So here's the thing,
They got 10 slots, they can’t give one to the biggest f***ing movie of, like, the last three years? ... Like f***ing make a populist choice, f***, man.
But the thing that is particularly bizarre about that criticism is that, while the Academy may not have nominated the sixth-highest-grossing-film-of-all-time, the Academy actually did make the populist choice. See, as I write this post, I've just returned from a brief holiday in Australia, where I discovered the Melbourne IMAX cinema was still showing the Denis Villeneuve film Dune three months after that film was released. I obviously couldn't pass up that opportunity, which is why I spent the evening watching the film - for the third time in an IMAX cinema, and my sixth screening in total. And what was particularly exciting about the screening, other than the fact that I was once again watching Dune at an IMAX, was the fact that the movie was still really busy - close to half the seats had been sold (many more than were sold for the screening of Uncharted, the opening-weekend film which was #1 at the box office, that immediately followed). At a time when Spider-Man had been and gone from cinemas, people were still turning up to see Dune, and they wanted to see it on the biggest screen possible. Dune is a genuinely remarkable piece of filmmaking, one that is also incredibly popular, and it's the film I was most excited to see listed in the Best Picture nominees.
[Comments on Dune, and the other nine nominees - The Power of the Dog, CODA, Belfast, Drive My Car, Licorice Pizza, Nightmare Alley, West Side Story, King Richard, and Don't Look Up - after the jump.]
And what's surprising is that Dune doesn't really feel like it should be the populist choice. For a start, it's an incomplete story, adapting only the first half of a famously dense book. The story - an Emperor seeks to put down a rising rival family by forcing them to take responsibility for mining the most valuable resource in the empire, dispossessing another powerful family, and then enabling that dispossessed power to attack the rival family, all while a group of supernaturally powerful women try to bring about the rise of a new messiah figure - is a strange mix of political machination and mysticism. It takes place in a sprawling world, spanning four different planets and three different factions, and yet we never even see the Emperor whose scheming is ultimately behind the conflict. It's a story that's filled with new and bizarre phrases - Kwisatz Haderach, Bene Gesserit, Melange, Shai-Hulud, Sardaukar - that we need to understand and follow. And it's hardly a feel-good movie - much of the film is spent getting us to fall in love with a wide cast of characters only to watch many of them being brutally killed, while the climax of the film is a nasty one-on-one fight in which our hero just flat out kills a person for the first time. And then the film just ends, because it's only adapting the first half of the novel, resolving nothing and ending the film with a promise of some cool stuff we'll hopefully get to see in the sequel.
And yet it all works, because we are in the hands of a master with a clear and precise vision for how best to adapt the source novel. The decision to focus so completely on Paul and the House Atreides, almost to the exclusion of all else, is fascinating. The immediate antagonists, House Harkonnen, are barely defined as characters, little more then the "brutal animals" that Gurney describes, while we only ever hear second-hand about the schemes of the unseen emperor that are driving the entire narrative. We're only ever given just enough information about them to understand their actions, but never enough to make them fully rounded characters. And while that seems a curious approach, I really like that choice for this film. Villeneuve has promised that the Harkonnens will be given more prominence in the next film, but here they just exist as an overwhelming force to be overcome by, no different to an exploding volcano or a devastating earthquake. And so the focus isn't on who will win the conflict between these families; it's solely on who will survive and how.
And I admire Villeneuve's confidence in his ability to use filmmaking to relieve the need for dialogue to explain so much of this world. Just look at the moment where the Duke asks how much money was spent on the visit of the ceremonial delegation, and Thufir Hawat's eyes roll up for a second as he does some quick calculations - there's no explanation, I don't think the word "Mentat" is ever even used in the film (I had to look it up), but in an instant we understand exactly what he is. In the same way, we never get an explanation about the Voice, or Ground Thumpers, or Hunter Seekers, or the Atreides hand gesture communications, while there's only a single line of dialogue to explain when the personal shields do and do not work - these are all elements that prove absolutely pivotal to the film, but they are presented to the audience with such clarity and economy that it allows the film time to focus on the political schemes driving the plot, time to peer into the weird corners of this world, or time to just exist in the emotional space of these characters.
One of the challenges this story presents is that the novel is famously hallucinatory and impressionistic at moments. There's a reason why Alejandro Jodorowsky tried to adapt the story, and why David Lynch actually did make the 1984 version - these are two directors whose works are driven less by clear narrative structure and more by atmospheric dream logic. Villeneuve is by comparison a director much more attuned to the storytelling needs of his films, but while his vision sequences and representation of Paul's dreams may be comparatively straightforward, there's something unsettling still at work in those moments. In particular, there's a vision sequence late in the film where Paul witnesses himself leading an army of Fremen into battle, slicing his way through his enemies, before returning to his home planet of Caladan with Chani by his side - but while it feels like this vision is promising Paul the outcome that he's been working towards, it feels like a nightmare. Villeneuve may not be giving the audience the off-the-wall spark that Jodorowsky might have given his audience in these moments, but he's expertly using these sequences to drive the emotional stories forward, and that is exciting.
Given how perfectly the film works, it's frustrating that Villeneuve was not nominated for Best Director. I wasn't much of a fan of his early work, which I found visually interesting but overall unengaging. But then he made Arrival, a brilliant and thoughtful piece of science fiction, and suddenly it became clear that his problem was that he's a science fiction filmmaker who wasn't making science fiction films. Since then he's given us Blade Runner 2049 and now Dune, both incredible and challenging works, and he's become a real draw for me. And here it's absolutely clear that we are seeing Villeneuve's personal vision for what a Dune movie could be. He's working with a text that is famously unwieldy, and every choice he makes feels calibrated by his focus on how to make this film work cinematically and coherently. And of course, there are moments of incredible spectacle - if the moment Paul first sees a sandworm isn't awe inspiring, then you've done something wrong - but one thing I love about his version of this film is how casually he presents something incredible. It wasn't until after seeing the film and hearing some of the commentary, for instance, that I realised just how unusual the thopters are - it just seemed so natural that you would have planes with dragonfly-style beating wings that it hadn't even occurred to me that there's something bizarre about that idea, because the film takes place in a world where there is nothing bizarre about that. And a big part of the realism of this world is driven by how tactile Villeneuve makes it feel. When Paul dips his hand into the water of Caladan, or when Liet-Kynes feels the sand liquifying under her, or the Sardukar army are dabbed with blood in the pouring rain, or Duke Leto puts a comforting hand on the back of Lady Jessica's neck, or the Harkonnen servant runs her fingers across the instrument - these are all small, subtle moments that many films would not include, but they feel vital to this film because Villeneuve uses them to evoke a sense memory in the audience that makes these worlds feel real to us.
On the other hand, one of the film's most deserved nominations is for its score by Hans Zimmer, and frankly it would be an outrage if anything else wins, as Zimmer's score is one of the best I've heard in years. Like Villeneuve, Zimmer read the book as a teenager, and his score feels like he's been imagining what this world sounds like for decades. Zimmer completely eschews a recognisable orchestral approach, adopting instrumentation that is wide-ranging, apparently even constructing new instruments to sound alien and original, and in the moments where we are consciously aware of specifically recognisable instrumentation, it's usually something we don't commonly expect to hear in this context - witness the bagpipes when House Atreides arrive on Arrakis. And it's not an especially melodic score, instead being driven by distinctive soundscapes - this is not a score to be hummed, but to be felt. Each environment, each faction, has their own particular sound - House Atreides is warm and regal, House Harkonnen is filled with mechanistic and militaristic beats, the Bene Gesserit have a barely audible chattering, the Fremen have a wailing cry that feels both mournful for a world that has been under subjugation and defiant against that subjugation, and Arrakis and the sandworms seem to have a majesty and wonder. And Zimmer does some fantastic work in layering these elements, placing this sound against that sound so that the score can give you a sense of the competing factions at play in each moment, in a way that a more traditional Wagnerian thematic approach might struggle to communicate. Which is not to say the film is entirely devoid of musical themes - there's one particularly memorable theme that runs through the film as representative of Paul's journey, from his introduction in his home of Caladan, through his family's departure, his first sighting of the sandworm, to his choice to journey into the desert. It's a small, simple theme but that can be both intensely thrilling and deeply mournful at the inevitable loss of life that is coming. (My favourite sequence in the film, the departure from Caladan, perfectly uses the theme - its powerful and exciting, but carries the weight and sadness of leaving the only home you've known, possibly never to return.) All in all, there's so much intricacy and detailed running through this score, which retains intense beauty and majesty despite how unconventional it feels.
