OVP: Best Director (2019)
The Nominees Were...
Bong Joon-Ho, Parasite
Sam Mendes, 1917
Todd Phillips, Joker
Martin Scorsese, The Irishman
Quentin Tarantino, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
My Thoughts: All right, we are moving into the final weeks of the 2019 Oscars project. Today & Wednesday we will be doing our Director & Picture ballots based solely on what Oscar thought. Though we've normally been doing our "If I Had a Ballot" series on Thursdays we have a special break from that on Thursday, so next Thursday we will conclude our 2019 Oscars with me finishing up with the 2019 ballot. Between then-and-now, we'll also be kicking off our new year, which will start on Friday. That's a lot of bookkeeping, but don't worry I've got it under control if you didn't follow, and you can just kick back & start perusing the 2019 Oscar nominees for Best Director.
Let's start with, I don't know...Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino is obviously a director of great talent, someone who creates genuine visions for the audience that other directors imitate but can't duplicate. The problem with his films (sadly) since the death of legendary film editor Sally Menke is that they're too long, and frequently overindulge his worst instincts (to stretch scenes that should be cleaner & better-edited). Hollywood is the best film he's made since Menke's passing, the rare film that feels like it should be as long as he's demanding it to be. The movie has touches that need trimming, of course (particularly the ending feels bloated), but Tarantino is at home in the world of New Hollywood in a way that he hasn't been since Inglorious Basterds.
Scorsese is also a director who is known for his longtime collaboration with an iconic, genius female editor, and here that relationship is put to the test as Thelma Schoonmaker & Scorsese parcel through a 3+ hour epic film that needs to justify that length. Scorsese's films don't always do that-something like Casino is a good example, a movie that has quality, but meanders to the point of it becoming a problem through a gargantuan length. That's not the case with The Irishman. While the visual effects pose a challenge, the story is riveting, showing the rise-and-fall of corrupt organized labor (and its mob connections), seeming in some ways like a bookend on the mob movies of the 1930's. We'll have films from the mob in the future (likely even from Marty), but there's a finality here that is profound & a sign of a director who can justify every scene. Truly visionary work, and a genius, bizarre companion to Scorsese's other 21st Century magnum opus, Silence.
Bong Joon-Ho doesn't entirely dispense with some of his own trademarks in Parasite, but it does feel like they reach another level in the picture. Parasite is a movie that shouldn't work-it tackles too many genres, it takes too many risks, & it makes too many assumptions about how the audience will consider the characters. Other directors have used this kind of ambition and failed (including Bong Joon-Ho). But it does work-great films are borne of risks that actually connect with the audience, and Parasite feels like it is a race car rounding tight mountain corners but instead of careening off, it lands each turn flawlessly, a thrilling take on economic inequality & the untold toils that it inflicts on the "have not's."
Sam Mendes is not Scorsese, Joon-Ho, or Tarantino. While the latter three directors have visual motifs & story flourishes that you can instantly recognize, Mendes sometimes feels like a brilliant director-for-hire. Films like American Beauty, Revolutionary Road, and Skyfall all have vision & care (they stand among my favorite films of each of those years), but they don't feel made by the same director. But that also makes his movie more expressive & freeing-1917 doesn't feel the burden to put an auteur stamp on it, and instead becomes a point-of-view struggle through the trenches of World War I. Mendes' best touches on the movie are the ones that feel like they leave no fingerprints, letting the audience connect with the work on a more personal, individualistic level.
Which brings us to Todd Phillips. It feels mean in some ways to end with Phillips after four great directors, all of whom are giving really good movies to the audience, but that's what the Academy did to me. Joker is a bad movie, one that has a perspective that never pans out, and is indulging the story's most masochistic angles without ever considering plot or even the characters at its center. It's a good example of "just because it's somber doesn't make it good," and Phillips direction does nothing to add life or dimension into the picture itself.
Other Precursor Contenders: We'll be traveling back further in time for our next Oscar profile, which is exciting as I want to get to an era where the precursors didn't feel so uniform. That was the case with the Globes, who went with a carbon copy of the Oscar lineup, though they favored Sam Mendes. The BAFTA Awards went with the exact combination-a lineup that mirrored Oscar while giving the trophy to Sam Mendes. The DGA also went with Sam Mendes, but here they skipped Todd Phillips for Taika Waititi. Obviously Taika is the only new name here, and considering his screenplay win I have to assume he was sixth place over potential nominees Greta Gerwig (Little Women) & Pedro Almodovar (Pain & Glory).
Directors I Would Have Nominated: Phillips aside, this isn't a bad list at all & is actually one of the more forgivable group think efforts of 2019. That said, I'd still have made room for Christian Petzold's Casablanca on LSD take in Transit, Terrence Malick's return-to-form in A Hidden Life, and James Gray's space odyssey Ad Astra.
Oscar's Choice: In the biggest upset of the night (at least until Best Picture), Sam Mendes was trumped by an historic win from Bong Joon-Ho.
Oscar's Choice: In the biggest upset of the night (at least until Best Picture), Sam Mendes was trumped by an historic win from Bong Joon-Ho.
My Choice: I will also copy Oscar, though I do so with apologies to Martin Scorsese, who comes very close to winning. The rules of the OVP are ironclad that I need to pick the person who made the best film of the lineup (and not consider, say, that one director is making his best film while another is making his fourth or fifth best)...keeping that in mind I still think I lean more on Joon-Ho's originality over some of the minor flaws of Irishman (but it's tight). Behind them is Mendes, Tarantino, and Phillips way in the back.
Those were my thoughts-how about yours? Are we all kind of on the same page that the Joon-Ho upset was totally worth it, or does someone want to make the case for Sam Mendes? Is Taika Waititi going to be able to make another movie that hits with Oscar in the same way as Jojo and get a directing nod, or is this as close as he'll get? And how did Parasite buck so much history to win this trophy? Share your thoughts in the comments!
Also in 2019: Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Animated Short, Live Action Short, Previously in 2019
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