OVP: Best Sound Mixing (2019)
The Nominees Were...
Gary Rydstrom, Tom Johnson, & Mark Ulano, Ad Astra
Paul Massey, David Giammarco, & Steven A. Morrow, Ford vs. Ferrari
Tom Ozanich, Dean Zupancic, & Tod Maitland, Joker
Mark Taylor & Stuart Wilson, 1917
Michael Minkler, Christian P. Minkler, & Mark Ulano, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
My Thoughts: We hit the halfway point in our look at the 2019 Oscars with Sound Mixing, which as I mentioned on Monday is going away as a category in 2020 (the two sound categories are going to be combined going forward). This is a pity, because these are distinct mediums & I like that the Academy had categories recognizing both, but looking at this lineup...it's perhaps for the best? The two fields, after all, are quite repetitive in terms of their nominations, and that doesn't always work-if you think of these as the same thing, you're going to nominate the same films, but not all films have great sound editing and sound mixing.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, after all, factored into both categories but is considerably better here than in its near nonexistent Sound Editing. While this isn't showy work, it is much more cogent. Tarantino incorporates his song score into the picture like few other directors working, and he does a decent job of capturing the sound of the sixties, particularly in terms of technology (think of the Wrecking Crew screening Margot Robbie's Sharon Tate witnesses). Other scenes aren't as impressive (the long DiCaprio dialogues aren't all that crisp), but you can see where the Academy was headed with this nomination, which wasn't the case in Sound Editing.
This isn't quite the same for Joker, which has better mixing than editing (mostly because the latter is virtually nonexistent), but neither is all that compelling. Joker's Score, as you might remember (links to all of the past contests below) was not one of my favorites, and so I don't find it a win that it is so omnipresent & repetitive. Without that, Joker is not all that worthwhile as a sound feature...there's nothing special, and no gimmicks to make me call it out in a big way. It just sort of is.
Ford vs. Ferrari, though, feels roughly on-par with both positions. It's occasionally hard for an untrained ear (like mine) to be able to distinguish the car sounds that are obviously happening organically onscreen & the ones that are being edited in, but the more impressive aspect of Ford is that the dialogue isn't drowned out. We have seen this as an unfortunate trend in recent years, where action films (like, say, Tenet) have inaudible dialogue being spoken that the audience can't learn (thus sacrificing story), in favor of hyper-realism from the soundscape. I hate this trend, and I applaud Ford for letting us hear what the actors are saying (even if what they're saying is pablum).
1917 requires near perfect sound mixing to make it work, and it also requires a lot of invisible strings to feel immersive while also not sacrificing that it is a movie. A lot has been made about the film's cinematography/editing, how they were able to convince the audience that the movie was one long-shot, but that also needs great sound mixing, putting in realistic yelling & background noise while also navigating artificial sounds (like the crashed plane or the roar of a battlefield) & a constant Thomas Newman score. 1917 succeeds on all levels-it finds a way to impart upon us a true wartime experience without ever needing to jar the audience with hyper-realism.
Ad Astra was the one film of the bunch that didn't make it into Sound Editing (which is usually a good sign-the films that are odd-man-out oftentimes are the most worthwhile inclusions in the list because they were good enough for the Academy to notice without a Best Picture nod). There's a reason for that. The muted noise on the moon is the clear aural highlight in the picture, but the different sounds of Mars, Neptune, Earth, and of course the baboon attack make every action scene distinct & recognizable. Ad Astra wouldn't be special were it not transportive about what we're seeing on the big screen.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Cinema Audio Society splits their nominees between live-action and animated films, and as can be expected, there's significant overlap for live-action. Ford won the prize, with Joker, Hollywood, Rocketman, and The Irishman all getting the remaining nominations, while in Animated the big winner was Toy Story 4 over Abominable, Frozen II, How to Train Your Dragon III, and The Lion King. The BAFTA Awards went with 1917 as their winner, besting Joker, Ford, Rocketman, and Rise of Skywalker. It appears to be between Rocketman (two precursors) and Skywalker (a precursor and a Sound Editing nomination) for sixth place, and considering the Academy's general antipathy for the Elton John biopic, my gut says it was the latter.
Films I Would Have Nominated: I am much more interested in the overall ambience of a film's sound, and so I would've picked some atypical films for this field. I'd start with A Hidden Life, which uses nature & a brilliant score as its backdrop over a pacifist wartime epic, and I'd also include Last Black Man in San Francisco, which does a great job of adding in a city soundscape and a recurring score that electrifies the movie. I'm not immune to quality action movies, though, and I don't entirely get why Skywalker was bumped for lesser work, particularly considering it had already made it into Sound Editing.
Oscar’s Choice: A rarity in recent years, the Sound Mixers bucked the editors and picked 1917, probably in a close race over Ford vs. Ferrari.
My Choice: This is tough-both 1917 and Ad Astra are world-class & worthy victors, but I'm going to go with the space epic, which has just a degree more difficulty with its shifting settings. In bronze is Ford, followed by Hollywood and Joker.
Those are my choices-how about you? Are you with me & Ad Astra, or are you with the (admittedly fabulous) team that won from 1917? What exactly was I missing from Joker that had people falling over themselves for its sound work? And who was sixth place-Rocketman or Rise of Skywalker? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Those are my choices-how about you? Are you with me & Ad Astra, or are you with the (admittedly fabulous) team that won from 1917? What exactly was I missing from Joker that had people falling over themselves for its sound work? And who was sixth place-Rocketman or Rise of Skywalker? Share your thoughts in the comments!
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