In case it wasn't clear, I adore Dune. This is an incredible cinematic work. Every time I watch it, it's just envelops me. Even after seeing the film six times, I want to see it again. I have the 4K disc sitting a few feet away, and as I try to find the words to describe how the film makes me feel, I desperately want to just put it on, just for a few moments/hours. And I feel I should be clear, this is not born out of any pre-existing attachment to this property. I've never read any of the books (before now I've never really even considered reading them), nor have I seen the generally well-regarded miniseries. I have seen the David Lynch film three times, hated it the first time, came to appreciate it more in later viewings, but that was more out of interest in Lynch as a film-maker rather than any interest in the property (and in any case I've never been able to actually follow what's going on in that film). And I've seen the documentary about Jodorowsky's failed version. But this is the first time I've really engaged with Dune, the first time I've fallen in love with it. And what's thrilling is that this is only half the story, and I know that Dune: Part Two is going ahead. All things going well, next year, I'll get to return to this world. And I cannot wait.
For much of the awards season, it seemed as though The Power of the Dog, the new western from Jane Campion, was locked in as the almost inevitable winner. Benedict Cumberbatch plays a rancher who takes delight in dominating and tormenting those around - and when his brother marries a widowed innkeeper with an effeminate teenage son, Peter, he has two new targets to focus his cruelty on. But then one day, for some reason, Phil suddenly shifts, and begins to take an interest in helping and teaching Peter how to be a rancher.
Regardless of whether it does win Best Picture, the film definitely looks like it will win Jane Campion the Oscar for Director. And it's an award that is absolutely earned. Campion is someone I've struggled to connect with in the past - I've seen all of her films, some multiple times, but the only time I've ever really felt engaged with her work was her TV series Top of the Lake (and even with that I had real problems with its flawed second season). But with her work here, I just felt her grab my attention from the opening minutes, and hold it until the credits rolled, and on second viewing I found myself really appreciating the way she tells the story. At least initially, there's not a strong sense of where the film is leading, and it ducks off into little side avenues or introduces these odd little moments that don't seem to be connected to anything. It's not until the film reaches its conclusion that all the disparate pieces of the film are bound together like a braided rope and we finally understand what the film as a whole actually is - I was glad to be able to watch the film a second time, just to approach it with an understanding of its ultimate direction in order to appreciate the efficiency and precision on display in the film's storytelling. I particularly liked the way she holds us at a distance from the characters - it's an extremely interior film, and yet the film is almost entirely focused solely on the events that occur, and (other then a line of voice-over from Peter at the very start of the film, and again at the very end) never really lets you into the characters' mind spaces. This forces the audience to actively engage with the film while sustaining a sense of ambiguity that leaves the story wide open for interpretation - I've seen so many theories about how this is what that character was planning, or that this character once did that, and they all could work. And it's important to note that this shows how engaged audience for this film is - they don't just receive the film; they are excited to puzzle through it and develop their own understanding of how everything holds together. This is not to say that the film is confusing - we have all the pieces, we understand everything that happened, we even understand at a broad level what motivations drove the characters, but the film still has this disconnect where you never fully understand why things happened, we never know what a person was thinking or what considerations drove particular actions. And that is part of its joy.
Campion also shows remarkable skill in getting the audience to experience the emotional space of the characters. If you look at what Phil is actually doing or saying, there's not necessarily anything overly terrible about any of his actions - he's mean and cutting and extremely nasty, sure, but he's certainly not physically abusive, and I'm not even certain that his actions reach the intensity that we imagine of when we talk about emotional abuse, he never even raises his voice. But Phil is able to identify every person's weakness and precisely target that so that he can do the greatest psychological damage to everyone. I mean, the most obvious thing he does to Rose is play the banjo - that is literally all he does - and yet Campion manages to put us in a space where we share the anxiety felt by Rose. With every plucked note, with every whistled breath, viewing the film I felt every bit as traumatised as Rose, and we completely understand the measures she takes to help her deal with her experience. Every moment of the film becomes filled with dread as we wait on edge for whatever new torture takes his fancy. It become a chilling portrait about how terrible masculinity could become when untempered by compassion or sympathy.
All four main performances in the film have been nominated in the acting awards - Benedict Cumberbatch as lead actor, and Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, and Kodi Smit-McPhee in supporting categories. The casting of Cumberbatch as this vile piece of excessive masculinity initially seems counterintuitive, but it proves to be the film's most brilliant choice. He never quite feels comfortable in the role, when he strides across the ranch he comes across as a little stiff, as though he is putting on a performance for everyone around, because that's the nature of the character - it's only in those rare moments when he's alone that he visibly eases, relieved of the burden of presenting this image he's dedicated to. It's a wonderful performance, and also a smart piece of casting that uses the actor's public perception to illuminate aspects of the character. I also enjoyed the air of jealousy that drives his character - you can see him looking at his brother George and wife Rose and how their union has brought them relief from their loneliness, and an intense resentment burns through the character at the different directions and opportunities their lives have taken compared to his - along with the tiny ways he signals the enjoyment Phil gets from lashing out at all around. Kodi Smit-McPhee gets an even more challenging role, in a role that almost feels like a mystery to be solved - outwardly he's frail, weak, but he has a look of determination in his performance, and a level of subdued rage that runs through his every action. His best scenes are those moments where he acts opposite Cumberbatch - there's a practised obsequiousness to his actions that almost feels sarcastic, but you can sense a coiled tension waiting to explode in his every scene, and when Phil mocks the very notion that Peter could ever be considered strong, it's clear how completely he's misjudged the boy in front of him. Kirsten Dunst becomes the emotional and tragic core of the film, bringing a meekness to the role that is completely understandable - you can see how the past tragedies that defined her life have left her vulnerable, and the decline that she takes is both pathetic and devastating. I always enjoy watching Jesse Plemons, and it's nice to see him get the acknowledgement of being nominated, especially alongside his real-life wife Dunst, but while he's very good as brother George, unfortunately there's not all that much to the role, he's a character I frequently forgot was in the film even while I was watching the film, and there are certainly stronger, more interesting performances this year that's probably should have been recognised ahead of him.
I'm fascinated by the fact that the film takes place in 1925. There is nothing in this film that necessarily requires it to take place at that time, and it could easily have been set 50 years earlier - during the period celebrated by the classic western - with little change. Instead it seems a deliberate choice to set the film in a more modern time, when the automobile is replacing the horse and stagecoach. Into this world, Phil tries to project an ultra-masculine rough, tough cowboy image, but he's doing this at a time when that image is in decline. He's so caught up in this idea that "this is what a man is" that he hasn't noticed the world changing around him, and that he's quickly becoming outdated. It becomes part of the tragedy of this character - he's learnt these lessons from the previous generation and is now replicating them in his own life, without recognising that the world is offering other ways to live that might make him happier.
The Power of the Dog is a wonderfully nuanced, thoughtful, and rich movie, and absolutely one of the filmic high points of 2021. If it does win Best Picture, it will be an award well-deserved.
However, in the past couple of weeks, a new film has won a number of major guild awards, pointing to a strong possibility of a win by CODA - which was a surprise to me, since I wasn't even expecting to see the film in the list of nominees, much less as a winner. CODA focuses on the Rossi family, especially Ruby - the only hearing person in a family where both her parents and her brother are deaf. As the "Child Of Deaf Adults," Ruby is relied on to be the ears and the voice for her family. But when she follows the guy she has a crush on and joins the school choir, the music teacher sees potential for her to attend a prestigious music college, which would require her to move away from her family right as they start a new business and they desperately need her help.
CODA is a very well made, nice film. But there's something about it that just feels like we've seen it all before. There's a moment about 20 minutes in where Ruby, having literally run out of the choir audition, is seen sitting on top of a cliff sadly singing the audition song - that scene made me think "This feels like a film that probably did very well at the Sundance film festival," and sure enough, it actually set a record for the amount of money paid to acquire a film out of Sundance. The film sets that generic, not too heavy, not too light, comedy-drama tone that tends to mark much of mainstream independent cinema. I watched it twice, and I found it enjoyable both times. But here's the thing: I didn't rewatch the film because I felt any pressing desire to rewatch it, the way I did with Dune, The Power of the Dog, or Nightmare Alley; I rewatched it because I saw it back in September, and in the time since, the film had completely left my memory. I had to rewatch the film, because otherwise I would have had nothing to write here. My second viewing was basically one long experience of rediscovery - oh, that's right, this film is about her singing; oh, that's right, there's a whole subplot about her family's fishing business; oh, that's right, I remember this scene now. Before my rewatch, literally the only thing that I remembered was the fact that her parents were extremely horny for each other; that is the only thing about the film that left any lasting mark in my memory.
