87th Academy Awards Breakdown

The Oscars matter insofar as without them, fewer people would have seen or at least have the privilege to consciously ignore small, human-sized movies like Boyhood, Whiplash and Still Alice. Or so the thinking goes; a world where works of art are not pitted against each other in competition, where the long months of campaigning and op-ed defaming makes each final victory feel more than a little pyrrhic, could very well be more egalitarian and receptive to intimate, intrinsic artistry — but that is not the world in which we live.

For better or worse, Sunday’s 87th Academy Awards reflected the conflicted state of things in America today, with every forward-pushing acceptance speech tempered by a nostalgic spectacle or tone-deaf joke. There was, as per usual, no lack of self-congratulation.

Birdman fits the Best Picture profile, given the film’s insular regard for itself, which aligns perfectly with the Academy’s. Along with other recent winners The Artist and Argo, it offered Hollywood the chance to stop, light a smoke and think, “Aren’t we great?” The ceremony’s low points belabored this self-love, stretching the broadcast’s runtime to the longest in eight years, while the brightest moments shined past any one film or celebrity to illuminate, as only an awards show can, a myriad of political issues.

The low points, I am sorry to say, almost always involved the affable, seemingly perfect host, Neil Patrick Harris. He started strong with a song and dance number that ran through movie history and brought Into the Woods star Anna Kendrick on stage for harmonies. A cynical Jack Black jumped on stage to rant, in his own singsongy way, about the omnipresence of superheroes, “formulaic scripts” and, reaching for his smartphone, “screens in our jeans” in movie culture today, to much applause.

Without such an irascible counterpoint for the rest of the show, Harris struck a tone at once overly chipper and flippant. For the whole show, Oscar-winner Octavia Spencer had to go along with a gag where Harris locked his “predictions” in a box that, when revealed, proved how the whole show is predictable, scripted or just ill suited to three-hour joke set-ups. His banter punned on Reese Witherspoon’s name or the furry ball dress of Dana Perry, just after the Best Documentary Short Subject winner opened up about her son’s suicide. His Birdman/Whiplash parody, where he took the stage in tighty whities to Miles Teller’s accompaniment on drums, displayed his most obvious assets without hiding, at least to awards season addicts like me, that Fred Armisen and Kristen Bell made the same joke at the Independent Spirit Awards the night before.

What this show never fails to deliver are the moments of unscripted awkward that, against all the micromanaged rehearsals leading up to it, scramble the evening’s gloss. I should disclose that the so-called disasters, like John Travolta’s garbling of Idina Menzel as “Adele Dazeem” last year, are my favorite parts of any live broadcast — anyone who follows up how embarrassing Travolta was with the decree that “he should never be up there again!” is no fun. Thankfully the show’s producers are fun, and reunited Menzel with Travolta, who after being introduced as “Glom Gazingo” petted the Frozen singer’s cheek as if he were Romeo.

It was the creepiest, most GIF-ready snippet of the night, though equally weird was when Terrence Howard took the stage to introduce Whiplash, The Imitation Game and Selma. Midway through, he paused to say, “Our next film … is amazing. I’m blown away myself right now,” before reading the synopsis not to Selma, but The Imitation Game. Drunk off emotion or some other drug, Howard could barely convey his enthusiasm for the other injustice-themed also-ran in the Best Picture race and not the good one. It felt like anything could have happened during his minute on stage; Imagine if Travolta just wandered, out of focus, in the background.

While Tegan & Sara, The Lonely Island, Questlove, Mark Mothersbaugh and Will Arnett hit peak goofiness during The LEGO Movie’s “Everything Is Awesome,” it was John Legend and Common’s performance of “Glory,” from Selma, that provided the moral center for the night. With lyrics evoking both the march to Montgomery and the Ferguson protests and a grand backdrop of Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, “Glory” struck a chord with the audience, bringing star David Oyelowo and Chris Pine to tears. It’s easy to be cynical about such emotional displays at awards shows, but the way Legend brought Dolby Theatre and viewing parties across America to silence during his final solo cut through all the noise to contemplate the seemingly irreconcilable divide that exists in our country, the Academy most certainly included, to this day. Lady Gaga’s Sound of Music medley, though impressive, felt too sweetly nostalgic after such a conscious musical statement

