Sunday, February 25, 2024

My Top Ten Films of 2023


        This list was hard. Possibly the hardest I've yet made.

        There have been some great years for movies since I started this blog, years where multiple movies came out that became instant all-time favorites of mine. We've seen some great triumphs, none more satisfying than my beloved EEAAO sweeping last year's Academy Awards. And I certainly did not see MORE movies this year than I used to; my „new film intake“ continues to remain relatively low compared to when I tried to make it a point to see one new film every week (ah! youth).

        Dakota Johnson was right; the film industry is an utter hellscape in so many ways right now. The major studios and their soulless billionaire owners with more wealth than God seem determined to be as cruel, as narrow-minded, as creatively bankrupt as possible, because that's what post-war Western capitalism rewards. This year saw possibly the biggest and most important strike in my lifetime, and it will certainly not be the last. Problems aplenty in the special effects and animation industries abound, #MeToo ended with less than a whimper, the superhero genre finally started to show cracks, and the cultural Black Death that is live-action adaptations of animated classics remains unsated.

        And yet. The movies I was able to see this year were SO good, and there were SO many of them, that nearly every single film I am about to name, even the honorable mentions, could top other people's lists (and many of them did!!). That this happened in spite of all our troubles was something of a light in the darkness for me; there are still so many unbelievably talented people in every branch of this business, still doing their best to churn art better, more representative, and more worthwhile than ever before, and some are still pulling it off, in spite of it all.

        There was almost no wrong way for me to order these, so of course, that made it all the more stress-inducing to try and do so. So I won't be able to offer much in the way of justifications as to why certain films are higher than others. In the end, all I had was my gut. And here's what my bundle of organs had to say about this year at the movies.


Honorable Mentions: The Holdovers, John Wick 4, Guardians of the Galaxy 3, Suzume, Poupelle of Chimney Town


10. A Haunting in Venice (Kenneth Branagh)

        I absolutely, unabashedly love this series. They are old-school campy in the best way possible. This one, however, is the first that I would call a straight-up great movie. Not having read the book, I understanding that his adaption changes a lot to allow for a setting and style that is far more explicitly horror-oriented than the first two films, which were mostly fairly direct whodunnits. The result is the best of both worlds, just enough horror to keep the thrills coming, while still having a compelling and believable mystery with multiple twists and turns right up to the end, with just enough left open to provide discussion fodder afterwards. I hope Branagh keeps making these til he dies.


9. Killers of the Flower Moon (Martin Scorsese)

        Out of the year's major big-name releases, I would rank this as the most ambitious. A massively long and exhaustive adaptation of a little-known book detailing one of the most horrific crimes ever committed against a Native American tribe (and yes, that IS saying something), with a focus on authentic cultural representation and language, plus one of the most open fourth wall breaks Scorsese has ever attempted, there are so many ways this could have not worked, or come off as insensitive. And there are fair criticisms to be made that even if this is the „best version“ of a White man making a movie about Native Americans, it still falls short. I myself did find the length a bit too trying at times, and in the crucial final section- where the evil of it all is finally coming to light- I very much wished for less time with the White criminals and more time with Mollie, seeing her trying to process the depths of her husband's betrayal.

        Nonetheless, I do feel that there is value in having a trio of the most influential figures in American cinema take this story, put in the effort to empower the community it impacted, and to bring awareness of it to an audience that would otherwise have never bothered to learn of the Osage Terror. It does mean something when Lily Gladstone becomes the first Native American to win another major award and gives another speech viewed by millions. Controversial and debatable the film will remain, but the fact that it will have an impact at all is still enough for me to rank it as one of the year's most important works.


8. Godzilla Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki)

        I can enjoy a good monster flick, but it's never been „my thing“, and the current effort by American studios to revive the genre have left me relatively cold, so that made it an extra special treat to get this quasi-remake of the original that hit in all the right places. The action set pieces maximize every cent of the small budget and leave a greater impact that most recent Marvel movies, but its the humanistic core- a Miyazaki-esque call to live, no matter what- that makes it something truly special. Alongside the OG, this is the Gojira flick everyone should see at least once.


7. Past Lives (Celine Song)

        A majestic, slow-burn story of how each decision we make- or that others make for us- shape our futures just a little bit more, how our identities can be torn between worlds, and how we can suddenly realize that whole potential paths we once considered are now closed off forever. It is a bittersweet sort of beauty, the way we fall in and out of each other's lives, and it's captured so effectively in the way the three leads interact with each other. Beautiful and poignant, this is the sort of experience that leaves a pregnant silence in its wake.


6. Barbie (Greta Gerwig)

        With the passage of time, and some distance from all my Barbenheimer bloviating from last summer, Barbie has ultimately fallen a bit further down the ladder in my mind's eye, while the artistry of Oppenheimer continues to rise. However, this is not meant as a knock on the film itself. This is absolutely the best and most boundary-pushing version of a corporate-approved movie-as-commercial we could have gotten. It will undoubtedly create a whole new bandwagon for toy companies to try and jump on, but I feel safe predicting that this was the lightning strike we will never see happen again.

        Plus, there is a sad irony at play right now in just how desperate the awards circuit is to show us why super on-the-nose lessons like Ferrera's „Feminism 101“ monologue are still necessary. Yeah, maybe the film's feminism is a touch White, and bringing in Will Ferrell way too easily distracts from Mattel's real-world (and genuine piece of shit) CEO. But if „serious“ industry figures are willing to reward the literal joke song over a wonderful Billie Eilish number, or somehow decide that the female director of the most dominant box-office film of the year doesn't merit a Best Director nomination, then it really does start to feel like Ryan Gosling in the only man on Earth who got the actual point of it all.


5. Perfect Days (Wim Wenders)

        Why does this film work so well? A good 90% of it is literally just following a toilet cleaner in Tokyo making his rounds, eating his lunch, tending his plants. That SHOULDN'T work as a beautiful celebration of the small joys that make up daily life, or as a paean to simplicity over shallow materialism, or offer subtle commentary on the trauma of unmet familial expectations, or as a powerful meditation on how to exist in the Now.

