American Hustle
Nominated Producer(s): Charles Roven, Richard Suckle, Megan Ellison, and Jonathan Gordon
Director: David O. Russell
Writers: Eric Singer, David O. Russell
Cast: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Jeremy Renner, Louis C.K., Michael Peña, Jack Huston, Colleen Camp, Surprise Guest Star
Plot:
In the 1970s, a pair of con-artists caught red handed must aid the FBI in an elaborate sting operation that rapidly spirals out of control as they go after first art forgers, then local politicians, then U.S. senators, and finally organized crime. Meanwhile a number of complicated, interwoven romantic entanglements ensnare and perplex the central characters who have to figure out who are they, what they want, and how to get what they want without being killed horribly in the process. This intricately plotted, high stakes comedy is inspired by true events but does not even pretend to be a true story.
Why It Should Win
Director David O. Russell has directed all four principal actors in his cast to Oscar nominations. A film with a nomination in all four major acting races? That hasn’t happened since…last year, when Russell pulled the same neat trick with Silver Linings Playbook. (And before that, it hadn’t happened since Reds in 1981). So Russell has done something that’s pretty rare twice in a row. That’s obvious. But here’s another fun fact I realized after mulling over the nominations announcement.
Not only has Russell directed each of his four stars to a nomination this year, but he has also directed all four of them to Oscar nominations previously. Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence were nominated last year for Silver Linings Playbook. Christian Bale and Amy Adams were nominated in 2010 for The Fighter. And Bale and Lawrence won! That’s a pretty impressive success rate!
Does this mean that Russell is an amazing director or that he chooses phenomenal actors? The answer is yes.
Everybody really seems to like American Hustle, and for that reason, it honestly could win Best Picture. It’s a good movie, the kind you can safely recommend to people without worrying it will scar them or make them suspect you’re a sociopath. Hustle is entertaining with sympathetic characters and a discernible plot. Though the protagonists are criminals and the story is full of twists and turns, this is basically a film with old fashioned values and heart. As we watch, Hustle does feel new and exciting, but ultimately that dizzying excitement is just another of the movie’s successful cons. The film disorients us with elaborate wigs, dazzling polyblends, and erratic characters, but at heart, it’s a simple love story—and kind of heist movie, although when all’s said and done, it’s what doesn’t happen that’s most important.
Very early in the film, con-artists played by Amy Adams and Christian Bale allow us to see them as they see each other. For me, the relationship of Sydney Prosser and Irving Rosenfeld felt so real that it served as an emotional anchor, grounding the non-stop, frenetic insanity of the rest of the film. Bale, Adams (and the script) made me care about Irving and Syd. Everything else—the plot twists, the hilarity, the brilliant supporting work of Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper—is just set dressing that makes the film more fun to experience. Jeremy Renner also gives a memorable turn as Mayor Carmine Polito, a largely sympathetic character (though a friend of mine recently mentioned the possibility that Polito is pulling the ultimate con, taking in even Irving and the audience, a pretty compelling interpretation).
Director David O. Russell definitely knows how to showcase the strengths of his (entire) cast. Its elaborate plot notwithstanding, American Hustle works primarily because its electrifying performances keep us watching.
Another strength of the film is its very lack of gravity. There may be all kinds of great stuff in American Hustle that you can take away with you. And who knows, the movie just may change your life. But clearly its greatest imperative is to entertain the audience while we’re sitting in the theater. Maybe all the characters are in extremis, but watching them is fun for the audience, and we don’t feel guilty for being entertained because from the opening scene, the movie lets us know that our entertainment is paramount.
12 Years a Slave will make you weep and Gravity will give you a panic attack, but American Hustle just wants you to have a good time at the movies, and some voters may find that highly refreshing.
Why It Shouldn’t Win
This year I find all of the nominated films worthy of Best Picture. (That rarely happens. Usually there’s at least one that strikes me as conspicuously less worthy than something that didn’t make the cut.)
That said, I will personally guarantee that if Best Picture does not go to either Gravity or 12 Years a Slave, an outpouring of complaints will flood the media and internet.
Thanks to an exceptionally strong field (the strongest I’ve personally seen), predicting Best Picture is harder this year than usual. The guild awards are usually a decent indicator, but American Hustle won the SAG, Gravity won the DGA, Gravity and 12 Years a Slave tied at the PGA, and Her and Captain Phillips won the WGA.
As of right now, I would tentatively guess that 12 Years a Slave will take Best Picture and Alfonso Cuarón will win Best Director. (I never write up that category because I’ve never directed anything, so I don’t feel qualified to evaluate the results.)
American Hustle strikes me as the one film that’s not Gravity or 12 Years that has enough momentum to win Best Picture. I know people would immediately protest that it was not a worthy winner, and a part of me might agree with them.
What makes American Hustle great is the performances, not just from the nominated stars but from the entire cast. A dizzying pace, tons of twists, and abundant comedy make the film fun, but lots of movies are fun. What’s great is the acting. That’s why it won the SAG. The award is for ensemble cast. Then again, if you were an actor, wouldn’t you vote for a film that showcases the talents of so many dedicated actors? Everyone who appears in this film looks great (in terms of talent, not hair) and makes an impression.
As a coherent collection of phenomenal performances, American Hustle definitely deserves an Oscar nomination. At the end of the day, however, it excels far more as a vehicle for actors than in any other way. So does it deserve the Best Picture Oscar? Most people will probably answer, “Sure,” until it actually wins, and then everyone will theatrically scream, “No!”
Captain Phillips
Nominated Producer(s): Scott Rudin, Dana Brunetti, Michael De Luca
Director: Paul Greengrass
Writer: Billy Ray
Cast: Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi, David Warshofsky, Max Martini, Barkhad Abdirahman, Faysal Ahmed, Mahat M. Ali, Michael Chernus, Corey Johnson, Catherine Keener
Plot: Captain Philips suspensefully dramatizes real events that took place in April of 2009 when the American cargo ship Maersk Alabama was hijacked by a small band of Somali pirates led by Abduwali Muse. In the film, the pirates board and (after meeting resistance from the crew) leave, taking Richard Philips, the captain of the ship, as their hostage. The ordeal finally ends days later following the intervention of the U.S. Navy.
Why It Should Win
In Captain Phillips, Tom Hanks gives arguably the greatest performance of his career, and in any other year, surely he would have received a nomination (at least) for Best Actor. His final scene is so magnificent and powerful that it overshadows the rest of the performance. As you walk out of the theater, you’re haunted by Hanks’s raw, jarring, authentic portrayal of shock. If you’re like me, you’ll fixate on that last scene and view it as far greater than the rest of the lead performance. Here’s the thing though, on a repeat viewing, Hanks will really knock your socks off. He’s not only great in that last scene. It’s just that what he does in the last scene is so overpowering that you tend to forget all his amazing work leading up to that scene. He should (by merit) be nominated for Best Actor. On the other hand, Hanks already has two Best Actor Oscars (won back to back), so we shouldn’t feel too sorry for him.