The film is a remake of a French film, La Famille Belier, which it seems has been little seen outside of French-speaking countries. But reading about that earlier film, it apparently came under a lot of criticism for casting hearing actors as the parents (only the brother character was played by a deaf person). The makers of CODA avoided that trap, casting deaf actors in all three roles, and that certainly elevates the film - not only in terms of representation, but also because the film clearly seems to have been informed by the experiences of the actors. Troy Kotsur is widely expected to win Best Supporting Actor, and if so he'll only be the second deaf person to win an acting Oscar - the first, of course, being his on-screen wife Marlee Matlin. And I can certainly understand the acclaim, because these two are unambiguously the best part of the film. (There's a reason why the only thing I remembered about the film related to their relationship.) I particularly appreciated the fact that these are not just "the deaf parents" - yes they are deaf, and a significant part of the film is spent in exploring the challenges that come with that, but they are presented as fully rounded and engaging people in their own rights. So we know, for instance, that they do have a passionate sex life - the early scene where this is discussed, and Kotsur expresses his appreciation for his wife's attractiveness, is honestly one of the funniest scenes I've seen in a while. But above all, they're just parents - they have sweet and tender moments in relating with their daughter; at other times they mess up and don't understand or appreciate what she's going through; and then sometimes they're just the annoying parent, telling bad jokes, deliberately embarrassing their kids, and taking real delight in their child's embarrassment. They both give a genuinely wonderful performance, and if Kotsur does win, while it's not the choice I'd make, it would certainly be a justified and deserved win.
The film is most effective and illuminating when it's actually exploring what life is like as a deaf person. There are the small things - the use of light as a wake-up alarm, for example, or the father's enjoyment of loud gangsta rap as allowing him to feel the vibrations of the songs, or the casual way they make jokes about their deafness. But there are also the big things - the unexpected barriers all around that unintentionally serve to exclude the deaf, or the ease with which people in their situation could become isolated and insular. At one point, her mother even admits to hoping when Ruby was born that she would be deaf, because she was worried that she wouldn't be able to connect with a hearing child. And there's a really nice moment where the family attend the choir's big concert, and when Ruby steps up to sing, the sound drops out and we are left in complete silence for the length of the song; we find ourselves in the family's shoes, as they look around at the visible responses of the people around because that's the only way they can know how well Ruby is doing.
It's also an interesting portrait of how it must be to be the only person who can hear in a family that cannot. A major problem throughout the film is the way the family comes to rely on Ruby to be their interpreter, to be the person who helps them to connect with and communicate with the rest of the world, and how they can come to feel like a burden on someone like Ruby - she can't live her life because she feels under an obligation to help others to live theirs. And the premise does set up an interesting way to explore the emotional space of being the only hearing person in a family - Ruby discovers this thing that she is passionate about, that she is talented in, and yet it is something she cannot share with her family because it is literally impossible for them to truly appreciate this art that she loves. So this is all interesting material for the film to explore.
But there are other points where the film is just clunky or obvious. Let's start at the beginning: the entire film is predicated on the improbable idea that this girl (who has never sung in public before) is so insanely talented that with only a few months practice she could get in to a top music school; she's a very good singer, but she does not come across as being good enough for that given the level of competition for a spot at this school. The choir teacher is the worst version of the inspirational teacher cliché - he's over the top, he's quirky, he's tetchy, he's the type of person who has people audition by singing "Happy Birthday" to him, and by the end of his first scene I had lost all patience with him and was very quickly growing to hate him. The jokes are frequently obvious, including not one but two scenes about people mistakenly using sign language to say something they didn't intend. There are multiple points where people should have had a particular conversation or have communicated in some way with someone else but don't, for no reason other than provoke a greater reaction later - for instance, Ruby knows that she needs to contact her music teacher urgently, but she waits until she's in the middle of a news interview while she is translating for her family before she starts txting him, when she certainly had time while the news crew was setting up. And the ending of the film plays out as though everyone in the room knows that Ruby is the main character in this story - "Yes, we have lots of rules about what is allowed in an audition in order to make things fair for everyone, but we will throw out these rules for Ruby because it will make for a heartwarming scene."
The rise of CODA as a possible winner feels like the Academy reverting back to form; they've had a couple of fun years giving the prize to interesting and unexpected movies like Parasite and Nomadland, but it's time to get back to choosing "safe" films. Back in 2020, when Parasite won the Oscar, I commented on Facebook that "Tonight the Academy earned enough credit that I'll forgive it ten Green Books." If CODA does end up winning, then okay, it's a good film, but the Academy has used up one of their credits. Above all, as a movie lover, it simply didn't invigorate me in the way that many films have this year. And for a film that may win Best Picture, that's a disappointment.
But neither CODA nor The Power of the Dog were always the presumptive winner. Early in the awards season, Kenneth Branagh's film Belfast was generally seen as the frontrunner. Inspired by Branagh's own childhood, the film follows Buddy, a nine-year-old Protestant in Northern Ireland whose world is rocked by the outbreak of the Troubles in the late 60s. Buddy tries to live the typical life of a child, going through the usual youthful hijinks, avoiding a thrashing from his mum, and spending time with his much-loved Granny and Pop. Meanwhile his father spends much of his time away from home working, and as the violence escalates, the family needs to decide whether to leave Belfast and follow their father to a new life in England.
I was actually rather pleased when it became clear that Belfast would not be winning. The film is likeable enough and fine, but it's not great, and while I have absolutely no doubt that this is a genuinely personal project for Branagh, nevertheless the decision to make this film at this time and in this way feels like a cynical exercise intended primarily to collect Oscars. The movie feels like Kenneth Branagh watched Roma, saw a director making a black-and-white movie inspired by their own childhood growing up in a turbulent and violent time, saw how close that film actually got to winning the Oscar, and decided that he had experiences in his past that could inspire a similar film - and since it's not in a foreign language, it might even be more likely to win. It just seems as though there's a transparent cynicism in the making of the film, and I'm therefore pleased that it doesn't seem to be working.
I do think the comparison to Roma provides a useful indication why this film is not as successful as that. While Roma was inspired by Alfonso Cuaron's childhood, the film is not told through the point of view of a Cuaron stand-in, but rather from the point of view of the domestic worker who worked for their family. That ensures that the central viewpoint through which the story is filtered is someone who is old enough to understand what's going on. But in Belfast, the main point-of-view character is a stand-in for Branagh as a child, and so everything gets filtered through that child's viewpoint - and I don't think it quite works. Certainly a lot of the film clearly shows that approach - much of the film is shot from a low-angle, as though the camera were a child looking up at the world, and there are definitely moments where we are not seeing reality, but rather events filtered through the boy's worldview (the parents and especially grandparents are certainly presented as the perfect ideals that a child would see them as, while the vision of a sweaty spittle-covered preacher speaking hell and damnation definitely feels like the nightmarish perception of a daunted child). But at the same time, Buddy is too young to appreciate what was really going on at the start of the Troubles, so the film needs to keep bringing in scenes involving the adults to drive the story forward. But then, because the film is supposed to be from the point of view of this child, they need to justify including these extra scenes by having the boy witness them. It almost became comical - it got to the point where every time one of these moments would occur, I found myself actively waiting for the end of the scene when Buddy would walk into frame or the camera would pan to reveal him, just to show that he was listening the whole time. But with most of these conversations, I felt that Buddy either wouldn't really grasp what was being discussed or just wouldn't care - for instance, when his father is intimidated by a local thug trying to force him to fight the Catholics, I don't believe that Buddy would have understood what was going on. The fact is, if the film was really as much in the child's world view as the rest of the film seemed, those scenes really should have played out with the adults speaking in a Peanuts-style "wa wa" tone. Instead, this kid seems unusually attentive to things that most kids his age would not notice. And that bothered me.
The movie also had a moment so gallingly lacking in subtlety that I almost feel the film should be disqualified from being Best Picture just on that basis. Midway through the film, Buddy is watching a western on TV, and I recognised the film as High Noon.* "That seems a bit on the nose," I thought, "referencing a movie in which the hero must decide whether to stay and fight or leave to escape his troubles, in this movie about a family that has to decide whether to stay or leave to escape the Troubles. But at least it's a comparison you would only pick up if you know the film." Until the next scene, which plays out over the ballad of High Noon, "Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin'", a song with lyrics that more or less explicitly say "Don't leave, I'm staying to fight". But if that wasn't obvious enough, a while later, when we reach the point where the father actually confronts the local thug, the song plays again, while the scene itself plays like a shootout from a western, with the good guy and the bad guy staring each other down. I was honestly angry that a film could be this hamfisted; it's appalling. But that entire confrontation scene is just bafflingly terrible, from the absurd way the film sets up the situation (I don't care what reason there is; a parent wouldn't deliberately take a child into the middle of a riot) to the laughable conclusion (which is technically set up, but that doesn't help when I already didn't believe the ball-throwing scene that set it up). It's an infuriating scene that completely undercuts the movie right at what should be its dramatic high point.
* I was actually surprised I recognised it; I'm not a big western fan, and have only seen the film once many years ago.