        But it does. It works, presenting an old man's singular and somewhat strange version of nirvana, while still allowing us to glimpse some of the cracks in his soul and leaving it to us to guess whether he is truly happy or not. This is a prime example of the unmatched power of cinema to take literally anything, no matter how seemingly inconsequential, and make it a metaphor for life itself.


4. The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki)

        Damnit, he's still got it. No one can mesh together resigned pessimism with determined optimism like Hayao Miyazaki, and I don't know if anyone after him ever will. His latest (I won't say „final“ because WHO KNOWS) combines a fairly direct treatment of childhood trauma in its first half with a fantasy coming-of-age arc in its second part, transitioning seemlessly from one to the other. The fact that Miyazaki permitted himself to hand over the rudder more than usual shows. There is a lot more variety in the animation styles on display than in his earlier works, which very much works in the film's favor. There may be no Studio Ghibli after Miyazaki. But for now, he's still here, and he remains one of humanity's most essential artists.


3. Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan)

        There's not much left at this point for me to gush over when it comes to Oppenheimer. I get why some don't like the movie as an experience, or feel too uncomfortable with the subject matter. But like with Dunkirk, there are a lot of ways Nolan is quietly undermining the shallow „Great Men doing Great Things and Making History“ spin that this sort of movie would usually entail. This is not blind hagiography; the film is VERY critical, openly so, about pretty much everyone on screen (except for David Krumholtz, who is a treasure and I love him). A lot of the power the film holds for me, particularly its masterful final sequence, is how 1-1 the fears of uncontrollable nuclear holocaust can be switched over to climate change. I have been plagued for years with the persistant fear I am trappen in a world on fire, and nothing has been able to capture that emotion via pictures and music like this did.


And now.....

Yes! It's a TIE for the #1 spot. I told you this year was hard, so I decided to go easy on myself for once.


1. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, and Justin K. Thompson)

        I have gone on record multiple times saying that Enter The Spider-Verse is about as perfect a rendition of the classic hero origin story that can be made by human hands. Well, the bastards came back and topped it. Better character development, better dramatic beats, better music, better jokes, phenomenal expansion of this particular multiverse, greater stakes, and a true gut punch of a final twist. If the first movie was the best possible case study of the origin story, this is the best possible case study of the follow-up. Not a single beat is missed. Like its predecessor, this film is a genuine miracle.

        Now, given the MASSIVE cliffhangers this film ends on, unlike the standalone first movie, whether or not this one holds up long-term will depend on how well the final installment ties it all together. Plus, the stories coming out of production have been less than nice, and I am very much hoping that they do NOT push to bring the film out in less than a year as currently planned. I adore this series and want the finale to do it justice. If I have to wait a decade for that to happen, I am young and strong and patient and I will do it.


1. My Small Land (Emma Kawawada)

        I had to. I just had to. The film that hit me, personally, right in the soloplex of my soul and left me a blubbering mess for a solid three-quarters of an hour. There is a reason refugees are regularly mentioned in ancient secular or spiritual texts as the sort of group where how they are treated says worlds about the values of a given society. And most of the time, what it says about us is horrifying.

        My Small Land, based on real-life stories of Kurdish refugees in Tokyo and partially inspired by a documentary, encapsulates so much of the unique travails and pressures that fall on the young when society refuses to lift themselves up. There is a unique psychological burden when children are forced to bear the weight of cold shoulders and closed doors, and the young amateur Kawawada-san found for the lead role manifests this perfectly in one of the year's standout performances. Life will go on- it MUST go on- but films like these force us to once again look in a mirror and ask ourselves how much longer we will continue to do such terrible harm to each other.


-Noah

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

My Top Film Scores of 2023

        Another year, another round, and we are back to recount the best in music and film of 2023!

        Ultimately, I saw even fewer new movies this year than I used to, but somehow, the average quality of what I did manage to see seemed especially high. Despite the strike and all the failures and struggles and just plain idiocy infecting the film industry, it was still a damn good year at the movies, with a bevy of masterpieces that featured some of the best film music I've ever heard. This year's lists are especially meaningful to me, so let's start it off right with the best in film music!


7. John Wick 4 (Tyler Bates & John Richard)

        The John Wick franchise, one of the best original IPs to come out of the past decade, came to a fittingly grand conclusion before a hilariously empty Sacre Coeur. While I will need to revisit the series once more to decide where each of the films hold up individually in my mind, the score for this final chapter was easily the best of the series to date. I know there are spinoffs and future installments planned, but much like Endgame, this was the organic spiritual end the franchise needed, and I will leave it at that.


6. Suzume (Radwimps & Kazuma Jinnouchi)

        Your Name remains the peak of both Makoto Shinkai and Radwimps' film work, but Suzume is the closest they've managed to come to achieving that sort of emotional height, easily surpassing their interim film, Weathering With You. A great set of music for an excellent adventure-fantasy story about time, loss, and the beauty of first love.


5. Godzilla Minus One (Naoki Sato)

        So few of us saw this one coming, a powerful, creative, and gripping re-emergence of the Godzilla franchise from the doldrums of its American adaptations. Even better, it brought a smashing and raucous score along with it, the perfect accompaniment to a damn-near perfect film. The film didn't miss a beat, and neither did the music.


4. Past Lives (Christopher Bear & Daniel Rossen)

        The production of the music for this deceptively powerful Korean-American drama mirrored the story of the film as well, with distance playing a key role in forming the musical themes of the film and how they interact over the course of an amazing story about how time and chances taken or missed shape the curvature of our selves. This is one of the year's best listens even when divorced from the film it was made for.


