SPOILER ALERT! The plots will be discussed.
The Oscars this year mirror the strangeness of
the rest of life under the pandemic. For the first time, most of us watched
original films meant for theaters on streaming channels. I haven’t been in a
movie theater in over a year and the only film classes I have attended have
been on Zoom. However, the way we watched these stories did not diminish the
accomplishments of the filmmakers. Here are my picks and preferences in some of
the major categories”
Best Picture:
I can’t say I have a strong favorite out of the
eight movies nominated. I am surprised that Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, One
Night in Miami, and The United States vs. Billie Holiday were not
included in this list since they contained compelling stories and exceptional
acting. These films, along with the nominated Judas and the Black Messiah show
the ongoing struggle for racial justice. The Father was powerful and
depressing in the way it put the audience in the mind of a man succumbing to
dementia. A similar effective technique occurs in Sound of Metal as we
experience the main character’s loss of his hearing after being a rock music
drummer.
Judas and the Black Messiah and The Trial of the Chicago 7 take place
during the period when I was attending college, so they touch me personally and
I believe it’s important to expose these historical events and people to
younger generations. Judas is interesting because it shows two different
African American lives from the perspectives of a civil rights activist and
Black Panther leader and a FBI agent. Chicago 7 adds personal details to
the journalistic record and fleshes out those involved in the trial. Mank does
the same with the man responsible for writing what some say is the best
American film ever made, Citizen Kane. It also does an admirable job
evoking Hollywood during the Depression era.
Minari is a great mixture of humor and hardship as it focuses on the
conflicts and unity of a Korean family trying to find the American Dream on a
farm in Arkansas in the early 1980’s. The title refers to a Korean plant that
the grandmother grows, suggesting something taken from another culture and
being added to the diversity of the United States, hoping the transplant will
flourish.
Promising Young Woman is a dark revenge film about a damaged woman who
goes to extreme lengths to punish men who victimize women. It has several
surprising and effective twists in the script and the ending is an emotional
gut punch. I’m not saying too much here because this film can’t be appreciated
unless it is seen, and if you are a sensitive type, it is not for you. It is
satisfying to me because of my intolerance and anger toward those who abuse
women.
Nomadland is a road movie that is very different from others in the genre.
In simple, elegant fashion, it brings us into a subculture of Americans who
either left their homes voluntarily or due to circumstances beyond their
control. Many do not put down roots in one spot but instead link up with others
and then continue on their separate journeys. It highlights the American desire
for individual freedom and self-sufficiency.
Nomadland has won the Producers Guild award and the Golden Globe, and so it
is the favorite to win the Best Picture Oscar. I have no qualms with that
choice, but the film that sticks with me the most is Promising Young Woman.
Pick: Nomadland
Preference: Promising Young Woman
Best Actress:
Frances McDormand won her two Oscars playing
strong, verbal women. In Nomadland she shifts gears and provides a
moving, minimalist portrait of Fern, someone who leaves her town because her
husband dies and the factory where she works closes. So, because of economic
circumstances she buys a van and travels, looking for work. She eventually
chooses this nomadic life instead of a stationary one. Her name suggests that
she can grow just about anywhere, and yet a plant usually needs to put down
roots. Like the plant in Minari, we also have here a symbol that
suggests the drive to survive.
Viola Davis is powerful as the title character
in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. She provides a portrait of the African
American blues singer who, even in the 1920’s, refuses to be dominated by her
white manager and producer as she battles for control over her music at a
recording studio. She can be manipulative, even with her Black musicians, and
is possessive of her girlfriend.
Vanessa Kirby in Pieces of a Woman draws
the audience into her nightmare as a traumatized woman who loses her infant
during childbirth. There is an intense scene, that the movie does not shy away
from, showing how childbirth can be an agonizing event for a woman. Her mother,
played by Ellen Burstyn, has brought her daughter up to place blame on others
for the bad things that happen in life, and pushes for suing the midwife. In
that way, Kirby’s Martha can reposition the responsibility her mother placed on
her for the child’s death onto the midwife. Martha grows during this story to
someone who moves toward being a person of understanding and forgiveness, as
she exonerates the midwife concerning the child’s death, and she eventually
becomes a happy mother later.
