Licorice Pizza
Nominated Producer(s): Sara Murphy, Adam Somner, and Paul Thomas Anderson
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Writer: Paul Thomas Anderson
Cast: Alana Haim, Cooper Hoffman, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, John Michael Higgins, Skyler Gisondo, Christine Ebersole, Sean Penn, Tom Waits, Este Haim, Danielle Haim, Moti Haim, Donna Haim, Maya Rudolph, John C. Reilly, Harriet Sansom Harris, Benny Safdie, Jospeh Cross, Bradley Cooper, and others.
Plot: Gary (Cooper Hoffman) loves Alana (Alana Haim, joined in the film by her real sisters and parents). She loves him, too, but the thing is, he’s fifteen. She’s twenty-five. She doesn’t think it’s right to date him, so instead, she does the next logical thing and becomes his employee in an alternative mattress business. It’s Southern California. It’s 1973. There’s about to be an oil embargo, and watch out for Jon Peters (Bradley Cooper in this movie, but that may just be good advice in general)!
Why It Should Win
Here’s what I love about Licorice Pizza. I like to imagine Paul Thomas Anderson saying to himself, “I’d really like to make a movie that touches on the oil embargo in 1973. I know! I’ll write about a fifteen-year-old, but not just any fifteen-year-old. This fifteen-year-old has a thriving waterbed business.”
The writer in me is pretty delighted by Licorice Pizza honestly, just the way Anderson uses the oil embargo. It also leads to that hilarious play on the classic chase scene where they can’t get away from Bradley Cooper because everyone is out of gas. It’s like the anti-car chase. (This is particularly great because Cooper’s character is dating Barbra Streisand, and I remember that fantastic car chase in What’s Up, Doc?, then quickly think what a staple of 1970s cinema elaborate car chases are. You’ve got entire franchises that are just car chases, some for adults, some for kids. And then there’s stuff like The French Connection, Freaky Friday. There are car chases all through the 70s. Is that because gas was so expensive, like the way Monopoly became popular during the Depression? I have so many questions now!)
I need to seek out some interviews with Paul Thomas Anderson and find out his actual thought process. I’m pleased that this is nominated for Best Original Screenplay because it’s quite creative. It’s also impossible to miss the point.
Over and over again, Anderson shows us relationships that were considered socially acceptable in the 70s. The obnoxious American using his Asian wife as a restaurant gimmick. Sean Penn’s much older movie star taking Alana out just to feel young. A gay man in a committed relationship choosing to stay in the closet for fear of discovery destroying his political career. These relationships are all “fine” according to society. So who cares what society says? Why should Alana and Gary worry about the opinion of society? They should be together because they are in love.
Now that I’ve said, “It’s impossible to miss the point,” I’m sure someone will tell me that this isn’t a point the movie is trying to make at all, and I’ve totally missed the point. (I will admit that I do not always connect with Paul Thomas Anderson movies. My favorite film of his is Phantom Thread which is also about an unconventional relationship that works for the people in it.)
Like a number of nominated films this year, Licorice Pizza also has such immersive atmosphere! Even though no actors involved got Oscar nominations, Philip Seymour Hoffman’s son Cooper makes a perfect Gary, and Alana Haim is so easy to believe as Alana that I watched and felt, “I totally get her. I am exactly like her,” when, in fact, by the actual circumstances of our lives, I am not like her at all. Bradley Cooper is hilarious, too, as the scene-stealing Jon Peters. (I’ve now spent far too long going down a rabbit hole of reading about Jon Peters! I don’t really recommend that. Just imagine Bradley Cooper acting hilariously insane. That will leave you with a better feeling about Jon Peters than researching him will.)
Why It Shouldn’t Win
For a Paul Thomas Anderson movie, Licorice Pizza is pretty normal. But when compared to most mainstream movies, it’s not.
As we watch the movie, we see that Gary and Alana should be together. They truly click. They enjoy each other’s company. They bring out the best in each other. They’re always there for each other. They care about each other on a deep level.
But when the movie starts, he’s fifteen, and she’s twenty-five. At the end of the movie, he’s what? Sixteen? He doesn’t seem to have aged much, although they have done enough together for three lifetimes. They’ve been quite busy.