3. The Boy and the Heron (Joe Hisaishi)

        While his work on the latest Miyazaki might not be as instantly iconic as the top, top tier of his discography, Hisaishi's score for The Boy and the Heron nonetheless builds itself up in a way that I found quite powerful and affecting. The main piano theme is simple and effective, and even the "big" moments from the orchestra are not as grand-sounding or bombastic as some of Hisaishi's previous highlights. All that is to the film's benefit; both it and the music are works that thrive on just being themselves and denying the expectations or overhype that would otherwise threaten to sink a new work by old masters like these.


2. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Daniel Pemberton)

        The first Spider-Verse movie was, to put it bluntly, perfect, as was Pemberton's soundtrack. And this year they came back and did it again, better than before. I will gush more about the film in my next post. As far as the music is concerned, there are so many wonderful moments where original themes are brought back and re-worked into the new score, while still making room for new additions. Gwen's theme is a fucking banger, and Miguel O'Hara gets the year's single best musical motif for a villain. And the main musical theme for the broader and seemingly limitless Spider-Verse the movies are building out gets the same treatment as the franchise as a whole, made bigger, bolder, better, more exciting. I adore this franchise, and I am praying, PRAYING, that the creators get the message and let the foot off the gas enough for the creative teams building these wonderful creations to have the proper time and energy to give Miles' story the sendoff it deserves.


1. Oppenheimer (Ludwig Göransson)

        Göransson is That Dude, there's just no denying it. As fantastic as his work with Ryan Coogler has been- Black Panther remains the single greatest original soundtrack to come out of the entire MCU- he finds a whole other level in Nolan's latest, and arguably, greatest, film to date. The very idea of using the musical motifs themselves, especially the violin theme for Oppenheimer, and breaking them down- making them more violent, clashing, dissonant- as a way to mirror the chaos and unpredictability of the quantum world the rise of the atomic age centers around is an absolutely brilliant concept. Simple to conceive, perhaps, but unimaginably tricky to pull off in practice, and he does here. My personal favorite track is „Destroyer of Worlds“, laid over the haunting visuals of the final scene where a world is imagined to collapse into fire and ash, as a pulse of music builds in its frantic energy. The track is a major reason why this was, for my money, the single greatest concluding scene in any film of 2023.

-Noah

Saturday, January 13, 2024

Movie Review: The Boy and the Heron/How Do You Live

The Boy and the Heron (2023): Written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Starring: Soma Santoki, Masaki Suda, Aimyon, Yoshino Kimura, Shohei Hino, Ko Shibasaki, and Takuya Kimura. Running Time: 124 minutes.

Rating: 4/4


        It would be all too easy to simply list the elements in The Boy and the Heron that mirror parts of other, earler Miyazaki films. Elements abound that will immediately bring careful Miyazaki curators to recall scenes and motifs from Porco Rosso, The Wind Rises, Spirited Away, and Princess Mononoke. There are fluffy and adorable spirit-like creatures, many a bulbous nose, a magical building that seems to hold special properties, a fantasy world adjacent to the "real one" that must be accounted for, and of course a gentle, lilting piano theme by Joe Hisaishi.

        But it would be both crass and inaccurate to simply do a surface-level read of the movie as just a rehash of an old man's favorite toys, a placeholder work from someone past his prime and out of ideas. Like Martin Scorsese,- an aging demigod who also treated last year's audiences to something new and boundary-pushing- Miyazaki may be old, and he won't live forever, but he remains one of the absolutely essential artists in the world of cinema.

        Elements of Miyazaki's own life and personality have made their way into his films before, most notably in Porco Rosso and The Wind Rises, but he freely admitted that this might be the most "autobiographical" film he's yet made. We start with tragedy, as a young boy named Mahito loses his mother in a terrible fire. It is not clear if this particular fire was the cause of Allied bombing, but this is very much set in World War II, and his father is a wealthy and successful man thanks to his business making parts for fighter planes. As such, he is able to still afford a lifestyle most Japanese can't access anymore, and to protect his son he moves them out into the country. This is in line with Miyazaki's own childhood, where his father's profited from war and his mother passed while he was still a child.

        It is immediately apparent that Mahito is deeply traumatized by the death of his mother. There is much in the varied animation of the film to recommend it, but the opening sequences where the world and people shimmer and shift as if in a haze as the fire burns and Mahito tries to rush through the chaos is an instant standout, something that has never been seen in any previous Ghibli film. Images of fire and burning plague him, especially when he sleeps.

        As if it wasn't bad enough to be a hurt boy who misses his mother, we learn (more or less along with him) that his aunt, his mother's sister, is to be his father's new bride, and that she is already expecting. Mahito maintains the sort of strict, polite discipline expected of boys in wartime Japan, but there is a distance he projects towards the woman "replacing" his dead mother, a stiffness and coldness in his movements that all too clearly betray the turbulent emotions inside. And this is all established and told masterfully in the film's first half, nearly creating a film on its own, BEFORE the doors to another world are opened and the film kicks into a higher gear.

        Ghibli aficianados know that The Boy and the Heron is not a direct translation of the film's original title. The Japanese title, after a book that loosely inspired the film's story, is How Do You Live, a title that is a) far more metal, and b) far less misleading that the alternate European one. One would assume by such a title that said boy and said heron would be more or less co-equal characters, or that their relationship would somehow be central to the plot.

        This is not the case. The heron- and while I will not spoil it, there are aspects of this heron that are decidedly not what anyone associates with birds- is very much the starting point for Mahito to be introduced to the alternate dimension/fantasy world where the second half of the movie takes place. Mahito's interactions with the bird are at first antagonistic, but it is soon apparent that this is neither the villain, nor even a primary player in the bigger story that unfolds. After the middle section, the heron is really just another character along for the ride. A strange one, one that helps Mahito adjust to the weird, unknown rules and workings of the quasi-wonderland he enters, but in key moments he doesn't seem to know much more than we do about what's going on.