Carey Mulligan gives the best performance of her
career in Promising Young Woman. Her character, Cassandra, can appear
vulnerable while actually being cold and calculating. She is cynical about any
man rising above the urge to exploit women sexually, and yet gives one fellow a
chance at romance, only to find her faith betrayed. Her pain is palpable when
she thinks about her best friend being raped. The attack caused such anguish in
Cassie’s life that she left medical school and has turned into a sexual
vigilante, humiliating and exposing male abusers. In the end, she makes the
ultimate sacrifice to avenge her friend’s rapists.
It’s difficult to believe that singer Andra Day
makes her debut as an actress in The United States vs. Billie Holiday.
She is the movie and inhabits the role. Along with Viola Davis’s Ma
Rainey, we have another African American singer who becomes famous for her
talent while she fights the white society that threatens her. Like Judas and
the Black Messiah, there is a conflicted Black federal agent here also. In
this case, he is torn between loving Billie and doing his job. Day gives a raw
and powerful portrayal of Holiday’s singing and the drug addiction that
resulted from her being tormented whenever she sang the song, “Strange Fruit,”
which attacked the lynching of Black Americans.
Great performances here, but Andra Day’s Billie
Holiday rises above the rest.
Pick: Andra Day, The United States vs. Billie Holiday
Preference: Andra Day, The United States vs. Billie Holiday
Best Actor:
Riz Ahmed is Ruben in Sound of Metal, and
he shows the ironic torment of going through the Beethoven experience, a
musician losing his hearing. He shows us Ruben suffering, but also in the end,
finding a sense of peace with his acquired deafness. In Minari, Steven
Yeun (I became a fan when he was in The Walking Dead) presents us with a
driven immigrant who despite all hardships wishes to become a productive part of
the American experience. However, for me, the performances that excel are those
of Gary Oldman, Anthony Hopkins, and Chadwick Boseman.
In Mank, Oldman’s portrayal of Herman
Mankiewicz is an indelible depiction of the writer who wise-cracks his sarcasm
in his dealings with the repressive powerful forces who have relinquished their
morality. His bitterness turns him into a self-destructive alcoholic who still
produced one of the most memorable film scripts ever written.
In The Father, Hopkins shows a subtle
ability to seamlessly shift gears as he moves between having fun, to being
suspicious and also fearful as his character’s dementia-damaged mind travels
through different time periods and interchanges characters. It is a believable
and scary portrayal.
Chadwick Boseman’s Levee in Ma Rainey’s Black
Bottom is like an exposed nerve that reacts to all types of external
stimulation. He holds nothing back when it comes to his personal torments and
grievances, and his desire to be recognized for his musical abilities. He is
like a catalyst who gets his fellow musicians to reveal their truths.
I did not realize what a central role Boseman
had in Ma Rainey until I saw the film. As I watched I thought that his
performance was worthy of an Oscar. I still feel that way. He will join Peter
Finch and Heath Ledger as a posthumous recipient.
Pick: Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Preference: Chadwick Boseman, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom
Best Supporting Actress:
Maria Bakalova is daring, given what she had to
go through in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. She was also very funny.
Previous Oscar winner Olivia Colman plays the caring and anguished daughter in The
Father. Amanda Seyfried, in Mank, is Marion Davies, the comic
actress who is the mistress of morally bankrupt William Randolph Hearst.
Seyfried adds lightness and amusement to this otherwise dismal period piece.
Glenn Close is a sort of gritty but supportive grandmother that is almost a
redneck caricature in Hillbilly Elegy, an uneven work that tries to
present nostalgia for a dysfunctional family. Another grandmother, played by
Yuh-Jung Youn, is not stereotypical at all, in Minari. She is
surprisingly nonconformist in her language and playfulness, while also demonstrating
fragility as the Korean family matriarch.
Glen Close has been passed over for the Oscar in
the past and she took the Golden Globe for this portrayal. I think she will
win. But, SAG winner Youn I believe is the more deserving choice.