Obviously people are going to be upset about the age difference in this movie. Personally, the thought of Cooper and Alana being together despite their age difference doesn’t bother me, but the realization of that does bother me. (It just feels morally remiss somehow. I do believe that people who are in love should be together. That just makes sense. But I don’t know that I would have made a movie about it. Doesn’t this seem likely to make everybody get very angry and start ranting about slippery slopes? Also if you were involved in a relationship with someone much younger (say they’re in high school, you’re an adult), wouldn’t this movie give you a lot of encouragement? I’m not sure that’s necessarily…great.)
The premise of this film is going to bother a lot of people. And the thing is, Paul Thomas Anderson, a brilliant, no doubt perceptive man, surely realized this, yet pointedly focused the entire movie on the romance of these two characters, anyway. Also, the John Michael Higgins character is so disgusting. His over-the-top, racist fake accent is distracting. Clearly, he is the one who is intended to be the butt of the joke, but it’s still something that will turn off a lot of audience members (and, again, encourage other, stupider audience members to believe that they’re being really funny when they imitate this character).
I think enough people will be put off by some elements in Licorice Pizza that it has no real chance of winning Best Picture, despite the matching Best Director nomination for Paul Thomas Anderson. Surely people would be more comfortable voting for something wholesome like The Power of the Dog.
Nightmare Alley
Nominated Producer(s): Guillermo del Toro, J. Miles Dale, and Bradley Cooper
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Writers: Guillermo del Toro & Kim Morgan
Cast: Bradley Cooper, Rooney Mara, Cate Blanchett, Toni Collette, Richard Jenkins, Ron Perlman, David Strathairn, Mary Steenburgen, Tim Blake Nelson, Willem Dafoe, and others.
Plot: Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) runs from his shady, tortured past straight into a convenient carnival which he joins. He meets all sorts of fabulous people there and spends the rest of the film summarily destroying their lives (sometimes quite literally). He also meets Willem Dafoe who gets a really creepy monologue that predicts Carlisle’s future. Then he moves to the city into a more traditionally film noir atmosphere where he begins a romance with Cate Blanchett (channeling Lauren Bacall) and teams up with her to attempt to con a violent, sadistic, powerful man with a trick so risky, it will never possibly work. Believe it or not, this all goes wrong.
Why It Should Win
I know a lot of people who hated this movie. A lot of people.
I loved it. (I listen to others’ critiques, and think, “Yes, yes, you’re right about all that.” But I still love it. What can I do? It’s an indefensible position, I suppose, when someone lists one-hundred bad things about a film, and all you can do is nod along in agreement to each one, and then conclude, “What a movie!”)
Perhaps I am crazy. Perhaps I am objectively wrong. But none of that changes how I feel about Nightmare Alley. Were it to win Best Picture, I, for one, would applaud. It would be me and Guillermo del Toro standing there clapping with joy. But I don’t care.
(That’s not going to happen, though. Actually, I would love it if it did for the sheer shock. Nobody thinks this movie is going to win!)
Watching Nightmare Alley was such a fun experience for me. I would stare at the screen and think, “I want to go to a carnival! I want to meet a fortune teller! I want to learn mentalism! I want to do a fantastic act! I want to perform in a glamorous night club where Cate Blanchett pretends like she’s Lauren Bacall in a movie!”
The first part of the film is an atmospheric dream! After watching, I felt like I had been to an actual carnival. Guillermo del Toro always knows how to create atmosphere that you just fall into (like Mary Poppins or something, jumping right in) and live in as you experience it on the screen.
It’s deservedly nominated for Best Cinematography. In another year Dan Lausten might win! This year it’s nominated alongside The Power of the Dog, Dune, West Side Story, The Tragedy of Macbeth. I have no idea how you pick there! All of those films feature cinematography that is not only excellent, but also incredibly memorable. You could turn any one of those movies into a coffee table book of images. If I’m being brutally honest, I like Nightmare Alley’s cinematography the best, but I’m sure I’m in the minority there. I love the way space is used. (Originally, I wrote, “I love the way the shots fill the frame,” but then I thought, “Doesn’t every shot fill the frame, though, Sarah? Isn’t that how the concept of a frame works? What’s in there if it’s not the shot?” What I mean is, no space is wasted, and every scene draws the eye in aesthetically pleasing (yet also mood establishing) ways.) The film is nominated for production design and costuming, too, as it should be. When I say you feel like you’re at the carnival, I mean it. I’m not just being hyperbolic and colorful. The whole next day, I kept forgetting I hadn’t just gone to a carnival.
