There's a basic pattern with David Fincher films. His even-numbered films are good, great, iconic even - Se7en, Fight Club, Zodiac, The Social Network, Gone Girl; these are the films that people talk about when they talk about Fincher. His odd-numbered films are at best fine, sometimes actively bad - Alien3, The Game, Panic Room, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo; I can't imagine ever feeling any pressing need to rewatch any of these films.
Mank is an odd-numbered Fincher film.
[Comments on Mank, and the other seven nominees - Nomadland, Minari, Promising Young Woman, The Trial of the Chicago 7, Judas and the Black Messiah, The Father, and Sound of Metal - after the jump.]
Which is not to say that it's terrible; looking at that list, I'd say it's close to the top of those odd-numbered films. But there was a frustrating inevitability when the Oscar nominations were announced, and Mank topped the list for number of nominations. Hollywood loves films about Hollywood, so almost any half-decent film on the subject is likely to do well; couple that with the fact that this is a film about the behind-the-scenes drama of the making of the "greatest movie ever made", and I'd be shocked if it wasn't a frontrunner. But it is an absolutely forgettable film, which is frustrating coming from a director who has demonstrated the talent to make so many vital and indelible movies.Mank tells the story of legendary screenwriter Herman J Mankiewicz, framed around his efforts to write the script for Citizen Kane while holed up in bed recovering from a broken leg. This becomes a framing device, through which we explore Mank's experiences in Hollywood through the 1930's, his work as a screenwriter at MGM under Louis B Mayer, his growing interest in left-wing politics and the role of the film industry in exploring issues, and his friendship with actress Marion Davies, famously the mistress of the inspiration for Charles Foster Kane, William Randolph Hearst. And we watch as his alcoholism increasingly isolates him, and as Davies, one of his few remaining friends, feels betrayed by his work on a film that she sees as a hatchet job on her lover.
The main problem with Mank is that the script simply isn't that good. The script was written by Fincher's father, Jack Fincher, over 20 years ago, and Fincher has been trying to make it ever since. Jack Fincher died in 2003, and so it was really does feel as though making this film is a tribute to his father. But you get the sense that this means that Fincher simply didn't have the necessary space to examine the script and identify where it falls down. The framing device really isn't that dynamic, amounting largely to Gary Oldman lying in bed dictating the script to his secretary, and while the rest of the film, flashing back to the prior decade, is more engaging, it still feels largely aimless, with the film not so much telling a story as telling a bunch of anecdotes from which we are supposed to interpret meaning. There's simply no flow to the film. Plus you don't really get any sense of who the characters are. Indeed, it seemed to me that the film took for granted a level of knowledge that I'm not sure a regular audience would have. I mean, I know who Louis B Mayer is, I know what an important figure he is in Hollywood history, but for a person who is a major character in the film, it seems to take little or no effort to explain to a casual film watcher who this person is.* And I do feel that's true of pretty much every historical figure in the film. The one exception is probably Marion Davies, and that's largely because the film has to show you who she was as a person, because her relationship with Mank lies at the core of the film. Rather bizarrely for a film that is at least centred around Citizen Kane, Orson Welles is almost non-existent in the film, an occasional voice on the phone and barely present on screen.
* And if you don't know who Louis B Mayer is, I strongly recommend the MGM Stories series on the You Must Remember This podcast, in which Mayer is understandably a major figure.
The film is also severely hampered by the fact that the audience is inevitably going to be comparing the film to Citizen Kane, arguably the greatest film ever made. And no film is ever going to hold up against that comparison. Now, to be clear, I'm not saying that because the film is about Citizen Kane then it is necessarily going to be compared to Kane; you could very easily make a movie about that film that never invites that comparison, simply by defining your own identity. The problem is that, with Mank, David Fincher chooses to invite the comparison by invoking Kane constantly. It's there in the black and white cinematography that consciously evokes Gregg Toland's work, in the construction of the film constantly flashing back and forth through time, in the choice to create a sound mix that deliberately sounds like it was playing in a 1940s movie cinema (complete with artificial echo), in the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross that has echoes of Bernard Herrmann's style, even in individual scenes and moments that look like they've been deliberately constructed to be reminiscent of moments in Kane (seriously, they actually mimic the dropped snowglobe scene). It seems as though the only choice Fincher made to put any distance between his film and Kane was the choice to film in widescreen - and to be honest, I was so surprised that he made any choice that deviated from Kane that I actually went back just to double check that it was indeed in widescreen. But if you're going to force me to think about Citizen Kane during your film, then I'm going to be aware of how your film is not is great as that film. I saw Mank in a cinema, completely shut off from all distractions, but still there were points where the film struggled to hold my interest; a couple of days later, I rewatched Kane at home, a film I've already seen many times before, with every distraction known to man at my fingertips, and it fully grabbed me and held me for two hours. And so I can't praise Mank, because I can't help but be aware that it didn't have that effect on me.
