Best Pictures #17: 2015 (88th) Academy Awards, My Pick for Best Picture

by A.J.

2015 (88^th) Academy Awards, My Pick for Best Picture

The 88^th Academy Awards for films released in 2015 was held on February 28^th, 2016 and the night went mostly as expected but still had a few surprises. The 2016 ceremony was mired in the controversy that became known as “#OscarsSoWhite.” From the moment the full list of nominees was announced the two became inextricably linked. No one could mention one without the other, and unfortunately the controversy was completely valid: for the second year in a row there was an incredible lack of diversity among the nominees, especially in the acting categories where all of the nominees were white. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced changes to the requirements for membership in hopes to increase member diversity. What, if any, effect the changes may have won’t be seen until the next batch of nominees are announced in January of next year.  

The eight Best Picture nominees for 2015 covered a wide range of subjects and genres but still encompassed many elements favored by the Academy. The nominees included: three movies based on true stories (Bridge of Spies, Spotlight, The Big Short) and one based on a novel which is partly based on a true story (The Revenant); a sweet, sentimental romance (Brooklyn); an independent, character heavy drama (Room); a thrilling adventure in a faraway land (The Martian); and, most surprisingly, an epic, big budget action movie (Mad Max: Fury Road). Room was the only nominee set in the present day. All of the other Best Picture nominees are set either in the past or the future. The Big Short was the most topical of the nominees with its events having taken place most recently (2005-2008) and the effects of its subject (the housing market collapse and resulting recession) still being felt by many, many people. It’s an entertaining and important film, and I’m interested to see how it will or will not hold up in the coming years. I think that despite winning no awards, the feel good, thrilling science fiction film The Martian will be a movie that audiences will re-watch and rediscover in the future.

Leonardo DiCaprio won Best Actor for The Revenant and while I’m glad he has an Oscar (he’s one of my favorite actors after all), I’m disappointed it’s for a simple one note performance in a rather unenjoyable movie. Alejandro G. Iñarrìtu won Best Director for The Revenant making him the third director to have back to back Oscar wins. The other two directors are John Ford for The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and How Green Was My Valley (1941) and Joseph Mankiewicz for A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950). I don’t feel like I’m going out on a limb when I say that Iñarrìtu, when included with the likes of John Ford and Joseph Mankewicz, pales in comparison. The Revenant is a technically well-made film, but that is all it has to offer. The films that Ford and Mankiewicz won for are true classics. However, Iñarrìtu will now forever be part of a very small club.

The big surprise of the 88^th Academy Awards involved the big award itself, Best Picture. Spotlight won the Oscar upsetting The Revenant, which seemed as sure as a sure thing can be. The Revenant had won several awards leading up to the Oscars and the odds were heavily in its favor. However, it is a film that no one seemed to enjoy (I don’t recall reading any wholly positive reviews of the film). In the end, the Academy’s preferential ballot may have worked against The Revenant since the second choice of the voters can add up and outweigh the apparent first choice. Spotlight does have the hallmarks of a Best Picture winner (ensemble cast, true story, an important and serious subject) but this shouldn’t diminish its accomplishments or its win. It is undeniably an important film but it is also a solid, well-made, and riveting thriller. Spotlight won the first award of the night, Original Screenplay, and the last award of the night, Best Picture, and nothing in between making it the first film since The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) to win Best Picture with only one other award (the other win for that movie was also for writing).

Spotlight is a great film and I’m glad it won, but my vote for Best Picture would go to…

My Pick for Best Picture 2015: Mad Max: Fury Road

If I picked the winner for Best Picture of 2015 I would have to pick the full throttle feminist action film Mad Max: Fury Road. As much as I loved this movie when I saw it in theaters back in May of last year, I would have thought it crazy that this movie would have been my pick for Best Picture or that it would have even been nominated. Fury Road took home 6 Oscars for the "technical categories" (Editing, Costume Design, Makeup & Hairstyling, Production Design, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing), all of which were well deserved wins. I’ve seen this movie three times so far and each time there is something new to notice or appreciate. This is an era when anything visually spectacular in a movie is automatically assumed to be done by a computer, but this is not the case with Fury Road. The stunts performed in this movie are performed by real people doing exactly what it looks like they are doing. The flame throwing guitar is completely real and works as a guitar and a flamethrower. The War Boys swinging on poles like pendulums to attack our heroes are stunt men really swinging on poles. The stunt team worked on perfecting this stunt to the point that it was safe enough to perform on moving vehicles. Director George Miller (who had my vote for Best Director) was even able to convince Tom Hardy to shoot a few takes on top of the swinging pole, despite his fear of heights.

