Oscar 2013 In Review

Having Ellen DeGeneres back to host after a seven year absence was nice.  I think she was amenable and friendly and kept the mood light, which makes the awards presentation run more smoothly.  Her bits (the selfie photobomb that broke Twitter, a pizza run for the hungry audience members) worked for the most part.

Once again, we are deprived of seeing great talents like Steve Martin and Angela Lansbury get their career moment, thanks to the giving of the honorary Oscars at a separate ceremony.  Showing a brief highlight reel is not enough.  I want cinema history to be celebrated, not a weak-linked celebration of heroes to show effects clips from Man of Steel and The Amazing Spider-Man.

We had an interesting outcome for the 86^th Academy Awards, with Gravity winning the most awards (seven, for Director, Cinematography, Score, Editing, Visual Effects, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing), but 12 Years a Slave winning the ultimate prize, Best Picture, along with two other statuettes (Supporting Actress, Adapted Screenplay).

This is an outcome similar to 1972 when Cabaret won eight Oscars (including Director, Actress, Supporting Actor), but lost Best Picture to The Godfather, which also won Actor and Adapted Screenplay.  Cabaret and now Gravity are the biggest Oscar winners to NOT win Best Picture, with 8 and 7 Oscars, respectively.

12 Years a Slave joins twenty other Best Picture winners to have only claimed three or fewer Oscars in all.  Some of these honored Best Picture winners with low Oscar totals include the aforementioned The Godfather, but also Argo (also won Adapted Screenplay, Editing), Crash (Original Screenplay, Editing), Rocky (Director, Editing), Midnight Cowboy (Director, Adapted Screenplay), Casablanca (Director, Original Screenplay), Rebecca (B&W Cinematography), Mutiny on the Bounty (no other wins), All Quiet on the Western Front (Director), and the very first Best Picture winner Wings (Engineering Effects).

12 Years a Slave is the 22^nd Best Picture to NOT win Best Director.  It is also first time since 1951 and 1952 that consecutive Best Pictures did not also win Best Director (1951: An American in Paris, George Stevens for A Place in the Sun; 1952: The Greatest Show on Earth, John Ford for The Quiet Man).  Last year Argo won Best Picture, but Ben Affleck was not nominated for Best Director (the award went to Ang Lee for Life of Pi).

12 Years a Slave is now the fourth Best Picture winner focused on the issue of race in the United States, following In the Heat of the Night, Driving Miss Daisy, and Crash.  All four films also share the distinction of winning Best Picture, but not Director. 12 Years is remarkable, however, for being told from an exclusively black point of view; Heat and Daisy feature white co-leads, while Crash has a multi-racial ensemble.

12 Years a Slave is also the first Best Picture winner from a black director (British director Steve McQueen, who despite losing the Director award, was honored as one of the film’s five producers).  Gravity director Alfonso Cuaron made history too, became the first Latin American honored in the category.

Director David O. Russell’s 1970s crime caper American Hustle went away empty handed despite earning 10 nominations.  It tied similar shut-outs for Gangs of New York in 2002 and True Grit in 2010 (both went 0 for 10).  The biggest shut-outs are still the 0 for 11 records set by The Turning Point in 1977 and The Color Purple in 1985. 

There have been fifteen films in the 86 years of the Academy Awards with at least one nominated performance in each of the four acting categories.  Russell has directed his actors to this distinction in consecutive years, for Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle.  But while Jennifer Lawrence was able to win Best Actress last year for Silver Linings, none of the four performers nominated this year for Hustle won in their four nominated categories.  American Hustle now shares that dubious distinction with My Man Godfrey (1936) and Sunset Boulevard (1950).

Russell seems like he’s on the verge of cleaning up, after Oscar nominations and wins for his actors in The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook, but I’m guessing he’ll have to really pander to voters to finally win a Screenplay or Director Oscar for himself.

Here are my thoughts about the main categories:

 

BEST PICTURE

American Hustle

Captain Phillips

Dallas Buyers Club

Gravity

Her

Nebraska

Philomena

12 Years a Slave

The Wolf of Wall Street

 

Winner: 12 Years a Slave

 “It’s time”, indeed.  An experience that truly transports the viewer into another world that many would like to pretend either never existed or happened a long time ago, so why dredge up this history?  But the film’s message of life enduring a system of oppression and exploitation has power.  The experience is true to this country’s origins and deserves to see the light.  I’ll share my words for the performers and the director below, but this is a magnificent achievement.