        It is particularly when in the fantasy world that many of the common elements I listed above appear, inevitably drawing comparisons to Miyazaki's other works. But again, this is not a rehash of old, used things. Miyazaki has, as he always somehow manages to do, brought something quite new into existance, the sort of tale that most wouldn't think possible in animated form. It is a story of grief, of trauma, and of the complex ways people seek to grapple with both, be they child or adult. Mahito's aunt/new mother is, at first glance, little more than a plot device to jumpstart the second half- Mahito is not compelled to enter the fantasy world until she disappears and he feels obligated on his father's behalf to find her. However, this view would also be far too shallow, and misses the small, easily-passed-over ways the film shows us how her own pain over the war, losing her sister, and the rejection she feels from her nephew/son-in-law afflict her just as much Mahito's grief affects him.

        The original title really is the more appropriate one, by the end. The biggest thematic similarity this has to Miyazaki's other greatest works is a striving to understand how an individual- small, breakable, easily overwhelmed- can find the strength, the courage, the fortitude, to continue even in the face of the greatest pain and adversity. How, indeed, does one live? The answer to this question has, I think, changed at least a little bit for Miyazaki himself over the years, and it will as always been interpreted differently by audiences. But one common thread that has never waivered is that answers and solutions that seem easy, that claim to have a simple answer that wipes away all the dirt and grime and contradiction of humanity, are mere illusions. Being able to live requires, above all else, a willingness to tackle all of what existing entails, both the good and the bad and the in-between. I am reminded of the words of Sheriff Bell in the beginning of No Country For Old Men; "A man has to put his soul at hazard....and say ok. I'll be part of this world."

        Word is that Miyazaki is already working on yet another movie. There is no way of knowing how much time he has left, and whether or not this is it as far as the big screen goes. If it is, then this is even more powerful a way to end his body of work than The Wind Rises was, which may for some viewers be a bit too heady and ethereal. The Boy and the Heron is certainly more immediately accessible, and while it may not bowl one over like Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away, the depth and feeling on display is as great and grand as it ever was. Joe Hisaishi, the absolutely essential special sauce to any Miyazaki dish, remains in fine form as well, with a more understated and less dominating work that nonetheless conveys the right power a given scene needs.

        This may be it for the Grand Master, or it may not be. Either way, I am immeasurably grateful that, unlike in The Boy and the Heron, we don't have to choose forever between fantasy and reality. When our world is too much- and right now, it is a lot to bear- the worlds of Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli are right there, ready to hold us, comfort us, and let us rest for just a moment before striving back out into battle.

-Noah Franc

Wednesday, December 27, 2023

Getting A Life: History in Film



        Mike Duncan recently noted in an article for The Nation that director Ridley Scott could hardly have picked a more fundamentally important and exciting historical person and period for his latest film than Napoleon and the entire generation of wars he started and fought that bear his name. In this, as in so much else, he is Quite Right. An argument can be made- indeed, many have and continue to make it- that the entire epoch from the beginnings of the French Revolution up to the Congress of Vienna, which (more or less) brought this first revolutionary era in Europe to an end, is one of the most consequential in all of human history. The scope of its influence is indeed global, since it directly affected the subsequent expansion of European colonial empires and indirectly laid the groundwork for both World Wars.

        But leaving that legacy- staggering as it is- aside, it's also a time period absolutely stuffed with some of the most fascinating, talented, idiotic, brilliant, egotistical, inspiring, debauched, funny, and tragic figures ever produced by the human race. You don't even need to make much- or indeed anything- up, because the scripts pretty much write themselves. I happen to have just finished re-reading Adam Zamoyski's Rites of Peace, the seminal text on the Congress of Vienna, and I must say; if that event alone were to be turned into something like a miniseries with near-zero deviation from the known historical record, the unending litany of intrigue, double-crossing, espionage, psychological warfare, and obscenely ostentatious displays of wealth and excess- not to mention the many, many, MANY orgies- would leave most viewers convinced it couldn't possibly be real.

        I'm losing the thread. Let's return to Napoleon, though I did want to bring up the vividness of him and his time for a reason; though fudging and fictionalizing in history-based movies is par for the course, Napoleon and his generation are some of the few subjects where the reality is already so fantastic and dramatic, it must be asked- why waste your time thinking something up?

        And that's our cue to turn to Ridley Scott. SIR Ridley Scott, for those who insist. Scott went on- and this is an understatement- a bit of a bender during the press tour for the film, flippantly dismissing historical criticisms of the film and the general science of history along with them. Top remarks included saying „no one could really know“ what happened during of the most documented and written-about periods in human history, that maybe the first (very self-serving) works about the Napoleonic era were „the most correct,“ and, most delicious of all, saying historians just need to „get a life.“

        Being one of these lifeless scuds myself, I feel compelled- as both a great lover of film and someone with an actual History degree- to jump and point out that most cinephiles (and, frankly, most historians, aside from the most tiresome ones) really don't deserve Scott's ire. Most of us are perfectly happy to suspend disbelief and accept fudging of historical records and personalities in a film, biopic, miniseries, play, what have you.

        There is a silent „if“ at the end of that sentence, and that „if“ is that the fudgings must be in the service of the greater good of telling a strong, meaningful, compelling narrative. Or if the positives at least outweigh the negatives. This is easier said than done.

        Hell, just look at my all-time personal favorite movie, Amadeus. As history? TERRIBLE. We have no evidence Salieri and Mozart knew each other as more than passing acquaintances, much less that he was the „Dark Man“ who commissioned the Requiem. But the story it tells is such a powerful meditation on human frailty in the face of greed, lust, ambition, and hatred, it's impossible to care about nitpicking the history.

        Or take The Social Network, which I very happily put in my 2010 Top Ten list not too long ago, and which is also a personal favorite. A faithful biopic of Mark Zuckerberg, that is not, not the least because we literally do not know what was said in the depositions; those documents are under lock and key and will remain so for some time, so for all we know Zuckerberg, Saverin, and the Winklevosses just spent those hours trading fart jokes before cutting each other a few checks and calling it a day. But in the end, that doesn't matter, because The Social Network remains probably the best and most prophetic film we've yet gotten about our current digital age, and it STILL might have been too nice, all things considered.

