The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will give the award for 2014 Best Picture, among others, tonight. I've reviewed each of the nominees below. I'd like to say a brief word about biopics, since four of the eight nominees this year fall into that category. It's tough (for me, at least) to evaluate biopics on their own merit. There's something about tacking a "Based on a true story" tag onto a movie that gives it all manner of luxuries that purely fictional films do not have. The weight of telling an interesting story is often lighter for biopics, and so we frequently forgive them for deviating from the beaten path to shoehorn in a tangentially related anecdote, for example. I believe that biopics ought to be held to the same standard that fictional works are - if a scene doesn't develop character or story, it shouldn't be included. This is why I have opted not to spend much time discussing historical accuracy in my discussion of these films. The accuracy does not, for me, necessarily add or detract from the quality of the movie. How the events that are portrayed contribute to the narrative arc is of great interest to me. This year was clearly strong for biopics. Three of the four represented here absolutely deserve to be mentioned among the best films of the year. However, there was only one that I felt truly elevated its source material to create something innovative and tell a great story.
The Theory of Everything - Eddie Redmayne was fantastic as Stephen Hawking. Unfortunately, nothing else about the film lived up to his performance. The Theory of Everything is a Pearl Harbor type of movie - using a well-known person or event as the backdrop for a love triangle, rather than letting the romantic aspects of the story pepper a fuller treatment of what the film is ostensibly about. Hawking's work, which is he barely tends to in the movie, is reduced to a good-natured, ongoing argument with his wife about the existence of God, something he actually isn't that concerned with in real life. Anthony McCarten's script doesn't trust viewers to handle the science; instead, graduate physics students loudly explain basic concepts to each other over beer in scenes that make the tired "pencil through a folded paper to explain time distortion" discussion in Interstellar look like something from, well, a Hawking lecture. There is one point, at the very end, where we get a glimpse of the film that could have been. While giving his closing monologue, Hawking sees a student drop a pencil and imagines himself getting up, walking down the steps, and picking it up and handing it back. It's a brave moment in an otherwise unambitious film, and it's way too little, way too late. Otherwise, we get whimsical music played over melancholy scenes, unnecessary montages that don't advance the plot, and the most amicable "we should get divorced" moment ever produced. Wasted potential and a wasted performance from Redmayne. 2/5
The Imitation Game - The Best Picture field wouldn't be complete without a World War II biopic, and while it's a bit unfair to brush The Imitation Game with such broad strokes, director Morten Tyldum is guilty of hamming for the Oscar voters a bit. Nevertheless, Benedict Cumberbatch elevates the already compelling story of Alan Turing with a masterful performance, and there's plenty to like. Liberties were taken the story, as in any biopic (see above), but some of them stretch the suspension of disbelief. It's a bit difficult to accept that the code monkeys would also be the ones to dictate policy in regard to how the military takes action on the codes they intercept, for example. Aside from that, I found that the framing device of the interrogation as well as the interspersed scenes of backstory added more punch to the tragedy of his death, something that could have been an afterthought. 4/5
American Sniper - It's almost impossible to comment on this film without divorcing it from its over-politicization by both sides of the ideological spectrum, particularly because director Clint Eastwood has never shied away from making polarizing statements, both within and without his films. I found American Sniper to be mostly bereft of anything legitimately outrage-worthy, something that surprised me given the amount of press it received. There is one notable exception*, and it is my main gripe with the film. Within the first ten minutes of the film, the titular sniper Chris Kyle receives a lecture from his father about the three kinds of people in the world (There are only three?!): the wolves, the sheep, and the sheepdogs, who protect the sheep from the wolves. Once the action of the movie catches up with its prologue, it is practically written in black-and-white: the Iraqi insurgents (described multiple times by Kyle and others as "savages") are the wolves, and the American troops are the sheepdogs protecting the sheep from them. At no point in the story does Kyle question this worldview. It's not a philosophical or even political error. There is little doubt that the real-life Kyle thought this way, nor is there doubt that there are many soldiers that feel the same way. It is, however, an error in storytelling. For Eastwood, that moment at the dinner table solidified the young boy's thinking and way of life, which he steadfastly stuck to for the duration of the story. A good character will develop as the story goes on. That's not to say that Kyle did not change at all. He clearly did, and Eastwood's treatment of PTSD makes American Sniper the definitive work of cinema on the topic. However, he failed to deviate from the baseline that he set up in his own opening act. He violated the Chekhov's Gun rule of character development, and for reasons I'm still struggling to articulate, that really bothers me. American Sniper could have been a modern war classic, but instead it's just a pretty good movie. 4/5
*A few other exceptions occur to me as well, like the straight line drawn from 9/11 to the War in Iraq, but I count them as minor in comparison and also as a consequence of telling a story through the eyes of any character. For Kyle (and others), maybe that straight line was real at the time.
