Review of Oscar Nominees 2020: Best Picture, Part I

Nominated Producers: Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping, James Mangold
Director: James Mangold
Writers: Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, Jason Keller

Cast: Matt Damon, Christian Bale, Caitriona Balfe, Noah Jupe, Tracy Letts, Josh Lucas, Jon Bernthal, Remo Girone, Ray McKinnon, and others.

Plot:  In the 1960s, Henry Ford II is desperate for a way to put the company his famous grandfather started back on top of the auto game.  Ford man Lee Iococca gets the idea to buy Ferrari to add some glamour to the Ford brand.  When Enzo Ferrari rejects the offer and throws in some salty insults to boot, Ford decides to “go to war” and beat Ferrari at the world famous auto race, the 24-hour Le Mans.  To accomplish this seemingly impossible feat as fast as possible, Ford brings in ex-racer Carroll Shelby to help design and test a fleet of racecars.  But Shelby insists that winning will take more than money, and hires his old friend, Ken Miles, the best man he knows behind the wheel.  The problem is, Miles has the reputation of being “difficult” (i.e. he’s known to throw wrenches during screaming track-side tirades).  The other problem is, Leo Beebe is a big jerk with an obvious ax to grind, and for some reason Ford keeps putting him in charge of the project.

Why It Should Win:

I just rewatched Ford v Ferrari (known outside the US as Le Mans ’66), and coming away from a second viewing, I’m astonished that it didn’t get a nomination for Best Cinematography. Granted, the film did snag nods for sound editing, sound mixing, and even the coveted film editing (which 1917 and Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood notably missed). But so often this second time through, I thought, “What spectacular shot composition!” (When Matt Damon’s Carroll Shelby turns a reprimand to his advantage in Ford’s office, the major players are positioned almost as if they are drivers racing on the track. We watch each man’s head as he evaluates and establishes his position of power. It looks not unlike the way Bale’s Ken Miles sizes up other drivers during a race.) Plus think of the actual racing!  Capturing all of those riveting trips around the track must take skill. (The editors noticed how artfully those racing scenes are put together, but somebody had to film them, too!) The film’s score also zooms along, catchy, distinctive, and energized.

Of all the films nominated this year, Ford v Ferrari is one of the most fun to watch. It was wonderful on the big screen, but (shockingly) it looks and sounds almost just as good at home, all those revving, rumbling, roaring engines, tight turns, and audible (but not blaring) conversations.  We don’t have an elaborate sound system at home, just the ordinary TV sound, so movies don’t always sound great here.  This one does.

People talk about the nostalgia factor of The Irishman‘s big cast a lot, but for me, Ford v Ferrari is the real blast from the past this year. Even the trailers instantly gave me déjà vu (of the best kind). It’s not that the film’s plot is too familiar, just that this movie has an ineffable but palpable quality, the feel of a 1990s blockbuster Oscar movie. I wish we got more films like this these days–big, bold, bright, epic, all-star, fun, upbeat, satisfying, repeatable–and thanks to the success of this one, maybe we will.

From the start, every Oscar pundit around noted that since both Damon and Bale were campaigning in lead, they would likely hurt each other’s chances, and neither would get an acting nomination. And, in fact, that is how it’s played out. Bale did manage to pick up some precursor nominations, though. I love Christian Bale (always have), and after watching this the first time, I found myself absent-mindedly belting out, “I’m H-A-P-P-Y!” for days. But honestly, in this film, I like Matt Damon even better. His Carroll Shelby is a character I loved rooting for start-to-finish. Whether he’s making an entrance in a plane or forcing a bargain in a car, he’s so charismatic, quick-witted, compassionate, steel-nerved, loyal, and surprising. I loved the guy. Plus I thought Damon’s accent was pretty good. I mean, we all know Matt Damon is from Boston, but here he makes it easy to suspend disbelief for two and a half hours.