Then there’s newcomer Barkhad Abdi, Hanks’s most frequent scene partner, brilliantly playing Somali pirate Muse, the actor’s first ever film role. In real life, Abdi’s family left Somalia when he was a child. By now pretty much everybody knows that before starring in this film, he was a limo driver in Minneapolis. Abdi gives an astonishing debut performance, full of focused energy and incredible intensity. He makes Muse sympathetic, menacing, and tragic all at once, and he definitely holds his own while sharing the screen with Hanks, which in a debut performance is pretty incredible.
Like every movie directed by Paul Greengrass, Captain Phillips is fast-paced and suspenseful. The shaky cam never makes us seasick. Instead it creates a sense of urgency, a feeling of realism. I think the cinematography and set design of Captain Phillips are also pretty captivating, and I certainly see why the film has an Oscar nomination for editing (though usually the Best Picture winner also takes that category).
Perfectly paced and suspenseful even when you know the ending, Captain Phillips also holds up over multiple viewings surprisingly well. I know because I’ve seen it three times already, twice at home in as many weeks. Given the film’s consistently heightened suspense, I wondered if the story would be as engaging on a second viewing. It shouldn’t be because we already know the ending. But somehow, the suspense artfully built by director Paul Greengrass still works. In fact, everything that happens seems suspenseful. As my husband noted in amazement, even the mundane, every day activities on the ship before the pirates arrive seem tense and suspenseful—because we know the pirates will eventually come and disrupt this peaceful monotony. Even on repeat viewings, Captain Phillips will have you on the edge of your seat.
Why It Shouldn’t Win
Nobody expects Captain Phillips to win. I’m not sure why not. Almost everyone I personally encounter who saw this movie enjoyed it. Both Hanks and Abdi give Oscar caliber performances. (Abdi, in fact, just won the BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor, but don’t get too excited about that because Jared Leto wasn’t nominated.)
Paul Greengrass doesn’t make bad movies. He only missed a directing nomination because it’s such a competitive year. But he did miss, and that’s usually a sign that the film won’t win Best Picture. (Do you ever believe that a Best Picture nominee without the corresponding nod for Best Director will actually win the Oscar? I personally can’t imagine that happening.)
Screenwriter Billy Ray won the WGA for Best Adapted Screenplay, so I wouldn’t be surprised to see Captain Phillips win that Oscar. But Best Picture would be a stunning upset that would shock everyone.
Now some of the men who sailed with Rich Phillips have come forward to criticize the accuracy of his memoir. But this movie does not make Phillips look infallible. In fact, when the film pointedly shows us Phillips sending a dishonest e-mail home to his wife, it subtly calls his reliability as a narrator into question. Still, anytime you claim to be showing the truth on screen, people inevitably complain.
The only thing I can say against Captain Phillips is that it’s probably not the unbiased, objective account it wants to be. Yes, we see the situation from the point of view of Phillips. Yes, we see the situation from the point of view of Muse. Yes, we see some heroics from the crew. Yes, we see some actual military personnel carrying out their duties in the film. But no artistic work is ever completely free from bias. To claim that the film is objective and makes no judgments is disingenuous. I mean, there’s not a scene in this film that Greengrass didn’t put there. We’re free to make our own judgments, but he’s providing all the material and directing our gaze. That’s hardly a crime, however. Sometimes I get a bit sick of people complaining that films “based on a true story” aren’t completely true. What’s true? I guess Tom Hanks could stand in a boat and read a list of facts provided by witnesses (some of which will undoubtedly contradict each other) in monotone so his inflection showed no favoritism. But would you see that movie?
There’s really nothing wrong with Captain Phillips. It’s a great, gripping, entertaining film, but it’s not going to win Best Picture.
Dallas Buyers Club
Nominated Producer(s): Robbie Brenner, Rachel Winter
Director: Jean-Marc Vallée
Writers: Craig Borten, Melisa Wallack
Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Garner, Jared Leto, Denis O’Hare, Steve Zahn, Griffin Dunne
Plot: Based on actual events, the film tells the story of Ron Woodroof, a blue-collar, hard-partying, homophobic Dallas man who learns in 1985 that he has contracted AIDS and has only one month to live. Two doctors (one sympathetic, one hostile) inform Woodroof that he’s not a suitable candidate for a drug trial. Desperate to survive, Ron finally discovers a clinic in Mexico where a doctor gives him pills that not only prolong his life but also improve his quality of life. In order to bring others the same treatment (and to make a living), Ron begins smuggling these medicines into the United States and sets up a Dallas Buyers Club. He doesn’t sell drugs; he sells memberships. But he finds clients had to come by until a transgender woman named Rayon opens doors for Ron into the gay community, and, eventually, opens Ron’s heart, as well.
Why It Should Win
Matthew McConaughey will probably win Best Actor, and the shocking part is that he completely deserves it. His work in Dallas Buyers Club is phenomenal. His performance is so captivating in part because it feels so real, so effortless. McConaughey brings a tremendous, hungry intensity to the frustrated, suffering Woodroof, and we lose ourselves in every scene, believing completely in Woodroof’s rage, resentment, frustration, terror, and overwhelming desire to live. His first scene alone with Jennifer Garner—that moment when they’re sitting across her desk from each other discussing why he can’t be a part of the trial—is alive with energy, tension. You never feel that McConaughey is trying to stretch himself as an actor or do justice to the role. Instead, he has become Ron Woodroof, and he makes Woodroof’s desperation feel palpably authentic.
Jared Leto is also phenomenal, a huge scene stealer and so much better than the other Supporting Actor nominees that if he doesn’t win the Oscar it will be a huge injustice. (And don’t get me wrong, the others are all good, all deserving. There’s just a huge gulf separating their performances from Leto’s.) That “woman in a suit” moment I talked about in my Supporting Actor write up is unforgettable.
The performances of McConaughey and Leto make the movie something special, but it has other strengths, as well. A well done scene with butterflies provides beautiful and truly resonant visual symbolism that could feel heavy handed but does not.
The final courtroom scene also gets its message across powerfully, memorably. Woodroof is fighting to survive. The opposition is fighting to be right. For them, the argument is academic. For him, it is literally life and death.
Dallas Buyers Club gives us a fresh look at one angle of the AIDS crisis. I would guess that many (if not most) Americans still have no idea what it was like to have AIDS in the 1980s and how slowly and blunderingly the government and healthcare industry responded to the crisis. This film blends a history lesson with an enormously compelling, character driven human drama. It’s a great film, and I’m glad it’s nominated for Best Picture.
Why It Shouldn’t Win
As usually happens with “true” movies, the authenticity of this story has now been challenged several times. Multiple people who actually knew Ron Woodroof have called into question the film’s portrayal of him as a homophobic, bigoted heterosexual. In fact, they say, Woodroof was openly bisexual. It would be bizarre to assume these people are lying. But it does help the film’s case that co-screenwriter Craig Borten actually interviewed Ron Woodroof in person for three days in 1992 and came away with the distinct impression that Woodroof was unabashedly racist, homophobic, and heterosexual.
I never knew Ron Woodroof, so I have no idea what he was like. Maybe he wanted Borten to think he was homophobic and the people who bought his memberships to think he was bisexual. Maybe he showed different sides of himself to different people depending on the impression he wished to make, and there was a degree of authenticity in every side. Homophobia and bisexuality are not mutually exclusive, after all. Human beings are complicated creatures.