That said, there are some rather good things about the film. It is actually quite effective when it is genuinely embedded in the child's understanding of the world. It's clear that the kids understand something scary is going on, and know that it depends on their religious belief, but that seems to be as far as their understanding goes. One of the best scenes in the film is a short moment where Buddy and his cousin grapple with how to identify a Catholic from a Protestant, and what to say when asked the question if you don't know the allegiance of the questioner, now that that distinction has become so vital to their survival. And the barricades become so much more daunting when viewed from a child's view, with jagged barbed wire looming over. But the film also remembers that even in the middle of this chaos, kids are going to be kids - the Troubles are the concerns of adults, and while Buddy is worried about them to the degree that he will be affected by them, he's much more focused on playing with his cousins, watching TV, falling in love with the smart girl, and stealing candy from the local store.
The film has acting nominations for Ciaran Hinds and Judi Dench, playing the grandparents, and okay, that's about what I expect from the Oscars. I could almost accept the Ciaran Hinds nomination - he's a much-loved character actor who has never had the awards attention that he really deserves, and his scenes with Jude Hill as Buddy, where he gets to offer some grandfatherly advice, offer slightly more interest to the role. But Judi Dench is just playing "kindly idealised grandmother", and there is nothing about the character or the performance that is in any way interesting beyond the fact that it's played by Judi Dench and she can play anything well. I simply felt there wasn't the substance to justify a nomination, and there were other actors who could have been nominated in her place. Hell, if they really wanted a nomination to go to Belfast, they could have nominated Caitriona Balfe - her performance is much more engaging, as she needs to navigate presenting the strong, idealised image of the perfect in-control mother, while having to be effectively "the parent" when her husband is (frequently) away, while also dropping hints about how overwhelmed and terrified she really is by events.
Belfast isn't terrible - or at least, most of it isn't terrible. It's a perfectly pleasant way to pass 90 minutes. It's the type of film that you would recommend to your mother, and she would come back to you saying what a nice film it was. But when there are so many other films that do exactly what this film does, and do them better than this film, it just feels like an unfortunate waste.
Now here's an interesting statistic - in the first 90 years of the Oscars, there were only 10 foreign language films nominated for Best Picture. But in the past four years, each year has had one foreign language nominee - Roma, Parasite (which obviously also won), Minari, and now the Japanese film Drive My Car. And this newest entry is a wonderful film that absolutely deserves to be counted among that number. Yusuke is a theatre director mourning the death of his wife, while also trying to deal with his knowledge that she cheated on him. When he's hired to direct a new production of Uncle Vanya, he decides to cast his wife's former lover in the title role. At the same time, he reluctantly agrees to the theatre's requirement that he have a driver, a young woman with whom he slowly starts to bond.
Famously (at least in film circles), it's about 40 minutes before the opening credits play, and those earlier scenes explore the relationship between Yusuke and his wife Oto, before the wife passes away, the credits roll, and the story proper begins. Right from the start it was clear that this film was going to devastate me - coming in, I knew about the adultery and the death, so when I saw how sweet and loving this central couple was, I almost didn't want to watch. I fell just as in love with Oto as Yusuke is, so the pain of her betrayal of him genuinely cut deep. But while the amount of time spent on what is in essence an extended prologue could seem excessive, it proves absolutely essential. Oto becomes such a vital presence in the opening scenes that the substance of the film from that point on is almost defined by her absence, which allows the film to become the intense meditation on grief that it is. We spend a lot of time in the rest of the film with Yusuke listening to a recording of Uncle Vanya that Oto made for him, reciting Vanya's lines in response to her prompts - while in the surface it's presented as a tool for him to memorise the play, it becomes a way of keeping her alive, where he's even able to have something resembling a conversation with her. And the best moment in the film involves an extended scene of Yusuke sitting in the car with Oto's lover, for the first time each actually being honest with each other about this woman, what she meant to each of them, and the gap that has been left in their lives with her passing.
The relationship between Yusuke and his driver Watari is also a joy to observe. Watari is reserved, even sullen when we first meet her, and it's fascinating to watch the incremental steps taken as the two begin to open up to each other. The two are both carrying a great level of guilt over how their own actions may have have led to tragedies that have come to define their lives, and it's caused each of them to become insular. Yusuke is positively resentful having to share this time that he wanted to spend alone with his wife's voice, while Watari's skill as a driver may be how she makes her living, but it's also a reminder of a trauma that she's trying to escape. And so it's wonderful to watch these people coming together, looking at the other from the outside, but also able to offer perspective and reflection born from their own struggles.
Now, one thing that should be acknowledged is that the film is long - nearly 3 hours, with a story that could easily be told in half that. But the film instead demands that time. Firstly, it simply does not feel that long - I was thrown when the opening credits started, because there was no way that I had been watching the film for 40 minutes already, and the film as a whole feels like it's maybe 2 hours at the most. And yet you can feel the film taking its time - it's unhurried, and scenes just play out at a leisurely and natural pace. But I think a lot of the film's effectiveness comes from the fact that it is taking its time to tell the story. Take that central relationship of Yusuke and Watari - yes, most films would have them bonded in a much shorter period of time, but the power of this relationship is born from the time they spend together; the way silent car drives slowly build to brief sentences, increasing comfort, a growing willingness to be ever so slightly open, until you reach the conclusion and they are admitting things to each other that they have never and would never admit to anyone else. This is not something that happens quickly, and the fact that it doesn't speed through any of those stages is what makes the film convincing, and give those final admissions near power - we've been through the natural growth in this relationship, and we understand why they can now tell the other these deep secrets.
The film also spends a great deal of time exploring the text of Uncle Vanya - we hear Oto reading the play on the cassette tape, we spend so much time with the actors reading the play, rehearsing the play, performing it. Now, this is not Vanya on 42nd Street, you're not going to walk away from this film knowing Uncle Vanya if you don't already, but we do spend a massive amount of time in the play. And those scenes are just beautiful - Chekhov's play has real power, even in small snippets; even when given a blank affectless reading, you can't help but be enthralled. But I do find myself wondering, why this play? Of all the incredible plays that have ever been written, why choose to center on Uncle Vanya? As far as I can see, there's no obvious point of connection between the play and the movie's plot - the closest I can get really get is that, in his knowledge about his wife's infidelity, Yusuke feels his love for her was unrequited in the same way as Vanya's love for Yelena was. (And certainly that's an issue he works through with Watari.) But to be honest, I don't think there is a strong connection between the play and the movie - and I think that's why it works for me. We've all seen movies where a character will watch a play, read a book, hear a song, that speaks directly and unambiguously to the situation they are in, and it always hits with a clang, where you can feel the writer behind the scenes saying "this is important". The use of Vanya here doesn't do that, there's no one-to-one comparison to the film's events. It's in the generalities that it feels most relevant - the regret they feel for actions long since taken or not taken, or the moments where people find themselves compelled to unburden themselves by expressing thoughts long left unspoken.
But what I think is more significant thematically about the play is the fact that it's a multilingual production, with different actors playing their roles in whichever language they feel most comfortable - Japanese, Korean, English, even Sign Language. And I think that's a subtle metaphor for the sense of isolation that we can feel. We all exist in this place, we all are trying to express something about ourselves, and we may think that we understand what others are experiencing or expressing, but we never get to genuinely hear what others are truly expressing because we filter everything through our own way of understanding. It's on display in the moments after the conversation between Yusuke and his wife's lover - you can see Yusuke trying to adjust the conversation he's just had to reflect his view, until Watari speaks up, interrupting that reframing to tell him that what he's just heard is the truth, at least as the other man sees it. The challenge is to not reinterpret the world into a viewpoint that we can understand, but to expand our ability to understand others.
I had a chance to see Drive My Car last year at the film festival, but while it was on my initial list of films to see, the long runtime made it just too difficult to fit into my schedule. When the "best films of the year" lists started coming out a month later, and Drive My Car became one film that consistently appeared in those lists, every time I saw its name felt like a dagger reminding me that I could have seen this film but did not. I was therefore extremely glad for the Oscar nomination, as it made a further cinema release more likely, and thus allowed me the chance to enjoy this beautiful, rich, and challenging work. I left the cinema positively buzzing with excitement at having had such a wonderful experience. It's not an obvious crowd pleaser, but if you are open to it, it greatly rewards you.
One of these days, Paul Thomas Anderson will win the Oscar for Best Director - it's just inevitable. The man has had three nominations so far, and will earn many more in future. Over the past 25 years, he's built a reputation for being one of the most brilliant directorial talents working, with a career that can never be predicted. Who could have imagined he would follow up a sprawling multifaceted drama with an Adam Sandler comedy, or follow up a fictionalised version of the birth of Scientology with a complex Neo Noir comedy, or follow up a strangely kinky and erotic drama about sexual repression and dressmaking with a 1970's-set coming of age comedy. And yet his name is such a marker for quality that just knowing he's the person behind a film instantly elevates it to a must-see. Which is why I laughed when I heard that there was a film called Licorice Pizza, only to become desperate to see it as soon as I heard that PTA was the man behind it. The film is definitely one of the lesser of his works, and will certainly not win him that Oscar, but it's cheeky and fun and one of my favourites of the year.