I was not thrilled with Catriona Balfe’s performance as Ken’s wife Mollie the first time around but found she improved on a second viewing once I knew what to expect from her. All of the male supporting performances are good, particularly Ray McKinnon, Tracy Letts (as Henry Ford II), Remo Girone (as Ferari), John Bernthal, and Josh Lucas (who gets to be a smirking villain and does some of the most interesting work of his career).

For me, the MVP of the entire cast is child actor Noah Jupe as Ken Miles’s son, Peter (affectionately called Petey). What a gifted young actor! Between his fine work here and his heart-wrenching turn as the young Shia LaBeouf in Honey Boy, Jupe really lit up screens in 2019! I can’t wait to see him in A Quiet Place Part II this spring.

Honestly, I have no particular interest in racing, and I found this movie literally (with no hyperbole!) pulse pounding. The first time I watched that Daytona race, I thought I might need some of Carroll Shelby’s heart pills. The racing scenes are intense, entertaining, satisfying. What drives the movie, though, is the character drama, the power (more the intensity than the complexity) of the key relationships. 

Best of all are some of the movie’s thought-provoking themes.  So many excellent films of 2019 share the message that the meaning is in the work, whether that work is racing, acting, or creating art. For me, that was the big takeaway of film in 2019. Forget the finish line. What matters is that you’re journeying toward it. Life is in the moments, and those moments can become immortalized.

Another thing that stands out about Ford v Ferrari to me is the scene in Henry Ford II’s office where Ford brags to Shelby that Roosevelt didn’t win World War II. It was the Ford assembly line that built the tanks that liberated Europe. We audience members must then recall that driving one of those tanks was Ken Miles.

Why It Shouldn’t Win:
Momentum is against this movie, and the finish line is approaching too fast to change that now.

For whatever reason, people have had it in their heads for years that fun, popular films (the kind everyone genuinely enjoys watching) aren’t supposed to win Best Picture. You could easily argue that Ford v Ferrari does not exactly have a happy ending, but still, it’s too uplifting to be taken seriously by the Academy.

Ford v Ferrari has also been taken to task for not passing the Bechdel test.  How could it?  There’s only one female character who isn’t someone’s secretary or translator.  Yes, I know that’s kind of the point, but adding more secondary characters would pull focus from the story’s heart, and I don’t think the audience would have the same warm feeling for Catriona Balfe if she sat around talking to herself about matters unrelated to the plot.  The historical Ken Miles and his wife Mollie had one child, a son named Peter.  What if instead they’d had a daughter named Penelope?  Would the film be as harshly criticized for not showing a female perspective?  A huge portion of the film is about Ken’s relationship with his family, and much of the time, we get the vibe that we are seeing this intimate glimpse through Peter’s eyes (or from his memories).  Both parents are romanticized and chiefly seen with one another.  So yes, it’s true, (undeniable), there aren’t many women in this story, but Balfe does have a huge and important part, and I personally prefer the economy of storytelling employed here to including unnecessary characters and tangents just to pass the Bechdel test.  Initially, I did have some resistance to Balfe herself, possibly because she vaguely resembles Cate Blanchett, unintentionally inviting the unflattering (to Balfe) comparison.  But that’s my problem, not Balfe’s.  (And she’s better on a second watch.)  It is also not Ford v Ferrari‘s fault that the Academy seemingly ignored so many excellent films by and about women this year.

The movie’s bigger sin may be the complete and utter vilification of Ford executive Leo Beebe, who is made to look like the villain in a Victorian melodrama.  But Beebe did, in fact, give the order that causes the big controversy at the very end of the film.  And by all reports, he did not get along well with Ken Miles.

To be honest, I hope Ford v Ferrari pulls a Ken Miles and comes speeding up to the podium at the last second. Nobody expects this movie to win Best Picture, so imagine if it did! Think of the genuine shock! The Oscars are far too predictable these days. I’d love to see a genuine surprise blow everyone away. Imagine a Best Picture winner delightful enough to watch again and again and again. The movie is nominated. Anything could happen.