Occam’s Razor suggests to me that nobody is lying in this situation (with the possible exception of Woodroof himself), but it’s also likely that Woodroof’s friends and caregivers knew him better than a stranger who interviewed him for three days.
Would Dallas Buyers Club have enjoyed as much success thus far if it had portrayed Woodroof as a sympathetic bisexual experiencing discrimination as he dies from AIDS? I don’t know. That sounds a lot like Philadelphia. (I realize that the two films are extremely different, but it’s easier for a film to get attention and build a legacy if it’s also immediately, superficially, recognizably distinct from existing well known movies.) Portraying Woodroof as a well-liked, open bisexual might have ruined the power of his relationship with Rayon and killed Leto’s Oscar chances by making the role less significant. On the other hand, portraying Woodroof as a homophobic bisexual would have opened up a huge can of worms. And if Borten had no concrete information about him aside from his personally conducted interviews, that would have been a very weird (and potentially disastrous) choice.
As is, the film works really well. Real human stories are always messier than narratives about real human stories. That’s the whole point of narrative. It’s a way of limiting and reconstructing reality to make comprehensible sense of it. Would a more historically accurate film have worked as well? Who knows? Borten didn’t write that film. He probably couldn’t have written it based on the limited information that he had.
None of this should affect McConaughey’s Oscar chances because he was simply portraying the character as written. The film’s overall chances can’t be helped by the controversy, though, and they weren’t that high to begin with. Dallas Buyers Club has never been a front runner in the Best Picture race. Even leaving the facts out of it, the film does have its flaws.
For one thing, the film never explains exactly how the medicines and supplements Woodroof takes are helping him. Sometimes he seems so robustly healthy that it’s almost unbelievable. Perhaps the treatments did help him that much, but the audience isn’t given much insight into how that’s possible. Another problem is that the movie pointedly demonizes the medical establishment. Yes we’re all suspicious of institutionalized medicine, and we hate insurance companies, but is Jennifer Garner really the only doctor in Dallas who cares about the welfare of her patients? This film goes beyond the cynical view that American doctors are in it for the money and sometimes makes it seem like the doctors are flat out sadists who enjoy watching the afflicted suffer. Sometimes I wanted to say, Look, Dallas Buyers Club, I’m completely on your side, but don’t you think you’re laying it on a little thick?
Right now, McConaughey and Leto look like the frontrunners in their respective acting categories. Given the rich field of deserving nominees, I doubt that one film will win Best Picture and two acting awards. (The one film that might pull it off is Twelve Years a Slave, but I doubt it.) Also (as I mentioned when discussing Captain Phillips), a film rarely wins Best Picture when not even nominated for Best Director. Dallas Buyers Club is going to win at least one Oscar for sure, but it won’t win Best Picture.
Gravity
Nominated Producer(s): Alfonso Cuarón, David Heyman
Director: Alfonso Cuarón
Writers: Alfonso Cuarón, Jonás Cuarón
Cast: Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, Ed Harris (voice)
Plot: After experiencing personal tragedy, Dr. Ryan Stone feels cut off from other people and wonders if she wants to continue living. Also because of a freak accident, she’s floating untethered through space with no easy way back to earth. Alone with limited resources, Stone must answer two tough questions: 1) Can she survive? 2) Does she want to?
Why It Should Win
Gravity’s tricky—kind of like Hamlet.
To set the story in motion, we get sweeping, momentous, grand, dramatic action. Then, just when we’ve gotten really invested in the protagonist’s quest, our hero suddenly volunteers, “Oh and by the way, did I mention that I’ve been on the fence about suicide since before you met me?”
At that point, we’re already invested. We’re thinking, “Seriously? You couldn’t have mentioned this sooner—like maybe before we started caring about you?”
And then we get really annoyed because the character decides to sort out these suicidal impulses first, and we realize that if s/he chooses not to live, then the major conflict in the story we’ve been following will never get satisfactory resolution.
It’s not like Ryan Stone is about to swallow poison or run herself through with a rapier. The situation she’s in will do the dirty work for her. The question is, does she care enough about life to take action to stop her impending death?
What makes Gravity brilliant is that the entire film is an elegant, visual metaphor for the human condition. Ryan Stone’s external dilemma is a vivid dramatization of her internal dilemma. After a terrible, unpredictable accident, she’s left alone, untethered, spinning out into space and staring forlornly at a distant earth. If we’re speaking literally, the accident is her collision with the debris from the detonation of a Russian satellite. Her tether is literally severed. She is actually heading out into space. If we’re speaking figuratively, the accident in question is the accidental death of a loved one. There is no longer any reason for her to connect to other human beings. She might as well be a million miles away from earth because in her grief, she feels all alone. Ryan’s outer journey corresponds perfectly to her inner journey. And if you take away the particulars, her journey also echoes the entire problem of human existence.
We’re all “okay” (and oblivious) until some accident strikes and rips us from our tranquility. (If you define accident as anything not effected through deliberate use of human agency, almost everything in life is an accident. By this definition, the deliberate act of any non-human being would also qualify as an accident because such an act would be beyond our human control or comprehension.) Once we’re shaken out of our tranquility, our position of safety, we feel just as lost and confused as Ryan. If we’re not tied to someone else, if we do not find meaning in human relationships, then what is there for us but empty space and death? Being tied to someone else (having a relationship with another person) gives human life meaning and direction.
Camus famously said, “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” In Gravity, Stone says something about how we’re all going to die, “but I’m gonna die today.” Isn’t that what she’s wanted all along? Since the death of a loved one, she hasn’t really been living. She hasn’t interacted with other people. She has allowed herself to be cut off from the world, deliberately. Now if she hopes to have even a chance of making it back to life earth, she has to decide if she wants to continue living. Is her life worth fighting for, or has she already given up?
In the end, Ryan finds herself in the same position as every other human being. She doesn’t get to decide if she gets to live. She gets to decide if she wants to live.
Gravity probably does deserve the Oscar for Best Picture. It’s so different from any other movie I’ve ever seen. On paper, it sounds more like a theme park attraction than a film. But Cuarón and Bullock deliver much more than I ever expected from the premise.
It’s such a universal story. Anyone can relate to it. On the level of external plot, of literal events, any human being from earth would probably feel absolute terror if we ever found ourselves floating untethered into space. But Ryan’s interior journey is something that all of us have experienced (in some form) as well. Gravity is a very human story. It’s about a human and everything else in the universe. So of course, it’s pretty easy for us to identify with the human.
Another point in the film’s favor is its magnificent use of special effects that look so real I didn’t realize they were CGI until halfway through the movie. (It’s not that anything sloppy looking happens at that point. It’s just that I suddenly realized that I’m an idiot and no, they did not take the cast and crew into orbit to make this film.) Usually, a film that’s almost entirely CGI looks it. But Gravity looks so real.
As I watched the BAFTAs Sunday, I thought of yet another reason that Gravity deserves the Oscar. The behind-the-scenes, making-of clips definitely drive home the point that what we see on the movie screen is not what the filmmakers saw while working on the set. Sandra Bullock really is giving one hell of a performance. I mean, at least in Captain Phillips, Tom Hanks and Barkhad Abdi got to look at each other during their intense scenes. But making Gravity, Sandra Bullock did not experience a 360 panorama of space. It would be much easier to react with visceral horror as you floated off into space if you actually were floating off into space instead of just hanging around in a mechanized harness staring at the white walls of a sound stage.