When “Glory” rightly won Best Original Song after, Common and Legend were one of many to unashamedly marry thank-yous with impassioned political statements. Common pleaded for equality and freedom of expression via mention of the Charlie Hebdo and Hong Kong protests, while Legend stressed the disproportionate amount of incarcerated black men in prison. Best Documentary winner Laura Poitras, with her Edward Snowden-starring Citizenfour, urged awareness of the surveillance state, while Patricia Arquette, who won Best Supporting Actress for Boyhood, stumped for gender equality as Meryl Streep, flanked by a cheering Jennifer Lopez, pointed and hollered in approval. Graham Moore, Best Adapted Screenplay winner for The Imitation Game, seized everyone’s breath as he confessed to attempting suicide 18 years ago. He followed this harrowing anecdote with the hope that his presence on stage will inspire those younger than him, who feel like they do not belong, to “stay weird” and “stay different.” It was a powerful speech.

The thing about Graham Moore winning, though, is that he wrote an awful script. “Sometimes it is the people who no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine,” is a line The Imitation Game trailer holds dear and the movie itself repeats, out of the conviction that historical characters speak as if composing their memoirs. Share that quote on the Dolby stage, however, and it naturally, indisputably belongs. The Oscars so rarely award real art because they, themselves, are not art, and they don’t need to be. The most memorable moments are inspirational, rousing and morally good. Great movies are rarely any of those things, and never all three at once, but “the movies,” the mystique of Hollywood that the Academy and theater chains sell, is, always.

It is that feeling of uplift, if oh so fleeting, that jettisons Eddie Redmayne’s light track record and The Theory of Everything’s deadness from my mind when he took the stage for Best Actor. His youth, his recent marriage and his humility made for an infectiously adorable speech, which filled the room I watched from with high-pitched “Awww”s. Julianne Moore deserved Best Actress not just for her work in Still Alice but for her unparalleled career, yet her speech was what we wanted to hear for its focus on love, family and community. The work itself has no hold on the rapture of the Oscar moment — before all the lights and cameras, only gratitude, conviction and a manageable dose of human weakness thrive.

Birdman’s second-half sweep — in Best Cinematography, Original Screenplay, Directing and Picture — introduced the manic, musky humor of the film into the speeches, which did not vibe well with the prevailing Oscar ethos. I have already expressed my unfavorable opinion of the winning film, which I think is little more than clever. Boyhood and The Grand Budapest Hotel were the rare masterpieces to actually make it into Best Picture consideration, which makes their loss more painful, since cinephiles more often than not revere their favorites in closet-sized shrines, without much notice from the outer, louder world.

But Alejandro González Iñárritu, Birdman’s director, said something that resonated with me during his acceptance speech, which went as follows: “Ego loves competition, because for someone to win, someone has to lose. But the paradox is true art, true individual expression, as all the work of these incredible fellow filmmakers, can’t be compared, can’t be labeled, can’t be defeated, because they exist, and our work will be judged, as always, by time.” I can’t say I think his film, with its Justin Bieber references and inexplicable gender politics, will survive that ultimate test, but I thank him for taming that ego this awards season has fed so well, for just a moment, to remind us of the absurdity of this whole artless enterprise.

This article was written for The Cornell Daily Sun.

Beyond Outrage

It goes without saying that the Sony hack — in all likelihood North Korea’s response to the Seth Rogen and James Franco comedy The Interview — and the Charlie Hebdo massacre vary in the severity of their crimes. But in both cases, strong and articulate progressive voices have countered all the calls to defend “freedom of expression” and #JeSuisCharlie’s by criticizing the content of the debateably satirical works themselves. Adrian Hong wrote a popular piece for The Atlantic titled, “North Korea: Not Funny,” while many on the left, in publications like Vox, Slate and Jacobin, criticized the content and motives of Charlie Hebdo. For The Hooded Utilitarian, Jacob Canfield said Charlie Hebdo’s “cartoons often represent a certain, virulently racist brand of French xenophobia.” These are well-meaning, well-informed lines of argument that raise issues we should be considering in 2015.