Nominated Producers: Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, Emma Tillinger Koskoff
Director: Martin Scorsese
Writer: Steven Zaillian

Cast: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, Harvey Keitel, Ray Romano, Bobby Canavale, Stephen Graham, Jesse Plemmons, Jack Huston, Sebastian Maniscalco, Anna Paquin, and others.

Plot: Nobody knows for sure what happened to Jimmy Hoffa.  This movie explains the whole story from the point of view of his best friend and killer, Frank Sheeran, but it’s three-and-a-half hours long, and most casual viewers don’t make it to the end, so Hoffa’s ultimate fate remains a mystery.

Why It Should Win:
Scorsese. De Niro. Pacino. Pesci.

No future film buff perusing past Oscar winners would see credits like that and wonder, “How in the world did this win Best Picture????”

The Irishman‘s pedigree speaks for itself. In fact, if you want to come away with the highest opinion of the movie, don’t watch it at all. Just read the credits.

But if you insist on watching The Irishman, please do watch the entire thing. I’m honestly a bit baffled about reports of people turning it off in boredom after various intervals of time. The Irishman may not be the towering masterpiece everyone had hoped for, but it is certainly not boring. In fact, despite its three-and-a-half hour runtime, the story’s pace never feels slow even once and actually seems to accelerate in the final third of the movie.

The Irishman‘s star performances are something special, particularly the nominated supporting turns by Pacino (who energizes the film) and Pesci (who is arguably doing career best work). Robert De Niro is the one who found the project in the first place, so if you see something moving in the piece, remember that he saw it first. If not for the added challenges presented by the de-aging process, I think De Niro probably would have delivered the performance people expected and received a Best Actor nomination himself.  As I’ll explain below, I’m virtually sure the fault lies not in his performance, but in our ability to receive it.  The technology becomes a barrier rather than an enhancement.

What I love about The Irishman is its Shakespearean echoes.  Pacino Hoffas around like he’s playing Julius Caesar (or, if you prefer, he Julius Caesars his way through his entire performance of Jimmy Hoffa).  This is not a gritty look at a flawed, complex man.  It’s a Shakespearean style tragedy about a guy with an enormous flaw, a larger-than-life character who gets in his own way and facilitates his own undoing.  Usually people look at me like I’m a halfwit when I say I love Julius Caesar, but honestly, it is one of my favorite of Shakespeare’s plays.  (It’s hard to misunderstand, easy to teach, fun to quote.)  If screenwriter Steven Zaillian didn’t intend the similarities to Julius Caesar, then Pacino did for sure.  (I’ve seen his Merchant of Venice and Looking for Richard.  There’s no way what I’m seeing in his performance here is unintentional.)

I know the material spoke to Robert De Niro, too.  I’ve heard him describe Frank Sheeran as a man “inured to violence,” because of his service in the war.  And approaching this story as a meditation on what war does to the psyche also generates some fascinating reflections.  For Sheeran, the world is kill or be killed.  He finds strong men and follows their orders to kill, and by doing so, he believes he keeps his children safe from being killed.  The problem is, at the end of all this, his daughter hates him.  Still, she’s alive.  (His other daughter seems bewildered when he explains his life strategy to her, leaving us to ponder the question, “Was he paranoid, or did he simply succeed in keeping her safe?”)

The other really great thing about The Irishman is that De Niro and Pacino managed to coax Pesci out of retirement by offering him the part like nine thousand times or something (again, I think of Julius Caesar, except that I don’t think Pesci’s repeat refusals were for show).  My family and I love Joe Pesci’s work, so I’m delighted we get one last fantastic performance from him, especially when it’s so subdued and different from what he’s done before.  I’m rooting for Brad Pitt to win Best Supporting Actor, but a win for Pesci would make me happy, too.  He’s definitely deserving.

