengrass for The Bourne Supremacy, and, believe me or not, Quentin Tarrentino and Robert Rodriguez for the double picture moxie of Grindhouse (even if this movie had been on anyone's Oscar radar this year, though, it would have been complicated to iron out who could be nominated for what).



Best Original Screenplay:





  • Will Win: Diablo Cody Juno


  • My Preference: Tony Gilroy Michael Clayton


Mostly my vote here is against Diablo Cody, who I find annoying, but who is clearly unstoppable. That said, Michael Clayton is nothing short of ingenious both in structure and character, and Gilroy, who also wrote The Bourne Ultimatum, deserves a medal as well as an Oscar for writing two of the most profound genre exercises of the year. However, in my world, Todd Haynes and Oren Moverman's screenplay for I'm Not There is using its originality to gain a slim lead over Kelly Masterson's crafty and intricate time layering screenplay for Before The Devil Knows You're Dead, making everyone feel bad for the cleverness of Adrianne Shelley's Waitress screenplay that simply cannot compete. It's unfortunate that these nominees represent the "best" in such an original year, but certainly someone had to write those great lines for Jennifer Garner in Juno. And, perhaps secretly, even if others were nominated, I might still root for Gilroy.



Best Adapted Screenplay:





  • Will Win: Joel and Ethan Coen No Country For Old Men


  • My Preference: Sarah Polley Away From Her


Now, this is a point of technical concern. I did not like what the Coen's adaptation of No Country did for Cormac McCarthy's Sherriff Bell, turning him into a doddering old man who didn't mean very much. I did, however, love how Polley managed to turn a wonderful short story (Alice Munro's "The Bear Came Over The Mountain") into a wonderful movie that does not turn Munro's telling, wise narration into anything but cinematography. It's the technical best adaptation of the bunch.



Best Picture:





  • Will Win: No Country For Old Men


  • My Preference: Michael Clayton


Initially, I had no passionate reaction to any of the nominated movies. I didn't even want to see one of them, and have some fundamental reservation or another over the remaining four. Given what they are, I'll say the cat-and-mouse scenes between Javier Bardem and Josh Brolin in No Country For Old Men are about as good as movie scenes got this year (I just don't like the full product... or any scene with Tommy Lee Jones). But I was making the wrong assumption about Michael Clayton, and I think that assumption - which is to say, it's "just a corporate thriller" - undercuts its excellence. The movie uses our knowledge of its type of movie to shock us with character heartbreak, disillusionment, anxiety, and hard-fought habit, until our biggest disappointments with the movie are its unbelievably brief exercises in genre familiarity (when Clooney lapses into his long, smooth speeches, say - but even that gets subverted in his great performance). This year has been praised for its originality, by me also, and in that, the acceptable "edgy" choice is No Country For Old Men, but Clayton takes the familiar and makes it strange and exotic again, forcing us to re-discover its possibilities.



Now I could go off again about I'm Not There, which should win as a write-in candidate, but I'll spare you for now. Three Coen Oscars in one night is never a bad thing, and No Country, which will surely win, had moments of astonishing spare beauty, flaws or no.