OVP: Art Direction (2011)

OVP: Best Art Direction

The Nominees Were...

Laurence Bennett (Production) and Robert Gould (Set), The Artist

Stuart Craig (Production) and Stephanie McMillan (Set), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

Dante Ferretti (Production) and Francesca Lo Schiavo (Set), Hugo

Anne Seibel (Production) and Helene Dubreuil (Set), Midnight in Paris

Rick Carter (Production) and Lee Sandales (Set), War Horse

My Thoughts: We are a finishing up the last of the visual categories for the Oscars-next will be the four sound/music categories.  But first, we must tackle art direction.  While my favorite tech category is Cinematography, I suspect that a number of people like this one the best, and why wouldn't they?  This is the category that celebrates one of the most astonishing aspects of cinema-the worlds that are created (sometimes based on history, sometimes by imagination) in front of us on the shining silver screen.  And with destinations like Paris in multiple decades, Old Hollywood, the countryside farms of France and Great Britain, and the Harvard of wizarding schools, I won't make us wait any longer to make the journey.  Let's dive in!

The striking thing about this category is how much time we spend in France.  While I don't recall Harry Potter making it to Paris (though I'd have to re-view the film to confirm we never get there), we have three films that spend all or part of the film in France, and The Artist has two French leads!  The French certainly were taking over this category, and most impressively with Hugo.  Ferretti/Lo Schiavo are old pro's in this category-they've got three Oscars a piece between them, and have created worlds for Mel Gibson, Tim Burton, and most frequently, Martin Scorsese.  Here they show their true heights with the beautiful world of France in 1931.

What makes this special isn't just that it's a captivating place-and-time, it's the way that it gives the audience a whirl of details, while never appearing gaudy.  Occasionally, in films like, say The Grinch, this category goes for quantity over quality, letting the film fall into a "let's throw a bunch of additional crap onto the screen" sort of pitfall.  With Hugo, though, we get quantity and quality-the Train Station, the many levers and ticks of the clocks, the sets that make up Melies flashbacks-they all lend themselves marvelously to the world that Scorsese wants us to enter.  Scorsese's films always aspire for atmosphere-that they are people who could live and walk amongst us, and even in a film that strays fairly far from the "real," Scorsese still gets that atmosphere-fluffy, snow-covered, and filled with discovery.  I wanted to go back to this world, and I felt like I could, and that's a sign that the art director is doing his job.

Take that and compare it, with, say, Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris.  Now, Woody rarely gets technical accolades for his films, and I think that's a crime.  In what stretch of the imagination, for example, do Diane Keaton's outfits in Annie Hall deserve less Academy recognition than those worn in Airport '77?  And the apartments in his New York City movies mean Manhattan for most of America-intellectual chic, with books and magazines littered amongst the potted ferns (for the record, if you're moving to Manhattan, either come armed with a winning lottery ticket or don't expect your apartment to look like that).  So it's disappointing that when he finally grabs a nod in a technical category, it's for something as run as the mill as his Paris.

It's not that Midnight's sets and production is bad, it's just not worthy to be gifted with an Oscar nomination.  The best parts are when they descend back into the Belle Epoque and enter Maxim's-the reds and browns of the set scream forward, and it's so romantically lit.  Paris (give or take my beloved New York) is the most intoxicating city in the world, and is never lacking in ambience, but unlike Scorsese's film, we don't ever get the full effect, and I feel like while we may get some upper-middle class realism in most scenes, we aren't treated to anything award-worthy.

Now that I've had to speak ill of Woody Allen (something I never like to do, even when he may deserve it-did anyone see his latest movie?), let's get the Spielberg (another of my beloveds) question mark out of the way as well.  Spielberg's film is also an oddity in this race.  In a year that wasn't lacking period films (Oscar tends to favor them in this category, though not to the extent he does in Best Costume), I was surprised they picked a film that takes place mostly on the battlefield and outdoors, two things that require minimalist work in this category.  The bunkers of World War I are very realistic, and the war field is quite marvelous (Joey running across the field is a spectacle), but otherwise there's nothing truly special about this film either-the interiors are fine, and again, obviously accurate, but it's not the lived-in marvelous accuracy that a film like Children of Men achieved to near perfect effect in this category.

And while we're in the countryside of Britain, we must make it to its mythical counterpart, the truly spellbinding world of Harry Potter.  Like I've mentioned in other categories, Deathly Hallows is handicapped by being one of eight, but there's more than enough to be wowed about in this film to justify this nomination.  The castle in particular we get to see in its cavernous glory-going into until now unforeseen dungeons and rooms, and we get a fuller appreciation of the entire Hogwarts grounds.  The Art Direction has always been the series' best technical aspect, and it doesn't disappoint in this film.

Finally, we're going to return once more to The Artist (for the record, I don't think I ever truly appreciated the magnitude of winning multiple nominations until I started writing this recap-Hugo and The Artist sure did clean up, didn't they?).  Again, and I say this with a lot of admiration for what the filmmakers were trying to do, but I don't see this as being truly extraordinary in the way that Hugo and Harry Potter are.  Sure, there is a lot of greatness in the set-the staircase and the dressing rooms are both splendid additions, but that's really it in my mind-the entire film looks less like a lived-in world than a set on a movie lot.  That, I know, is possibly what they're going for, but it then becomes homage and mimicry, but not necessarily greatness.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Art Directors Guild cited an almost entirely different lineup.  While Hugo (their eventual winner) and The Artist both stuck around, the Shakespearean world of Anonymous, the Southern homes of The Help, and the cluttered offices of "the Circus" of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy were all nominated instead.  The BAFTA's matched up almost identically with Oscar (and also gave the award to Hugo), with only Midnight in Paris being dumped in favor of Tinker Tailor.

Films I Would Have Nominated: You know how above I talked about that lived-in, transformative quality that a number of the films were missing?  It's a shame that one of them didn't get out of the way for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, easily the best of this category (it even outdoes Hugo and Harry Potter).  The spy headquarters look exactly like you'd expect them to be-disorganized, sheltered, with clear touches of government money (beautiful conference rooms) juxtaposed with the wear of people toiling through a constant work schedule.

Oscar's Choice: Yet another win for Hugo, probably the Oscar it most deserved of the ones that it took.

My Choice: This would be an easy choice if I had the world of George Smiley to choose.  It'd also be easy if I was able to recognize Stuart Craig's work on the Harry Potter series as a whole.  And it's also easy to rank the final three films (The Artist, War Horse, and Midnight in Paris, for the record).  But after hemming and hawing, I'm going to give this to the magical Scorsese Paris.  It's a tough decision, but if I'm being truly in a bubble only looking at this five films and their quality (the goal of this project), I have to say it's the slight superior, even if that means that Stuart Craig never gets honored for one of the most impressive achievements in the history of the field (his other two nominations are against even stronger competition) due to his work being a fragment in a series rather than a whole.  So congrats to Dante and Francesca, my by-a-hair winners!

And now, of course, I welcome you to discuss in the comments-of the five films, what movie deserved the trophy?  What films should have been nominated?  And of all films in 2011, which had truly the best Art Direction?

Also in 2011: Cinematography, Costume, Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, 2011 Recap