The film focuses on Gary, a teenage child actor who has aged out of cuteness, and who is now building his own businesses as an entrepreneur. One day he meets and falls in love with Alana Kane, a 25-year-old who's drifting through life without any sense of direction. She's not interested in a relationship with a kid 10 years younger than her, but the two become friends and begin hanging out in a way that she's very aware is weird. And the film just follows their various exploits and experiences as they drift in and out of each other's lives over the passage of a year.
The main reason why I don't feel the film is as great as much of Anderson's previous work is simply the fact that it is extremely bitsy. It doesn't feel as though it has an actual story - it's just a collection of incidents, and the film moves from one moment to the next. Now, this is not particularly new to PTA, as it could be argued that his breakthrough film Boogie Nights was similarly episodic, but in that film at least there is a direction of travel that gives the film a structure, whereas here I get the sense that you could almost move the incidents of the film around into almost any order without significantly affecting the film. And that leaves it feeling slightly more weightless then I'd like. This issue was crystallised for me after the scene where they set up a water bed for Jon Peters - Peters threatens to kill Gary and his family if he damages Peters' house, they then deliberately leave the water hose running to flood the bedroom, but there's never any sense that Peters even gives them an angry phone call. Now that's not to say that this is a bad thing; on the contrary, it gives the film a real youthful energy - almost as though the film is exclaiming "We'll do what we like, and bugger the consequences, because there are no consequences," but it does mean the film feels less impactful than much of his other work. But when the film is this much fun, who really cares? After all, the Jon Peters sequence is also easily the best part of the film - not only does it have a hysterically funny performance by Bradley Cooper as the unhinged Peters, but it also has the incredible scene where Alana has to drive a truck with no gas downhill in reverse. It's brilliant, more exciting than almost any action scene (outside of Dune) this year, and in that moment I didn't care whether Jon Peters would be annoyed about his house being flooded; I was just entirely thrilled at this remarkable scene.
There has been a lot of commentary about the appropriateness of focusing the film on a relationship between a 15 year old boy and a 25 year old woman. To be honest, it's something I do find myself feeling uneasy about, and it has occupied a lot of my thinking about the film. But to its credit, the film knows that there's something uncomfortable and odd in this friendship, with multiple scenes that specifically comment on how weird it is - in many ways, that's what the film is about. At the same time, it kinda makes sense when you think about it. Alana may be 10 years older than Gary, but she's not 10 years more mature - she has no sense of direction and is drifting through life taking random jobs when they come up, whereas she's impressed by Gary, who has started multiple successful businesses and has a clear vision of where he wants to get to. It's almost as though her immaturity and his maturity means the two meet at some middle level. She's in this weird space where she just needs some kind of affirmation, and Gary gives her that - and the film understands that there is something about that that is actually toxic for the two of them. But the film never lets you forget that Gary is only 15 years old - there's one scene where Gary tries to impress Alana by telling a crude joke on television, in a moment that instantly reminds you that this is a child who still doesn't really know what it is to be an adult. All of which means I feel I can't criticise the film for being about this undesirable relationship, because the film knows that it's a bad situation, even explicitly states as much - and besides, just because the film portrays this situation does not mean the film approves of what the characters do in that film. And anyway, this film does not feel like it's heading towards a happily-ever-after; we've also seen enough to know that, however the film ends, these two will just continue to move in and out of each other's lives for years to come.
The film is held together by a pair of phenomenal acting performances by two actors both making their film debuts, although both have notable connections to show business. Cooper Hoffman, playing Gary, is the son of the late and much missed Philip Seymour Hoffman, who until his passing was a PTA regular. Not only does he look remarkably like his father, he has that same mix of confidence and awkward desperation that I think was the hallmark of PSH's work, and I'm very excited to see where his career leads. Alana Haim, in the role that bears her name, has apparently already established a notable music career, and here just commands the viewer's attention. Her character is a woman whose life is a complete mess, who carries an air of being above it all, and yet who carries a natural spark that does irresistibly draw people to her. I don't know whether she plans to carry on acting, or just return back to music, but if we never get another Alana Haim performance, then at least we got this one.
There are a couple of scenes in the film that have been the subject of significant criticism surrounding claims of racist content that I do feel need to be addressed. John Michael Higgins plays the owner of a Japanese restaurant in the valley, who at some moments communicates with his Japanese wife by speaking English with an extremely broad, exaggerated mock-Asian accent. It's understandable why people have complained that the film encourages people to find this imitation accent funny and laugh with the racist attitudes on display. And almost certainly there will be people who did find the scene funny for that reason - there's no real way to avoid that, in the same way that many films have had their intent misinterpreted by part of their audience. And if you're Asian, and you feel the film was making fun of you, I understand that. But to me, Higgins is playing a character who is so absolutely cartoonish and absurd that it's impossible for me to believe the film is not making fun of him in those moments. My gosh, in his second scene, the film goes out of its way to point out that his wife is a different woman from the first scene - he's ended his first marriage, and remarried a new woman who is also Japanese. It could not be clearer that this is a man who fetishises Asian woman but who refuses to genuinely engage with their culture. If that refusal to engage wasn't clear enough from the fact that his restaurant is called Mikado,* the ultimate punchline is the revelation that he doesn't even know how to speak Japanese - even though he's been married to two Japanese woman who barely speak English. He's absolutely presented to the audience as an idiot, and we are invited not to laugh at his actions, but at him.
* A reference to the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta set in a fictional Japan as imagined by people living in Victorian England. Full disclosure: I played one of the lead roles in a school production of The Mikado, and I genuinely love the show, while being aware of its problems as a representation of Japan.
The other thing that I think is significant about that scene, is that it is part of an effort to undercut the nostalgic element that could seep into the film. When you have coming-of-age films set in a past era, it can be extremely easy to just focus on the good things about those times, the way when we reflect on our youth we only remember the good times, but PTA seems to deliberately weave moments through his film to remind us that not everything about this time was golden. So yes, there are these moments where people were casually racist and it was barely noticed; it was also a time when, even more than today, women were just objectified with no real way to respond (in her very first scene, Alana's butt is slapped by her boss without comment), it was a time when an oil crisis lead to mile-long queues to get into a gas station, it was a time when politicians couldn't be open about their sexuality, and it was a time when political assassination seemed a real and present risk (there's a moment that forcefully calls Taxi Driver to mind, and also made me think of the deaths of RFK and Harvey Milk a few years before and after this film). 1973 was not some idealised world, and I loved the film for the way it specifically acknowledged that.
Licorice Pizza is an extremely entertaining and appealing work, and it serves as a reminder that Paul Thomas Anderson is such a master of the cinematic art that even a lesser work from him can be one of the most entertaining and delightful films of the year.
In addition to his small but memorable role in Licorice Pizza, Bradley Cooper takes the lead in Nightmare Alley, Guillermo del Toro's follow up to Oscar winner The Shape of Water. It was surprising to learn that, for the first time in del Toro's career, he's not working in a fantastical realm (although he retains his usual fascination with and compassion for the real world freaks that populate the film), instead making a tribute to film noir through a new adaptation of the 1946 novel that previously inspired a Tyrone Power classic. Cooper plays Stan Carlisle, a drifter trying to escape a secret past, who stumbles into work at a carnival, where he becomes fascinated with the cold reading skills and use of codes by the "clairvoyant" performer. Several years later, Stan has left the carnival, and is using the skills he learned to work as a psychic act for high society members. One evening he is approached by a femme fatale psychologist with a scheme - she feeds him information gathered from her sessions with wealthy patients, and he uses that information to fool those patients into believing he has the ability to connect them with their lost loved ones.
I initially wasn't sure how I felt about the film; I enjoyed watching the film, certainly, but it wasn't quite working for me. But there was something in the film that I was intrigued by, that lingered in my thoughts, so I eventually I decided to go for a second screening. And that was the point where the film suddenly crystallised and started feeling much better. I think a big part of my initial issue was the starkly bifurcated structure of the film. There's the first half, which takes place at the carnival - there's no real sense of strong narrative thrust in those scenes, instead feeling primarily like a portrait of life in this world; in the context of the wider film those scenes exist primarily to set up elements that feed into the narrative later. Then there's a clear delineation between the parts - Stan and his girlfriend Molly leave the carnival they've called home, never to return, the film jumps ahead several years, and the rest of the film essentially takes place in the big city. It's at this point the main driving narrative begins, with an entirely new cast of characters, and exploring the way the city can be simply another more civilised version of the carnival and offer new opportunities to scam and exploit those around. Now I don't have a problem with that type of bifurcated structure - after all, my favourite film, Vertigo, has a very similar structure - but when you're not expecting it, you can be thrown by the way it can almost feel like two films in one. Once my expectations were appropriately set, it was much easier to settle in and get absorbed into the film.