Now, the film is not completely without merit. David Fincher is a great filmmaker, and you can see his delight in playing with black and white cinematography for the first time. Plus, much like he enjoyed examining the 70s in Zodiac, you can see him really loving exploring a recreation of the 1930's studio system. The portrayal of the Hollywood studio system during its height is fascinating and enjoyable, and I loved the way Arliss Howard captured the contradiction of Louis B Mayer, how he appealed to creating a sense of family while also being an astonishingly ruthless figure. (One of my favourite scenes involved Louis B Mayer addressing a room of studio workers to insincerely convince them to agree to a pay cut.) Amanda Seyfried as Marion Davies is the best part of the film, and the film would be worth watching even if only for her affection for Mank and her sense of betrayal when he chooses to write a film so openly attacking her lover. And casting Charles Dance as William Randolph Hearst is brilliant; in just a handful of scenes he brings an air of innate power and control, and when he looks witheringly and dismissively at Mank you feel tiny, which makes the choice to write a work like Kane feel especially daunting. (It just makes you disappointed, of all the stories connected to Kane, that they decided to tell this story. The story of the relationship between Hearst and Davies is fascinating - hear this episode of You Must Remember This - and could make a great film.) Sadly the worst performance in the film comes from Gary Oldman in the title role - it's just a very broad portrait of a self-destructive alcoholic, lacking any real nuance or subtlety, it's just exhausting to watch.
But the film was fine. I was glad to have had the chance to see it on the big screen, where the beautiful cinematography was best highlighted, and I was sufficiently entertained during the movie, but I haven't thought about it at all since the movie finished. It's the film that leads the nominations, but it looks like it's probably not taking home that many awards, which I'm glad about, because it really doesn't merit them.
The accepted front runner is Nomadland, the new film from Chloe Zhao. I really liked her earlier film, The Rider, which really grew on me over time the more I thought about it. While I liked Nomadland, it hasn't quite had that same effect on me, because I do have some issues with it. The film is based on a non-fiction book of the same name, about a community of people who live in vans and roam around America. The film brings in a fictional narrative - Frances McDormand plays Fern, a widow who loses her home after the main employer in her town closes; finding herself houseless, she packs her life into a van and sets off to see the country and pick up whatever temporary job she can find.
It's possible that part of my issue with the film is grounded in simply having too much knowledge. Part of what made The Rider so fascinating was the realism inherent in the filmmaking - Zhao is someone whose interest is in exploring the boundaries between documentary and narrative film. So with The Rider, she doesn't use professional actors; she's inspired by a real person, and then casts his friends and family to play his friends and family, and while the story is fictional, there are stretches where you're just watching these people doing whatever it is that they normally do - you're just watching this real-life horse trainer train a horse. And so there's a palpable sense of reality in the film. And she takes a similar approach in Nomadland - the end credits are filled with names like Bob Wells as Bob, Linda May as Linda, or Charlene Swankie as Swankie, and the similarity in names between the actor and their character tells you that these are real people effectively playing themselves. And there are long stretches where you have one of these characters just talking, and you get the sense that this isn't the character speaking, it's the actual person reflecting on their life. And that's really fantastic and gripping, and I loved having the opportunity to just sit and listen to these stories. The issue I have comes when you introduce famous Oscar-winning Hollywood actress Frances McDormand playing this central role - now, Frances McDormand is hardly an example of Hollywood glamour, throughout her career she's demonstrated her interest in exploring real people, and apparently she did genuinely live as a nomad for months while making the film. But still, there's something jarring when you bring recognisable actors like Frances McDormand or David Strathairn and have them act against real people - it breaks the reality to a degree. Now, it helps that Fern is a newbie to the community, she's not supposed to feel quite as at home as some of the others around, and a lot of the conversations she has with members of the community occur in part because they have to explain one thing or another to her, but still something about it didn't quite work for me - the mix between documentary and narrative felt off.
And then the film threw me even more in the last part of the film. Again, to see why, you can look at the end credits - because the cast are listed in order of appearance, there's a clear dividing point where we go from most of the actors sharing names with their characters to actors whose character names differ from their own. And that's because the last part of the film fairly clearly moves away from this pseudo-documentary style and becomes more purely narrative, as Fern goes to visit her own family, as she goes to stay with David Strathairn and his family, and as she goes to visit her old home town. And those parts of the film feel much more like a conventional film, because you can feel that these are regular actors working with a script of some kind. And so you've got this film where a large part of the film feels mostly like a documentary, but then you've got this other part that is clearly narrative like any other film, and the merging of those two parts simply did not feel natural to me.
And yet, for a film that I did find structurally flawed from the start, I genuinely did like the film. Chloe Zhao is very clearly a talented and humane storyteller - there's a lot of tragedy and pain in the back stories of these people, stories of lost lives and lost family, and the moments where these people talk about the circumstances that led them to this life are heartbreaking. But at the same time, she ably manages to avoid turning the film into misery porn, focusing primarily on the joy and love of this strange community that has developed around this lifestyle. Very few of these people would ever have imagined living this life, would never have chosen a life of living in a van with so little security, but there's a genuine sense of excitement and enjoyment in the freedom and opportunity the lifestyle offers them. And Zhao is clearly very interested in understanding and exploring that mindset. She's helped incredibly by Frances McDormand, who as always does approach her character with honesty and interest, seeking to genuinely understand and empathise with the type of person that would be in this situation.
The film is also beautifully shot by cinematographer Joshua James Richards, who worked with Zhao on her two previous films. This is a film of vast open spaces, a film where part of the joy of the lifestyle is the ability to just go and explore the many environments of the country, and so Richards takes genuine delight in capturing some of that overwhelming beauty. There's a particular sequence where Fern goes to visit the Badlands National Park, and the scene takes place as the sun is setting, and I honestly think it's the most visually beautiful sequence I've seen in quite some time.