        Hell, even Ridley Scott himself has a great entry in this particular subgenre; his Director's Cut of Kingdom of Heaven is also pretty rough on the „history“ part of the Holy Land in between Crusades, but the acting is fantastic, the set pieces are astounding, it moves at a great pace, and it has an awful lot to say about the hollowness of religious pageantry and bluster in the absence of having the heart to care for real, genuine people. Saladin's reaction to Orlando Blook threatening to raze Jerusalem to the ground- „I wonder if it would not be better if you did“- was haunting even BEFORE the current round of ethnic cleansing defiling that place as I type these words.

        And, when looking at the main surface-level liberties Scott takes in Napoleon, there is lots there that could be the core of the same sort of history-but-not-really-history film that uses a time period as mere window dressing to gaze into the abyss of the human coul.

        Napoleon as a Trumpian Man-Baby who only trips to the top because others are desperate to find a strongman to fall in line behind? Not the real Napoleon, no, but that is absolutely a take you can make a great flick out of.

        Centering the film around Napoleon's fascinating relationship with Josephine? GREAT idea. Again, it's absolutely not true that Napoleon's political decisions were all based around Josephine's vagina and her many affairs, but since SO much of human history revolves around people being weird about sex, there is plenty of meat to pick on that bone(r).

        I'm so sorry. 2023 is almost over, I swear, we'll make it together. 

        Even a movie that was just all camp- Pheonix is making quite a few Decisions with his performance here and I can't say I disapprove- would be a great break from the self-suffering seriousness these types of films usually drown themselves in.

        The problem here is......well, this movie ain't it, Chief. Scott, you took a swing, but you really out to sit down for this one. All of the individual scenes or images or set pieces that work here- and there are a few, especially the sequence of Napoleon pouting around an empty, cold, and abandoned Moscow- are too scattered, and even as Scott is botching the history left and right, he's moving forward so fast that there is simply no way to get a hold of the passage of time and how one scene leads to another as Nalopeon rises and falls, then does it all again. Why does anything happen in this movie? Well.....it happens, dunnit?

        That's the real failing of this film, in the end. It doesn't just fail to justify the bad history, it fails to justify itself, period, and so leaves little to no impact in the brain.

        At least, that's my take. Granted, there's a not-insignificant chance that this movie, by default, becomes The Napoleon Movie for quite a few viewers. Aside from a well-regarded silent epic from 1927- which, of course, is neither widely known nor available- there appears to have never been a significant French production on the life and times of, and I do feel secure saying this, the single most famous Frenchman who ever Frenched.

        Yes, I too hear the comments that „ACTUALLY HE WAS CORSICAN“ approaching. We shall shunt those into the „But didja know Hitler was AUSTRIAN“ box. That's just not how historical memory works, folks.

        And it's not like France only just discovered the joy of 8mm lenses; the French filmmaking industry is (massive understatement incoming) fairly well-known and popular. There is no way to convince me that the talent, money, and interest in mining this particular well doesn't exist.

        Which is another way of saying that if this movie DOES leave a legacy of being THE cinematic portrayol of Napoleon, it's kinda the fault of the French that they let Scott get there first.

        However, I think those worries are overblown. At the end of the day, I can't feel myself able to get too worried about the potential of Napoleon to ruin historical cognizance because, well, it just isn't good enough. Effective historical revision needs to have something the mind can hold onto to stick, and there just isn't enough of that here.

        So I suppose, in the end, this has been a great deal of sound and fury about nothing. At least Scott is doing his level best to keep the world interesting.

-Noah

Friday, November 17, 2023

Hidden Lives


        Franz Jägerstätter was a farmer from the Austrian village of St. Radegund. Though happily married and content to live the simple country life, he felt called by his own moral compass to refuse military service under Hitler's Third Reich. This simple act was seen as such a threat to the Nazi regime that he and many other conscientious objectors were arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to death for their „crimes.“ Franz Jägerstätter was executed by guillotine in August, 1943. He was only 36 years old.

        Franz's story was eventually adapted into a major, acclaimed film in 2019 (called A Hidden Life), directed by Terrence Malick, one of the most influential directors of the late 20th and early 21st century. Many, myself included, consider the film to be a deep and underappreciated masterpiece.

        Mollie Kyle was born in 1886. By virtue of timing and her Osage heritage, she shared in the immense oil wealth her people had recently obtained. Tragically, this very wealth made her a prime target for one of the most insidious crimes committed against American Indigenous peoples in US history. After suffering the devastating loss of her entire family and the terrible betrayal of her own partner, she died in 1951 at the age of 50, a life considerably shortened by grief and illness.

        This Autumn, in the year 2023, Mollie's story was brought to film by a team headed by Martin Scorcese, Leonadro DiCaprio, and Robert De Niro, three of the most famous figures of American cinema. The movie, Killers of the Flower Moon, is already considered a serious awards contender, with Lily Gladstone, an actress of Blackfeet heritage who portrays Mollie, standing a decent chance to be the first Indigenous person to win an Oscar for acting.

        How does this happen? What about these two hidden lives endured long enough to be immortalized (in a sense) in film by some of the finest artists of our time?

        I can't help but see resonant parallels between Mollie Kyle and Franz Jägerstätter. Theirs truly were small lives, relatively normal and powerless (Mollie's wealth notwithstanding). Had they had better timing and lived in unremarkable times and places, I see no reason why their lives could not have been longer, healthier, hopefully happier, and perhaps just as unremarkable and unremembered. And I would not sitting here, thinking about them, writing this article.