Why It Shouldn’t Win
Some of the world’s top scientific minds have already pointed out innumerable flaws in the science of Gravity. And all of the whiniest people on the internet have complained at length about certain weaknesses in the plot. I don’t think that stuff really matters too much. Gravity is not trying to be Star Wars. It’s more like Our Town—in space. It is not a sci-fi adventure. It’s a survival story. The same exact story could be dramatized just as effectively on an empty stage. Seriously, I can imagine Sandra Bullock dressed in black, sitting on an otherwise bare stage, delivering a long, heart-breaking soliloquy. (She could be pretending she’s lost in space, or she could simply be talking through her grief. Either way would work.) Of course, a minimalist stage version of Gravity would lack the beautiful, dazzling visual effects of the film. But my point is, the movie isn’t trying to be Star Wars, Alien, or an astronomy documentary. (Well, maybe it is trying to be Alien a little bit, but not in terms of action.)
For me, the film’s most glaring weakness is its uncanny series of events. (Forget that all the stuff she needs wouldn’t be conveniently lined up like that in real life. Does it really matter if the film’s science is possible if its narrative is already implausible?) I’m not a scientist, but if you show me a movie featuring a single person undergoing such an endless litany of varied, successive disasters…well, your film had better be a biopic of Rasputin (and even he finally died at the end). What happens to Ryan Stone is about as about as plausible as the Home Alone movies.
In terms of plot, Gravity is not only uncanny and implausible, but it’s also repetitive (and weirdly formulaic for a concept that initially seems so fresh). As an elegant metaphor, the film is fantastic. As a sci-fi adventure, it falls a little short. As I said, I doubt Cuarón conceives of Gravity as a sci-fi adventure, but it may be difficult for the movie going public (and many Academy voters) to conceive of it in any other way since there aren’t many films like it out there.
At this point in the race, I’d predict that Gravity has the best chance to win Best Picture. It’s special effects are so innovative that it does deserve the award. But I would not go out on a limb and call it the frontrunner. As I see it, this year there is no clear frontrunner. 12 Years a Slave is a serious contender that can’t be counted out, and American Hustle looks like a solid dark horse.
Her
Nominated Producer(s): Megan Ellison, Spike Jonze, and Vincent Landay
Director: Spike Jonze
Writer: Spike Jonze
Cast: Joaquin Phoenix, Scarlett Johansson (voice), Amy Adams, Chris Pratt, Rooney Mara, Olivia Wilde, Kristen Wiig (voice)
Plot: In the Los Angeles of the not-so-distant future, sensitive writer Theodore Twombly feels alone and depressed because his marriage has failed. But everything changes when Theodore purchases a new, state of the art, self-aware personal operating system. The OS, who quickly names herself Samantha, feels an instant attraction to Theodore’s humanity, and soon the two fall in love and begin dating openly. What happens next, however, comes as a huge surprise to everyone—Theodore, Samantha, and even the audience.
Why It Should Win
The preview for this movie does it no favors. It’s all high-waisted pants and smoggy Fauxlifornia and maudlin, self-important mopey angst. I mean, can you get more pretentious than Joaquin Phoenix spinning in gleeful circles as he and his iPhone fall in love to the self-consciously cool stylings of Arcade Fire?
I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a preview so unbearable for a film so brilliant. (It’s like the reverse of Are We Done Yet? That laugh-a-minute preview was pure genius, but the movie itself just makes you feel really bad for Ice Cube and maybe kind of sleepy.)
Her is a much smarter, better movie than its preview suggests. The premise seems so limited, yet the film ends up taking us somewhere unexpected, inventive, and legitimately interesting. I’m not sure that it’s quite as original as everybody says. To me, it seems like a clever, contemporary spin on Pygmalion (the original myth and the Shaw play), but as far as I’m concerned, that’s actually better. Spike Jonze plays the visionary, taking a classic story, interjecting it with the angst of our own day, and then smartly spinning the results into a myth about our future.
So Her is smart, surprising, and substantial. What’s even better, though? It’s funny. The film has such a wonderful and pervasive sense of humor. Kristen Wiig’s voice work in the early phone sex scene almost killed me. What makes the humor great is that it’s off-kilter and yet strangely (painfully) grounded in reality. Wiig’s scene with Phoenix is so hilarious—and also so heart breaking . Even though the specific details are wacky, any adult who has ever been single (or just lonely) can relate to the situation and feel Theodore’s anguish.
Joaquin Phoenix has already established himself as a great actor, and in a less competitive year, his work here would almost certainly be nominated for Best Actor. Scarlett Johansson’s voice work is also key to the film’s success. She stepped in to replace Samantha Morton in post-production, so clearly she’s providing something the film needs to work as well as it does. For me, the real revelation in the cast is Amy Adams who delivers her lines so insightfully, you would think that she wrote them herself.
The sharp writing, well-crafted performances, and incredible ambiance of Theodore’s vivid world make Her Oscar worthy for sure.
Though I don’t see it winning Best Picture, I could easily imagine Her taking Best Original Screenplay. If I were voting, I would seriously consider it for Best Score, as well.
Why It Shouldn’t Win
Academy members who fail to watch Her may think that it’s too weird. Granted, once you watch it, you discover that it’s not, in fact, very weird at all. But to make that discovery, you first have to watch the film, and I know they don’t all watch every film. It’s so easy to make fun of this one and dismiss it without serious consideration (kind of the way some Oscar voters dismissed Brokeback Mountain as “the gay cowboy movie.”) I hope that doesn’t happen, but I do think Her might lose some votes that way. (It also won’t appeal to people who don’t know what an OS is and don’t relate to Theodore’s non-stop reliance on technology.)
Oddly enough, the larger problem with Her is that it’s not actually as weird and out there as everyone says. Seriously, I’m not reaching at all when I say that it’s just a fashionable variation on the Pygmalion myth. I don’t mean that in a dismissive way, but some people might.
Honestly Her is a pretty great film. Spike Jonze could respectably retire right now. (I’m not saying he should.) Jonze never has to worry about topping this effort because it’s good enough to be his legacy. The concept is fresh (in that it takes a classic idea and weds it to newly emerging concerns). The acting is top-notch. The world-crafting is really flawless. Costume and set design are impeccable. And I love Arcade Fire’s score and the whimsical “Moon Song” by Karen O. (though out of deference to the emphatic wishes of my five-year-old daughter Elsa, the Snow Queen, I cannot in good conscience root for it to win Best Song).
Either Gravity or 12 Years a Slave seems most likely to win this year, and American Hustle could always upset. I will say, though, that a Best Picture win for Her does seem within the realm of possibility simply because quite a large, vocal group of people emphatically love the film, and there’s no particular reason for anyone to hate it. Her is deserving enough to win the Oscar. The only real strike against it is that the Academy might find other films marginally more deserving.