Look, it is an excellent film, and one I genuinely enjoyed. Its emotionally rich, and authentic in its explorations of this almost-accidental community. I will be honestly happy should the film win, because there is so much of the film that I loved. There are just films I liked more.
One film I loved is Minari, a delicate flower of a movie, a thing of deep but subtle beauty. A portrait of the challenges of the American Dream, it follows a young Korean immigrant family, the Yi family, as they move to Arkansas in the 1980s; while the mother works to provide for the family through the long and laborious work of chick sexing, the father pursues his dream of becoming a farmer, growing distinctly Korean vegetables for the growing Korean community, and hopefully making enough money that his family can move out of the caravan they currently live in and into a real house. Then the grandmother moves over from Korea to live with them, and their young son in particular does not respond well to the interloper.
It came as no shock when, after watching it, I discovered that the film was semi-autobiographical, that writer-director Lee Isaac Chung did himself immigrate from Korea as a young child in the 80s and grew up on a farm in rural Arkansas. It has that air of genuine honesty and lived knowledge in every detail. You can tell that he's summoning up memories of people and experience to fill the film, and there's no artifice, every moment feels perfectly observes and real. One thing I did appreciate was that the obvious stand-in for Chung, the young son David, is often an unpleasant brat. It can be easy when making a film that draws so much from your own life to try to soften your edges, to hide the parts of you that you are ashamed of. But Lee Isaac Chung is honest in exploring that character - his open dislike of his grandmother, this strange woman who smells like Korea and has intruded into their family, is a major part of the film, and he will play cruel practical jokes on his grandmother that genuinely shocked me. And I appreciated that there's no straight line in the improvement of their relationship; every moment you think that he's starting to soften towards the old woman, every time there will be a nice interaction between the two characters, he'll turn back into the brat, as though he's catching himself starting to like this woman and trying to fight it. It's a very real portrayal of the way children can often think, and I did love it.
It's also a fascinating portrait of the struggles involved in being an immigrant, coming to a country with nothing, and having to work to achieve your dreams. The efforts of father Jacob, wonderfully played by the reliable Steven Yeun, to hold his vision together in spite of the myriad of challenges facing him are gripping to watch, as every new problem becomes a barrier that could derail their entire life. And the frustrations this has on the rest of the family are carefully explored, especially in its examination of the tensions in the marriage between Jacob and Monica, who worries that they've thrown away a safe and secure life in order to pursue a dream with colossal risk, and where nothing seems to be falling into place. And in the meantime, the farm becomes all-consuming - Jacob even carries a crate of vegetables into his son's medical appointment because he can't risk leaving them in the car in the heat of the day - which infuriates Monica. The reason this conflict is so effective in the movie is that we find ourselves agreeing with each side, so you find yourself taking the point of view of the last person who spoke - when Jacob is speaking, we are caught up in his excitement for his dream and desire to build a new life; when Monica speaks, we are convinced by her fears and concerns about chasing a fantasy that might never eventuate. And this tension is part of the reason why the film remains in the mind long after seeing the film.
I was a bit disappointed that the character of the daughter was largely forgotten about. The conflict between the parents, between the mother wanting to follow the safe and secure path and the father looking to pursue a crazy dream, is fundamental to the themes of the film. And the fluctuating relationship between the grandmother and grandson are pivotal to the emotional core of the film - plus the son has health issues that makes his mother constantly fret over his safety. (And he is the stand in for the writer-director.) In this context, it might be understandable that the daughter might feel as though she gets overlooked, but it's disappointing that the film herself seems to overlook her. While I had a strong sense of who the rest of the family was, and even some characters outside of the family, I often forgot did they even had a daughter. And that does feel like a shortcoming of the film - but it's probably the only shortcoming the film has.
I do love the choice to make the film largely in the Korean language. You wonder how much pressure there might have been to make the film completely in the English language, or at least to have the grandmother be the only character speaking Korean. After all, this is an American movie, the family are able to speak English, and it would have been tempting to remove language as a barrier to the audience. But it's absolutely the correct decision to have Korean as the prominent language in the film. For a start, I assume it's authentic to the director's experience - Lee Isaac Chung probably grew up speaking Korean at home and English in public. But it also emphasises the fact that this is an immigrant family, which is so foundational to the film - if this family did walk around speaking English everywhere, I think you would lose the sense of these people being outsiders, they would just become another Asian-American family who could have been here for generations. And, by being a distinctly American film that is largely not in English, it will hopefully open the door for other stories of the American experience that may have been overlooked in the past.
I was initially concerned by the choices that were made in creating the character of Paul, a local man who comes to work on the farm. When he's introduced, he is presented as a clear eccentric who decides to pray in tongues in front of Jacob, a nominal Christian who is visibly uncomfortable at the experience; later we learnt that Paul spends every Sunday walking for miles while carrying a full-sized cross. And so I was frustrated at the film for choosing to make the Christian character a "weirdo". After all, I was raised a Pentecostal, I pray in tongues in my personal life, but I would hope that I would have the sensitivity to recognise if I was making people uncomfortable. But as the film goes on we gain a real appreciation for the love and openness by which Paul welcomes the Yi family. By the end, I did find him an extremely challenging character - I do know that I'm not anywhere near as fully committed to Christ as Paul was in the film, and nor do I show the level of love and care for those around us that Paul does. And so it becomes an interesting and challenging portrayal of a character, because as uncomfortable and trying he is as a person to be around, he is also one of the best examples I've seen lately of a true Christian living life as they should.