Why It Shouldn’t Win:

In The Irishman, Martin Scorsese takes a creative risk, incorporating advances in digital de-aging techniques to let a mature actor tell the story of a character’s entire life. (I credit Scorsese here because he is the director, but producer and star Robert De Niro actually discovered and helped to develop the material.) Thanks to technology, an older actor can now shave decades off his age. In the past, to tell a story like the one we get in The Irishman, a director would need to find a young actor, then age him up through make-up. The downside of this approach is obvious. A twenty-year-old man does not actually know what it’s like to be eighty. That’s probably why movies that take place over a lifetime often cast multiple actors to play the same part (like Saoirse Ronan, Romola Garai, and Vanessa Redgrave as Briony Tallis in Atonement). Scorsese’s choice to use current technology to serve his story reminds me of the way he thoughtfully used 3D in Hugo, adding a dimension and making a runaway train leap out at the audience to give kids today an idea of how wondrous early moving pictures must have seemed to children of yesterday.

In theory, using the digital de-aging is a brilliant idea. The trouble is in reality it just didn’t quite work on this particular project. It certainly could have worked. It worked just fine on Samuel L. Jackson in Captain Marvel. And the idea of letting the same actor play present and past in a person’s long life also worked brilliantly in Destroyer, a film that probably should have won Nicole Kidman an Oscar. (Was the de-aging there digital, or was it simply make-up and good genes? I’d guess a combination of all three, but I’m not completely sure.)

So the concept is great, and The Irishman could have been mind-blowing. That makes its failure to impress doubly disappointing. Possibly the actors were uncomfortable filming with the added layer of technology (which sounds extensive when Pacino describes it), but since they are so seasoned and talented, I don’t think that’s the issue. I think the digital de-aging just isn’t very good. I don’t have the technical background to know how it’s all done. I just have eyes and can see that Robert De Niro often looks more wooden than young. Speaking of eyes, probably the greatest mistake the movie makes is its baffling choice to turn De Niro’s eyes blue. It’s not like he was playing Frank Sinatra. Frank Sheeran’s face is not famous. Even if the real man had blue eyes, the audience doesn’t care. An Irishman can have brown eyes. Colin Farrell does. They should have left De Niro’s eyes alone. I mean, Harry Potter has green eyes, but not in the movies because the colored contacts weren’t working for blue-eyed Daniel Radcliffe.  Eye color is not that big a deal–unless you make it a distraction.

Of course Robert De Niro didn’t get an Oscar nomination! He looks like he’s playing an extra in Dune, or like his eyes were filmed in black and white and “colorized” by Ted Turner. I know I’m being flippant here, but those eyes did take me out of the movie a bit. They are very distracting. Alita, Battle Angel has more realistic looking eyes. So does Gollum.

I also think that attempting to make De Niro look younger by erasing many of the lines from his face was a terrible idea, doomed to fail. I am nearly positive this erasure is what cost him a nomination for Best Actor. The character is taciturn, the performance subtle and nearly silent. Erase the lines, and you mask most of the acting. Cloud the eyes with eerie blue pools, and you lose what’s left.

Nobody ever manages to look actually young in The Irishman except the child actresses playing young Peggy and her sisters. De Niro looks like a stiff, Dune-style Spice addict. Pacino looks like an ageless being from another world. And Pesci makes the journey from kinda old to older.

So the de-aging thing was a genuinely cool idea in theory, but an absolute disaster in practice. On the plus side, it does look expensive. It doesn’t look like Scorsese just did it all himself on his phone ten minutes before the movie premiere. You can tell money was spent, and cutting edge technology was employed. Maybe a few younger actors should have been employed instead, though.

Another thing that hurts the movie is its length. By the time of the ceremony, I will have seen all of these Best Picture nominees at least twice except The Irishman. We’re Netflix subscribers, but the movie is so long! I can’t convince anyone else to watch it again, and I can’t sneak in a quick watch while everyone else is asleep.