Nebraska
Nominated Producer(s): Albert Berger, Ron Yexra
Director: Alexander Payne
Writer: Bob Nelson
Cast: Will Forte, Bruce Dern, June Squibb, Stacy Keach, Bob Odenkirk, Rance Howard
Plot:
In Montana, elderly alcoholic Woody Grant receives a piece of junkmail that makes him believe he has won a million dollar prize given out in Nebraska. Determined to travel from Billings to Lincoln to pick up his money in person, the slightly senile Woody keeps getting picked up by police for wandering down the side of the road. Eventually Woody’s younger son David agrees to drive his father to Lincoln, not because he believes that his father has won money, but because he welcomes the chance to spend some time with his distant father and thinks the change of scenery might do them both some good. As the journey takes some unexpected turns, David gradually begins to understand and appreciate his father in a way he never has before.
Why It Should Win
I love Nebraska. I’m from Nebraska (though we moved from Omaha to Dallas when I was four). Alexander Payne’s latest masterpiece is right at the top of my list this year, jockeying with Philomena for first place. I can never completely decide which film I love more. I’ll have to see them both again before I can be sure.
The two films have a surprising amount in common. Both feature a comedian in a dramatic role taking a meaningful roadtrip with a beloved veteran actor. But while Philomena offers surprises that touch on a number of hot-button political issues, Nebraska is nothing more than a nice, quiet movie about nice, quiet people.
That’s a rare commodity these days. How often do we see films about average people existing in their daily lives in the mid-West? Location aside, films with elderly protagonists are not that common. When we do get films with older protagonists, they’re usually doing something exciting and sexy like having a last hurrah in Vegas, getting reactivated as spies, blasting off to outer space, or being the Queen of England. Woody and his wife are just regular people. Their kids are just regular people, too. But the Grant family is definitely worth getting to know.
Some people insist that Nebraska is boring, a criticism I just don’t get. The film is consistently hilarious and heart-breaking (often at the same time, which is tough to pull off, though the talented cast makes it look easy).
Both Bruce Dern and June Squibb give Oscar worthy performances. Earlier in the year, I thought Dern had a solid shot at a win. That seems unlikely now. But the fact that he deserves an Oscar for playing Woody Grant has not changed. Woody and his wife Kate are imperfect people, but they feel real, genuine, like people any of us might know.
The real surprise of the film is Will Forte’s performance as David, the couple’s younger son. I had no idea Forte had such talent as a dramatic actor. He’s perfect in the role of David. In fact, I like him better in this film than I’ve liked him in any comedy. (And he’s a funny guy.) Bob Odenkirk is pretty good as David’s older brother, too. The four principal members of the Grant family have great chemistry together. It’s easy to believe them as a family and (frankly) tremendously refreshing that the movie doesn’t give us some dumb, juvenile conflict between the brothers. Stacy Keach is also in fine form as Ed Pegram, the closest thing the film has to a villain. The moment when Woody reclaims his letter from Pegram is perhaps my favorite in the film. Nebraska features so many amazing, layered scenes—visiting the cemetery, returning to the family home, breaking into the shed—but Dern, Forte, and Keach all play this poignant moment so perfectly that it may be best of all.
Phedon Papamichael’s nominated cinematography is excellent, captivating. In black and white, the stark landscapes of rural Nebraska look even starker. What a dramatic contrast between these barren fields and the eclectic warmth found inside people’s homes! I like Mark Orton’s score, too. In fact, I have been humming the main theme for weeks and can’t seem to get it out of my head.
Why It Shouldn’t Win
Nebraska is not the kind of movie that usually wins Best Picture. How Alexander Payne keeps getting nominated making sentimental, hilarious, weepy dramedies about ordinary people truly mystifies me.
I’m not saying that he doesn’t deserve the nominations. I think his work is brilliant. But Nebraska could easily be summarized as follows: An elderly Midwestern man with two grown sons, a feisty wife, and a bit of dementia doesn’t win a million dollars.
That doesn’t really sound like the plot of a Best Picture winner. This movie isn’t about politics or religion or scandal or injustice. It’s just about people, human relationships (kind of like life). Its two principal stars are a (mainly TV) comedian and a veteran character actor known for playing sociopaths and weirdoes.
Since I love Nebraska, I would have no objections to a Best Picture win; not everybody loves Nebraska, however. Some people think it’s boring. I disagree, but I don’t get to vote, and maybe some of them do. The unfortunate reality is that not enough people seem insanely excited about the film right now. It has a better chance of winning no Oscars than taking home the top prize.
Philomena
Nominated Producer(s): Gabrielle Tana, Steve Coogan, and Tracey Seaward
Director: Stephen Frears
Writers: Steve Coogan, Jeff Pope
Cast: Judi Dench, Steve Coogan, Barbara Jefford, Peter Hermann, Mare Winningham, Sean Mahon, Sophie Kennedy Clark, Tadhg Bowen, Michelle Fairley, Anna Maxwell Martin
Plot: This is the true story of Philomena Lee, an elderly Irish woman searching for the child who was taken from her when she was just a girl. After a brief encounter left her pregnant out of wedlock, the teenaged Philomena was kicked out of her home and sought refuge in a Magdalene laundry. The nuns let her visit her child occasionally, but when he was a toddler, she could not prevent his adoption by Americans. The nuns refused to give her any information about the adoption. She never saw her son again. Now after many years, she finally tells the truth to her daughter who puts her in touch with journalist Martin Sixsmith, the writer who recently worked for the British government until being fired in the wake of a scandal beyond his control. Sixsmith has a certain disdain for sentiment and “human interest stories” until his interactions with Philomena lead him to realize that humans can be interesting. As Martin attempts to help Philomena reconnect with her son, he overcomes his own depression and rediscovers the power of caring for others on a human level.
Why It Should Win
Philomena is my favorite Oscar film of 2013. Dench gives one of her strongest performances ever (which is saying something), playing a character who is such a departure from her usual screen persona. I’m not saying that Dench isn’t versatile, simply noting that she usually plays a strong, no-nonsense woman. Philomena is a strong woman, but she’s got a different style of strength, a self-effacing, modest, courteous, congenial manner of self-presentation. And I’ve never been so impressed with Steve Coogan. (Honestly I’ve never been impressed with Coogan at all. Hamlet 2 was clever but uneven, and Around the World in 80 Days was uneven but… I’m not saying that Coogan isn’t funny and talented, but his American screen career has been vaguely forgettable. Until now.)
Coogan just won the BAFTA for Best Adapted Screenplay, and the win was totally deserved. In the film, experiencing Philomena’s story changes Martin Sixsmith’s life for the better. In real life, adapting Sixsmith’s account of Philomena’s story should change Coogan’s career for the better. I know that I intend to see any future films that he writes.
What makes Philomena great is that it presents its story with realistic complexity (common to real life but frequently omitted from fiction). The screenplay is excellent. Several times, we get to hear Martin smugly tell his editor what he feels sure the story will look like in the end. His take on the whole thing is distanced, jaded. He imagines formulaic, by-the-numbers claptrap. Then he experiences the real story and gets shaken out of his aloof contempt for sentiment and “human interest.”
The “road trip” aspect of the movie really works for me. As Martin and Philomena take a journey from England to Ireland to America together, each simultaneously goes on an interior journey and experiences genuine growth through interaction with the other. Martin learns to open his mind and heart to others; Philomena gains closure. Philomena chastises Martin for mocking faith; Martin gives Philomena permission to acknowledge her anger at the Church. The two work so well in tandem. They’re perfect screen partners, and their interactions not only entertain us but benefit them as well.