The film I was probably most surprised and pleased to see nominated was Promising Young Woman, the first film written and directed by Emerald Fennell. I really was not expecting it to be in the list of nominees; I knew there had been a lot of buzz around it, but it is an intensely polarizing film, and simply does not feel like an Oscar film. Starring Carey Mulligan, the film focuses on Cassie, a 30 year old woman who dropped out of medical school after her best friend was raped while intoxicated; aimlessly drifting, she now spends her nights going to bars and pretending to be wasted until someone tries to take advantage of her, at which point.... Then one day she learns that the main person behind the rape is now a successful doctor and planning his wedding, and this sparks her to seek revenge, not just on the perpetrators of the crime, but also all who enabled it to happen.
The film makes so many fascinating and unexpected choices, almost all of which for me really landed. For a start, it's effectively a rape-revenge film, a genre of film long established as a feature of the exploitation market. And while we've increasingly had films that re-evaluate the genre from a feminist perspective, there's always the point where you have to grapple with the rape scene, and the risk that a portion of the audience might enjoy such scenes in a way that was not intended. But by putting that crime in the long past, our focus ceases to be on the event itself, and more on the lasting consequences it had on those affected - they somehow managed to almost completely remove the rape from the rape-revenge film. (There is one moment where the film does toy with rape imagery in a way that is clearly deliberate, but does so in a way that is utterly horrific and non-exploitative, and is quite brilliantly done.)
I was also surprised by some of the story choices the film takes. This is probably partly influenced by the promotion of the film, which made it seem more like a typical revenge film, but I walked into the film expecting it to be about a woman who attacks or even kills people who take advantage of incapacitated woman. And so it threw me to realise that's not the direction this film takes. And I've seen a number of people criticise the film for not being brave enough to take that approach, but I admire the choice to not do that, because that's the story that always gets told with these films, and this film knows that and plays with it (witness the early scene where we're supposed to think she's just murdered someone, only for the blood stains to be revealed to be ketchup from a hot dog). But the ending of the film would hold completely different meaning if she was this avenging figure of violence, and I find the film so much more fascinating because that's not what she is.
I particularly admired Fennell's direction, which held the promise of an exciting new voice. She has a fantastic sense of style, and gives the story a candy-covered artifice that frequently sets you off balance, leaving you unprepared for the venom that lies underneath. She proves herself adept at navigating the conflicting tones of the story, jumping all the way from romantic comedy to outright horror with confidence and a certainty of tone. Possibly even more than my surprise at its nomination for Best Picture, I was shocked to see Fennell nominated for Best Director, but it's a well-deserved acknowledgement of her genuine skill as a filmmaker, and I'm excited to see what she does next.
Now, there has been some criticism of the film for effectively ignoring Nina, the rape victim who is central to inciting the events but regardless barely features in the film. And that's a valid point. But I also think that that would be a different film, and we are not short on films about victims turning the tables on their victimisers. That would be a story about a person trying to overcome direct trauma; this is a story about a person who is trying to cope with their own guilt over the many ways that she failed her friend - it's a different film, and in many ways a more original film. And the film is aware of Nina's absence from the narrative - there's even a scene involving Nina's mother where this is specifically discussed.
I was also fascinated by the choice to explore the wider culture that facilitated the crime and allowed those involved to evade consequences. It's easy to rage against people who are involved in a crime, it's more interesting to target the systems that support the perpetrators. And I was intrigued that the film pays particular attention to several women who by their actions chose to side with the culprits rather than the victims, as though the film was particularly outraged at the idea that these women would abandon female solidarity. But the way Cassie chooses to take revenge on these women by destroying them emotionally is particularly heinous, a choice that really made me respect the film. Cassie is not a "good" character, and in some ways we are supposed to see her almost as a villain, albeit in a film that has characters who are much more villainous. But we are still supposed to sympathise and empathise with her, and we are put in a place where we understand her rage at these people also. The film achieves a delicate balancing act that I was genuinely impressed with.
I've also seen a lot of criticism of the message that is sent by the film's ending, about what the film is saying to women who have been the victim of assault, asking where the message of the film gives any hope for these woman. And I'm going to try to be vague about this point, and avoid spoilers, but to me I found the ending perfect. It wasn't the ending I wanted, indeed initially I hated the ending, but the more I lived with it and reflected on it the more I realised that was the ending the film needed. I have heard that Emerald Fennell originally intended the film to end earlier, after the scene in the cabin - I wouldn't have liked that choice, which would have left the film with a sour taste. As it is, the film manages to have a "happy ending" that is nevertheless bitter and angry and cynical. I've heard a number of commentators who seem to have wanted Cassie to go almost Kill Bill at the end, almost as though that would improve the message of the film. But to me, the point is that what Cassie is doing is not healthy, is extremely self-destructive. You're not supposed to look for hope in her story, because what she is doing is wrong. And yet weirdly, even though I do think the ending is unrealistic, a "movie ending", I also think that there's an honesty and truthfulness in it. There's a fascinating fatalism to this ending, a message that ultimately it's not possible to get justice. It's not a happy message, but it's a realistic message.