Length in itself is not a bad thing, but when combined with the fact that the movie didn’t play in theaters here, it becomes troublesome. As we watched at home together, my mother remarked, “This is just like watching a mini-series.” I can’t get that out of my head. I mean, she’s not wrong. What makes The Irishman different than any number of Mafia themed miniseries my grandma used to watch in the 80s and 90s? 

I understand that everybody said no to the project but Netflix, but maybe there was a reason for that. (I don’t mean that as an insult. People say no to my projects all the time, so I get the impulse to follow through on your vision by any means, but this method has won me zero Academy Awards.)

De Niro and Scorsese aimed exceptionally high with this project but didn’t quite get there. I think the nominations are a sign of respect for the artists involved. I will be stunned if The Irishman wins Best Picture.

Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood

Nominated Producers: David Heyman, Shannon McIntosh, and Quentin Tarantino
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Writer: Quentin Tarantino

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Julia Butters, Austin Butler, Marget Qualley, Emile Hirsch, Dakota Fanning, Timothy Olyphant, Mike Moh, Luke Perry, Damian Lewis, Lorenza Izzo, Kurt Russell, Bruce Dern, Al Pacino, and many others.

Plot:
In late 1960s Hollywood, fading star Rick Dalton ponders his relevance and struggles to get his career back on track by proving to himself (and a precocious co-star) that he is a real actor in a guest spot on a new Western.  Meanwhile, his stunt man, best friend, and house sitter Cliff Booth accidentally has a tense encounter with Charles Manson’s family when he picks up an alluring hitchhiker in his boss’s car. Oh, and did I mention who lives next door to Rick?  It’s Roman Polanski, the celebrated director of Rosemary’s Baby, and Polanski’s vibrant new wife, a young actress named Sharon Tate.

Why It Should Win:
Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood won me over back in August, and it has managed to remain my favorite film of 2019. “Why do you like that awful movie?” you may be asking yourself. Well, I’ll tell you. I’m a sucker for metadrama, so I don’t even try to resist when Quentin Tarantino gleefully trots out Al Pacino in act one to tell us how the film is going to work. The idea that the movie itself tells us not only what it plans to show us but also how we should react delights me. I also love the uncanny, messy, intertwined duality of Rick Dalton (the fading star who acts in Hollywood Westerns) and Cliff Booth (his stunt man who plays the lead in a real-life Western in the Hollywood of his present day). These two are so entangled! In the opening credits, each star’s name even appears under the opposite man on screen. And later DiCaprio has that wonderful line about going home to Missouri, Pitt’s actual home state! Booth claims to “carry [Dalton’s] load,” but, actually, Dalton is in a sense supporting Booth, providing him with needed employment (which is hard to find ever since Cliff “didn’t” murder his wife).

Plus all of this thought-provoking fun isn’t happening in a vacuum. It’s happening on the streets of 1960s Hollywood, gorgeously (and meticulously) recreated and compellingly shot. The atmosphere is immersive. The soundtrack is killer. Pitt (who deserves the Best Supporting Actor Oscar) guides the spellbound audience through that edge-of-your-seat tense scene at the Spahn Movie Ranch. DiCaprio does (arguably) career best acting alongside precocious child actress Julia Butters. The deep supporting cast features famous faces delivering great material.

But I love the movie because of Margot Robbie’s Sharon Tate.

Do you know what happened to Sharon Tate? I do because I foolishly assigned it as a possible essay topic eleven years ago, and then I had to read those essays while I was pregnant.

Sharon Tate was murdered by members of Charles Manson’s family. They were complete strangers to her. They came to her door one night when she was almost nine months pregnant. They murdered her and her houseguests. She died with her hands over her belly, begging her attackers to let her live so she could have her baby. They stabbed her sixteen times.