        But they didn't live in unremarkable times, did they? Franz, the sort of quietly pious person whose lives fill centuries upon centuries of Central European history, just happened to be there at the height of the Nazi's power, in the middle of the greatest death machine the continent ever witnessed. Mollie had the misfortune of being not just a woman and indigenous, but wealthy, at the very tail end of centuries of active genocide committed by the United States against all Indigenous peoples within its borders, effectively painting three massive targets on her back from birth. Neither of them chose or likely even wanted to live in times and places of horrid suffering. Both would have likely preferred to just exist as they were and let the rest of the world be. Yet the rest of world insisted that such a fate would be denied them.

        There is, of course, one clear difference that must be highlighted- Franz Jägerstätter chose his fate in a much more active way than Mollie did. Part of what has made his story so controversial (both in real life and in discussing the film adaptation) is that being a conscienscious objector is very much a choice. It is a deliberate act to NOT conform to the status quo. So we must be careful and not try to make a perfect 1-1 comparison of a Native American woman in Oklahoma and a White, Christian man in Central Europe. That said- and I don't want to get lost in the weeds on this- I do believe that, even though his was a much more active choice, the very fact that he faced that choice- that refusing military service in his case went beyond facing just a fine, or a stint in jail- is itself a condemnation of the situation he was in. No one should ever have to even contemplate that sort of option for simply not wanting to fight in a war.

        And we return to my question. How did these two stories survive, and what meaning can we draw from them? In both cases, so many in similar situations who faced tragedies just as grave or made choices just as important, truly have disappeared in the sands of time and will never have their stories told. As is repeated in various forms over and over again in the film, it was easier to be convicted for killing a dog in America than for killing Indigenous peoples (and in many places, it still is). The cost of centuries of genocide will never be truly measurable. How many Mollies suffered similiar or worse fates whose names are lost forever?

        The fact that we know so much about Mollie herself is, in many ways, a mere product of good timing. Her family's ordeals just happened to be one of the final straws that prompted action from the federal government, where at least some facts and some perpetrators were able to be identified, arrested, and sentenced. Mollie was able to see a tiny (and, granted, inadequate) measure of justice, and- at least initially- escaped the horrific, slow poisoning her tormentors had planned for her. As a result, her family's part of the Reign of Terror is the one we know the most about for certain, while so much else- even hard numbers of how many victims it claimed- is unknowable.

        Perhaps that makes it all the more precious that we at least can know her and her family, to a limited extent. She tried to hold onto to the disappearing traditions of her people, in spite of the fact that she was one of the generations forced to Christianize and attend English schools. She was by all acounts an incredibly loving mother; her children- and this is a detail I wish had been included in the movie- recalled that one son suffered ear aches, so she would often blow gently on them until he fell asleep. I find such small things infinitely precious, especially in the face of those who would stamp out genuine love for the sake of power and money.

        Franz is threatened even more explicitly with oblivion; he is repeatedly told, by friends, family, townspeople, judges, soldiers, even Church figures, variations of „This won't matter,“ „you can't change anything,“ „no one will remember you,“ „no one will care.“ and so on and so forth. Many have been told such things when they tried to go against the grain. And certainly, in many individual cases, an act of resistance does not provoke immediate change, and the person is indeed ground up by the wheels of time.

        But that did not happen to Franz. We do remember, and we even have a movie now to help us in the remembering. He didn't end the war or directly change Nazi politics with his sacrifice, but- when taken together with all the other acts of resistance documented and memorialized- it has made something of a difference. He didn't know this at the time, of course. He wasn't playing some 5-dimensional chess game in his head to win post-mortem fame; he just felt compelled to do what was right. Just as Mollie surely did not see, wish, or expect her story to be tragic and gripping enough to merit a major movie; she simply wanted to survive and love and enjoy her family.

        It is true that so much of our world is built on the toiling of the hidden lives we never have a chance to recall or honor. We will never know just how many people we owe the debt of our lives to. Yet sometimes, fragments survive. Single stories can function as a stand-in for the others we will never know. Films, just as much as books, plays, and music, provide some of the best avenues to help these stories endure, to provide us with flickers of light in dark times. As such, I am deeply grateful for the existance of A Hidden Life and Killers of the Flower Moon, of the craft and care on display in each. Ifind it deeply powerful, and even not a little hopeful, to consider the stories of Franz Jägerstätter and Mollie Kyle, to be grateful that their fames will not be so easily forgotten. Provided, that is, that we all keep at the work of remembering, which is its own herculean task at times. But we must try, at least.

-Noah 



Thursday, September 21, 2023

Barbenheimer Redux: A Way, Way Too Early Look at Next Year's Oscars

**as of this writing, the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes are active and ongoing. The rich and wealthy only win when the rest of let ourselves be tricked into fighting with each other over unimportant minutia. The rich and powerful hold all the cards and are never to be trusted. Ever.**

**If art matters to you, do what you can to show support, and consider donating to the Entertainment Community Fund**


        It's been two months and I am still in the grip of Barbenheimer fever, so....what the hell. I think it's time for a way, WAY too early prediction round for next year's Oscars.

        Now of course, all sorts of caveats apply. The strikes remain ongoing and with numerous film releases shifted already, there is no guarantee that a) the Oscars happen at all, and b) they will happen in a recognizable format, or that there will be artificial limits on what films are considered. Also, it's September.

But I still want to do this, mostly because I already see a not-insignificant chance that we could see a Barbenheimer redux come awards season, with Barbie and Oppenheimer duking it out across the awards circuit for most of the major hardware.

        For reasons wholly unique to me, this thought hits my nostalgia buttons just right by taking me back to the 2010 Oscars. I don't know why, but that year the Oscars resonated with me in a way they never had before. It was an absolutely banner year at the movies, as well as a groundbreaking one (it was the first time the Academy went over five films for Best Picture). Major nominees included Inglorious Basterds, Up, Up In The Air, A Serious Man, and District 9. The animated category was headlined by Up, but also nominated were Coraline, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and the deeply, profoundly underappreciated Secret of Kells.