The baffling thing about the nomination of The Trial of the Chicago 7 is that it means that there was a significant number of members of the Academy, people who work in the movie industry and who you'd hope would have some appreciation for the medium, who looked at this film and genuinely thought it was one of the best movies of the year. I do feel that, even if this was genuinely the best movie that you saw in 2020, surely you would assume there must have been better films that you just didn't see, and it's better to not nominate anything rather than nominating something so clearly undeserving.
A dramatisation of the trial of eight counter-cultural figures charged with various crimes, including conspiracy, in the aftermath of violent protests at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the film is the second directed by Aaron Sorkin, working from his own script. And that's really where the problem starts. At his best, Sorkin is a great writer; he is not a great director. He relies too much on the spark of his own words to tell the story, and doesn't put enough effort into his directorial storytelling. When you think of how masterfully directors like David Fincher, Rob Reiner, or Danny Boyle brought Sorkin's work to the screen, the degree to which his effort as a director falls short becomes obvious. The direction is very conventional, with very basic setup shot construction, and no sense of a film-maker behind the camera. Fatally, he struggles to create any sense of urgency in the film, and so it just becomes baggy, weighed down by a bunch of distractions that detract from the importance of the issues at the centre of the fight.
I'm sorely tempted to make a joke about how "As a director, Aaron Sorkin is a great writer". Unfortunately I can't in good conscience make that joke, because the greatness of his writing is also not on display here. I know nothing about the actual trial, so I will assume that the film is being accurate in the way it presents the trial as a farce. Leaving that aside, there is never any sense that these people are fighting for an important principle, the right to free speech and protecting the ability to protest a government's actions that you consider unjust. In fact it frequently loses track of the fact that these are people fighting to stop a war where thousands of young men are being killed. Instead it constantly degenerates into a collection of scenes where characters pull one absurd stunt or another, most notably Sacha Baron Cohen who plays Abbie Hoffman as though he is always trying to find some low-level Borat-style stunt to antagonise the judge. Is it entertaining when Hoffman comes to the court dressed in judge's robes; yes of course it is, but it doesn't actually tell me anything. This is a trial that lasted for 5 months, being boiled down to a 2-hour summary, and yet the film keeps getting distracted by gags that tell us nothing other than that Abbie Hoffman was a provocateur. Still, at least you walk away knowing something about Abbie Hoffman, even if it's as this one-dimensional figure; I genuinely finished the film feeling I knew nothing about most of the defendants, who for the most part just became faces sitting behind a table with very little characterisation or efforts to distinguish one from another. There's a moment in the film where a key plot point comes down to the way a particular character happens to speak, his tendency to elide words in his sentences, but we don't spend enough time with that character and learning how they speak for that moment to land. There's a moment in the film where Black Panther leader Fred Hampton is brutally murdered; Hampton is a recurring figure in the film, but he's just the guy who sits behind one of the defendants whispering advice, and we never actually know him as a character, so we really feel nothing when he is killed, and nor does the film pause to really explore how that defendant is affected by the death. Or what about Frank Langella as judge Julius Hoffmann; he's effectively the main antagonist in the film, and Langella is a great actor, but he's a cartoon here, only called on to be exasperated and constantly yell "Overruled", before telling us in an end card that he was later considered to be incompetent. How about taking the time actually develop Hoffman as a character, give Langella something to play, and make the effort to actually explain who this person was and why he was giving rulings that were patently spurious.
The fundamental problem is that there is simply too much material here to fit in a 2 hour film. It would have been so much better had Aaron Sorkin gone to HBO, and offered to tell this story as a 4 or 6 episode limited-run series; we could have had time to actually develop all of the characters, actually explore the issues and tensions that were at the core of the trial, with the antics of Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin becoming some extra seasoning that spices up the material, rather than overpowering everything else as it does in the film. Ultimately the film doesn't have enough time, and so its message becomes a blunt instrument that it has to hit you across the head with, rather than being a work that's more cutting and incisive.
And the thing was frustrating is just how much a great cast was wasted. I'm not typically a fan of Sacha Baron Cohen, but he's excellent casting as someone who's always looking to stage one stunt or another, and being used to seeing Jeremy Strong as the repressed figure he plays in Succession, it's a delight to see him playing Cohen's collaborator in provocations. I'm always happy to see John Carroll Lynch playing a John Carroll Lynch-type, I've already expressed my appreciation for Frank Langella's work, and then as we go down the list, you get people like Joseph Gordon-Levitt, John Doman, or Michael Keaton. It seemed as though every few minutes I would get excited when another actor I appreciate appeared on screen, and then the film would give them some stock characterisation that offered nothing of interest for them to do. Its baffling how every opportunity for drama, every opening for your actors to test themselves, just seems to go to waste.
To be clear, its not that this is a bad film - it's fine, it's just not a great, or even good, film. And that's what you should want before you proclaim a film as a contender for Best Film of the Year.
In an interesting coincidence, the death of Fred Hampton, which forms a small part of The Trial of the Chicago 7, is the main focus of Judas and the Black Messiah, the second film from writer-director Shaka King. The film focuses on William O'Neal, a low-level criminal who is pressured by the FBI to become part of the Black Panther party and inform on the rising star of the Illinois chapter, Fred Hampton, seen by J Edgar Hoover as a very real threat to society due to the power of his oratory. Hampton comes to power in the party and brings together a "rainbow coalition" of organisations representing various ethnic interest groups. Meanwhile O'Neal gets close to Hampton, even becoming the head of his security detail, all the time helping the FBI to find ways to deal with the Hampton problem, despite his own growing belief in the movement.