In the past, I’ve had some moral qualms about Tarantino’s revenge fantasies. I loved watching Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained, but I found them a bit problematic because they turn the suffering of real individuals into popcorn munching entertainment. I worry that the real victims get taken advantage of again when their torture turns into something so fun for an audience. Also I find it problematic when fictional versions of those actually victimized take imagined violent revenge and become as savage as their real life torturers to the cheers of an audience. (Imagine a movie about Gandhi on a rampage with a machine gun. Do you think Gandhi would like that movie?)  To me, these revenge fantasies seem potentially insulting to the memories of kind, decent people who were victims, not perpetrators of horrific violence.

So I was pleasantly surprised (to put it mildly) by the way Tarantino treats Sharon Tate in this movie. Instead of exploiting her, he honors her memory, truly honors it. Margot Robbie deserves some praise here, too. To me, those who say Robbie’s role is too small, (that Sharon doesn’t have enough lines, etc), fundamentally misunderstand the film.

One of Robbie’s lines is, “I’m Sharon Tate. I’m in the movie.” And she is. The actual (living) Sharon Tate is in the movie. When Robbie’s character slips into a movie theater to watch a film she co-stars in, The Wrecking Crew, up on the big screen, we see the actual Sharon Tate. In other Hollywood glimpses at films-within-the-film, we see DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton edited into various movies, but Margot Robbie looks up and sees the real Sharon Tate. And as she watches “herself” and listens to the audience react to her scenes, Margot’s Sharon basks in the warmth of their response and remembers with pride and satisfaction all of the work that went into making the movie.

Honestly, this moved me to tears. Of course, as someone who creates fiction, I’m touched by this declaration of the power of art, the hyper-reality of fantasy. But I also remember what happened to Tate. She didn’t deserve it. (No one deserves that.) She didn’t even do anything to provoke it. But what a beautiful way to celebrate a woman’s life! To prepare for the role, Robbie talked extensively with Tate’s sister, who gave her some of Sharon’s own jewelry to wear in the film.

I just love this idea of using fiction to create meaning, to fashion a better reality. Let chaos rail, but Sharon Tate is in the movie, and she always will be.

Why It Shouldn’t Win:
I know not everybody will love this film. (I know that for sure because my own sister hates it as passionately as I love it.) Some people find it boring. Some watch and say, “Nothing is happening.” My own experience was, “Nothing is happening…yet.” But that awful murder was always in my mind, so the film seemed painfully suspenseful on a first watch.

I’ve heard a lot of people saying, too, that the ending goes off the rails with its extreme, outrageous violence that happens out of left field. I want to say, “Well yeah. How do you think Sharon Tate felt?” Again, I think people miss the point. What actually happened that night was neither measured nor expected. It was obscene and graphic and horrible and came as a complete surprise.

Actually for a Tarantino movie, Once Upon a Time contains shockingly little violence. The ending of the movie is extremely violent, though. I’m not a huge fan of graphic violence myself, and there’s no use pretending Tarantino doesn’t enjoy it. (At least, if he has a non-violence fetish, he’s remarkably good at hiding it.)

Also the movie’s portrayal of Bruce Lee has drawn a lot of scrutiny, and I wish Tarantino had let his film speak for itself and kept his mouth shut about that because his remarks did not help his case. But I guess he can say what he wants. That scandal did not prevent him from winning awards, and it seems to have quieted down recently.

Know what else has quieted down, though? All of the movie’s Best Picture buzz. Just a couple of weeks ago, this film was perceived as a (if not the) frontrunner, but now…not so much.

Like so many other early frontrunners before it, Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood now finds itself eclipsed by newer, flashier movies. Well, one movie, 1917. Parasite‘s chances are also looking up, but 1917 takes everything Once Upon a Time had going for it–exciting theatrical release meant to be viewed on a big screen–and does it bigger, arguably better, and definitely more recently.

If I had to bet money, I’d predict the safest choice for a Best Picture win, 1917. There’s no reason to vote against it.  Plus it’s big and exciting, and everybody just saw it. But I do believe that Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood is still the most likely winner in this grouping of three. It definitely still has a chance, and support for Brad Pitt’s performance virtually guarantees the film at least one Oscar.