Oscar Predictions for Tonight

2009 in Film

Periods of financial hardship and political uncertainty always make their mark on film. This was certainly the case with 2009. That mark was filled with paradoxes. “Avatar,” a film which questions materialism and imperialism, cost about a quarter of a billion dollars and has grossed over two billion dollars in its first six weeks of release, according to the Internet Movie Database. With “Avatar,” “Up,” and others, the movie world was taken by the storm of 3-D technology. But movies like “Fantastic Mr. Fox” demonstrated the persistence of older technologies. “The Hurt Locker,” “Precious,” and “Up in the Air” rose critical questions about life and politics in America. “Inglourious Basterds” took on a new approach to addressing Nazism that parallels our culture’s changing notions of political correctness. Ultimately, there were so many types of films in 2009 that it is difficult to compare them on the same plane, and it will be interesting to see how the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences addresses this problem.

“Inglourious Basterds”

Best Picture

For the first time since 1943, the Academy nominated ten films for Best Picture. My opinion is that this dilutes the quality of the pool, especially in a year like this where I would be hard-pressed to name ten English-language films that I thoroughly enjoyed. Let’s take a moment to laugh at the fact that a Lifetime-esque sports-drama (“The Blind Side”) and an extraterrestrial sci-fi flick (“District 9”) were nominated. The animated and Best Picture categories rarely overlap, but they did so this year with “Up”. While this would have not been my pick in any field, “Inglourious Basterds” deserves the award. Quentin Tarantino demonstrated once again his true mastery at concocting scenes and the chemistry between cast members was unmatched. While I felt uncomfortable at points in the film, this only testifies to the film’s emotional complexity and gravity. However, my prediction is that the Academy will once again crown James Cameron “king of the world” with “Avatar.” The Oscars tend to applaud the epic, and “Avatar” wins this metric in all regards. Moreover, the film, for better or worse, has taken film in a whole new direction, and was enormously popular with audiences. My main qualm is that it sacrifices complexity and clever ingenuity for the “wow” factor.

Nominees:

“Avatar”

“The Blind Side”

“District 9″

“An Education”

“The Hurt Locker”

“Inglourious Basterds”

“Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”

“A Serious Man”

“Up”

“Up in the Air”

Best Direction

Good direction is all about vision and personality. A good director should bring a film’s actors into their element and fine-tune the film’s aesthetic and technical components to match their conception of what the film should be. Great directors will always have a hallmark, though not formulaic, approach, so that one can say “that’s a Hitchcock!” or “that’s a Scorsese!” I think the best direction of the year was for “The Hurt Locker.” Kathryn Bigelow did a remarkable job making the military operations feel authentic and conveying the sense of uneasiness and fear that pervade combat. Her work will change the aesthetic of war films from now on. However, Cameron will most likely accrue the award because of the sheer amount of labor that went into making his vision of Pandora and the Na’vi people a reality. This award is not undeserved, but it is too much a result of a large budget and talented technical crew. Interestedly, Bigelow and Cameron were married from 1989 to 1991.

Nominees:

“Avatar” — James Cameron

“The Hurt Locker” — Kathryn Bigelow

“Inglourious Basterds” — Quentin Tarantino

“Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire” — Lee Daniels

“Up in the Air” — Jason Reitman

Colin Firth in “A Single Man”

Actor in a Leading Role

This year’s Best Actor race bears a remarkable resemblance to last year’s – both races pit actors who play men who have passed their prime in life with actors who play gay men struggling with discrimination. Jeff Bridges, who plays a former country music star, is this year’s Mickey Rourke, who played a former professional wrestler. Colin Firth, who plays a 1960s college professor coping with the death of his lover, is this year’s Sean Penn, who played Harvey Milk, a 1960s gay rights activist. The Academy awarder Penn the award last year, and Firth deserves it this year. His character could be played with shouts and tears, and it is at the right moments, but instead we see a man with an internal emotional roller coaster trying painfully not to break down on the outside. In Firth, we see the complexity of a person’s emotions without the usual over-the-top outbursts. He imbues the film with a masterful suspense. However, Bridges, who struggles with a different set of problems, took the award at the Golden Globes and is the favorite to win the Oscar this year. The award is certainly deserved; my preference for Firth is a stylistic one. The other performances were strong as well for their authenticity. Clooney successfully embodies the oddities of American corporate culture and Renner the difficulties of fighting a war. Freeman and Mandela himself are almost indistinguishable, but none of these roles demanded the transformation expected for the award.

