OVP: Best Adapted Screenplay (2019)
The Nominees Were...
Steven Zaillian, The Irishman
Taika Waititi, Jojo Rabbit
Todd Phillips & Scott Silver, Joker
Greta Gerwig, Little Women
Anthony McCarten, The Two Popes
My Thoughts: In the Original Screenplay category on Monday (see below for links to all past 2019 contests) I opined how there was only one writing nominee that didn't come from a Best Picture race, and how this has become a problem in the last decade, and was particularly egregious in 2019. That holds just as true for this field. Only one of these movies was not nominated for Best Picture, and even that was probably a close call (I suspect that The Two Popes or Knives Out would have been the final Best Picture nominee if the Oscar Best Picture contenders were uniform). Unlike Best Original Screenplay though, which cobbled together a good (though I could've done better) lineup, this field is rougher, and contains a few movies that are total misses when it comes to their writing.
One of those, I'm really sorry to say because I know that she's incredibly talented (and #FilmTwitter is going to eat me alive if they actually catch this article) is Greta Gerwig's Little Women. One of the expectations of a film is that you shouldn't have to read the book in order to have an idea of what's going on. Unlike movies based on real events (where you can take some liberties with assuming that, say, the audience is familiar with the concept of there being two living popes), movies based on even famous books need to ground us in the story they're telling, as there's always someone coming into the tale new, which was me here (somehow I have never read Alcott's novel nor seen any of the previous Little Women through to completion). Gerwig's story reads as jumbled as she meanders through the book, giving us flashbacks without warning, and making some of the performances feel adrift (particularly Ronan's Jo and Watson's Meg). There are moments of brilliance, as I have since become more familiar with the story (and realize the work Gerwig did to make Amy so compelling), but this is not Lady Bird, and doesn't deserve to be in this lineup.
It's easier to hate on something like The Two Popes since its filmmakers & subjects enjoy less adoration, but weirdly it has a similar problem in that the script's choices hurt the overall narrative. One could easily criticize The Two Popes for the way it handles the most pressing real-world scandal of the reigns of Popes Benedict & Francis (the sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church), but if you're looking at a technical level the bigger miss for the script is that it rarely invites us into the inner-worlds of these two men. We understand very little about what it's like for them to become near-deities to over a billion people, and what drives their personal toils. I liked The Two Popes' lighter nature, but its screenplay suffers from not giving us enough of what the audience needs to understand their onscreen journey.
Jojo Rabbit also invited a lot of real-world criticism of the structure of the film, but it's another movie that (like The Two Popes) I enjoyed more than most devoted cinephiles. Here the script works better, even if there are shortcomings to what it's presenting. The film handles the tricky double-nature of Scarlett Johansson's & Taika Waititi's characters well, particularly in the latter showing the evolution of an imaginary character who exists both in reality but must stay grounded in the mind of a child. But its ending is in bad taste, and it doesn't know how to invite comic figures (like those played by Sam Rockwell & Rebel Wilson) into the movie in a way that jives with the rest of the plot. Jojo Rabbit suffers in its latter chapters from being a better idea than a movie, but I think its ideas are brought forth stronger in the first half than some of the other twists we've already seen in these films.
The Irishman is another movie that plays with our concept of time, and in some ways it doesn't succeed (similar to Little Women), but that's not a fault of the director (instead, it's the fault of the visual effects artists and the casting department who couldn't find a convincing way to make Al Pacino look younger). Otherwise, Irishman is a home-run script, gifting us with three hours of story that runs like a swiss clock, unfolding chapters about these men's humanities (with some slipping away while others maintain their grasps) while also giving us a robust look at the full history of the mob & its interactions with the Teamsters Union during the era of Jimmy Hoffa. It takes a lot to make an epic that feels intimate, but The Irishman achieves that.
Joker does not. We are now entering the big categories, and as a result this film doesn't have some of its technical prowess to rely upon as reprieve from my criticism, and the script for Joker is a gigantic mess. Taking aside the potential twist of the film's final moments (not going to give that away here, but you know what what I'm talking about if you've seen it & know this doesn't work), the movie is dour, has too many stray plots, & borders on the offensive in the way it shows mental illness as a gateway to violence. The movie has no joy, life, or redemption, and without it there's also no contrast, making it feel like looking at a monochromatic wall rather than anything with texture. The writing of Joker, a movie I didn't like but can tell that there was some skill in its execution, is the one area that fail on every level for me.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes combine their writing categories so there is no adapted or original distinction, and we already gave the prize to the original screenplay of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. However, both The Two Popes and The Irishman did get into the Top 5 with the field. The BAFTA's split, but went exactly after Oscar's lineup, and even picked the eventual winner there with Jojo Rabbit coming out on-top. WGA is usually better for differentiation (though it too went with Jojo for the win), bumping The Two Popes in favor of A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. I think that Beautiful Day was in sixth place, as there's almost no other options (in my predictions at the time, I even listed Avengers: Endgame as a 7th place option this field was so thin for plausible Oscar competitors).
Films I Would Have Nominated: I'm definitely picking some new names here, but I don't blame Oscar for getting totally distracted as the adapted work in 2019 was not good (my field is better by my measure, but this is the weakest lineup I mustered in 2019 for my personal Oscars). I'd have opted to keep Beautiful Day (Marielle Heller is always so good at crafting films like this), and I'd have surely thrown in Christian Petzold's ingenious modernization of a 75-year-old novel with Transit. I also think I'd have found room for How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (by the shifting rules of this category over the years it likely would count as adapted in 2019), as it takes some prowess to draw such an epic tale to a close.
Oscar's Choice: For me this was seen as a proxy consolation prize for Taika Waititi & Greta Gerwig (both of whom just missed a Best Director nomination). Oscar seemed to think Jojo Rabbit was in sixth place & gave the former the trophy.
My Choice: Not even a question mark for me-with Transit not in the contest, The Irishman is the best of the scripts here, and would get my statue. I'd follow that with Jojo, Little Women, The Two Popes, and Joker WAY in back.
Those are my thoughts-what about you? I know it hasn't aged as well for some, but I must have company over with The Irishman, or are more people siding with Jojo? Does Little Women hold up better upon revisit if you're super familiar with Alcott's work? And what are the under-sung adaptations of 2019 that I should be investigating? Share your thoughts below!
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