Whiplash - Whiplash strikes me as a non-nominee nominee, a picture that was recognized for its brilliant performances but not expected to bring home the trophy by any stretch of the imagination. The always brilliant J.K. Simmons is matched by Miles Teller, who should be finding more work based on this performance. The story feels like an exaggeration, and perhaps it is from Terence Fletcher's (Simmons) point of view. A jazz band conductor at the prestigious (and fictional) Shaffer Conservatory, he believes in inspiring his most promising students with tough love, fueled by an apocryphal story of how Charlie Parker was pushed into becoming a great musician when Jo Jones "nearly decapitated" him with a cymbal after a poor performance. The real story is way more benign than that, but Fletcher is not a man of nuance. He gives speeches about "good job" being the two worst words in the English language, baits his students into making mistakes and punishes them for it, and generally terrorizes Andrew Neimann (Miles Teller) into quitting. The ambiguity of the ending (Mild spoilers: Does Neimann appreciate Fletcher after all? Does Fletcher still believe his actions are justified?) adds a layer of depth to an already outstanding character study. The narrative is tight, the musical aspect is well done, if sloppy in a few minor instances, and the questions linger long after the credits roll. In this case, that's a good thing. As a semi-serious band student in high school who had a director with Fletcher-like tendencies (it should be noted that they were very mild in comparison), I found Whiplash endlessly fascinating on a number of levels. A piece as narrow in scope as this will never make an all-time best list, but is essential nonetheless. This is the kind of film that benefits from the expanded Best Picture category. 4.5/5
Selma - It would have been very easy to make a Martin Luther King biopic that glossed over the ugly parts of his movement. By that, I do not mean the racism, violence, and ignorance. Those are essential parts of the story and are not lacking in Selma. Instead, I'm referring to the in-fighting in the King camp, the struggles he faced as his own people died, and his rocky relationship with Coretta. Many works of art have been made and will be made that turn the Civil Rights struggle into a philosophically black-and-white struggle between good and evil, without pausing to consider the demons that the good guys had to overcome along the way. Selma is a nuanced look at King and the situation in Selma, and more than any of the other biopics nominated this year, screenwriter Paul Webb does an extraordinary job of setting the historical stage, using real-life events as inciting incidents for the characters to react to, rather than as backdrop that must be addressed for accuracy's sake. Unfortunately, I found much of the supporting cast to be a bit one-dimensional, likely a result of trying to cram so much story into so little time. A longer running time with more character development focused on the other members of the SCLC, or perhaps Jimmie Lee Jackson, James Reeb, or Viola Liuzzo (who is barely featured at the end) would have gone a long way. As it is, though, Selma is rich, complex, and needed. 4.5/5
The Grand Budapest Hotel - I'll go ahead and say it: I'm a Wes Anderson fanboy. The Grand Budapest Hotel is Anderson at his best, though I'll not commit to labeling it my favorite of his films. It's quirky, even for Anderson, but the screwball nature of it all works to its great benefit. The framing device of a story within a story within a story allows viewers to invest in its zaniness - certainly it gets better with every retelling. The tongue-in-cheek style makes, for example, the Society of the Crossed Keys, which is an otherwise absurd device, into a humorous and accessible anecdote. It's almost impossible to describe the plot of this film, so I won't attempt it, but I will say that it is equal parts brilliant, heart-warming, joyful, and yes, twee. Fans of Anderson's work will not need to be convinced to see it, nor will they be disappointed. Those who are put off by his style will not find respite in his most recent entry into the canon, but in my opinion, they are missing out. 4.5/5
Boyhood - An Oscar movie that's released in the summer goes through several life cycles before the February ceremony, and Boyhood appears to be in a backlash stage, where people criticize it for being praised for its gimmick. That gimmick, if you're unaware, is that it follows a boy and his family from about first grade through his entry into college, only that it was filmed in real time. Scenes from Mason Evans' (Ellar Coltrane) middle school years were filmed around 2008 or so, and his earlier years were captured before that. Every year for a few weeks, the cast and crew met in Texas, filmed some scenes, and came back roughly a year later for more. As he ages in the final product, there are no montages or signals that time has moved on, other than the music, technology present in the characters' living rooms or at school, and of course the aging of the actors. One minute, Mason is 8 or so, and the next he is maybe 10, his mother has gained a little bit of weight, and the family has a new car - and maybe a new father figure as well. The effect is an authenticity that is no gimmick. Richard Linklater has captured the life of a generation like no other fictional film has. Boyhood is almost three hours long, and it's hard to blame Linklater for not wanting to part with scenes that are in some cases 12 years old, but it does not suffer for the length. In fact, each character develops such a rich history over the course of the story that it feels like the extended denouement isn't even enough. The emotional depth is astounding. I found myself wanting to know more about characters that could be described as tertiary at best - that's how deep the world of Mason Evans is. I've never cared so little that a story didn't have a defined beginning, middle, and end. I think that's because it feels like it's still being written. Linklater and the actors have spoken extensively in interviews about feeling a profound sense of loss after wrapping the picture, and it's easy to understand why. The story isn't over. I hope somebody writes a book about the production of this film. It certainly deserves one. 5/5
Birdman - In Birdman, Michael Keaton plays a hollywood actor who starred in a series of superhero (called Birdman) movies and has now written and is directing and acting in a Broadway show. I emphasize the Michael Keaton part, because the meta-narrative behind the whole thing is a huge part of the film. Keaton, who of course played Batman, is playing some version of himself. So too is Edward Norton, who is hard-to-get-along-with but immensely talented and popular and becomes Keaton's co-star after an unfortunate accident right before the show goes to previews. Birdman has its own gimmick. It's shot to look like one continuous take, with two important interruptions. The gimmick works. While Keaton isn't in every scene, his persona is always on the periphery. The on-the-surface story is tight and compelling, and a particular scene where he fights with an uppity critic has reportedly received plenty of in-theater applause, but there's so much more below the surface. The symbolism present in every scene is off the charts, and there's this little matter of whether or not he's crazy or even suicidal. It's a subtle convention that introduces itself in a big way within the first two minutes, and little hints are sprinkled throughout. The underlying narrative walks the line of heavy-handedness, but for my money always stays just on the right side. Alejandro González Iñarritu has at times been guilty of campiness in some of his previous projects, but Birdman is just about perfect. He has essentially made an accessible Charlie Kaufman film that is enriched by multiple viewings. An instant classic. 5/5