Pick: Glenn Close, Hillbilly Elegy
Preference: Yuh-Jung Youn, Minari
Best supporting Actor:
Paul Raci is Joe, the supportive but firm leader
of a community that helps those who are deaf adapt to their new lives. Leslie
Odom, Jr., in One Night in Miami, plays singer Sam Cooke, the successful
singer in the 1950’s and early 1960’s, who wrestles with how he can use his
fame to advance the cause of African Americans in the United States. Sacha
Baron Cohen plays activist Abbie Hoffman, one of the defendants in The Trial
of the Chicago 7. Cohen’s performance dominates the movie as he accurately
mirrors Hoffman’s intelligence, outrageous humor, and verbal delivery. Lakeith
Stanfield is Bill O’Neal, the Judas in Judas and the Black Messiah, a
coerced FBI undercover agent used to spy on Black Panther leader Fred Hampton
in Chicago in the late 1960’s. He becomes a tortured individual as his
loyalties become divided. The Messiah in this film is Fred Hampton, played by
Daniel Kaluuya (who worked with Stanfield in Get Out). Kaluuya is
charismatic as one of the Black Panther leaders who is a dynamic speaker. He
can be diplomatic in reaching out to local street gangs and was instrumental in
creating community outreach programs. He is depicted as a martyr who is
assassinated by law enforcement officers.
I would not be displeased if Sacha Baron Cohen
won here, since I truly enjoyed his portrayal of Abbie Hoffman. But, Daniel
Kaluuya’s depiction of Fred Hampton is mesmerizing. He won the Golden Globe and
SAG awards.
Pick: Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah
Preference: Daniel Kaluuya, Judas and the Black Messiah
Best Director:
I actually feel that the best directors were not
nominated. I thought Regina King did a great job of revealing the different
characters in One Night in Miami. She unobtrusively “opens up” the story
enough so claustrophobia doesn’t take hold in the motel room where Muhammad
Ali, Sam Cooke, Malcolm X, and NFL star Jim Brown fictitiously get together.
Also, Florian Zeller does a great job of arranging the scenes in The Father
to place us right in the middle of the mental storm the character of Anthony is
trying to weather.
That’s not to say that Minari’s Lee Isaac
Chung, Promising Young Woman’s Emerald Fennell, Mank’s David
Fincher, Nomadland’s Chloe Zhao, and Another Round’s Thomas
Vinterberg didn’t do great jobs. Zhao offers us a beautiful and revealing
canvas on which to paint her moving portraits. She won the Golden Globe and the
Directors Guild awards.
Pick: Chloe Zhao, Nomadland
Preference: Chloe Zhao, Nomadland
Best Original Screenplay:
I thought Mank would be nominated here
since it has some excellent dialogue. Although Judas and the Black Messiah and
The Trial of the Chicago 7 are not based on previously written works,
they did have the historical records to rely upon. Minari and Sound
of Metal create intriguing and developed characters. But, Promising
Young Woman, written by Emerald Fennell, is darkly smart and humorous, and
it pulls no punches. The Screenwriters Guild awarded Fennel its award, and
justly so.
Pick: Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman
Preference: Emerald Fennell, Promising Young Woman
Best Adapted Screenplay:
It’s difficult to believe that Ma Rainey’s
Black Bottom is not among the choices here, given that the late August
Wilson is partially credited for the script based on his great play. That would
be my pick, given its rich characters and dialogue. Nomadland and The
White Tiger are based on books, and The Father and One Night in
Miami are adapted from plays. Although only based on the character of Borat
from the first movie, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm is considered an
adaptation. It is the most original in this category, and it is often sharply
satirical. It received the Screenwriters Guild award.
Pick: Sacha Baron Cohen and a whole bunch of other people for Borat
Subsequent Moviefilm.
Preference: Borat Subsequent Moviefilm
Editing:
Nomadland beautifully pieces together numerous images of the United States
and those that roam it. Promising Young Woman presents scenes that
ramp up the tension as the audience joins the main character on her vengeful
quest. Sound of Metal has shots that reveal the frustration, anger, and
eventually the acceptance of its deaf protagonist. The Trial of the Chicago
7 successfully joins courtroom action with chaos on the streets during the
Democratic National Convention in 1968. It received the Editor’s Guild award in
this category. However, I believe the crafting together of Anthony’s various
states of mind in The Father make it the best entry here.
Pick: Alan Baumgarten, The Trial of the Chicago 7
Preference: Yorgos Lamprinos, The Father
The next film to be
analyzed is The Grifters.