While in theory I should consign these critiques, I do not, because theory has no claim on comedy. While watching The Interview, I laughed a good many times, even as the critic in me groaned this has got to be Franco’s worst performance to date. While decoding the seemingly offensive cartoons via the blog Understanding Charlie Hebdo, which provides translation and context, I did not laugh, necessarily, but I understood how the caricaturists effectively put air quotes around their most egregious creations, often lampooning the perspective of their country’s serious and seriously racist National Front party. The politically engaged French citizen, knowing the context, could find these cartoons humorous, because their inherent shock value can catalyze in said person a needed second or two of reflection during his or her average, busy day.

Because if there is one thing art does that political criticisms of it too often forget, it provokes a response from the viewer — an emotional, physical, automatic response that imbues that art, no matter its quality, with an individual significance. So I may laugh at The Interview, a stupid film, and not be considered callous to the suffering of North Koreans or — worse of all! — a bad critic. It is a superficial, irresponsible movie with many many flaws, but it succeeded, for me, as passable entertainment. To judge The Interview as a failure because it does not convince its viewers to “do something to help change this odious regime and bring about human rights for North Koreans,” as Hong does, is to freight it with an Oscar-baiting importance that would induce fatal cases of eye-rolling in its target audience.

But I am grateful Hong wrote that Atlantic piece. While I may disagree with the parameters he chose for critiquing a particular film, he brings a far more significant issue — the plight of innocent North Koreans — to the attention of many. For every thousand Facebook shares fueled by schadenfreude, there has got to be one person who read Hong’s story and felt a pang of profound moral outrage, worth exploring more and taking action against. That positive outcome is something only the popularity, and stupidity, of The Interview made possible. Whether Franco and Rogen respected or trashed their film’s sensitive subject matter, the media will be there, assuming its post-Twitter role as a spontaneous and widely visible corrective to the sins of popular culture.

For better or worse, this chatter only crescendos when the object of passion is a challenging, thrilling piece of bona fide art. It is for this reason that no one is talking about The Theory of Everything or The Imitation Game, with their spectacularly unearned denouements,and why we cannot stop arguing over Selma and American Sniper. Pitted by opportunists as ideological enemies, the latter two films both complicate their heroic narratives through changes of perspective (in Selma, Coretta Scott King rightly accuses her husband of something he does not fess up to) and uncomfortable pauses (as a V.A. psychiatrist questions the historically efficient sniper Chris Kyle, the camera lingers on the soldier’s face as he conclusively denies any feeling of regret). Neither film is totally devoid of sentimentality, but both provoke thought through emotion, ensuring that any moral misgivings will fester and leech.

I know there are some fine, smart people out there who will disagree with my praise for Selma and American Sniper especially, and that they could pursue more productive routes of attack than “Selma gets LBJ wrong!” or “That Chris Kyle was a liar.” That is how these things go, as they should. But it does us little good to go on about what A gets wrong about X or Y, because a great film’s politics should be difficult to reduce to binaries and viral polemic. Find a recruitment poster if you’re looking for a call to action, and go outside if you’re looking for facts. Emotion remains the only barometer of truth, so long as that emotion stubbornly resists translation.

This article was written for The Cornell Daily Sun.

The Oscar Disconnect

Courtesy of Santi Slade

What movie will win Best Picture at the 86th Academy Awards is anyone’s guess, provided those guesses are Gravity, American Hustle or 12 Years a Slave. With the Golden Globes, Producers Guild and Screen Actors Guild spreading their love amongst them, you can rest assured that voters will choose one of these final three. Which one is the big question, although I predict a victory for 12 Years a Slave, a movie I also happen to think is the best from these choices.

But, as any scholar of Oscar-ology knows, film quality has little to do with a movie’s chances. Having fun with the Academy Awards requires accepting that they are meaningless indicators of artistry, innovation, genius, etc. The Oscars are more a game of sociological politics than anything else.

