Oscar 2012 In Review

Wow.  I know people are defending Seth McFarlane, but listing things from his childhood that existed is getting old.  I hope he doesn’t come back.  I don’t mind that there was a recognition of some history (I guess Les Miserables being a Best Picture nominee meant it would be based around musicals).  I just wish the history would go back further than 10 years to Chicago, you know, to those films that were made throughout the 20^th century...

The fact that they continue to hide their history by giving the honorary Oscars at a separate ceremony that we see only in a montage still irks me.

They did spread the wealth and split between Picture and Director.  4 awards to Life of Pi, 3 awards to Argo and Les Miserables, 2 awards to Django Unchained, Lincoln, and Skyfall. 

This year, the big six categories (Picture, Director, Actor and Actress, Supporting Actor and Actress) went to six different films.  Since the supporting acting categories were added in 1936, a six way split of those big awards has happened only three times before:

2005 (Crash, Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Walk the Line, Syriana, The Constant Gardener)

1956 (Around the World in Eighty Days, Giant, The King and I, Anastasia, Lust for Life, Written on the Wind)

1952 (The Greatest Show on Earth, The Quiet Man, High Noon, Come Back Little Sheba, Viva Zapata!, The Bad and the Beautiful)

Here are my thoughts about the main categories:

BEST PICTURE

Amour

Argo

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Django Unchained

Les Miserables

Life of Pi

Lincoln

Silver Linings Playbook

Zero Dark Thirty

 

Winner: Argo

A competent thriller, but again the Academy has to go overboard and make a bigger statement with awarding it.  They want to show respect to actor-turned-director Ben Affleck for revitalizing his career.  When the directors branch fails to nominate him in the Director category, the actors overcompensate by giving the film Best Picture.  Affleck, along with George Clooney and Grant Heslov, are now Oscar winning producers.  Actors love that career trajectory.  Argo is now only the fourth film in 85 years to win Best Picture without a Director nomination (joining Wings, Grand Hotel, Driving Miss Daisy).  I have a feeling that had Affleck been nominated for Director, he would have won too.  The idea of Hollywood actively participating in a covert action and saving lives is just too delicious.  They really love this movie, but living down a Best Picture victory seems to be the history that awaits most winners.

 

Personal preference: Amour

This and Zero Dark Thirty are the only two nominees I really considered here, but I’d have to give it to Michael Haneke’s honest depiction of a couple’s long life slowly deteriorating into death.  I’ll say more about Amour below. 

 

Snubbed for a nod (and should have WON): The Master

But my love for Amour aside, the best picture of the year wasn’t even nominated.  Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master is a sublime character study of a brute seduced by a manipulative sect leader.  The film has three actors doing career best work and a writer/director with a capable hand and eye.  Audiences and critics weren’t as sure about their feelings for The Master as they were for There Will Be Blood, but I think that’s intentional and the film is all the more rewarding for the repeat viewer looking to step into these character dynamics.

 

BEST DIRECTOR

Michael Haneke, Amour

Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild

Ang Lee, Life of Pi

Steven Spielberg, Lincoln

David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook

 

Winner: Ang Lee, Life of Pi

Without Affleck nominated, there was a lot of uncertainty about who would win.  Some favored one of the old guard master filmmakers (Spielberg, Lee).  Others thought perhaps the bold foreign choice (Haneke).  A few argued for the upstart auteur (Russell).  The second win for Ang Lee is interesting.  He now has two Best Director Oscars (the other was for Brokeback Mountain in 2005), but neither film won Best Picture (Crash won in 2005).  Is this an apology for that?  Perhaps.  But the technical artists loved Life of Pi so it makes sense that they would honor a creative type who does interesting experiments with different genres, sometimes to success (Sense and Sensibility, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Brokeback Mountain), other times, failures (Hulk, Taking Woodstock).  I found the film a bit of a misstep in terms of story and performances, but the technical achievement is notable.  I don’t really mind this win.

 

Personal preference: Michael Haneke, Amour

That being said, my pick among the nominated directors would be Haneke.  His cold and calculated material puts off many viewers (Funny Games- both versions, Cache, The White Ribbon), but his staging of this dark descent for husband and wife is confined to a large apartment for most of the film.  He steps out of the way and lets the actors do what they need to do.  That type of direction usually won’t win against more flash and style, but it’s still a complete vision.  He also looks like a badass in this picture.

 

Snubbed for a nod (and should have WON): Paul Thomas Anderson, The Master

I would have honored Paul Thomas Anderson for The Master.  PT Anderson made a divisive film that says a lot about our eternal struggle for meaning and purpose, and our inability to ever be completely free of others’ influence.  He blends dream with reality, putting us in the head space of those broken and duplicitous figures.  It’s not comfortable, and that’s what he wants.

BEST ACTOR

Bradley Cooper, Silver Linings Playbook

Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

Hugh Jackman, Les Miserables

Joaquin Phoenix, The Master

Denzel Washington, Flight

 

Winner: Daniel Day-Lewis, Lincoln

There are a few actors who have won 3 Oscars, but winning all of them in the lead category is difficult.  Katharine Hepburn is the big exception, with 4 wins as lead actress.  Last night, Daniel Day-Lewis became the only actor with 3 wins as lead actor.  His career has been an acting school, from Christy Brown in My Left Foot to Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood to the 16^th President of the United States.  Day-Lewis is the personification of who we imagine Lincoln to be, with enough of the human frailties to make him a mere mortal.  This is a respectable win.