Some of the supporting performances are fantastic. I remember pretty universal confusion when Cate Blanchett was nominated for a SAG, but I think she was deserving because she’s playing the role as if she’s Lauren Bacall in a movie playing the role. It makes the whole thing feel fun, like, “Let’s play film noir!” That’s the thrill of the movie. It feels like a big, elaborately costumed game of, “Let’s pretend!” Toni Colette is great as the fortune teller. (I have no idea why Carlisle doesn’t just stay with her! I really am baffled by his choices.) David Strathairn gets some touching, moving moments as Pete. And Willem Dafoe! Wow! His monologue is so creepy and so well delivered that I would give him an Oscar nomination just for that! (Of course, we’re very partial to Willem Dafoe in our household, so I will admit massive bias.) Richard Jenkins is also good as another highly disturbing person (who is completely nothing like his much more charming character in The Shape of Water).
I also love the fact that the movie (which is about mentalism, fortune telling, and playing tricks on an audience) uses foreshadowing so often and so well. (You feel like you’re playing along with the movie. Each time I would anticipate a plot point, it felt like I was performing the audience response part of a little game.) And of course, truly fascinating is the idea that perhaps we can’t escape the destiny that we create for ourselves. (Carlisle is told time and again not to believe the illusion, but he insists on believing it, conning himself, and letting the carnival predict and determine his future.) It’s a cool story. It’s fun, and the joy is in the presentation.
Why It Shouldn’t Win
Even though I love this movie, I found I despised the protagonist increasingly as I watched. I mean, Phil Burbank in The Power of the Dog is a piece of work, but there’s a part of me that watches him and thinks, “That poor sad man.” I watch Stanton Carlisle and think, “Why do you suck?” He’s not even evil and compelling. He’s just a morally bankrupt disaster.
The problem is, I was always with him to a point, and then he would totally lose me. I imagine him telling me his plans, and I’m nodding along excitedly as he says, “I’m going to join a carnival and find the coolest people there and convince them to take me into their confidence and their home, and I’m going to learn everything I can from them…” And I’m smiling and nodding, like, “Yes, yes,” until he finishes inexplicably, “And then I’m going to hurt them.”
What?!
And then I might want to ask, “Are you going to hurt them for a good reason?” And he’ll explain with a grin, “No. Just for no reason. They’ll understand because that’s just what I do.”
What do you say to that? Who does that? And then Stanton Carlisle goes on to confide, “Next—remember that woman I’ve always been in love with?”
In confusion, I realize, “No. What are you talking about?”
And he says, “Oh you know. I’ve always been so in love with her since right now. So I’m going to take her away from everyone she knows, then totally ignore her and betray her trust. Furthermore, I plan to find the most dangerous, sadistic villain I can and try to trick him with something so inane that it can’t possibly go right. I’m also involving that woman I ‘love’ in my scheme because you know me. I get such a thrill from hurting people who treat me well.”
Hurting your enemies is not virtuous, but it is human nature. Hurting your friends is not only vicious, it’s also stupid. It’s illogical, unnecessary, and disgusting. I can appreciate that Carlisle is working through trauma, and that he deliberately self-sabotages because he can’t allow himself to be happy. (I do that all the time!) Still, you look at him and think, “Why in God’s name would you make any of the choices that you do?”
None of the vicious things he does is ever necessary. Sometimes (in noir particularly) someone gets too clever for their own good and caught in their own trap. This guy is almost never forced into making bad decisions. He seeks them out. Now maybe he feels internal pressure. (Certainly, he’s in a hurry. He always feels he must act now. He’s not good at understanding the word, “No.”) He comes from a background of pain and suffering, so perhaps every moment feels fight-or-flight to him. I get the sense than if you offered Carlisle a piece of cake at a party, he’d say, “Thanks,” eat it, and then stab you in the face. (Maybe that’s a bit over-the-top, but the movie is not subtle, either.) He’s a bad person, and he seems to cling to that. Maybe he’s afraid to think of himself as anything else, and that’s why (despite repeated warnings) he allows himself to believe the trick and lets the carnival predict his future.