All of these practical effects and stunts foster believability in this wild, post-apocalyptic world. Max and Furiousa are not superheroes; you believe everything you see these characters do. All of the characters in Fury Road are bound by the laws of physics. They hurt and bleed and have personalities that the movie showcases instead of glossing over. The setting may be a dystopian fantasy and the genre is action, but this is a movie about people. Charlize Theron was not nominated for any awards for her performance as Imperator Furiosa, but it is a great performance nonetheless that carries this movie and gives every action importance. As good as Tom Hardy is as Max, this film would not work without Charlize Theron in the lead.

Best Pictures #10: 2015 (88th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee, The Revenant

by A.J.

2015 (88^th) Academy Awards Best Picture Nominee

The Revenant

The Revenant contains, paradoxically, some of the most beautiful and most unpleasant images in any film of 2015. The film was shot by renowned cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki whose nomination for The Revenant is his eighth nomination for Best Cinematography. He won the award last year for director Alejandro G. Iñàrritu’s Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) and the year before that for Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity. It is entirely possible, and likely, that he will win his third consecutive Oscar for shooting The Revenant. As much as Leonardo DiCaprio, Lubezki’s imagery is the star of The Revenant.

The Revenant is based on a novel by Michael Punke, which is a fictionalized version of the true story of 19^th century frontiersman Hugh Glass. Glass, portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio, and his Pawnee son, Hawk, are serving as the guides for a fur trapping expedition collecting pelts out in the harsh wilderness. Glass is mauled by a bear and survives, but his wounds are so severe the company cannot transport him back to camp. Two trappers, Fitzgerald and Bridger, are offered extra money to stay with Glass and watch over him until the company can send a rescue party or he dies of his wounds, whichever comes first. But instead of waiting, Fitzgerald tosses Glass in a shallow grave, covers him while he’s still breathing, and leaves him for dead. Glass crawls out of his grave, giving the movie its title, and sets out on a grueling odyssey to take his revenge.

Leonardo DiCaprio is nominated for the Best Actor Oscar and has already collected a few awards thus far for his performance of Glass. At this point his Oscar win for The Revenant seems to be a foregone conclusion. DiCaprio gives a good performance, as he tends to do, but there is not much for him to do with the character of Glass aside from seethe, suffer, mourn, and brood. It is a mostly silent performance, aside from the grunts and groans. He simply perseveres, struggles against the elements, tries to survive the wilderness, the cold, animal attacks, and attacks by angry parties of Arikara. Glass technically has a character arc and though I saw it, I didn’t feel his arc. DiCaprio did good, hard work undoubtedly, for The Revenant, but has had better, more dynamic performances in other movies. I’m a big fan of DiCaprio and wouldn’t mind seeing him win an Oscar, but I can think of at least three other performances he should have already won for and am sure he will give us more.

There are good performances from the other players in this film, too. Tom Hardy, who delights in challenging himself and the audience with his roles, plays John Fitzgerald, though his character may as well have been named, The Bad Guy. One of the first things we hear his character say is a racial epithet against the Native Americans and then he confronts Glass’s son for being Pawnee. As soon as Fitzgerald volunteers to stay with Glass after the mauling, we know he has only bad things in mind. Hardy, another great actor of which I am a fan, does more than a lot of other actors could with an almost cartoonish and diabolically evil one dimensional character. Domhnall Gleeson also gives a good performance as the decent, noble Captain Henry, who represents civilization in the untamed wilderness; tellingly, when the company arrives back at the fort he is only man who shaves his beard. 