Philomena is also a delightful, enchanting film to watch which seems weird given its heavy, often tragic story. As the story unfolds, it becomes increasingly incredible, amazing. At every moment, the tragedy is palpable, and yet the whole thing is infused with such beautiful, realistic, life-affirming comedy.
The film also has fantastic cinematography, and an Oscar nominated score by Alexandre Desplat that has a decent chance of winning.
Why It Shouldn’t Win
Philomena is my favorite Oscar film of 2013, so that’s a strike against it. My favorite film of the year hardly ever wins Best Picture. In fact, it’s really only happened once, when The Departed won in 2007 (and that doesn’t quite count because The Deptarted shared the honor of being my favorite with A Prairie Home Companion which did not even get a nomination).
Harvey Weinstein is campaigning for Philomena which ordinarily would help (and probably has helped) its Oscar chances. But there does seem to be a weird backlash about his campaign for Philomena. Some people persist in believing that the film is nominated only because of Weinstein’s relentless campaigning which seems patently ridiculous to me. The film is marvelous and deserves recognition based solely on its own merits. Nevertheless that opinion is out there all over the place. From my point of view, a number of people seem dismissive of the film in exactly the same way that Martin Sixsmith (in the film) is initially dismissive of human interest stories.
Also what appears from previews to be a sweet, folksy tale of a sweet little old Irish woman is actually also a fairly scathing exposé of abuses of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland. In that way, it’s a very political film. In fact, what Martin Sixsmith eventually uncovers about Lee’s son touches on so many hot button issues that I’m amazed it’s a true story. But that’s life for you.
The thing is, the real Philomena Lee stands behind this film and keeps appearing at various ceremonies to promote it. Philomena Lee is Catholic and still practices her faith. I’m also a practicing Catholic, and I don’t find exposure of pockets of corruption within the Church offensive or the slightest bit shocking. What happened to Philomena Lee (and others) is horrible and pretty shady. Just because Philomena and I are Catholic does not mean we’re obligated to believe that what every other person professing to be Catholic does is above reproach. Even people in high positions make mistakes. For a famous example, do a little reading about Joan of Arc. Or consider the Church’s (ever so slightly) belated apology to Galileo. Actually, if you want to be really dramatic about it, try researching the Avignon Papacy. The Pope must be above reproach, right? But what happens when more than one person claims to be the Pope? Must we assume that anyone claiming the papacy is the Pope in an effort to be good Catholics? Calling out and correcting Church corruption is not the same thing as abandoning all faith.
In the end, between the controversy and the lack of interest, I doubt Philomena will win Best Picture, but if I were an Academy member, it might get my vote.
12 Years a Slave
Nominated Producer(s): Brad Pitt, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Steve McQueen, and Anthony Katagas
Director: Steve McQueen
Writer: John Ridley
Cast: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Lupita Nyong’o, Paul Giamatti, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano, Sarah Paulson, Alfre Woodard, Brad Pitt, Taran Killam, Scoot McNairy, Quvenzhané Wallis, Dwight Henry, and countless others.
Plot: The true story of Solomon Northup, a freeborn African American violinist from New York lured to Washington D.C. under false pretenses, drugged, kidnapped, and sold into slavery in the antebellum South. Eventually Solomon ends up a slave on the cotton plantation of Edwin Epps, a tormented, cruel man who has an obsessive fixation with a much-abused female slave named Patsey. Epps and his sadistic, jealous wife make life on the plantation miserable for everyone. Solomon longs to escape but lacks opportunity. He remains a slave for twelve years. When rescue does come, Solomon escapes his nightmare but seems haunted by the fact that his fellow slaves remain behind in torment.
Why It Should Win
12 Years a Slave takes a novel approach to the topic of slavery, one that seems universally embraceable.
Normally films about slavery take one of two approaches. 1) The hideously objectionable (and no longer sanctioned) approach of glossing over the horrors of slave life and making antebellum Southern plantations look like one big happy family 2) The individualized approach of focusing on the suffering of one individual (or cohesive group) and ending the story in the tragedy (death) or triumph (running away) of said individual(s).
12 Years a Slave does something completely different. It pointedly does not gloss over any of the horrors of slave life. It also does not limit its focus to the suffering of one individual (or group). In 12 Years a Slave, everyone in the antebellum South is suffering—the kidnapped Solomon (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the vicious Tibeats (Paul Dano), the conscience-stricken Reverend Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch), the much abused Patsey (Lupita N’yongo), the tormented Epps (Michael Fassbender), his sadistic wife (Sarah Paulson), and all the other slaves (too numerous to be contained by one set of parentheses). The only non-suffering person who ever sets foot in that antebellum Southern nightmare is Brad Pitt, the Canadian with a clear conscience who repeatedly tells everyone he meets that slavery is an evil institution.
Too often the discussion of films about slavery quickly devolves into finger pointing and paranoid assumption of finger pointing. 12 Years a Slave does not let us get away with saying simply, “Look what we did to them,” or “Look what they did to us.” It makes no distinction between “us” and “them.” Instead, the emphasis is, “Look what slavery does to the human soul.”
Slavery is evil. When evil is declared good, everyone suffers. I’ve often thought about how horrible and crushing being owned and abused by someone must feel. But until seeing this movie, I’d never given much thought to how awful it would be to own someone. Epps is one crazy dude, but consider the counsel he’s given. His sadistic (equally crazy) wife is constantly criticizing him for not being cruel enough to his slaves. What’s weird is that she seems to be backed up by cultural norms, divine scripture, and even natural phenomena. Given the heights of his madness, Epps would probably be kind of a trainwreck no matter what his circumstances, but the world he’s in just makes him that much worse. Imagine being told, “You are better than these people. They’re not even human. It is your job to punish them. God wants you to make them suffer for their sinful nature.” How could anyone raised in such a weird environment ever form a functioning conscience?
People like the charming Epps family and Paul Dano’s insecure overseer Tibeats are blatantly, obviously horrible. But 12 Years also gives us characters like Cumberbatch’s Reverend Ford. He’s a well-meaning man who wants to spare Solomon trouble and pain, and he seems to sense that something is terribly unjust about his society. But the world he lives in prevents him from truly helping Solomon without bringing harm on himself. (It’s that “without bringing harm on himself” part that gets him. That’s what gets most of us. We could all be pure hearted heroes except that it’s awfully inconvenient.)
The film makes such a practical argument against slavery. It’s not simply saying, “You shouldn’t own slaves because it’s bad for them.” It’s going a step further and pointing out, “You shouldn’t own slaves because it’s bad for you. Dehumanizing other people will not make you a god; it will make you a monster. Do you want to be a monster?”
Of course, the slaves suffer the most, which seems pretty true to life. It’s hard to argue with a straight face that on an antebellum cotton plantation anyone had it worse than the slaves. If you say something that stupid, you pretty much deserve to be laughed out of respectability forever. A person may damage his soul by administering the lash unjustly, but the person who gets whipped will have a scar where the flesh was torn from his back.