Say 12 Years a Slave wins Best Picture. Do you think most voters — 94 percent white and 77 percent male, according to L.A. Times — process the significance of a black protagonist struggling to retain his agency within his own story? Or the nuances of Steve McQueen’s direction, as he drapes Solomon’s face in darkness throughout his first beating? I am floating critical readings of the film here, attempting to break down a daunting and daring mammoth in order to support my claim that, “12 Years a Slave is a great film” with evidence. A critic must do that, especially a pretentious amateur such as myself.

The Oscars do not reward films for their intellectual prowess, like, ever. Yet, that does not mean they do not reward complex, abrasive fare like 12 Years a Slave, which has two advantages: 1) The ending packs an emotional wallop, reducing you to a puddle of tears whether you like it or not. The last dramatization of this sort to win Best Picture was Schindler’s List, a movie that does not skimp on the waterworks for its devastating final minutes, either. 2) And like Schindler’s List, 12 Years a Slave is capital-I Important, with History and Race and Human Suffering and The Banality of Evil populating its thematic lineup. 12 Years a Slave also has the ignominious honor of being the first high-profile slavery film since 1997’s Amistad, if we discount the subject’s pulp fiction treatment in Django Unchained. That means you can expect plenty of votes stemming from white guilt — the “We have to give 12 Years a Slave Best Picture so I can sleep again” mindset — more than deliberate appreciation.

All this could backfire, of course. Academy voters could see 12 Years a Slave as too tough, too “brutal” (McQueen’s least favorite word) a slog and opt for American Hustle’s lighter, almost paper-thin touch. However, American Hustle does not have what similar confections like Argo and The Artist had: It is not a movie about how movies — that is, of course, those made in Hollywood — are so great. If David O. Russell started his movie with a make-up girl pasting Christian Bale’s dead rodent of a toupee together and let Jennifer Lawrence frolic about a movie set, Singin’ in the Rain-style, the Oscar would be his. For now, he will just have to hope his streak of nominations over the past three years amounts to enough goodwill to vote his fun, if decidedly flawed, movie to the top. If American Hustle does, indeed, win, blame the actors’ branch, the Academy’s largest and surely the most receptive to the energy Russell pulls from his actors.

Then, of course, we have Gravity. Alfonso Cuarón’s passion project has almost $700 million to its name in worldwide grosses, a figure Hollywood can feel good about after exporting a string of not only god-awful but, lord almighty, underperforming blockbusters last summer. A 97 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes speaks to a level of “universal acclaim” that not even past CGI pioneers-cum-critical darlings like Avatar, Hugo and Life of Pi had. With Academy favorite Sandra Bullock starring as the latest sci-fi heroine since, what, Terminator’s Sarah Connor and a nifty 90-minute runtime, Gravity has a few statistical perks up its sleeve. It should also be noted that the Academy’s prominent but faceless below-the-line faction (editors, sound mixers, visual effects programmers) surely love Gravity’s technical powerhouse.

What do we learn about the films by analyzing their Oscar chances? Nothing. Well, to be a Best Picture nominee, a film must pass a few preliminary tests: slick presentation; lofty, if not very provocative, subject matter; coherence of narrative. Somehow American Hustle squeezed in despite failing that last one, and I’m sure most of the Academy denounced the fringe lunatics who got The Tree of Life in two years ago (my kind of people, by the way). But pretty much any Best Picture nominee looks and feels like a “good movie,” if not a surprising, or motivated, or layered, or even smart one.

I sense that Nebraska, my favorite film of last year, received its nominations on the backs of its aging stars more than the brilliant subtext Alexander Payne and screenwriter Bob Nelson weave into every scene. Then again, many movie lovers, inside and outside the Academy, looked over Nebraska. I not only felt the power of that movie as I watched it but let it slide around in my mind for days and weeks after. I realized how certain minute moments (like the Mt. Rushmore visit, or the brothers’ air compressor theft) spoke volumes to these characters and their rich history. Those epiphanies are mine and will stay with me, despite what other critics may say, despite how much money it makes, despite how many Oscars it does not win.

This article was written for The Cornell Daily Sun and can be viewed at its original location here.