(no subject)
So, this year's Oscar nominees are an interesting lot. It's shaping up a lot like the 1979 Oscars, actually, and since I understand that that sentence doesn't mean anything to almost anyone, I'll clarify. Generally the Oscars nominate a specific type of film that is trying to straddle the world of art and commerce, but sometimes completely weird things slip through. 1979 is notable to me because it was a year where there was a stark contrast between the normal Oscar fodder - the things that were well made but ultimately conventional - and the things that were definitely well made but obviously crazy. On the one hand, you've got Kramer Vs. Kramer, which is about a single dad's struggle to raise his son, and Breaking Away, which is a coming of age sports story - movies that are enjoyable and well made but which aren't really doing a high wire act. On the other hand, you had Apocalypse Now, which was iconic, but also sloppy and pretentious. You also had All That Jazz, which managed to be a mortality comedy musical about self loathing and somehow be great on all of those levels, but which requires a certain mindset to enjoy. Had Breaking Away failed it would have just been mediocre, but had Apocalypse Now failed, it would have been an utter disaster.
This year's nominees have a smiliar tension. I find Darren Aronofsky to be consistently challenging, but he's the sort of go-for-broke filmmaker whose films are either really respected or utterly trashed. Black Swan is not finding a lot of middle ground. Even an "I was pretty apathetic about it" review is a vote for "it's overhyped" because it's gotten so many rave reviews. So I'd say it's pretty squarely in the Apocalypse Now camp: even the people who find it brilliant understand why it's disliked, and the people who dislike it probably really hate it.
This might sound surprising, but I'd put Social Network in the crazy category, too. David Fincher has made films that are definitely out there - Fight Club being most prominent - but I put it in the go for broke category mostly on conceptual grounds. A movie about a website is the sort of thing that was either going to be utter bullshit, or else a completely relevant commentary on modern life. It sounded so terrible and then got such across the board great reviews: it's a lot like All that Jazz, insofar as it's a movie that shouldn't work, and in most people's hands wouldn't, but then because of how good those hands are, does.
True Grit, on the other hand, is a lot like Breaking Away. It's a great movie, but it's great because of the basics. It has a good attention to character and detail, and the strength of the film is in the dialogue and the acting. The Coen brothers generally are swing for the fences type filmmakers, but this is one of their most reserved and straight forward films. It's not what you'd expect from the Coens, but it is what you'd expect from a Western. It's a film I can see someone not liking, but I just can't imagine why someone would hate it.
And obviously the King's Speech and the Fighter are your typical Oscar bait: well made, interesting, uplifting, just slightly quirky.
The main reason why I bring up 1979 as a touchstone is that often times when you are trying to prioritize art it helps to have some sort of rubric in mind, because the actual process of deciding that something is "best" is so arbitrary. And 1979 is a good template to look at this year's race because I think the right film went into the time capsule, so to speak. Apocalypse Now is a bigger, bolder movie than Kramer Vs. Kramer, but Kramer Vs. Kramer does a better job of documenting a specific time and place. Which is not a knock on Apocalypse Now, because that was always meant to be metaphorical and larger than life, but the way that Kramer Vs. Kramer deals with feminism and cultural change is interesting now in a sociological sense, and the drama of the film still unfolds well because the problems it faces are personal problems and we can still relate to those people.
So 1979 was decided, I think, not by which film was bolder or which film was more proficient, but by the question "which of these films most belongs in a time capsule?" And to that end, I think the film that most documents our time is Social Network. True Grit and King's Speech are period peices; 127 hours is an isolated incident; Black Swan is a metaphor. Those films speak to us as people, but I don't know that they say a lot about life in 2010. But the Social Network is a film about personal drama and also about our time. It's about why friends stop being friends when money is involved - but it's also about how fast things change with digital technology. It's shot digitlaly, but doesn't feel digital. Despite being about specific people, it has an oddly universal quality.
Social Network is one of those weird movies that kind of has it all - something which is pretty conventional, but also a high wire act - and for that reason, if I had a vote I would vote for it.