Oscars - 2022

 Here are my picks and preferences for the 2022 Academy Awards:

Best Picture:

I do not think that either Licorice Pizza or Don’t Look Up deserve to be in this category. Licorice Pizza had a meandering plot that didn’t amount to much and the characters are unsympathetic. The dialogue was mediocre. Don’t Look Up had moments of satiric observation, but its tone was inconsistent between biting and just plain silly. It needed more focus. I thought the best film was Belfast. It successfully personalized the conflicts that occurred in Ireland between the Protestants and Catholics by focusing on a family caught up in the turmoil. Unbelievable that it was not nominated for editing or cinematography since it is an evocative and seamless creation. However, the contest seems to be between CODA and The Power of the Dog. The former deals with a hearing-impaired family in a way that is moving without being patronizing. It received the ensemble acting award from the Screen Actors Guild and the Producers Guild Award for best film. The Power of the Dog is an impactful depiction of homophobia in the American West. It won the Golden Globe award for best drama and Jane Campion received the Directors Guild Award for her direction. I think the theme and the character portrayals in CODA will win over the Academy.

Prediction: CODA

Preference: Belfast

 

Best Actress:

Good performances all around here. Nicole Kidman received the Golden Globe for her performance as the shrewd Lucille Ball behind the scenes in Being the Ricardos, while Jessica Chastain won the SAG award for her portrayal of Tammy Fae Baker in The Eyes of Tammy Faye. I’m giving the edge to Chastain, who shows a flawed character who also truly believed in her faith and was not afraid to stand up for gay people against the self-serving male TV evangelists.

Prediction: Jessica Chastain

Preference: Jessica Chastain

 Best Actor:

Will Smith has a lock on this category. He has been nominated before and is a box office favorite. He does a good job of showing a man who was passionate to the point of obsessional about having his daughters excel and be role models for African American women. The story is a little creepy on how much he controlled his daughters’ lives to fit his plan that he developed before they were even born. My pick is Benedict Cumberbatch for his scary self-loathing homosexual cowboy in The Power of the Dog. It is an uncompromising portrait of how bigotry can poison a person, in the case of this story, both figuratively and literally

Prediction: Will Smith

Preference: Benedict Cumberbatch

 

Best Supporting Actress:

I believe Oscar lightening is going to strike twice for the character of Anita in West Side Story. Rita Moreno won the award in the original and indications are that Ariana DeBose will do it again for her interpretation of the role. She is very good at singing, dancing, and acting in Steven Spielberg’s remake. I have a slight reference for Kirsten Dunst’s heart-breaking depiction of the tortured mother in The Power of the Dog.

Prediction: Ariana DeBose

Preference: Kirsten Dunst

 

Best Supporting Actor:

Another good group of performances. However, I think that Troy Kotsur’s emotional and strong father in CODA will win over the Academy members.

Prediction: Troy Kotsur

Preference: Troy Kotsur

 

Best Original Screenplay:

I hope that the Academy will honor Kenneth Branagh for his memoir of what it was like for him growing up in Belfast during the confrontations he experienced as a child. The script depicts the characters realistically and allows the audience to truly care about their fates.

Prediction: Belfast

Preference: Belfast

 

Best Adapted Screenplay:

I think CODA will be the choice for its honest depiction of the hearing-impaired family who has a daughter who can hear and, ironically, sing beautifully. She is caught between the worlds of sound and quiet.

Prediction: CODA

Preference: CODA

 

Best Director:

Jane Campion most likely will win this award for her masterful work on The Power of the Dog. As was stated she won the Directors Guild Award. She also is the only woman who has been nominated twice in this category, having previously been acknowledged for her direction of The Piano. Since I was awed by the work done on Belfast, I would prefer that Branagh be the pick.