Much of the attention around Judas has understandably being focused on the Oscar-nominated performances of Daniel Kaluuya and Lakeith Stanfield - and it's entirely justified. Kaluuya is just magnetic as Fred Hampton, a figure with great charisma and intelligence, an intense force of will, and the ability to genuinely inspire people. A big part of Hampton's story was the way he managed to unify various conflicting organisations under one umbrella and get them working towards a common goal, and in his performance you genuinely feel that Kaluuya has the authority and power to bring about this outcome. The film's title, calling him a "Black Messiah", might seem somewhat hyperbolic, but seen in the context of the film, you can believe that this is genuinely how people might see him - both his followers, and those who are threatened by him and who may want to suppress his influence. It's a powerful performance, and it's immediately understandable why people are so focused on that performance as one of the frontrunners for the award.
People seemed to be more surprised by Stanfield's nomination playing Bill O'Neal. But to me he's giving the more fascinating performance. Lakeith Stanfield has to exist in a world of squirrelly discomfort. At the end of the film, there's interview footage of the real O'Neal where he talks with pride about being involved in the civil-rights movement and the fight for the black community, seemingly without ever considering the fact that he was also actively involved in the murder of one of the key leaders in that movement. Stanfield manages to make his character feel like someone who would be unable to recognise the inherent contradiction in those positions because that's the world he exists in. He's genuinely inspired by this figure, and yet he is actively working against this person who he honestly believes in, and he'll be frustrated when he doesn't manage to entrap them. He'll condemn people for given information to the police about their activities, all the while being the authorities' most significant informant. He's never able to be comfortable, he's always on the edge, while at the same time he has to project an air of confidence and command since that's what is required when you are the head of security in a militant group. The way Stanfield is able to exist in this uneasy and uncomfortable space for the entirety of the film is absolutely impressive, and I loved just watching that performance.
A lot of commentary has been focused around the fact that both actors have been nominated in the Supporting Actor category, which does raise the question about where the dividing line between a lead and supporting actor is. I've seen a lot of people declaring Kaluuya should have been nominated for lead actor, with Stanfield in supporting. But this to me fundamentally misunderstands the difference between a lead and a supporting role. Kaluuya absolutely gives the more prominent and magnetic performance, but that doesn't necessarily make him the lead. The film is unmistakably centred on O'Neal - it starts and ends with him, both in the story and in the interview footage that frames the movie, it's his personal journey that we're watching, and it's his interior conflict that forms the core emotional basis of the film. But an inability to understand the delineation between lead and supporting actor is just an ongoing problem with the Oscars (witness Denzel Washington in Training Day, or particularly Anthony Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs - both clear supporting performances that won for lead actor). The fact is that Lakeith Stanfield was the lead of the film, and absolutely should have been nominated as such. Take out Gary Oldman and his unfortunate performance in Mank, put in Lakeith Stanfield, and I think that would be a perfect list of Best Actor nominees.
My only real problem with the film comes literally at the end, when a title card informs us that Fred Hampton was only 21 when he died. I was genuinely shocked by that discovery; never did it occur to me that the 30-odd Daniel Kaluuya might be playing someone so young. As great as his performance is, I wonder whether casting someone so noticeably older than the character being played undercut the film dramatically; the character is impressive in the film, but it's even more impressive when you know that this guy was barely an adult. And if anything, I have an even bigger issue with the casting of Lakeith Stanfield as O'Neal; I don't think the film gives us any indication of how old he was, so I was shocked to discover after the film that he was only 20 at the time the film ended, and more importantly that he was only 17 when he agreed to work with the FBI. That completely changes his character. I think it's so much easier to understand how a 17 year-old, still a kid, facing years in prison might decide to turn informant, and it might even make his character more sympathetic as we might feel that he never had a chance - we understand why he might grab onto this offer out of desperation, and then feel he was trapped. But someone who is an adult, who has been an adult for a decade, feels much more like someone who had other options, and who chose this path purely out of self-interest, and this makes the character much less likeable. None of this is a criticism of the actors, who do great work with the material and genuinely deserve every accolade they've received, and I can understand why they would have been cast in these roles. But I do think that the casting choice to age these characters up was unfortunate, and I think it would have been fascinating to see how different the film would be had the film been more true to the reality of these people.
But casting choices side, Jesus and the Black Messiah is an excellent movie, an interesting telling of an aspect of the civil rights fight that is possibly not as widely known, and well worth watching.
To be honest, I had no idea that The Father even existed until about a week before the Oscar nominations, when I saw the trailer playing before a movie. So I was genuinely shocked when the film appeared as one of the Best Picture nominees. I will confess to somewhat dismissing the film - a film about a daughter trying to deal with her father's dementia is fairly standard awards-bait and well-worn ground, and while the trailer does point to the film doing something unexpected with the material, I was still expecting it to be a fairly generic version of a film we've seen many times before. I was wrong.