The ending of this movie is so depressing. The only cheering aspect is that the film’s conclusion is predictable (in a good way). We get heavy, heavy foreshadowing in a delightful scene featuring an odious Willem Dafoe. When a movie that focuses on reading the future as a delightful trick gives us cues to decipher the ending a mile away, the audience has fun playing along. But the events themselves are so bleak. Still, is there a way to make the movie end happily when the protagonist is irredeemably unlikeable? I don’t know how you would do it!
Most of the films nominated in this category feature either A) Protagonists you love to root for or B) Protagonists you feel ambivalent about investing in but just can’t help yourself.
Stanton Carlisle is C) Just plain unlikeable.
There is no way Nightmare Alley will win Best Picture.
The Power of the Dog
Nominated Producer(s): Jane Campion, Tanya Segatchian, Emile Sherman, Iain Canning, and Roger Frappier
Director: Jane Campion
Writer: Jane Campion
Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Thomasin McKenzie, Julie Forsyth, Peter Carroll, Frances Conroy, Alison Bruce, Keith Carradine, Adam Beach, and others.
Plot: In 1920s Montana, Phil Burbank (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his brother George (Jesse Plemons) are successful ranchers. Phil is charismatic, devoted to his work, respected, admired, and feared. George is lonely. He meets a woman named Rose (Kirsten Dunst) who runs a restaurant, falls in love with her, and quickly marries her. Phil is horrified. He resents and mistrusts Rose, mistakenly believing she is a soulless gold digger, and he makes it his personal mission to torment her until she begins to unravel psychologically. Even more than he resents Rose herself, Phil can’t stand the sight of her sensitive teenaged son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Phil (and several others) assume that Peter is gay because of his characteristics and mannerisms that Phil vocally detests (because he is gay himself and doesn’t want anyone to know). But gradually Phil’s perception of Peter shifts a bit, and the two strike up an unlikely friendship. This ends well. (Just kidding.)
Why It Should Win
I think The Power of the Dog should win Best Picture or, at least, Best Director. Granted, I could say the same about some of the other nominated films, but here’s what I love about this one.
When I was a grad student in literature, everybody was always talking about reading silences and finding meaning in gaps. Sometimes this is all you can do if you’re trying to learn more about a character (or author) who isn’t permitted to speak or isn’t permitted to speak freely.
None of the principal characters in this film can speak freely. We have to read all of their silences. (George has often lived in his brother’s shadow. Rose enters a situation in which she is being watched all the time. Phil doesn’t even express his desires to himself. Peter knows it’s safest to play things close to the chest.)
As we experience the film the first time, it is so much eerier than it seems like it should be. (What is exactly is so terrifying? “Aaaah! Grass!” It shouldn’t be so scary, but it is.) (Jane Campion should remake The Happening!)
Not until I was watching an interview with Kirsten Dunst did I realize why I felt so unnerved. Director Jane Campion deliberately does two big things that unsettle the audience. 1) She gives us immense, boundless sweeping vistas, then lets us hear people whispering, hear the rustle of the grass. That’s not true to human experience, so we feel like something is wrong even though we may not realize what it is. 2) She not only leaves out crucial information, she first has the actors film those scenes and then cuts them. So the actors experience a reality that the audience does not. For the characters in the scenes, there is often continuity, but the audience gets gaps, making behaviors mysterious that would not require any guesswork if we had seen everything. This is jarring. (It reminds me of the way night turns to day as if someone has flipped a switch in the movie Hereditary. This is a bit more subtle, though. In Hereditary, you know something trippy is being done with time. Here, you sense that there’s more you don’t know, but since it’s not there, you can never be sure.)
I love the way Campion gives us these (maybe unnoticed) cues that something isn’t right, something is missing. This is great as a metaphor for telling the story of a closeted gay man. (When you watch Phil’s public behavior, half of his life is missing!) (In fact, “closeted” isn’t exactly the right word for Phil. He doesn’t just prevent others from knowing who he is. He often prevents himself from even thinking about it!) And Peter’s keeping secrets, too. Both of them are hiding in plain sight. Rose, meanwhile, feels she has nowhere to hide. (How could she? In that wide open expanse, we can hear every blade of grass. And in the house, Phil is always watching, listening, banjoing.)