        But of course, the headliners- and, in the end, the biggest winners- were James Cameron's box office behemoth Avatar against the low-budget, politically-topical, arthouse war drama The Hurt Locker, directed by none other than Kathryn Bigelow, Cameron's ex. My then-best-friend came over to watch the ceremony and were each in opposite corners. He was all-in on Avatar, I was pulling for The Hurt Locker. Meaning I was especially pleased when The Hurt Locker ended up with the most awards, 6 to Avatar's 4, included the top two, Best Picture and Best Director, the very first time a woman won that particular award. It was one hell of a night.

        Obviously, the comparison is not 1-1. While Barbie has utterly cornered the market for crowd-pleasing blockbusters by unassailably attaining the top spot as the year's highest grossing film, Oppenheimer is very much NOT a small, arthouse drama ala Hurt Locker. Nolan goes neither small, nor low-budget. Also, Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan are not exes (as far as we know).

        Nonetheless, I had a lot of fun thinking up potential category showdowns, and in the midst of the strikes it's worthwhile to remind us how fun movies and award races can be. So let's do this, for the hell of the thing.

        To set the parameters, I will seperate this into two main section; technical awards first, then the heavies (Acting Awards, Screenplay, Best Picture). I am basing this off the award categories as officially named in last year's Oscars, so if the Academy switches anything around between now and then, it's on them.


The Technical Stuff-

Best Visual Effects:

        I am not sure if Nolan's physical re-creation of the Trinity test would fall more into the realm of visual effects or production design, but I will consider it the former for my purposes, and if the Academy sees things the same way I could actually see Oppenheimer taking this one home. However, I think the film deserves an edge here for more than just that (admittedly very central) particular scene. There is a lot more going on visually in the movie than you usually get from a scientist-oriented biopic, from the flashes of imitated atomic effects to much more subtle touches, like the overlay of drops of water on a table of maps. It all works, both big and small, so I would not feel too unsafe calling this one.

        I don't see Barbie being a threat or even a potential nominee here. That film's strengths in the visuals department center around its production design, which, speaking of....


Best Production Design:

        Honestly, Barbie's to lose. Barbieland is one of the best, funnest, and most interesting places I saw created by a movie this year. The attention to detail is astounding and the design alone achieves fantastic amounts of world-building without ever needing to waste dialogue on it. I definitely think Oppenheimer will be nominated- the re-creation of the 30's and 40's settings are perfect- but it won't win.


Best Costume Design/Best Makeup and Hairstyling:

        Every year there's basically That One Film that seems designed to waltz away with either of these awards. It almost feels too easy to say Barbie feels like That Film in either category, even though it currently does. So far there's not a particularly prosthetics-heavy competitor ala The Whale that I see as major competition, and the costumes are QUITE literally front-and-center for much of the movie (plus, they're part of the film's fun).

        My call? Barbie gets nominated in both, Oppenheimer likely gets a nom for Costume, but I see Barbie taking at least one, possibly both.


Best Film Editing:

        I honestly don't see Barbie competing here. Oppenheimer absolutely will. Nolan doesn't perhaps play quite as much with time here as he usually does, but the cuts between timelines and branches of the narrative are central to how the tension of the film builds, especially as it regards Oppenheimer's (often very contradictory) inner turmoil as he ages and his legacy becomes tied more and more to the bomb. I think Oppenheimer walks away with this one, which, traditionally, instantly makes it the heavy favorite for Best Picture (but we'll get to that).


Best Sound:

        Oppenheimer all the way and it won't even be close.


Best Cinematography:

        It might be safe to assume Oppenheimer will be a favorite here, but I feel less certain calling it now then in other categories. Another film, perhaps one helmed by a beloved veteran, could get this as a consolation. Flowers of the Killer Moon has Rodrigo Prieto working the lenses, and he's yet to win. Robert Yeoman will likely get a nom for Asteroid City. I see Oppenheimer being a competitor here, but I'm hedging my bets and won't call it yet.


Best Original Song:

        Barbie features a song by Billie Eilish, so.....yeah, I think this one's pretty straightforward.


Best Original Score:

        Ludwig Göransson will win for Oppenheimer. Or we riot.

        Going into this I assumed (especially with Dune out of the picture) that these categories would be overwhelmingly Oppenheimer's to lose, but as you can see I now don't think it'll be that lopsided. Oppenheimer is more heavily favored, but between Production, Song, Makeup, and Costumes, I think Barbie has plenty of room to gather up gold.

        Now we move on to The Heavies, and here's where it starts to get interesting.


The Heavies-

Screenplay (Original and Adapted):

        Unless the Academy gets funny here, I see these two getting nominated seperately and being the heavy favorite in their respective categories. Oppenheimer clearly lands in the Adapted corner and I suspect it's biggest competition will be Killers of the Flower Moon. Flower Moon is not out yet, but it got rave reviews from the festival circuit, so while I see Oppenheimer as the favorite as of now, that could very well change.

        Barbie SHOULD be nominated for Original- it would be fucking absurd to put it in Adapted- but the Academy has pulled weirder shit before. For now, though, I assume Barbie WILL be nominated for Original and I see it as the heavy favorite.


The Acting Categories-

        Here we might see some of the most intriguing competition of the night, depending on how the nominations play out, so let's go bit by bit, starting with the Actress categories.


Best Supporting Actress:

        The only possibility for even a nom for Oppenheimer in either Actress category is Emily Blunt's Kitty in Supporting. Frankly, Blunt has had better performances and better characters- writing woman anything remains a deservedly critiqued weak spot of Nolan's- but she does make the most of what she's given and her confrontation with Jason Clarke fucks, so she definitely could swing a nomination, but I highly doubt she will win even if she does.

        So, does Barbie have a shot? If anyone from Barbie gets a nod in Supporting, America Ferrera would make the most sense. She truly sells The Monologue and that is the sort of thing tailor-made for Oscar clipping. It's too early to say if she's a favorite to win, but I think a nom would be more than deserved, especially since I'm not terribly confident the Academy will otherwise manage to nominate a large number of non-White performers in these categories.