Nominees:

Jeff Bridges in “Crazy Heart”

George Clooney in “Up in the Air”

Colin Firth in “A Single Man”

Morgan Freeman in “Invictus”

Jeremy Renner in “The Hurt Locker”

Meryl Streep in “Julie & Julia”

Actress in a Leading Role

Remarkable female performances were scant this year. Carey Mulligan and Gabourney Sidibe are fresh and talented young faces, but certainly didn’t offer the kind of earth-shattering performances expected in this category. After winning at the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild awards, Sandra Bullock can be expected to win at the Oscars. The Academy likes to see actors transform themselves, but becoming a quirky and iconic food enthusiast is a much larger stretch than a wealthy, Southern woman. Meryl Streep has been nominated for this award 13 times and only won it once (for “Sophie’s Choice” in 1982), and her role as Julia Child was by no means her most successful, but she is the most deserving of the award this year.

Nominees:

Sandra Bullock in “The Blind Side”

Helen Mirren in “The Last Station”

Carey Mulligan in “An Education”

Gabourey Sidibe in “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”

Meryl Streep in “Julie & Julia”

Christoph Waltz in “Inglourius Basterds”

Actor in a Supporting Role

Christoph Waltz is slated to win, and his performance was one of my very favorite of the year. He shed light on what the wickedness of the Nazi regime would look like on a very personal level. He inspired his audience to not just hate him, but to loathe him over and over again. You could sense his personality from his facial expressions alone, but whenever he spoke, it was marvelous. He switches between flawless English, French, German, and Italian over the course of the film.

Nominees:

Matt Damon in “Invictus”

Woody Harrelson in “The Messenger”

Christopher Plummer in “The Last Station”

Stanley Tucci in “The Lovely Bones”

Christoph Waltz in “Inglourious Basterds”

Mo’Nique in “Precious”

Actress in a Supporting Role

Penélope Cruz’s strongest performance this year was not in “Nine,” but in “Broken Embraces,” a Spanish film. Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick were a large part of what made “Up in the Air” really successful, but neither actress deserves the award independently. Maggie Gyllenhaal is too overshadowed by Bridges in the male-focused “Crazy Heart.” That leaves the heart-rending performance by Mo’Nique in “Precious,” which is the likely and deserved winner. She has made a point of not canvassing for awards. She doesn’t need to; the performance speaks for itself.

Nominees:

Penélope Cruz in “Nine”

Vera Farmiga in “Up in the Air”

Maggie Gyllenhaal in “Crazy Heart”

Anna Kendrick in “Up in the Air”

Mo’Nique in “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire”

“Up”

Animated Feature Film

“Up” will take the award, as it received five nominations, including one for best picture. It was a clever and earnest film, but my favorite in this category is “Fantastic Mr. Fox.” Director Wes Anderson is a master at crafting worlds (without resorting to advanced technologies), so an animated film is wonderful addition to his corpus. The film is aesthetically stunning, funny, and filled with a cast of stars that take on animal personages seamlessly.

Nominees:

“Coraline”

“Fantastic Mr. Fox”

“The Princess and the Frog”

“The Secret of Kells”

“Up”

Some reflections on the state of cinema

2009 was across the board a pretty poor year for cinema. This was indicated by the success of “Avatar” and “The Hangover” at the Golden Globes.

Avatar

I finally caved in and saw “Avatar” last weekend. It was visually stunning. But its critical acclaim and unprecedented popularity appall me. It seems that Americans have forgotten that beautiful film can be made on a budget much smaller than $250 million (especially in today’s economy). Moreover, I’m sick of the refrain that “it has a plot!” Yes, it has a plot, but is that sufficient to make it a great film? Absolutely not; it is simply a basic requirement of any film at all. Avatar’s plot was completely devoid of complexity. There weren’t characters, there were ideologues and archetypes. The protagonist makes a shift, but from one “side” to another, reinforcing the film’s woeful dependence on antagonism and binary opposition. It was also too long; I found myself aching for a simple conclusion to the film’s simple message ninety minutes into the two-and-a-half hour epic.

Broken Embraces

I also saw Pedro Almodóvar’s film “Broken Embraces” last weekend, and it restored my faith in the emotional power of film, or at least European film. I think “Avatar” is indicative with Hollywood’s obsession with grandiosity. If the United States is waning as a global superpower, at least it can exercise its machismo with blockbuster films! Despite Avatar’s anti-imperialist message, it in reality represents a sort of American imperialism in film. And when once radical anti-militarist, environmentalist ideas can be stomached and applauded by massive, mainstream audiences, they have ceased to be meaningful or useful in actual political action. “Wall-E” was similar in its implications about the peril the American lifestyle might someday actualize, but viewers, for the most part, fail to even take a moment to let that enter into their minds.