The first half of the film is certainly the stronger segment of the film, despite the lack of a sense of narrative direction. You can feel del Toro's fascination with this subculture as he gets to explore this world that draws in society's rejects and outcasts, the complicated tricks and scams that drive the culture, the reliance on showmanship and storytelling to take a five-second moment and turn it into something incredible, and the willingness for people in this world of outcasts to find someone even more of an outcast and to exploit them for their own ends (this may not be a fantasy film, but there are definitely monsters). It's a fascinating culture to explore, and one you don't often get to see in films, so it was a delight to just sit and dwell in this world. By contrast, the second half, while very strong, doesn't quite have that spark of originality that you get in the first half - we've all seen films set in the big city, we've all seen art deco offices and millionaire mansions with palatial gardens, it's a world we're more familiar with, and so it doesn't have that same sense of surprise or revelation. But it's at that point that the actual plot of the film begins, and so you do find yourself getting caught up in this fascinating neo noir story of an everyman trying to pull a scam that will inevitably lead to disaster. It's nothing we haven't seen it before, but it's so well done that it's a joy to watch.
I honestly think this is my favourite performance Bradley Cooper has ever given us. At first it's a surprisingly taciturn turn from Cooper, as he just wanders the carnival in silent observation. It's a performance that feels weighed down by his past actions without ever seeming as though he feels any guilt about those actions. As he becomes more involved in the carnival the character does start to come out more, but his actions always seem motivated by self-interest, looking for how he will benefit. Eventually he does become the Bradley Cooper we are used to - a smooth talker with confidence that quickly turns towards arrogance - but with a blacker core than I'd ever seen from him; he's almost soulless, as though he's the devil walking among us. Which would explain his almost eager greeting of his fate in the conclusion of the film, in what is definitely the most chilling and frankly fucked-up moments I've seen in quite a while. This is a thrilling performance by Cooper, offering much more then I think I've seen from him before. And while the film is filled with the expected wonderful performances by Rooney Mara, David Strathairn, Toni Collette, Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, and a brief but particularly devastating performance by Mary Steenburgen, this is ultimately Bradley Cooper's film, and he grabs it with both hands.
One thing I find fascinating about the film is how patently bad Stan's plan actually is. It's no surprise that his scheme goes wrong - it's the nature of film noir that things won't work out well. But what surprised me is that, when we first hear about his plan, you instantly know where things are going to fall down, because his plan relies on people not acting the way people would act - and sure enough, it plays out exactly as you think. But where in other films such poorly planned ideas might be the hallmark of an underdeveloped script (the typical "idiot plot" that only works because the characters are idiots), here it's absolutely inherent to the film and its core character - Stan has become so arrogant about how he can use his "ability" to control people that it doesn't even occur to him that he might not be able to prevent a person experiencing extreme emotions from acting naturally in response. And so when things don't go to plan, it genuinely feels as though this is the consequence of Stan's hubris. And that is smart writing.
The sad thing is that Nightmare Alley has not been popularly received by audiences. Making less than $40 million worldwide on a budget of $60 million, the film is a definite flop in the box office. And while it's nice to see such a strong film get awards recognition, I can't help feeling that its failure to receive even modest returns when competing against Spider-Man is another nail in the coffin for movies intended for adults. It deserves to do much better than it did. But don't blame me - I saw it twice.
It's been a decade or more since I was genuinely excited by a Steven Spielberg film. Spielberg has continued to make very good movies in that time (and he also made Ready Player One), but despite the fact that he is one of the greatest working directors, it's been a long time since he gave us anything that was truly compelling. So when it was announced that Spielberg's next film would be a new adaptation of the musical West Side Story, it was nice to find myself genuinely looking forward to the film. Spielberg has long discussed his desire to make a musical - which has been obvious since the opening scene of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom - and his love for West Side Story particular. You get the sense that this is a movie he's imagined making for all his life, and I was intrigued to see how he would approach the material. At the same time, it's a big decision to make that film in particular - the 1961 film won Best Picture in its year, and while it's undeniably a flawed masterpiece (the use of brownface to cast white actors as Puerto Rican characters is unfortunate), it's still a genuine and much-loved classic, and so you have to wonder how Spielberg will distinguish his version.
Fortunately, Spielberg really delivers, with some of his best work in this century. There is a sense of palpable excitement to be working in this genre, and he proves himself to be a master of the form. I've seen established directors who seem almost embarrassed to be making a musical, and try to downplay that element as much as possible - no risk of that happening here, with Spielberg taking delight in the excess of romanticism on display with every musical note. I've seen other directors who try to liven up musical sequences by overediting, forcing an acceleration of pace at the expense of visual coherence. But Spielberg takes joy in long takes, often letting entire verses play out in a single take so that we can appreciate the interplay between the characters, enjoy the dancing, in exactly the same way that we would if we were watching a stage production. And let's be honest, Robert Wise was a great Hollywood filmmaker, and he did wonderful work on the 1961 film, but Spielberg is a Hollywood legend, and he's also working with camera technology that has advanced over the past 60 years well beyond anything that Wise could had imagined. So where the cameras in the earlier film were often static or limited in movement, Spielberg's camera floats, moves, and dances as though it were an extra performer in the show - it's never showy or draws attention to itself, but the camera work absolutely feels alive and energetic.
I will confess that I took a bit of time to be comfortable with the idea of the film using new choreography. Famously, West Side Story was originally conceived by choreographer Jerome Robbins as a vehicle for his work, and it was he who approached Bernstein and Sondheim to write the music and lyrics around which his dances would take place. His choreography was so essential that he was even credited as co-director of the 1961 film (even though he was fired after his quest for perfection in the dancing led the film to quickly fall behind schedule). Even today, they still use his work in official productions - I saw a touring version a few years ago that used the Robbins choreography. So when I heard that they had hired Justin Peck as choreographer, part of me was bothered - that original choreography is so essential to the piece, just as much as the classic songs, that I wondered whether a production that uses new choreography could really be considered to be West Side Story? I still don't think I have an answer to that question, but I do know that the new choreography works really well. Robbins' work was at times mocked for the way he had gangs of street thugs ballet dancing - which is an unfair criticism; people will happily accept that this is a world where those same thugs burst into song, so I don't see why dancing is such a big leap. But Peck's work has clearly taken that criticism into account - at times he references Robbins' work, but for the most part, particularly with the gangs, it feels less like they are actually dancing, and more as though there's just a stylised movement to them. It's often been said that any fight scene in a movie is just an elaborate dance between the opponents, and Peck's work here really brings that out - most notably in "Cool". The piece has always been marked as having better choreography than the song it's attached to, and here it's been reinvented from being a dance involving the entire gang to being a game of Keep Away with Tony keeping Riff's gun from him - the two are never dancing, but there's always a precision in their movements that feels deliberate. And when the film does get to go full-out musical dancing, with numbers like "America", there's a joyousness and excitement to those moments, as though the performers have been desperately waiting for the opportunity to cut free and enjoy the spectacle.
The cast is almost uniformly wonderful. As Maria, Rachel Zegler is a delight, bringing a youthful optimism and naivete that devastates as the story turns to the tragic. Broadway actor Mike Faist really makes an impact playing Riff - you get the clear sense of authority with which he controls the Jets, but also as the situation spirals you can feel his desperation as he tries to keep control of everything happening. Ariana DeBose follows Rita Moreno into a well-deserved supporting actress nomination for playing Anita - I enjoyed her lusty and energetic performance, which makes her eventual and understandable turn to rage hit with a wallop. And speaking of Rita Moreno, I like the decision to make space for Moreno in the film by creating a character for her that fills the place of Doc - it's a move born entirely out of sentiment and love for the legend, but it's also intriguing by essentially casting her as a possible image of Maria 50 years in the future (an idea driven home by giving Moreno, not Tony and Maria, the song "Somewhere").
Sadly, the one exception to the excellence of the cast is Ansel Elgort in the central role of Tony. I previously only seen him in Baby Driver, but there I felt he showed himself to be a solid actor. And in West Side Story he proves himself to also have a good singing voice - perhaps not Broadway-level, but good enough. Unfortunately, his problem is that he seems to struggle with the idea of acting while singing - as soon as the music starts, it feels as though he's so focused on the singing element (or at least, since I assume the songs were pre-recorded, trying to hit his synchronisation with his vocal track) that his performance struggles. Look for instance at his performance of "Maria". Tony is a man who has just meet the girl he loves, who is in such a delirium of passion that he loses himself in the sound of her name, and yet when he sings he has an almost distractingly blank affect that completely fails to communicate that emotion. In the moments where he's not singing, Elgort gives a fine and enjoyable performance, but unfortunately in a musical the singing is a big part of the piece, and it just does not work.