Best Actress:

        Margot Robbie will absolutely be nominated. It would be her third time on the roster and, especially after being snubbed for Babylon, might be seen by many to be „due.“ BUT....again, haven't seen it yet, but the positive buzz around Flower Moon has very much included its female lead, Lily Gladstone. To date, there has been only one American-Indigenous person nominated for a female acting role (Yalitza Aparicio for Roma), and no Indigenous person from any continent has ever won in any acting category. Gladstone will almost certainly be nominated, so if I'm being honest, I will likely be rooting for Gladstone no matter what. Margot Robbie is a star's star and she'll be fine.


Best Supporting Actor:

        Michael Cera as Allen, done and dusted.

        Just kidding.

        Naw but seriously. Robert Downey Jr. will be nominated, and he will win. He doesn't chew the scenery in Oppenheimer so much as imbibe it into his being and then project it outward through a blood-chilling sneer. He's been nominated twice before, but it's been an age since the last one and his career trajectory has been nothing short of remarkable. He's as due as it gets.

        Robert De Niro will get a legacy nomination for Flower Moon. Ryan Gosling will in all likelihood be nominated for his turn as Ken, the only question is whether it's for Lead or Supporting. Ken really, really should only be considered a Supporting role, hence me putting this blurb here, but I can see the Academy going either way.


Best Actor:

        He might be as rock-solid a lock as Downey but....from where I'm standing, Murphy is almost as secure here as his co-star, even if he ends up in competition with Gosling. Leo will definitely get a nomination for Flower Moon, but like with De Niro, given that he's won already, it will be a legacy nomination.

        Alright. Now for the Biggest of the Biggies.


Best Director:

        Gerwig and Nolan will both be nominated. This is an absolute certainty. Scorcese will almost certainly be nominated as well, but, again, it'll be a legacy nod. Wes Anderson might get nominated, might not. Doesn't matter. This will come down to Greta and Chris.

        It took ages, until he made a straight WWII flick, for Nolan to finally get a directing nomination. It would certainly track if he were to then finally win via making his second WWII-centered film. Greta was nominated straightaway for Lady Bird, but then passed over for Little Women. There have still been only 7 nominations total for women in this category and exactly two wins, both within the past 13 years, still absolutely not enough. Both would, under wholly neutral circumstances, be equally deserving.

        Under earlier circumstances, Nolan would have absolutely been the favorite. However, I think Gerwig has the edge here. Barbie stands far and away atop the box office pile and she has bragging rights for the foreseeable future for shattering all sorts of records for profits of female-helmed films. That alone could make Barbie a watershed in finally breaking much of the film industry out of the "Women Things Don't Sell" thinking that is still depressingly dominant. There will be plenty making the argument that Barbie/Barbenheimer "saved cinemas," and Barbie was by far the more crowd-pleasing of the two, so making Gerwig just the third-ever woman to win Best Director would certainly be a fitting, final crowning moment. It would definitely be about as obviously „feel-good“ as these things get.

        Plus, while it is certainly possible that either Oppenheimer or Barbie could sweep Directing and Picture in tandem, this is one of those years where the tiny (and of course, ineffably accurate) voices in my head say the awards will split. And, not to tip my hand too much, but I think "Barbie, Best Picture Winner" is still a step too far for too many Academy voters. Hence, Gerwig will take this one as a none-too-shabby consolation prize.


Best Picture:

        I already admitted it, but here it is in plain English; I very much think that, like Directing, this one comes down to Barbie vs. Oppenheimer, and I currently think Oppenheimer is more likely to land The Big One. Nolan is certainly due to win AN Oscar, but while he has been snubbed plenty in the Directing category, my predictions here would have him taking home two seperate awards, one for Screenplay, the other here, as one of the film's three producers.

        There are a couple reasons why I think it has the edge. On the more superficial level, it's a WWII-centered feature featuring a lot of Big Men saying Big Things, which is all you need to hook what remains of the decrepate, White-as-paste old guard still alive and puttering around the Academy back rooms. This, plus the fact that it has a more „serious“ subject matter concerning atomic weapons and scientific development that doubles as current political commentary, which is always a major plus for all Academy demographics. Comedies have always fared poorly when it comes to the Oscars, and Barbie is far more a comedy than it is anything else, so I think this WILL hold it back, or at least hold it behind Oppenheimer, in the ranked voting.

        Plus, for all the love I have for the production in Barbie and how much fun it has with its settings, there is an argument to be made that Oppenheimer is more interesting, compelling, and groundbreaking as a cinematic experience, that feels like a Movie. To be fair, those are some pretty loaded phrases that mean widely different things to different people. But I must admit that, after multiple viewings of both films, I find myself revisiting Oppenheimer the most, dissecting decisions regarding editing, shot composition, counter-intuitive sound design, the tiny folds of repetition and self-reference built into every nook and cranny of the screenplay. That's a level of continual analysis I just don't feel the need to apply to Barbie.

        My initial takeaway was that both movies were very nearly equal, but by now, Oppenheimer now holds a clear, if small, lead in my estimation. But to be clear, this is not me saying that it would be bad if Barbie won. Either film winning Best Picture- and I do think it will be one of the two- would be absolutely wonderful, each one groundbreaking in its own way and worth celebrating. But if I had a vote, I would place Oppenheimer above Barbie, and I currently suspect enough Academy voters will ultimately do the same.


        And, well, there it is! To round out the fun, here's the tally of nominations and wins I have these two pegged for, as of this writing:


Oppenheimer: 13 Nominations, 8 Wins (Visual Effects, Editing, Sound Design, Score, Adapted Screenplay, Leading Actor, Supporting Actor, Picture)


Barbie: 10 Nominations, 6 Wins (Production Design, Costumes, Makeup, Original Song, Original Screenplay, Director)


        We'll all meet back here come Spring next year to celebrate how perfectly right and on the money every single one of these predictions ended up being. ;)


-Noah Franc