Solomon’s story is heart-breaking enough. It’s also horrifying. Like most of us, he wakes up every day not even considering that he could be enslaved. Then he gets kidnapped and sold into slavery. That’s a nightmare scenario. What happens to Solomon could happen to anybody. But what makes the movie truly great is Solomon’s gradual realization that not only should such injustices not be happening to him, they should not, in fact, be happening to anyone at all. Yes, he was originally free and he does not deserve such treatment. But everybody was originally free (even those born into slavery had free ancestors at some point), and no one deserves such treatment. (At the BAFTAs, director Steve McQueen pointed out that that slavery still exists today, and that we ought to do something about it. He’s right, of course.)
Then there’s Patsey, (brilliantly played by Lupita N’yongo) conspicuously virtuous, atrociously abused. Solomon knows that he does not deserve to suffer. But does Patsey deserve to suffer? He witnesses her suffering first hand almost every single day. When she begs him for a favor, and he refuses her, what has he done? Has he chosen to do the (morally) right thing by refusing to be swayed by the corrupt, evil world he has fallen into? Or has he made the less virtuous choice because it’s more convenient for him? That the answer is not simple or clear reflects the messy confusion of real life in a flawed world. Like everyone around him, Solomon appears to be in a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation. When he finally escapes from captivity, he never truly escapes from the knowledge that countless others remain behind in unjust suffering. And while over time, it may be possible to forget “countless others,” nobody’s ever going to be able to forget Patsey.
One of the things that always bothered me about last year’s Django Unchained (a film that I truly enjoyed) is that it makes such entertaining fare of the evils of slavery. In order to ensure sympathy for a protagonist who carries out extreme revenge, Tarantino first has to demonstrate that the acts prompting the revenge are so despicable themselves that nothing short of extreme revenge would suffice. That’s all well and good for dramatic purposes, but while we’re all laughing and cheering and gasping watching a sociopath make men fight to the death, or hoping a woman won’t get put back in the hot box, we have to remember that awful things like that actually happened to real people. Real human beings were tortured, raped, killed, made to kill, and why? For our entertainment? I mean, we all watch and think Leonardo DiCaprio’s character is so awful for watching men fight to the death for entertainment, and then we shove some more popcorn into our mouths and cheer wildly as he (and many others) are killed in retribution—up on the big screen.
12 Years a Slave is different. It definitely does not make slavery “fun.” In discussing the challenges of playing Patsey, Lupita N’yongo articulately explained that she herself did not suffer playing the role. During the making of the film, Nyong’o wasn’t raped repeatedly by Michael Fassbender or physically abused by Sarah Paulson or whipped vigorously by Chiwetel Ejiofor. She was just playing a part in a film. But Patsey—Patsey is different. Patsey is a real person. These horrific, nightmarish acts really did happen to the historical Patsey. N’yongo considers the opportunity to bring Patsey to life for audiences an honor and an obligation. She’s extremely gracious and makes a great point. We don’t suffer by watching 12 Years a Slave, but we do take a serious look at the real suffering of others. And we don’t do it for fun. We do it to acknowledge the reality of their terrible ordeals.
12 Years a Slave also has some of the most haunting cinematography I’ve ever seen. (Its snub in that category is the biggest shock this year, as far as I’m concerned.) Everything looks so eerily lovely, and yet what horror pervades those seemingly serene landscapes!
Why It Shouldn’t Win
12 Years a Slave is a great film that deserves to win Best Picture. It is also the Best Picture nominee this year that is the least fun to watch (unless you’re one of the people who can’t make it through The Wolf of Wall Street).
If I were an Academy member, I would think, “Alfonso Cuarón deserves to win Best Director, so let’s vote 12 Years a Slave for Best Picture, and then everybody wins.” But see, I’m not a member of the Academy, and I really have no idea how the actual voters think. (I wouldn’t put it past them, for example, to give the Best Supporting Actress Oscar to Jennifer Lawrence like the BAFTA voters did.)
I do think that some of the campaign ads for 12 Years a Slave may have hurt its cause. The one that says, “It’s time” is what I’m thinking of mainly. On a purely artistic level, that’s such a clever slogan since the film is literally about the twelve years Solomon Northup spent as a slave. The problem is, the double meaning (which must be intended) suggests that it’s time people vote for a film like this. Whatever you think that means, the problem is that the slogan seems to imply that if you don’t vote for 12 Years a Slave, it’s because you’re racist/in favor of slavery/something like that. Regardless of the intent of the ad, the slogan seems to insult the voter proactively.
If I had my way, Gravity and 12 Years a Slave would tie like they did at the Producer’s Guild. That never happens! Wouldn’t it be amazing to have a Best Picture tie? That would make the Oscars really exciting, and it would also be the perfect ending to a year featuring such a crowded field of outstanding and worthy films.
The Wolf of Wall Street
Nominated Producer(s): Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Joey McFarland and Emma Tillinger Koskoff
Director: Martin Scorsese
Writer: Terence Winter
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Margot Robbie, Rob Reiner, Kyle Chandler, Joanna Lumley, Jon Bernthal, Cristin Milioti, Jean Dujardin, Matthew McConaughey
Plot: Eager young stock broker Jordan Belfort comes to Wall Street just in time to experience Black Monday in 1987. Shaken by the crash and left without a job, Jordan soon discovers a talent for selling penny stocks and starts scheming to increase his profits. Pleased with his success, Jordan decides to establish his own firm, Stratton Oakmont, devoted to swindling money from the richest Americans. Belfort’s business model is legally sketchy, morally indefensible, and highly lucrative. Before long, he’s a multi-millionaire. What does he do with the money? A number of surprising things (surprising chiefly because they’re rated R instead of NC-17). Eventually, of course, Belfort’s wild lifestyle of sex addiction, drug abuse, and madcap debauchery catches up with him, and as punishment for his crimes, he’s forced to play tennis for a while.
Why It Should Win
Leonardo DiCaprio keeps saying that movies like this don’t usually get made, and he’s right. I’ve never seen a movie quite like The Wolf of Wall Street. It’s three solid hours of sickening, almost-too-bizarre-to-be-real, nonstop, materialistic excess, told to us from the point of view of an amoral predator who may well be a sociopath. It’s capitalism run amok, and our window into the story is the unrepentant perpetrator who (not surprisingly) takes a very sympathetic view of himself.
Personally I think movies like this usually don’t get greenlit because there’s not a precedent for them being made, and audiences do not know how to receive them. The American public approaches books and movies very differently. We all know (from bitter experience with high school) that books may be out to teach us something, but the thought that movies might have an agenda (beyond our entertainment) is somehow shocking (and often sinister). For whatever reason, some people immediately assume that every movie offers us its protagonist as a moral exemplar. And even more people worry that others (less intellectually capable than themselves) may fall prey to this naïve assumption.
This problem is hardly new. A cursory glance through the Hays Code will confirm that here in the United States, we’ve long been worried that movies can corrupt the common man. (In fact not trusting the judgment of the common man was cool way before we even had movies or a United States. Nothing gets the naïve rabble all roused up like a sophisticated piece of theater!)