The screenplay by Tony Kushner was written with an eye to updating the work for a modern audience. And, with one exception, it works remarkably well. You get a sense of that reworking right from the start, with a massive sign speaking of slum clearance in order to construct the Lincoln Center; a fact we're constantly reminded of - a clear unambiguous statement of the futility of the fight between the Sharks and the Jets, as they fight for turf over an area marked for impending destruction. I appreciated the way he took pains to remind us of the Puerto Rican origins of half of the characters in a way the original show and movie never did, most notably by having them in conversation casually and naturally skip between English and Spanish, and even having that communication barrier be referenced at moments. I was also really impressed by the way his script made some of the more difficult songs work - for example, "I Feel Pretty". It's one of the songs that the 1961 film moved from its original location, immediately following the rumble - it works well enough on stage, where the interval give the audience time to decompress and reduce the jarring clash of tones, but in the earlier film it was felt that jumping from the violence of the rumble into "I Feel Pretty" didn't work. Kushner has a smart take by making that clash of tones the point - we as an audience are aware of the tragedy that has just occurred, but Maria has no idea, and is still living in a romantic fantasy that is about to be destroyed, and the song hurts to watch as a result. Or witness the way that "America" plays out in front of a protest against forced relocation - not only is it a reminder about the futility of the gang conflict, but it's also a nice undercutting of the song to ensure that it never over-romanticises life in America. But Kushner's greatest achievement was to reconceive the show in a way that made it feel reflective of its period, but not of its period. I was surprised when the nominations came out and his name was not on the list for adapted screenplay nominees, because I honestly think it's a masterful example of how, even working within the strictures of a musical where you have to include all of these songs with these specific lyrics, it is possible as a screenwriter to reconceive the show and bring your own vision to how the film can work for a modern audience.
There's only one point where I do feel the updating simply does not work. The play has a minor character called Anybodys, a tomboy who really wants to be a Jet but who they won't let join because they don't let girls into the gang. In the new movie they reframe the character - rather than being a tomboy, Anybodys is now a trans man, played by a trans man. Everything else seems largely the same - except that the gang cannot say "no girls allowed" (even though that's absolutely what they would have said at the time), because that would be misgendering, and in a film made in 2021 you can't casually include a scene where a trans person is misgendered without it becoming a distraction from the point of the scene. So you get this weird element where Anybodys is constantly rejected, but the reason for the rejection is never expressed. Now, obviously we the audience can interpret why the rejection is happening, but the fact that no-one says anything when Anybodys declares "I'm not a girl" suggests that they agree with that statement, which seems odd for people who are still literally rejecting someone for being trans. I can understand the impulse for the change, but it simply means, in this one area, the film feels anachronistic - people aren't behaving the way they would have behaved at the time, simply because the film is actively trying to avoid raising issues that are not the point of the film. And in that case, why make the change?
But putting that small element aside, West Side Story is a glorious film that invigorates and delights constantly, even when the show's emotions prove devastating. Above all, I'm just sad that it has taken Spielberg over 45 years to make his first musical. He has such an instinctive and clear understanding of the form for this type of film that I find myself wishing we could have had many more musicals directed by the man. Unfortunately it seems he has said he intends to never direct another movie musical, which will be a great shame. Still, at least we got to experience one Spielberg musical, and it's a wonderful film that I expect to revisit often.
I'm somewhat frustrated by the general acclaim being given to King Richard, the true story of Richard Williams who, before his daughters Venus and Serena were born, wrote an 78 page plan on how he would make his daughters into tennis champions, facing racism and dismissal by those in the tennis world who thought they knew better than him, and fighting until he proved himself. Now, to be clear, King Richard is not a bad film; it's a perfectly fine film that is very watchable and likeable. But what it isn't is one of the best movies of the year. In fact, it runs dangerously close to hagiography, and is more a surface-level presentation of facts and events than a movie that engages with its lead character.
I don't follow tennis, so while I obviously knew about the Williams sisters, I was completely unfamiliar with their father until word of this movie began. When I look him up, I find a wealth of references to him as a "controversial figure" in tennis. But there is nothing in this film that really justifies that description. Yes, he's demanding, overbearing, and belligerent, infuriating to be around, and at times even insists that he knows better than experienced professional coaches, but there's no real sense of why he should be seen as a controversial figure. After all, he's always proven right - he tells the coaches that they are teaching the girls the wrong stance, he's right; he decides to pull the girls from the junior tours despite claims the lack of competition will affect their development, he's right. And of course, history has proven him to be right, there's no denying that, but when a film repeatedly shows you all the times that he was right, never shows him have even a moment of doubt about his decisions, presents him with the kind of hero worship that a kid will typically have for their father, then it does start to feel like it's a sanitised version of history, even if the film acknowledges that he is hardly being a saint. The one moment where I felt the film seemed to be getting deeper into who this man is and what he is like to be around comes in the scene where he fights with his wife Brandy - not coincidentally, this was the only point where I felt I was seeing real people on screen, rather than an imaginary idealised version of the man. At this one moment, she attacks his flaws, criticises him for claiming credit for their daughters' acheivements and not acknowledging her role, and even points out that the "devoted family man who would never leave his girls" has multiple children by other woman who he has effectively abandoned. It's a gripping and brilliantly performed scene, in which you feel the hurt and frustration that Brandy must have felt living with Richard all these years. But it doesn't matter, because once the scene's finished, it feels as though the film just reverts back to the status quo, and he gets back to being "King Richard".
But because the film doesn't really take the time to focus on exploring its characters, it winds up just being an uninspired recitation of events, as we trudge mechanically from this thing that happened to that thing that happened. And this means that massive events carry little weight unless they have ongoing significance. There's a point where Richard stands up to a gang, gets violently assaulted by them, takes a gun intending to kill the gang leader, but then witnesses the leader being killed in a drive-by shooting, and then makes peace with the rest of the gang. It's a massive moment in his life, and it's a well-made and gripping sequence in the film, but five minutes later you've completely forgotten this even happened, because it doesn't seem to carry any ongoing impact on Richard as a person, and it's not relevant to his efforts to find a coach for his daughters, and so it just becomes one event that carries surprisingly little weight in a film made up of many events.
A big part of my issue is that the film starts too late. When the movie begins, Richard has been coaching his daughters who are already talented young tennis players, and he's trying to promote them to coaches who might take them to the next level. And that would be a logical place to start if you are telling the story of Venus and Serena, but because they've made the decision to tell the story of Richard, I can't help wondering about everything that went before. Going way back to the beginning, where did his interest in tennis come from? There's no sense in the film that he's a particularly talented tennis player himself - he seems more of an enthusiast than a star - so how does he become so convinced that he can make tennis legends out of these girls? How does he come to know these things he taught his daughters, things successful experienced coaches don't seem to know? And what was his relationship with Venus and Serena like, how was it affected by his coaching - when he had them out there training at 4 years old did they ever feel like their father was forcing his passion for the game on to them? These are, I think, natural questions to want to ask in a story about Richard, but they are questions the film's not interested in answering. This is a fundamental conflict working through the film - the film claims to be the Richard Williams story, but it's actually interested mainly in being the Venus and Serena story, and that creates an awkwardness around the different parts of the film that feels uncomfortable.
Will Smith is one of the front runners for the Best Actor prize, and it's a fine performance, but it's not a role that necessarily feels like it's stretching or challenging him as an actor. Richard Williams may not be as fun to be around as most Will Smith characters, but Williams in a lot of ways is still a showman, oozing with charm, confidence, and certainty, and determined to prove himself right against all challenges - and that's every major role we've seen Will Smith take. Yes, he's older than the typical Will Smith role we're used to (but then, Smith himself is getting on), and he doesn't have the bounce we're accustomed to seeing from Smith, but when I watched the film, I didn't feel that I was seeing anything from Smith that I hadn't seen many times before. I've also heard suggestions that Aunjanue Ellis, as wife Brandy, may be a surprise winner in a strong category. And she does do strong work, but it really is a nothing role - except in those 5 minutes where Richard and Bandy fight. During that scene she positively steals the scene from Will Smith, as she pours out her every resentment and anger against him. It's rich, compelling, and a brilliant moment of performance by Ellis. And then in the next scene she's back to almost being a background figure - except now we've seen how good she can be, and so we feel like we've been cheated out of time to really enjoy that performance. And Saniyya Sidney and Demi Singleton as Venus and Serena are appealing and charming, in roles that don't necessarily call for any particular depth, but they are enjoyable to be with, and to my inexperienced eye they looked like they genuinely knew how to play tennis, so that was fun.
Look, I liked King Richard, it was an enjoyable time in the cinema. But it's another one in the long line of blandly enjoyable movies that gets a nomination because they're a likeable crowd pleaser, rather than because of any particular exceptional quality to the film.