It is obvious that a lot of hard work went into The Revenant, both on and off screen. Principal filming was done in Canada to capture the Great White North’s snowy wilderness, but the production went on so long that the snow melted as summer neared, and the whole production had to be moved to the southern hemisphere, Argentina specifically, to find more winter scenery. Director Alejandro G. Iñàrritu and Lubezki shot the whole film, with the exception of one scene, using only natural light, so there were only a few hours per day when filming could occur. And of course, you can’t talk about The Revenant without mentioning Leonardo DiCaprio eating a real bison liver, doing his own stunts, and, most of all, convincingly being mauled by bear. The visual effects of that scene are incredibly convincing and impressive; it really does look like DiCaprio is being mauled by a huge bear. The bear attack is intense and bloody, but it is one of many gruesome and violent scenes in this 2 ½ hour long movie.

With The Revenant, Iñàrritu seems to be only interested in grim suffering; survival is incidental. There is immense cruelty in The Revenant, but almost no humanity, aside from Domnhall Gleeson’s character and Glass’s relationship with his son. Any insights on man’s cruelty to man will come solely from the viewer and not from the film. The Revenant is not complex in story or emotion. The film’s only statement seems to be that a man suffered and then suffered some more and it is a true story…but not really; in real life, Glass had no son and only sought to get back his possessions that the men who left him had taken with them.

My main problem with the film is that it goes on far too long for having such a simple story and, therefore, has pacing problems. There are some thrilling and intense set pieces (among them the fur company being attacked by Native Americans and Glass being attacked by a bear, and being chased off a mountain, and going down a waterfall…); but there are also scenes of nothing really happening. Our only respite from the dour, brutal nature of the plot is the beautiful cinematography of Lubezki coupled with a wonderful score by Alva Noto and Ryûichi Sakamoto. All of the scenes of dreamlike flashbacks and surreal visions that appear to Glass don’t work and though they deliver information on his past, they don’t build his character. There is an interesting B-story involving a Native American chief searching for his kidnapped daughter that eventually converges with Glass’s story. Those scenes are some of the most interesting in the film; however, if all but the two scenes which intersect with Glass were cut, the movie would still be the same.

I had a mostly good experience watching The Revenant since it was made by many people who are good at what they do; however, Iñàrritu’s work as a director is very uneven. Of his five previous films, I really enjoyed Amores Perros and think it is a very good film and I enjoyed Birdman, despite the problems I had with its themes and plot. I would place The Revenant third behind those two films.

While watching The Revenant, I was reminded of the films of Terrence Malick, and I think it is no coincidence that Lubezki shot Malick’s films The New World, Tree of Life, and To the Wonder. As in those films and Malick’s other work, there are big sweeping camera shots capturing the simple beauty of the natural world. However, Malick’s stories use those images to add to the transcendental contemplation already happening in his films. The Revenant only seems to want to be contemplative in passing. It is primarily concerned with the physical action of the characters. I was also reminded during certain scenes of Aguirre, the Wrath of God directed by the great Werner Herzog and wondered if he wouldn’t have been a better fit as director for this material.

Nominees: Arnon Milchan, Steve Golin, Alejandro González Iñárritu, Mary Parent, Keith Redmon, Producers

Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Screenplay: Mark L. Smith and Alejandro G. Iñárritu, based in part on the novel by Michael Punke

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson

Production Companies: Anonymous Content, Appian Way, M Productions, New Regency Pictures, RatPac-Dune Entertainment, Regency Enterprises

Distributor: 20th Century Fox

Release Date: December 25, 2015

Total Nominations: 12, including Best Picture

Other Nominations: Actor-Leonardo DiCaprio, Director-Alejandro G. Iñárritu, Supporting Actor-Tom Hardy, Cinematography-Emmanuel Lubezki, Editing-Stephen Mirrione, Production Design-Jack Fisk and Hamish Purdy, Makeup & Hairstyling-Siân Grigg, Duncan Jarman, and Robert Pandini, Costume Design-Jacqueline West, Sound Editing-Martin Hernández and Lon Bender, Sound Mixing-Jon Taylor, Frank A. Montaño, Randy Thom, and Chris Duesterdiek, Visual Effects-Richard McBride, Matt Shumway, Jason Smith, and Cameron Waldbauer