They Shoot Oscar Prognosticators, Don't They?
Telluride Film Festival Parts 2 & 3
By J. Don Birnam
September 7, 2017
BoxOfficeProphets.com
I discussed here the comings and goings of my first day at Telluride and which movies were well-positioned for the Oscars. Let’s take a look now at the rest of the weekend movie slate, the winners and losers, and what we can expect moving forward from TIFF and on through the 90th Academy Awards. Follow extended coverage of the festivals on Twitter: @jdonbirnam and Instagram: @awards_predix
First They Killed My Father: Could Be a (Controversial) Player
Saturday early morning began with the World Premiere (if you don’t count its screening in Cambodia first) of Angelina Jolie’s new brutal film First They Killed My Father. The story of one young girl during the reign of terror of the Khmer Rouge, the film is not exactly what you would expect from the topic, but it is nevertheless difficult and challenging to watch at times.
However, Jolie has clearly learned from her past mistakes (think Unbroken), even if she still ambles around the edges a tad here and there. The movie packs a hard emotional punch and is an important story by an important and growing filmmaker. It will be hard to ignore.
The controversial question is whether the film will be submitted as Cambodia’s Foreign Language Film nominee. How could this be so, you may wonder? Jolie produced the movie but she is a Cambodian citizen, the film is entirely set and spoken in Cambodian, and, indeed, most of the crew (including Jolie’s two sons) are Cambodians. In Telluride, Angelina explained that she asked for permission from each of the affected factions - the former Khmer Rouge, the survivors, the current government - to make the film, and says that they all gave their blessings.
So why does it feel wrong, somehow, if Angelina Jolie becomes nominated for producing and directing the best Foreign Language Film of the Year? What will the Academy even do if the Academy submits this film as they are likely to do?
Oscar potential: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Score, Best Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Sound
Battle of the Sexes: One To Watch Out For?
This film, before Telluride, seemed to me to be basically a joke, the equivalent of a facile movie, think along the lines of TIFF movies such as Queen of Katwe. But Battle of the Sexes is actually much much more.
Although it is for sure billed as a quirky comedy between Emma Stone and Steve Carell about the historical tennis match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs, this movie is only about a third of its total dedicated directly to that happening. The story really is about the demons and challenges that both of them face internally, with the focus decisively but only slightly so, on Stone’s superb King.
By the time the tennis game rolls around, it is best understood as a culmination of forces more powerful than either of them, almost as if they were forced to play that game to satisfy the unfortunate gender stereotypes that both had to grapple with in the 1970s. And the overwhelming feeling of joy, realization, and inspiration that one gets from the entire exercise cannot be denied. Stone is arguably better than in La La Land, for which she won the Oscar.
Battle of the Sexes turns out to be a surprisingly political movie, and some have noted it is the movie about feminism and equal rights that we need today. That is both true and also perhaps a problem for it. And it remains to be seen whether the overall simplicity of the film is unsatisfying for the ever-more-sophisticating Academy. But it is a crowd-pleaser, so I would not discount it as of yet.
Oscar potential: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Stone), Best Supporting Actor (Carell), Best Score, Best Screenplay, Best Editing, Best Costumes
Lady Bird: The Indie Spot
Greta Gerwig has been around, it seems, forever, but it seems impossible to imagine that we really first learned of her with the indie hit Frances Ha only about four years ago. Now, the young, talented actress/writer has turned to directing, and has made it a successful debut at that.
In her film Lady Bird, which had its world premiere at Telluride, she threads ground that is familiar both to her and, most obviously, to movie audiences. It is a sort of coming-of-age story centered around Saoirse Ronan’s Christine, who has rebelliously renamed herself Lady Bird, as she navigates her fraught senior year in high school. Boy anxieties aside, it does not help that she has a sort of insane, definitely overbearing mother, played by an absolutely brilliant Laurie Metcalf.
The story is definitely familiar in some senses (teenage anxiety, sexuality, friendship), but the sincerity with which Gerwig paints her canvass and the difficult daughter/mother relationship make it stand out. The question is honestly whether the movie is “too female” to resonate with the broader Academy. On the other hand, movies like An Education have found space, and this could be the one that takes up that slot that now seems reserved for much smaller films.