Campion should probably win Best Director for this. Maybe I’m just so impressed because I’m a writer and don’t think about being able to manipulate sound to tell a story. (I do think about what characters have done in scenes that don’t appear in the book, but that’s not quite the same in a novel as in a film where the characters are played by human actors.) To a surprising degree, Campion advances the narrative in this story by not telling it. You can’t do that as a novelist. If you were to hand someone a blank book and wait hopefully as they read it, they would just punch you. (Well, no they wouldn’t. They would assume it was a diary and say, “Hey thanks.” See? I’m not good at writing about things that don’t happen.)
The storytelling methods used in this film fascinate me, and all the performances are exceptional (even Jesse Plemons; I feel like I’ve been so unfair to Jesse Plemons). I also love Jonny Greenwood’s score which contributes powerfully to the film’s unsettling mood, too. (Greenwood has written so many amazing scores this year. If I had gotten a vote, his Spencer score would be nominated, too. (I also liked his Licorice Pizza score. I really need to start listening to more Radiohead.)
Why It Shouldn’t Win
I’m so baffled by Sam Elliott’s reaction to this film. It’s a good thing I wasn’t the one interviewing him. When he said, “There’s all these allusions to homosexuality throughout the f—king movie,” I would be tempted to gasp, “What? What are you talking about? I never noticed a single gay thing in that whole movie! Are you sure you’re not gay?”
But I think another question he asks is more useful, “Where’s the Western in this Western?”
I’ve seen many suggestions that Elliott is revealing himself as a repugnant homophobe, but to me what he’s revealing is frustrated genre expectations.
The Power of the Dog does contain several elements often explored in Westerns, such as becoming a man, what it means to be a man, how men should behave, loneliness, revenge, how a man should protect his family, what makes a woman “decent,” how a man should protect a woman, suffering in silence, what to do when someone destroys your pa/ma/pa & ma, having the guts to kill, dangers of the environment, how to interact with the native Americans, learning from the animals, why educated people on the frontier are dangerous, how best to read the Bible if you’re in a Western.
But The Power of the Dog is not a movie about cowboys doing cowboy stuff (unless you think of “cowboy stuff” in quotes with a wink and mostly learned about cowboys from Brokeback Mountain and Midnight Cowboy and graduate level revisionist history conferences.) The movie does contain several key stand-offs, but often we do not know when we are watching them or what we are seeing. (In some ways, I wish Campion had included the scene from the book when Phil has a significant interaction with Peter’s father. Including that moment would, I suspect, make this seem like a more traditional Western to Sam Elliott.)
Another thing I hear when I read Elliott’s remarks is basically, “This is not like my experience.” And it’s not his experience. It’s the experience of Someone Else.
My dad had a reaction not unlike Elliott’s but expressed it far more palatably. “Oh,” he realized about a third of the way into The Power of the Dog. “This isn’t exactly a Western. It’s one of those art films.” Yes. That’s what it is all right.
Maybe some voters will take Elliott’s view that The Power of the Dog isn’t enough of a traditional Western. (They may be hoping for something more plot driven, less character driven. But I mean, write a barebones outline of the events that actually happen, and The Power of the Dog is a pretty straightforward story of revenge, protecting the home, becoming a man, learning to kill. There are strong undertones of “getting rid of the bad man who has clout” and “realizing the villain is not who we think,” too.)
I don’t think this is going to turn into a situation like the year Crash won and everybody latched onto what Ernest Borgnine said about Brokeback Mountain. If The Power of the Dog fails to win, it’s not because any offensive off-hand comments Sam Elliott made revealed the Academy’s largely unspoken homophobia. (If anything, Elliott’s reaction will probably help the movie’s chances.) I think some people just won’t vote for The Power of the Dog for Best Picture for the shocking reason that—brace yourself!—they like another movie better! CODA is a really heart-warming, crowd-pleasing, inspiring, uplifting story. Belfast and King Richard also make the viewer feel strong, positive emotions. And West Side Story is a musical. (I have a hard time imagining it won’t be one of those five films. That’s not narrowing it down very much, I realize.) But it’s only the beginning of March. Unlike Willem Dafoe in Nightmare Alley, I cannot predict the ends of movies!