Personal preference: 12 Years a Slave

For the most part, the competition was admirable (Captain Phillips, Gravity, Her, Nebraska, The Wolf of Wall Street), but the Academy made the right choice here.

Snubbed for a nod: Before Midnight

Director Richard Linklater reuniting with his stars/co-writers Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy to bring us the latest depiction of the relationship between the worldly travelers Jesse and Celine is perhaps the most ambitious.  After the “meet cute” in Vienna for Before Sunrise (1995) and the reunited lovers in Paris for Before Sunset (2004), we find our couple navigating the difficulties of child raising, custody issues, the fading romantic spark, and the potential of how much each knows about the other to become a powder keg for a destructive war of words.  This is not the easiest of the three films to watch, but it may be the most realistic and honest.  

BEST DIRECTOR

Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity

Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave

David O. Russell, American Hustle

Martin Scorsese, The Wolf of Wall Street

Alexander Payne, Nebraska

Winner: Alfonso Cuaron, Gravity

Cuaron’s technical achievement ran away with 7 of the 10 categories (losing only Production Design, Actress, and most noticeably, Picture).  The long path to bring this tale of survival for a lone astronaut, played by Sandra Bullock, in the cold vacuum of space is a commendable effort.  The film itself is largely successful at giving audiences an experience that is both exhilarating and terrifying.  Cuaron and his many collaborators, including cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, achieved their goal.  But truly, these technicians and storytellers already pushed the medium forward with their innovative science fiction dystopia Children of Men in 2006.  But of course, Cuaron wasn’t even nominated for the film that should have won him Best Director.   

Personal preference: Steve McQueen, 12 Years a Slave


As impressive as Cuaron’s efforts were, the storytelling choices made by British director Steve McQueen for 12 Years a Slave are specific and meaningful.  The composition of performers in their surroundings sets the stage of the enslaved and their dreary plantation existence. I’m eager to see what McQueen does next, because the progression from Hunger to Shame to this film has shown him to be one of the great talents working today.

Snubbed for a nod: Spike Jonze, Her

The expanded Best Picture line-up allowed for a contingent of supporters to get Her a nomination.  But Jonze was snubbed in this category, which is a shame.  His empathetic telling of a tender relationship between two unlikely “people” showed a creative impulse that is continuing to flourish in the years since his auspicious debut Being John Malkovich.  At least Jonze deservedly won the Original Screenplay award for Her.

BEST ACTOR

Christian Bale, American Hustle

Bruce Dern, Nebraska

Leonardo DiCaprio, The Wolf of Wall Street

Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave

Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club

 


Winner: Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyers Club

Alright, alright, alright. MConaughey’s career resuscitation is complete.  He’s made the leap from pandering romantic comedies to more prestige work.  The last two years have been kind, with strong performances in Bernie, Magic Mike, Killer Joe, Mud, and The Wolf of Wall Street.  But it’s the true life performance of AIDS patient Ron Woodroof, working to bring unauthorized pharmaceutical drugs into Texas to bring relief to the afflicted.  McConaughey’s work is impressive, showing the ravages of the disease and the bureaucratic barriers he struggles to overcome.  It’s a quality work in a strong year of performances.

Personal preference: Chiwetel Ejiofor, 12 Years a Slave

The love of movie star McConaughey and his career transformation made all other performances fall behind.  But Chiwetel Ejiofor’s performance as the born free Solomon Northup, kidnapped and sold into slavery.  We see through Northup’s eyes the stain of this country’s founding.  The emotion and humanity in every moment of pain and suffering Northup experiences feels necessary.  His inner-strength is conveyed by Ejiofor’s extraordinary performance. 

I was torn between Ejiofor and poor Leonardo DiCaprio.  He will probably never win.  He needs to take my advice and produce some Oscar bait.  Winning Best Picture can get you a statuette just as easily (see: Brad Pitt, now an Oscar winning producer for 12 Years a Slave). 