Oscar potential: Best Picture, Best Actress (Ronan), Best Supporting Actress (Metcalf), Best Screenplay
The Shape of Water: The Only Potential Frontrunner
If there is an Oscar frontrunner at this point, after Telluride, it has to be Guillermo del Toro’s sci-fi love story The Shape of Water. I don’t want to spoil too much, but Eliza (Sally Hawkins, in what surely will be a nominated if not winning role) is a mute working girl who cleans a top-secret government lab in 1950s Baltimore. One day, a mysterious, amphibian-like creature is brought in by a military strongman played by a devilish Michael Shannon. Owing in part to her solitude and saved only at times by her older next door neighbor (played by a moving Richard Jenkins), Eliza develops a rapport and then some with the creature.
With the help of her neighbor and her best pal (Octavia Spencer), Eliza eventually rescues the creature from certain doom. It is essentially a Beauty and the Beast love story, but with a fish. And yet, for as weird as it sounds, it is a very sincere, very touching romance. Del Toro pays homage to the '50s, its horrific politics, and its amazing artists, while expressing love in his own, monstrous-type approach.
If people can get past the admittedly weird form of the romance, this could do very well indeed this Oscar season. Del Toro is sort of owed one for losing the Foreign Language Oscar to Germany the year of Pan’s Labyrinth, and he is considered a gregarious, friendly guy. He kissed all the right rings at Telluride.
Oscar potential: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Hawkins), Best Supporting Actress (Spencer), Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor(s) (Jenkins/Shannon), Best Art Direction, Best Score, Best Cinematography
Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool: Annette’s Fading Chance
Annette Bening has famously lost the Oscar twice to Hillary Swank, so it is no surprise that every time she has anything even mildly promising, people think that his may be her turn. She was also the President of the Actors’ Branch, almost became the President of the entire Academy, and is married to golden boy Warren Beatty.
So is the real-life love story Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool finally her moment? Likely not, as the decidedly soapy romance probably will not appeal across the spectrum. She gives it her best as the aging, faded actress having an affair with a young British boy (a stupendous Jamie Bell), but the story suffers a tad from the director’s overreaching into timeline shenanigans. Still, a nomination seems at least a possibility, but a win appears to be slipping away once more.
Oscar potential: Best Actress (Bening)
Hostiles: A Player if It Can Get There
As a part of a tribute to the brilliant actor Christian Bale, the festival screened his new film, the Western called Hostiles. The movie does not yet have distribution, so whether it is even a player this year is up and the air, and I suspect publicists and the studio are looking for prognosticator tea leaves to decide what to do.
My advice would be to dump it like it’s hot, but other Oscar illuminati have taken to it, so what do I know! Bale plays an embittered and battle-tested soldier handed the thankless job of taking his former mortal enemy, a Native American chief, and his family, from New Mexico to Montana through the Wild West in 1892. At the outset of his journey he encounters a brutalized widow played by the always gorgeous Rosamund Pike.
The description ought to be enough to tell you what sort of categories you could expect it to hit at the Academy Awards should it get there. The quality of the story, if you ask me, is quite another matter. I found the film derivative of the ten thousand or so other Westerns made before it, and the characters eventually became irrational. Still, last year I wished for a quick and easy death to Lion and that got six nods.
Oscar potential: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Bale), Best Actress (Pike), Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Sound, Best Editing
Wonderstruck: Don’t Count on Todd Haynes This Time Around, Either
Much talk was born out of Cannes earlier this year when Todd Haynes, who obviously directed Carol, screened his latest movie Wonderstruck. Could this be his year after literally decades of snubs that span at least since Far From Heaven? Unfortunately, I do not think that this film will be the one to get him to the nominations slate, let alone the winner’s circle.
The movie is about two 12-year-olds separated by 50 years, embarked on adventures in New York City. One is black and white and silent, the other in color. Both are eventually deaf. There is a mysterious connection between the two.
It is as complicated as it sounds, but unfortunately the ultimate denouement is rather…pointless. Yes, there is a swelling score by long-time collaborator Carter Burwell (who also did Carol and others), but the story, based on a successful novel, just does not translate well onto the big screen with the pastiche of time and the eventually very obvious reveal. I will list it for two potential Oscars but smart money says this will not be discussed again.
Oscar potential: Best Screenplay, Best Score
Still to Come
Up next is TIFF, need I say more? More seriously, there is nothing really “big” left that has not already been seen premiering at TIFF. Although there are still unseen movies coming out in the Fall or maybe even December, most of the expected contenders such as mother!, Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing Missouri, and Suburbicon have all played at Venice. It is the middle one with the most buzz, but I will save further commentary until TIFF.
If anything new could make waves, I suppose it could be Jessica Chastain’s Aaron Sorkin movie, Molly’s Game, so we will wait and see.
See you in Toronto!