Up in the Air

“Broken Embraces,” with its bright aesthetic, humor, and sentimental romance, is thorough Spanish. The language is beautiful and the acting is natural and truly earnest. Its plot twists are ingenious and unexpected. And the plot contains enough nuance to keep the viewer quick on her feet for over two hours. The film tactfully answers many of its own questions, but then leaves just enough for the viewer to ponder after leaving the cinema. The cinematography and music create a wonderful Hitchcockian suspense. European governments are active sponsors of their nation’s films for cultural reasons, meaning that films like “Broken Embraces” masterfully capture the zeitgeist of a time and place.

The Hurt Locker

Perhaps the best zeitgeist-capturing American film this year was “Up in the Air.” The film was excellent because of its indirect implications. On the surface it was about a few very strange but ultimately very endearing people. Underneath it reflected the soullessness of corporate America and the all-too-comforting homogeneity and shallowness it has created. “The Hurt Locker” also took a very personal spin on U.S. involvement in Iraq that expressed the futility of so much of our work there. The American political climate is interesting these days. We obviously have some immense problems on our plate. We are fortunate in that we have a large population of writers, artists, and filmmakers who are doing so much meaningful reflection on those problems. Its too bad that there aren’t more of these people on Capitol Hill and working on the big-budget American films.

Fantastic Mr. Fox

It’s no wonder Wes Anderson made the transition to animation; the worlds portrayed in his films have always been so meticulously crafted. Needless to say, Fantastic Mr. Fox chronicles the most fashionable group of animals ever shown on screen. The film makes wonderful use of claymation, a medium I have been longing for since the days of Wallace and Gromit (which the film seems to allude to in its adventuresome spirit and devious human characters). The claymation is very 21st century; it’s not quite as rough around the edges as it was in the Wallace and Gromit years, though it is equally endearing. The impressive thing about animation is the sheer quantity of labour (the film is set in Britain, the land of proper English!) required, and Fantastic Mr. Fox goes far above and beyond the minimum standard. My only aesthetic complaint is that Anderson’s frames are a bit too symmetrical for my liking (this glared at me from the get-go), but I suppose asymmetry would make the film less Anderdson-esque. His selection of typography is remarkably diverse in comparison to The Royal Tenenbaums.

Wes Anderson is one of my favourite figures in the film world today, and, as always, he is accompanied by a number of other favourites in this film. Noah Baumbach (The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding) assisted Anderson with the screenplay. I’ve taken particular interest in Baumbach since seeing The Squid and the Whale and since hearing that his name inspired the band Noah and the Whale, but the screenplay was rather unremarkable, in my opinion. I suppose it is an adaptation of a children’s book, however, and in that sense it is endearing (though the use of the word “cuss” for any profanity becomes very annoying). It was lovely to hear Maryl Streep’s voice (I adore her), though Mrs. Fox was thoroughly her own character (not simply an animated Streep). Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman are my favourite of Anderson’s acting entourage, and they both did quite nicely. Murray plays an authoritative, though not compared to Mr. Fox, badger-lawyer. Schwartzman plays the Fox’s son, Ash, who struggles to fit in as a stealthy, athletic critter like his father. Eric Anderson, Wes’s brother, plays Kristofferson, Ash’s cousin, quite nicely (Kristofferson is the stealthy, athletic young fox that Mr. Fox adores, much to Ash’s chagrin). Willem Dafoe also makes an appearance as a devious rat with a thick Southern drawl. My least favourite fixture of Anderson’s films is always Owen Wilson (I understand that he is a necessary component, as they were college pals); The Darjeeling Limited was a much less beautiful film than it could have been with another actor. But fortunately, he only appears for on scene in the film, and he pulls off Coach Skip quite well. Wes Anderson plays Weasel, who is quite endearing throughout the course of the film, and Anderson’s role is by no means self-indulgent. Jarvis Cocker plays a worker named Petey, who plays a raucous, and excellent, banjo solo in one of the film’s best scenes. Mario Batali and Roman Coppola also make small appearances.

Anderson creates a number of compelling human characters in the film. Boggis, Bunce, and Bean are the three devious farmers who try to root Mr. Fox out in a series of hilariously concocted scenes. Each have wonderful quirks much like all of the characters in Anderson’s live action films. Even Bean’s wife and son, though they only appear briefly, have sufficiently developed characters. They live in a human world built stunningly in clay. Curiously, all of the humans in the film have English accents whereas the animals have American ones. I don’t think this bears any meaning, but it caught my attention.

Though Fantastic Mr. Fox is by no means a contender for Best Picture, it is almost certainly my pick for Best Animated Film at the Oscars. Roald Dahl was one of my favourite authors as a child (me and every other liberal bourgeoisie child, I think) and I am so glad that his novel caught Wes Anderson’s eye. Any Anderson fans should be sure to check out the recent New Yorker profile on the director.