Prediction: Jane Campion

Preference: Kenneth Branagh

Closely Watched Trains

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

I occasionally write a post about a film my movie class watched and discussed at the Bryn Mawr Film Institute. We recently saw Closely Watched Trains, a Czechoslovakian film which is a tragicomedy that received the Best Foreign Language Oscar of 1966. The story takes place in that country during the Nazi occupation. There is a sarcastic saying that fascist countries can make the trains run on time. The line may imply that the machinery of the state dehumanizes people. It follows that the compensation for the loss of freedom is not worth the sacrifice paid by the dominated citizens. The trains in this context also may be a reference to the shipping of Jews to concentration camps. The placement of the story in the past allowed the filmmakers to make hidden references to the oppression Czechoslovakia suffered under Russian rule.

The film centers on Milos Hrma (Vaclav Neckar), who comes from a family of lazy losers. His great grandfather was a soldier, but students hit him with a stone, and he retired early. Milos says, “he didn’t do anything after that except buying a bottle of rum and a pack of tobacco every day.” His train-driver father retired early and just sits around all day. Milos is an apprentice train dispatcher at a small station. He enjoys wearing his new uniform and when his cap is placed on his head, the image suggests a mock coronation, implying the grandness of the ceremony is only in Milos’s head.

The train dispatcher, Hubicka (Josef Somr), is a ladies’ man, apparently having had many sexual conquests. He exhorts Milos, a virgin, to pursue the conductor, Masa (Jitka Scoffin), who shows an interest in Milos. At her urging, they attempt to have sex, but the inexperienced and anxious Milos has a premature ejaculation and is unable to consummate the act. Milos is in such despair that he attempts suicide, but is rescued. As he is carried to a physician, Milos is naked except for a wrinkled sheet covering his lower body. The image resembles Michelangelo’s Pieta. Could this be a foreshadowing of the need to have an individual sacrifice for the good of the many?

The doctor tries to calm Milos down, telling him what he underwent was common, and to think about other topics so as not to climax so quickly. The class disagreed as to whether the tone of the film was inconsistent, taking a light-hearted view of sex and then combining it with the topic of Nazism and suicide. The film does not depict the brutality of the Nazis, which is consistent with its lighter approach, but it also downplays the repression that the Czechs were undergoing.

Hubicka charms the telegraphist, Zdenicka (Jitka Zelenohorska), into letting him use the station’s rubber stamps to place print marks on her thighs and buttocks. I wondered if this playful activity on the surface suggested its demonic opposite which was the tattooing of numbers on those interned in the concentration camps. At the least, it makes fun of the overemphasis on bureaucracy.

Zdenicka’s mother observes the print on her daughter’s body while the young woman is asleep, and is in an outrage. She ironically lifts the girl’s skirt to show just about anyone what an outrageous act was done, at the same time being even more outrageous by exposing her daughter’s behind. She takes Zdenicka to the pompous Zednicek (Vlastimil Brodski), the Councilor, who is a Nazi collaborator, who previously espoused Nazi propaganda. He is emotionless in listening to the mother’s complaints. The whole episode suggests an abandonment of valuing human feelings for efficient regimentation.

There were comments by members of the class that the movie seemed to be preoccupied with sex, and that women were portrayed as sex objects willing to satisfy the urges of the men. It could be that given the state of the country, sex was a diversion from the Nazi oppression. A resistance agent, Viktoria (Nada Urbankova), brings explosives to the train station to get the workers to blow up a German train carrying ammunitions. She is older than Milos and is successful in making him sexually efficient. Her character, as well as the other uninhibited women, show females awakening the latent masculinity of the males and empowering them to act.

After feeling that he is no longer a “flop” but is now “a real man,” Milos says, “I cut myself off from the past entirely.” He detaches himself from the failed men in his family and his own prior ineptitude. Milos takes the bomb with a timer and climbs a tower which spans the train tracks. When the Nazi train carrying ammunition passes under him, Milos drops the explosive onto it. But, he pays the price for his heroic action as a German soldier on the train shoots him. Milos falls onto the train. In Elizabethan times, death and sex were equated, since the sexual climax in poetry was depicted as a sort of bodily release.

After the train travels away, there are several detonations, and the train is destroyed. The explosions could be seen as an orgasmic eruption against repression. The blast blows Milos’s cap near Masa’s feet. Because he has redeemed his family, fellow workers, and himself, the head covering can now truly be seen as a crown of distinction.

The next film is Wall Street.