The film starts with a scene we've seen play out many times, with Olivia Colman as the daughter telling her dementia-struggling father, played by Anthony Hopkins, after he chases yet another care nurse away, that she's moving to Paris and won't be able to care for him anymore. So far, so as expected. Suddenly the film throws you for a loop - unexpectedly there are people living in the house with the father, people don't seem to be who we thought they were, conversations that we saw happen apparently never took place, time seems to loop back and repeat on itself. And you're left feeling intensely uncertain, like the entire world of this film has gone insane, and you're the only person who can recognise how wrong the world is. It's an astonishingly effective approach because, more than any other film on this subject I've ever seen, it manages to put the viewer in the position of experiencing things the way the dementia patient experiences the world. I've seen many films about how hard it is for a person to struggle with a family member dealing with these issues; I've never seen a film so effectively engage with the experience of being that dementia patient. And yet at the same time, even though we're never fully certain what parts of the film are true and which parts of the film are the consequence of his broken mind, we're still clear enough that we can follow the story and sympathise with the frustration of the daughter. So the film somehow manages to tell the story from the perspective of both the father and the daughter, even though the entire way they even perceive reality is so completely at odds with each other. It's a positively miraculous piece of filmmaking.
There's a common thing where an actor reaches a certain age and they start getting nominations that is less about the quality of the work in the specific film, and more about acknowledging the body of work throughout their career - when I saw Anthony Hopkins' name among the nominees, I have assumed that was what this nomination was. I could not have been more wrong. This is a powerful and moving performance that requires Hopkins to draw on every acting skill he ever developed. At times he's just like any other person, as full of life and power as anyone, and you can see the man who has been fully in control of his entire life. At other times he will turn vacant and become someone who is clearly unable to care for himself. Or perhaps he'll start expressing an impotent rage at a world that he's losing his bearings in. There's a particular moment in the film I keep coming back to, where he's talking to someone and he's sweet, charming, energetic, lifeful, and then in the space of maybe five words he completely flips and is suddenly filled with venom and bile and anger, and it happens so fast that it takes a moment to even register what just happened.
And then there's Olivia Colman, who everyone knows is wonderful, and this film just reminds you why we love her. It's a beautifully nuanced performance, because she can almost never let her emotions become visible. Just watch the way she smiles at her father, the way she communicates that she's never happy, but she smiles to comfort and reassure her father, even while she is absolutely emotionally devastated and drained. A big part of her character's frustration comes from the fact that she knows her father doesn't understand the pains he's putting her through - he'll repeatedly talk about how his other daughter hasn't been to visit, which is upsetting to Colman as a constant reminder of the death of her sister, but she has to hide that pain to avoid retraumatising her father by causing him to learn of his child's death all over again. There's really only one moment when we get to see exactly how she's feeling and the burden that this is having on her, and the pain and regret that infuses her performance is just palpable. For the rest of the film, it's all just in undertones, and it's an incredible performance.
As for the rest of the cast, they're really all in minor supporting roles, but the film rests on the effectiveness of their performances. It's difficult to talk about these performances, because I can't really reveal who they're actually playing; so much of the film centres on the question of who these people are. A couple of months ago, a screening of Rushmore left me and a friend wondering what happened to Olivia Williams, and while this is not a large role, her interactions with Anthony are some of the most beautiful and tender in the film. Mark Gatiss has an enjoyably casual element to his performance, as though he is irritated by the need to deal with this old man losing his mind. Rufus Sewell is utterly hateful, nasty and selfish, in many ways the villain of the piece, but he brings a nice shading to the character that makes him feel less awful, and more someone who is simply frustrated as having to deal with this situation. And Imogen Poots delights as a character who seems extremely vulnerable but who manages to tap into an impressive strength.
The film is the first film to be directed by Florian Zeller, based on his own play. It's an confident piece of directing, that shows no signs of Zeller's inexperience in the medium. It probably helps that the play, which I understand is very well-regarded, offered a strong starting point for the film, and there's little effort made to expand it from its stage origins, so he feels very comfortable working in this environment. Often it's a valid point of criticism that a film adaptation of a play still feels too much like it's been performed on stage, but here I think it's one of the film's strengths. The film takes place pretty much entirely inside, mostly in the one apartment or another, occasionally stepping out to a hospital or doctor's office, but we never go outside. This lends a real air of claustrophobia to the film, as we feel just as trapped in this apartment as the father does.
And particular attention really has to be paid to the production design, which really stood out for me. They need to pull off this nice little trick where all the spaces where the film takes place are clearly distinct and delineated from each other, each location has its own clear markers and character, while also being sufficiently close in design that it becomes easy to lose track of which space we're in, forcing us into this same disoriented world that Anthony exists in. Add to that the need for everything to feel closed in; these are massive, cavernous apartments, but the production design doesn't give us any space to breathe, these spaces feel oppressive, enclosing, disorienting, without any sense of air, which just leads to the sense of being trapped which is so pivotal to the film.
The Father is a great example of the good effect that the Oscars can have. I probably never would have seen this film; no matter how good the reviews were, I expect I would have rejected it as yet another dementia story, but because of the Oscars I was forced to watch it, and therefore had the delight of learning just how new, original, fascinating, and emotional this film was. I walked away from the film close to in tears, but also excited by how this film used the medium to explore these issues. It's a brilliant film and I loved it.
As I did Sound of Metal. They say that, surprisingly, the most important element in creating the cohesive experience of a movie is not what appears on-screen, but is actually the audio. They've apparently conducted experiments that show that people find it easier to accept a film with poor picture quality but good audio then a film with good picture quality but poor audio. It seems counterintuitive, since for the first three decades of the medium they didn't even have sound, but these days it really is the audio track that ties the film together and makes it feel convincing. And Sound of Metal is a perfect example of the importance of sound in communicating an experience that can never be shown visually.