Snubbed for a nod: Joaquin Phoenix, Her

Following up last year’s Oscar nominated performance in The Master (really, should have been Oscar winning) with a very different role, Joaquin Phoenix shows his versatility.  Here is a man who has retreated from the world after his divorce and is very tentative in opening himself up.  The fact that he is largely opening up to a disembodied voice puts the physical presence of this relationship solely on Phoenix’s shoulders.  He carries it admirably.

A tough category, with performances from Robert Redford in All Is Lost and Tom Hanks in Captain Phillips missing out, but I would have liked to see a nomination for Oscar Isaac in Inside Llewyn Davis.
 

BEST ACTRESS

Amy Adams, American Hustle

Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine

Sandra Bullock, Gravity

Judi Dench, Philomena

Meryl Streep, August: Osage County

Winner: Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine

She is one of the great actresses.  She has been due a lead statuette since 1998’s Elizabeth.  She did win a supporting Oscar for The Aviator, though her more impressive supporting nomination was as “Bob Dylan” in I’m Not There.  It makes sense that her path would cross with Woody Allen, and of course, her performance is remarkable.  But it’s not necessarily revelatory after nearly two decades of quality work from her. 

 

Personal preference: Blanchett

But all things considered, Blanchett was the best performance of the five nominees.

Snubbed for a nod (and should have won): Julie Delpy, Before Midnight

But a performance to highlight has to be Julie Delpy in her signature role of Celine in Before Midnight.  Few actors get the chance to develop a character over 18 years and three films.  Watching this vibrant soul grow and interact with the love of her life and seeing the tension and attraction grow and fade has made this one of the great film experiments.  But at the heart of this creativity is a strong performance from a great actress. 

A lot of great female performances, once again, are nowhere to be found.  Please stop nominating your friends Sandra Bullock, Judi Dench, and Meryl Streep and make room for the future.  Greta Gerwig in Frances Ha.  Brie Larson in Short Term 12.  Adele Exarchopoulos in Blue is the Warmest Color.  Olga Kurylenko in To the Wonder.  Berenice Bejo in The Past.    

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Barkhad Abdi, Captain Phillips

Bradley Cooper, American Hustle

Michael Fassbender, 12 Years a Slave

Jonah Hill, The Wolf of Wall Street

Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club

Winner: Jared Leto, Dallas Buyers Club

Jordan Catalano has an Oscar.  I hope he and Angela are still together?  Kidding of course.  Leto definitely tried to make that transition from teen heartthrob to adult dramatic actor, and results were mixed.  But all you need is one great role.  He provides a fine balance to McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club.

Personal preference: Michael Fassbender, 12 Years a Slave

But of the nominees, I would have chosen Fassbender’s sadistic plantation owner.  He and director Steve McQueen have had a fruitful collaboration, going back to Hunger and the Oscar worthy but snubbed performance in Shame.  Here in 12 Years a Slave, Fassbender is a destructive force that victimizes our main characters for his own pleasure.  Like Ralph Fiennes in Schindler’s List, Fassbender is a human monster.

Snubbed for a nod (and should have won): James Franco, Spring Breakers

Hear me out: Spring Breakers is an ode to youth, for better or worse (and largely worse).  Guzzling large quantities of beer on beaches and in hotel rooms is a fairly vapid experience, but there is an artfulness in how this story is being told.  And it is James Franco’s ruthless criminal influence is one of the film’s charms.  He is having fun, and you find yourself too, in spite of yourself.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Sally Hawkins, Blue Jasmine

Jennifer Lawrence, American Hustle

Lupita Nyong’o, 12 Years a Slave

Julia Roberts, August: Osage County

June Squibb, Nebraska 

Winner: Lupita Nyong’o, 12 Years a Slave

Truly one of the great film debuts.  She is a strong counterpoint to Ejiofor’s enslaved intellectual and family man, a woman who has suffered the worst indignities of the slave system. 

 

Personal preference: Nyong’o

Again, of the nominees, this is a no-brainer decision.  And I applaud the Academy for it.

Snubbed for a nod (and should have won): Scarlett Johansson, Her

 But a voice coming from a phone, introducing itself to Joaquin Phoenix (and us) as Samantha, is the best “supporting” performance.  This is arguably a co-lead with Phoenix, but his journey and history is largely the film’s focus.  The relationship formed between these characters is largely one of discovery and self-awareness for Samantha.  We feel her experiences and growth and pain, all through her voice.  Most impressive.