    

 

Personal preference: Joaquin Phoenix, The Master

Phoenix has done some interesting work in his career, and while I’m not completely sold on his more mainstream roles in Gladiator and Walk the Line, I think the work in The Master is comparable to the method work done by Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire or Day-Lewis in There Will Be Blood.  Phoenix’s work as the explosive drifter Freddie Quill is a dark mirror many of us do not want to look into.  If Day Lewis’ Lincoln is who we aspire to be, Phoenix’s Quill is who we really are.

 

Snubbed for a nod: Matthew McConaughey, Killer Joe

Another human monster that deserved some accolades was Matthew McConaughey’s police detective moonlighting as a hitman in Killer Joe.  This is an actor I had written off as doing romantic comedies with Kate Hudson and playing bongos naked.  But this year was very kind to him (I also highly recommend Bernie, and to a lesser extent, Magic Mike).  McConaughey subverts that womanizing charm to chilling effect.  You could feel the chicken grease after watching him.

I think we could have also found room for Denis Lavant in Holy Motors.
 

 

BEST ACTRESS

Jessica Chastain, Zero Dark Thirty

Emmanuelle Riva, Amour

Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook

Quvenzhane Wallis, Beasts of the Southern Wild

Naomi Watts, The Impossible

 

Winner: Jennifer Lawrence, Silver Linings Playbook

She was good in Winter’s Bone.  She was okay in that X-Men movie and The Hunger Games.  But this really won?  Again, it is a competent film like Argo.  But is it the best of the year?  No.  I hate that because there are so many trite romantic comedies and dramas that when one is a notch above those, it gets the hype.  This doesn’t come near the heights of smart, witty romantic works like The Apartment or Annie Hall.  That may not be fair, but again if this is the best of the year, you haven't seen enough movies… That sounds familiar…

"I chose the second trailer on purpose because it uses that classic song where people yell 'ho' and 'hey'..." he said with a staight face.

 

 

Personal preference: Emmanuelle Riva, Amour

It’s great the actors recognized the best female performance with a nomination at least.  Riva is an icon of the French film scene, with her roots going back to Hiroshima mon amour.  It is fitting that we find her doing a farewell of sorts in the most brutally honest way.  The decline of one’s body and mind as they meet their death is something we can all find relevance in.  Riva has no modesty about her performance, showing herself as vulnerable as she wastes away before her husband’s eyes. 

 

Snubbed for a nod: Melanie Lynskey, Hello I Must Be Going

A lot of great female performances have been ignored.  Rachel Weisz in The Deep Blue Sea.  Linda Cardellini in Return.  Mary Elizabeth Winstead in Smashed.  Michelle Williams in Take This Waltz. 

But a performance that I want to highlight is in the little seen indie film Hello I Must Be Going.  Melanie Lynskey has been a solid actress who wasn’t able to cross over to the mainstream the way her Heavenly Creatures co-star Kate Winslet did back in the 1990s.  But she has still done solid work as a supporting character actress.  Here as the lead, a divorcee in a malaise while living with her successful parents, we share in her brokenness.  And we find her relationship with a younger man a wake-up call to take control and challenge her circumstances.  It’s a performance that is much more about the mood communicated by Lynskey than dialogue.   

 

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Alan Arkin, Argo

Robert De Niro, Silver Linings Playbook

Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master

Tommy Lee Jones, Lincoln

Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained

 

Winner: Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained

He won three years ago (for Inglourious Basterds) and he played both characters in a very similar way, while speaking the words of writer/director Quentin Tarantino.  This is also category fraud in that he was really a co-lead with Jamie Foxx.  I don’t usually complain except for what happened (see below).  But yeah, an unnecessary win.

 

 

Personal preference: Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master

Waltz’s win is all the more egregious when you realize how amazing PSH was in The Master.  Again, kudos to the actors for nominating the performances of the film, but the win was deserved.  Watch the processing scene between him and Joaquin Phoenix.  First, watch it as just an observer.  Then watch it as Phoenix is broken down and built up by Hoffman’s careful questioning.  Then watch it as Hoffman pushes exactly the right buttons to manipulate the reaction he wants.  He charms us and attracts us with the base human nature in us; our ability to be the one in control of another.

 

Snubbed for a nod: Leonardo DiCaprio, Django Unchained

Waltz elbowed DiCaprio out of this category.  DiCaprio was playing the showy villain role this time around, so the fact that the Academy passed on him for Waltz again is strange.  Maybe if DiCaprio becomes a producer/director… he can pull a Ben Affleck?

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Amy Adams, The Master

Sally Field, Lincoln

Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables

Helen Hunt, The Sessions

Jacki Weaver, Silver Linings Playbook

Winner: Anne Hathaway, Les Miserables

No.

 

 

Personal preference: Amy Adams, The Master

Everything I wrote about Philip Seymour Hoffman applies to Amy Adams.  Is she the title character?  Does her husband answer to her?  These are the questions to ask as you watch and rewatch the best picture of the year The Master.  Yeah, I would have given 5 of these 6 awards to The Master.  Only in my mind's eye is it a blow out. 

 

Snubbed for a nod: Juno Temple, Killer Joe

Newcomer Juno Temple has been here and there (small roles in Greenberg and The Dark Knight Rises), but she does the trailer trash Lolita act very well, the object of Matthew McConaughey’s creepy affections.  As the hitman plot compounds and twists into that memorable last 20 minutes, the relationship between her and McConaughey reaches its crescendo.  The Southern gothic roots of poverty are lived in by her character, and the assassin for hire is her Prince Charming.  Dreams do come true.