What’s vexing is that as soon as someone articulately defends the Average Joe and maintains that common people do not, in fact, lack discernment, some idiot somewhere makes the news for copying a dangerous/violent scene from a popular movie and (at best) injuring a number of innocent bystanders.
In an age when toddlers all over this land are learning about the world through daily conversations with Dora the Explorer, maybe we should stop being shocked when most movie goers expect the “good guy” in a movie to be a good guy.
Here’s why The Wolf of Wall Street matters. 12 Years a Slave makes a pretty ironclad case for the abolition of slavery. As director Steve McQueen just pointed out in his BAFTA acceptance speech, slavery still exists in the world, and we’re all much too complacent about that. But slavery on American cotton plantations no longer exists as it did in the antebellum South. That way of life is over. (I’m not saying we’ve entered some brave new world of enlightenment where all people are treated with the respect and dignity they deserve at every moment, but the horrific world of 12 Years of a Slave no longer exists as it once did.)
But Jordan Belfort is still alive and well. He’s out of prison now. He’s made a ton of money from his memoirs and speaking engagements, and I hear he’s shopping around a reality show. Not only that, but Belfort’s excessive way of life is alive and well, too.
In the movie, DiCaprio’s Belfort declares confidently that “everyone wants to be rich.” And you know what’s horrifying? I think for the most part, he’s right (particularly because he makes an exception for religious ascetics). If you ask people about “the American Dream” you may hear a few things about escape from tyranny and religious freedom, but you’ll hear a lot more of, “In America, if you work hard, one day you can be rich” and also “no taxation without representation.” If you ever are feeling inclined to look to film and television for moral guidance, you’ll find yourself barraged with directives to spend, spend, spend, buy, buy, buy (and not just by the commercials, by the shows they’re interrupting). Making and spending money will make you happy, popular, beautiful, the kind of person you deserve to be. We get this message constantly.
Now (to be fair to Americans) most of us are at least semi-aware that we get this message constantly. But there’s a weird kind of cognitive dissonance going on in our society. If we carry through this great life advice to its natural ends, we’ll end up living The Wolf of Wall Street. But nobody ever mentions that part (maybe because most of us never realize our dreams of wealth. We all dream of becoming millionaires, but it’s the aggressively amoral Jordan Belforts of the world who are actually cashing in via our highly flawed system).
I think Scorsese and DiCaprio (for whom this is a passion project) are trying to shock us. And that’s pretty hard to do these days. American filmgoers are pretty jaded. Our YA film adaptation du jour is about a government that forces teenagers to fight to death in the arena for the entertainment of a wealthy, vapid (easily controlled) populace. (The Hunger Games touches on many of the same social issues as The Wolf of Wall Street, but when we then get tie-ins like the Maybelline Capitol Collection, we get the feeling that maybe some people are missing the point.)
Some people stormed out of The Wolf of Wall Street in disgust. It makes excess look so ugly. (Particularly key to the project’s success, I think, is casting as Jordan someone fans have been swooning over since Titanic.) Other people have volunteered online and on air that they find the antics of Belfort and his cronies in The Wolf of Wall Street so amazingly awesome. (All you people out there eager to censor the film, if you’re looking for something to be shocked and disgusted by, focus less on the film and more on that reaction.) The Wolf of Wall Street shows how greed, excess, and worship of extravagance can turn even a handsome, charismatic person into an ugly, disgusting monster. (Or—from another perspective—our current way of life in this country enables someone who is already a vicious, disgusting monster to succeed fabulously, amassing great wealth by taking to the extreme values that almost all of us express.)
If we don’t allow artists to take risks in film, pretty soon true artists will stop making films and start doing something else. Now some people have called Scorsese a misogynist (and a lot of other things) arguing that he does not condemn the bad behavior of his characters explicitly enough and enjoys their antics on some level. These people clearly aren’t considering that one of the perks of being an artist is that you can present controversial issues without taking a firm stance on them. That’s why you offer the audience a whole bunch of characters having a dialogue instead of just standing up and making a speech yourself. You can get a really amazing discussion started and avoid being demonized or arrested. It’s great! If Scorsese wanted to tell you exactly what he thinks by taking a firm stance on troubling issues, he would be a statesman, not a filmmaker.
On the BAFTA red carpet, Tom Hanks said that one of the alluring features of Captain Phillips is that it simply shows what happened without making judgments or over-interpreting events. We see the (limited) motivations and actions of both Phillips and Muse. This may sound odd (given the bizarre events in The Wolf of Wall Street), but I think Scorsese is attempting something similar. He’s showing us the life of Jordan Belfort from Belfort’s own point of view, and he’s asking us to use our own judgment. (We don’t get that a lot. There’s a lot of hand-holding and prodding in mainstream American entertainment.) If you see the movie and discern that Belfort is an awesome guy and your role model, be sure to mention that in any online dating profiles you have. (Call out that last scene with his wife, in particular.) That will help you weed through potential matches very quickly. But if you really want to see why The Wolf of Wall Street is a powerful film, watch it the same night you screen Captain Phillips. Consider Muse’s world. Consider Phillips’s world. Then meet Jordan Belfort.
Not everyone will like The Wolf of Wall Street, but it is a great film.
Why It Shouldn’t Win
People are probably going to like The Wolf of Wall Street at some unknown point in the future way more than they like it now. (And surely at other unknown points in the future, it will be reviled and misunderstood even more.)
The only reason it even has a chance of winning this year is Martin Scorsese. He’s well respected and spent so long getting snubbed by the Academy that a lot of people still feel he deserves more recognition than he’s gotten. (Don’t forget, the Academy is not a static body. Its members are human. Every year, new members are added, and existing members die. So the Academy that snubbed Scorsese is not identical to the Academy that now seems so eager to reward him.)
Another reason the film could (possibly) win is the lack of a slam-dunk type frontrunner.
But more realistically, I’d guess The Wolf is simply (much) too divisive to win Best Picture. Yes, some people love it. But when you make a movie like this, you’ve got to realize that some people are definitely going to hate it, and not just passively hate it. There are going to be some Academy members who when asked about their vote for Best Picture, respond emphatically, “Well I’ll tell you one thing. I’m not going to vote for that piece of trash The Wolf of Wall Street.”
The thing is, people who hate The Wolf probably won’t hate any of the other nominated films more. This one is just so, so easy to hate. And if you say, “I thought The Wolf of Wall Street was too obscene to get an R rating,” nobody’s going to reel back in shock and gasp, “What?! You prude!” On the other hand, people who love The Wolf of Wall Street are very likely to love other nominated films just as much or more.
I’m a huge fan of Leonardo DiCaprio and an (admittedly less diehard) admirer of Martin Scorsese, and even I don’t think this is a) their best collaboration b) the best film of the year. Is it one of the best films of the year? Yes. Without a doubt. Would it be undeserving of Best Picture? No, not at all.
But there are more obvious choices. In fact, there are eight more obvious choices. (I’m not calling the other eight nominees more Oscar worthy. I’m calling them safer.)
All nine nominees for Best Picture this year would be worthy Oscar winners. But if The Wolf of Wall Street pulls off a win, I will be howling with shock. I’ll be so shocked, I won’t even be able to convey the shock myself. I’ll have to hire Tom Hanks to do it for me. (Maybe then he can get the Oscar nomination he deserves.)