Riz Ahmed stars as Ruben, a drummer in a metal band with his girlfriend Lou. One day he's distressed to realise he's having trouble hearing, and learns that his hearing is at a 20% level. But being unable to imagine doing anything else, he continues to play until his hearing is almost completely gone. While he holds on to the dream of an expensive implant that will restore his hearing, Lou pressures him to join a community of deaf people, particularly taking on a mentor to guide him through this experience and working with a school of young deaf children, and help him to learn to live with himself and the reality of his new existence.
The film is a beautifully written exploration about what it's like to have your entire life change in an instant, and the struggles of coming to accept a new reality. Now, I have no doubt that the film probably elides and simplifies a lot, a necessary concession to time limitations and an audience that is probably fairly new to this story, but it still feels like it approaches a challenging and devastating situation with sympathy and honesty. There's a moment where Ruben is told that the way he's talking, about spending vast amounts of money chasing every little opportunity to preserve some kind of hearing, makes him sound like an addict, and it's not a bad comparison - the film makes very clear that he will throw away everything in his life in order to avoid having to deal with the problems he's facing. I was really impressed by how subtle a lot of the writing was - we're told that Reuben has been clean for 4 years, so when a moment later we learn he's been with Lou for 4 years, the film manages to communicate the couple's entire history and backstory in just two words. And I appreciated that the film never feels like it's taking the conventional route - this is most notable with the character of Lou; after being so prominent in the first part of the film, she's largely absent through the middle part, only returning towards the end, and you feel that you can predict where the tensions in their relationship will come from, and when the film reaches that point it does something completely different and intensely satisfying.
The film is anchored around Riz Ahmed's performance, and it's a powerful reminder of just what a great actor he is. His character is filled with a constant nervous energy that drives him to always be moving, completely unable to just pause and be at rest, and that's why this experience terrifies him so much - it's not just the fact that his entire life revolves around making music with his girlfriend, not just the knowledge of everything that he is losing as his hearing goes, it's that he's genuinely panicked at the thought of calm, he can't cope with the idea of silence. He's a frustrating character, compulsive, impulsive, belligerent, frequently lashing out in anger at anyone around who will take it, and the way Riz Ahmed brings these elements to his character while retaining the audience's sympathy is compelling and remarkable, and I adored watching him. He has been nominated for the Oscar for this performance, and it would be absolutely deserved; it's a performance of immense vulnerability and honesty, and truly is one of the best of the year.
Also nominated is Paul Raci in the role of the deaf mentor Joe. He's someone who's been working for decades in minor roles, and to be honest I'd never registered him before, but it's exciting when someone like that gets an opportunity to play a career-making role like this and so completely nails it. He's a genuinely supportive figure, someone who has clear sympathy for what Ruben is going through and who understands what he needs, but is also not willing to sugarcoat things and who is determined to challenge Ruben when necessary. It's a fantastic and compelling performance, and the scenes of these two talking are easily the highlight of the film.
I was also excited when I realised that Lou was played by Olivia Cooke, who I've been a fan of for almost 10 years at this point. And I am genuinely surprised that there hasn't been more awards discussion about her work here; while it's not as immediately obviously great as Ahmed or Raci, she brings a lot of the emotional grounding to the film, and you can feel the weight of Lou's unexpressed history in her interaction with Ruben, you can see that Ruben has been there for her when she was going through bad periods with her addiction, and that she's determined to give him the same support that he gave her. It's beautiful work, and I just hope that one day she gets the recognition she deserves.
Sadly I had to watch the film at home, but I would deeply have loved to watch on the big screen - less so for the visuals (although it is a beautifully shot film), but more for the all enveloping soundscape, which was effective at home but would have been fantastic with the full power of a cinema sound system. The audio of the film is constantly treated in a way that emphasises the experience of Ruben as he goes through this experience. Sometimes the sound is perfectly normal, at other points it's muffled and stodgy, or perhaps there's a harsh digital processing applied to the audio, and sometimes the sound is just completely dropped out and we're just left to sit in silence. At points you can tell that they're using low frequency vibration to communicate the physical aspects of sound that can still be experienced even as hearing loss occurs - something that would have been extremely effective in cinema. And it's all done in a way that is often intentionally disoriented, leaving conversations in sign language unsubtitled, so we're left to experience everything just as Ruben does. It's extremely effective use of a vital element in filmmaking, and I'd be shocked if it doesn't win the Oscar for best sound.
There's a famous quote by Roger Ebert: "For me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. If it’s a great movie, it lets you understand a little bit more about what it’s like to be a different gender, a different race, a different age, a different economic class, a different nationality, a different profession, different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears. It helps us to identify with the people who are sharing this journey with us." And that's what Sound of Metal does to an impressive degree - for a moment, it helped me understand what it would be like to experience the world as a deaf person. It's a brilliant film, one of my favourites of the year, and I wholeheartedly recommend it.
All in all, its a pretty good batch of nominees. There are a couple of films that aren't great, but there are a lot that are, with a number of films taking some big swings in experimenting with the form and succeeding for the most part. After the weird year that 2020 has been, it's pleasing to see that there is still great cinema being made.
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