Finally, we get to easily the most baffling movie to be nominated, Don't Look Up, the story of two astronomers who discover an asteroid heading directly to Earth, and their struggles to have anyone take the threat seriously. Now I will admit, I did rather like The Big Short, Adam McKay's earlier nominated film about the 2007 financial crisis; he did a strong job in taking a complex issue and presenting it in a clear and engaging manner. I hated his follow-up film Vice, a frustratingly bad film that I feel was only nominated because the voters felt a certain way about Dick Cheney and voted accordingly regardless of the quality of the film. But Vice is a piece of incisive and perceptive cinema compared to the ham-fisted and ill-considered catastrophe that is Don't Look Up.
Loving all the heated debate about our movie. But if you don’t have at least a small ember of anxiety about the climate collapsing (or the US teetering) I’m not sure Don’t Look Up makes any sense. It’s like a robot viewing a love story. “WHy ArE thEir FacEs so cLoSe ToGether?
And here's where my first problem with the film is - if the film is an allegory about the need to respond urgently to climate change, that's all very good, but what action are they wanting to take? The film offers no solution, no perspective on this issue, it just says we should do something, we need to do something, why aren't we doing something, won't someone do something please? Now, I realise that the nature of allegory often means that it does overly simplify complex issues, I understand that the impending devastation caused by climate change seems too remote and lacking in immediacy, and therefore they used an impending collision with an asteroid as an example of the type of disaster that should focus the attention but does not. But here's why I think that analogy doesn't work. If we have an asteroid destroying the world, there's one obvious solution to that problem - destroy or deflect the asteroid in some way. But that's also a problem that can only be solved by the people in charge; ordinary members of the public simply don't have the ability to do anything about an asteroid collision. That's not true with climate change, where there are more solutions than can be conceived of, and where the politicians may have a role in setting incentives to push us in one direction or another, but ultimately it's the individual decisions of every person in the world that cumulatively determine how our planet responds to climate change. And also, every solution involves complex compromises, winners and losers. After all, the most effective response to climate change would actually be mass extermination (Thanos actually had the right idea - but he needed to go much further then just eliminating half the population if he wanted to really have an effect). But if we assume that killing off most of the population is an undesirable approach, then we need to find other ways of working through and balancing different options to find a solution. Investing in electric vehicles is a good idea, but does that lead to pollution through the mining of materials to produce batteries, and we do need to somehow generate enough electricity to charge an entire nation of electric vehicles, so just how clean would that electricity be? Investment in public transport should be a good idea, but if people don't use it, it becomes an expensive white elephant and could even result in an increase in emissions. Following international agreements seems like the right solution, but those agreements can be the consequence of a million compromises, and some have argued they even have the potential to discourage already efficient production in one country and encourage more wasteful production in others. So the problem that Don't Look Up is trying to satirise is so much more complicated than in the film that the satire almost becomes irrelevant to the problem being satirised. (In fact, to be honest, the approaching asteroid is so far removed from the issue of climate change that, until I read up about the film, that analogy never entered my mind - before then I genuinely thought it was intended as a satire about our response to Covid.)
It's plain to see that Don't Look Up is trying desperately to be this generation's Dr Strangelove. But when Kubrick wanted to make Dr Strangelove as a satire about US-Russia relations and the threat of nuclear war, he didn't do it with an insulting analogy that was completely disconnected from the issue being satirised. Instead he made a comedy about someone launching a nuclear attack, he took us into the war room with the President and Generals debating how they should respond to the situation, he even gave us a scene in which representatives of the US and Russia were literally fighting. The end result is a satire that actually feels relevant to the matter being talked about. And I fully believe that it could have been possible to take a similar approach in satirising the response to climate change. You could absolutely present a problem, whether it's actually climate change or something broadly analogous, and show how it is rendered unsolvable simply because everyone is trying to find the solution that involves the least or no sacrifice on their own part - that seems like something that would actually be entirely relevant to the problem being addressed here. But no, it's simpler to say that people don't care about climate change because people are obsessed with celebrities and also Trump was bad.
But the length of the film also points to how colossally indulgent it is. The film is filled with so many avenues and diversions that you feel the film doesn't really know where it's going. What is the point of Leonardo DiCaprio having an affair with the Fox News-style anchor played by Cate Blanchett? Why is there a late film romance between Jennifer Lawrence and Timothee Chalamet? Between this and Ready Player One, is that just what Mark Rylance thinks all tech geniuses are like? Did you know that the problem stopping us from solving climate change is Trump's nepotism? And I realise the film is trying to satirise our tendency as a society to focus on irrelevant gossip rather than matters of importance, but the amount of time spent on the love life of a pop star, or a sex scandal involving a Supreme Court nominee, makes the film feel less like it's less satirising these distractions and more buying into these distractions itself. It's so completely all over the place that it completely lacks any sense of focus or clarity over what it's trying to say.
Now, that lack of clarity could be forgiven if the film was funny. Unfortunately, the core problem with Don't Look Up is that it's insufficiently funny. Again, let's look at Dr Strangelove - what's the funniest moment in that film? There are so many candidates: "You can't fight in here, this is the war room"; the President speaking to the Soviet premier; Jack D Ripper's "precious bodily fluids"; "You'll answer to the Coca-Cola company"; Kong riding the bomb; "Mein Fuhrer, I can walk"; Buck Turgidson's wide armed delight in describing the B-52 bombers; Vera Lynn singing "We'll Meet Again". Don't Look Up is a comedy that is an hour longer than Strangelove; there should be so many jokes in this film that it should be difficult to pick a favourite one. And yet every time I've heard anyone refer to a specific joke in the film, it's always the exact same joke - the scene in which an army general gets some snacks for Jennifer Lawrence, along with the recurring references back to that scene through the rest of the film. And I agree, that is a brilliant joke - it's specific, character-based, makes a point, and is also bloody funny. But the fact this is the near-universally agreed best joke in the film, and no-one can think of another joke that's even worth referencing, means that the film has failed as a comedy.
There's also one moment in the film, and it's a very small thing, but it just really rankled with me. You remember how in The Big Short the film would often pause so that we could be given an explainer on how some complex aspect of the financial system worked. Adam McKay continued to take this approach of breaking the fourth wall in Vice, with moments like the fake-out ending or the conversation in mock-Shakespearean dialogue. Here he breaks the fourth wall once - someone refers to something called the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which is responsible for identifying objects in space that could collide with the Earth, and the film pauses to put text on screen telling us that this is an organisation that actually exists, and here is its logo. The way the information is given to us in that moment makes it feel like it's a joke, as though we're supposed to laugh at the absurdity that such an office might exist in reality. Except that the entire film is about the risk presented by collisions with such objects, so surely it seems like a good thing that there is an organisation tasked with looking for such threats. So what is the purpose of that interruption? Is McKay seriously trying to make a joke about the existence of a thing that the film is also telling us definitely needs to exist? It's admittedly a minor point, but it's an example where Adam McKay's comic sensibility seems to actively work against the film because he seems to want to make jokes out of things that shouldn't be jokes.
Don't Look Up is a disastrous film. And then you look it up, and you discover the film cost $75 million to make, and that makes sense because it is not cheap to cast Jennifer Lawrence, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Meryl Streep, but also that's a lot of money to spend on a horrifically bad movie. Honestly, if you're going to make a terrible movie about a giant space body crashing into the planet, at least have the common decency to make the destruction of Earth the final stage in a billion-year intergalactic war involving an evil AI - that at least would be entertainingly bad to watch. Instead we just have to sit and watch this film being insulting and smug in its sanctimony, and sit in that for an interminable 138 minutes. And it's simply not effective as a piece of anti-climate change advocacy - you get the sense that more emissions were produced in making the film than will ever be stopped by viewers taking its message on board. I feel genuinely angry that this film was nominated.
The depressing thing about a film like Don't Look Up getting the nomination is the fact that it takes up a spot that could have drawn attention to something more worthwhile - films that didn't even get a nomination. If they wanted to speak to the massive problems facing society today, why not a film like Mass, addressing issues of gun violence and reconciliation with a sympathetic and sensitive approach. (At the very least, it deserved Screenplay and Acting nominations.) If that's too heavy, and they want to nominate a comedy with social awareness, you have films like Zola or Red Rocket, genuinely laugh-out-loud funny films that both speak to challenges of female exploitation in the sex industry. Annette was my favourite film of the year, and while it was never going to get a Best Picture nomination, I had been certain that "So May We Start" was a lock for a Song nomination, so its shut-out is extremely upsetting. Or Cyrano, in which the classic romantic tragedy is reinterpreted as a heartbreaking musical with an intensely soulful performance by Peter Dinklage. But perhaps those films are just too small and the Academy just didn't notice them. In which case, they probably should have taken out Don't Look Up, and just put in anything that's better. Like, say, Spider-Man: No Way Home.
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