OVP: Best Original Screenplay (2003)
The Nominees Were...
Denys Arcand, The Barbarian Invasions
Steven Knight, Dirty Pretty Things
Andrew Stanton, Bob Peterson, & David Reynolds, Finding Nemo
Jim Sheridan, Naomi Sheridan, & Kirsten Sheridan, In America
Sofia Coppola, Lost in Translation
My Thoughts: All right, we're going to be trying some growing paints on the blog in the next few weeks. I'm trying to tackle some new things in my personal & professional life, and so we'll be a little shy on the blog for the next 2-3 weeks as I attempt to jump start a few New Year's resolution projects that I am not giving up on until I give a proper college try. As a result, while we will have articles near daily, we won't be prioritizing film reviews for at least the next couple of weeks (if you follow me on Letterboxd, though, you'll find that I'm still reviewing everything I've been seeing, which has been a lot of 2003 & 2021 movies in the past week). To make up for that, we'll be increasing dramatically the number of OVP Ballots we're doing in the coming weeks (which, I will admit now, is part of one of those projects I'm doing, but more on that to come). With this, like last week, we're going to get three OVP articles in the coming days, including today's look at the Original Screenplay Oscar (giving us a slight break from JRR Tolkien).
When it comes to the Best Original Screenplay race, there's kind of two classes of nominees (sorry, but it's real), and so we're going to get three films that made very little impression on me out of the way first. Probably the best of these is Jim Sheridan's In America. The film isn't bad (unlike the next two), but the screenplay is not its best asset. Sheridan's story is brimming with sentimentality, bordering on the saccharine, and it feels like an odd element from the film to cite (even in a year where most of the major movies were from adapted work)-the acting, especially by the two leads, is much more the calling card for In America.
Still, it's better than the meandering mess that is Dirty Pretty Things. One of those movies that stars a number of actors before they were famous (hello Chiwetel Ejiofor, Benedict Wong, & Sophie Okonedo), and features Audrey Tautou, who is a favorite of one of TMROJ's most devoted readers, but it just doesn't work (sorry Robin-please forgive me!). The story is all-over-the-place, needlessly violent & aggressive, and rarely does it make any sense. I get that, like In America, it has a famous film director behind the camera who might make giving it a nomination feel appropriate, but that's no excuse for AMPAS to cover for it when it's dreadful.
The last of the bunch is The Barbarian Invasions, which doesn't have solid acting like In America and doesn't have messy ambition in its storytelling like Dirty Pretty Things, but instead is an eye-rolling comedy, frequently trading in hackneyed sex jokes that even in 2003 felt like they had dated badly, and not understanding how to move the story along or make the characters feel relevant to the audience. I have admitted before that I have not seen the original of this movie, which might in part be my problem, but considering the first film came out 17 years earlier, I can't be alone in feeling lost (and it's hard to fathom it gets better with more context).
All of this is to say thank goodness for Sofia Coppola. Lost in Translation is everything that these first three films is not. Witty, nuanced, and deeply observational, it takes a really smart look at two people at a crossroads in their lives. Coppola's script is such a winner partially because she takes two stories that should be different (a coming-of-age vs. a midlife crisis), and makes them intersect without having one of them feel inauthentic. She also makes sure the movie plays like a love story even if that's not really what it is...it's romantic, it's not a love story, and that makes all the difference in some of the later moments of the picture.
Finding Nemo might be the best traditional story, at least in its execution of any of these five films, and I love that the Academy took the time here to honor only the third animated film for a writing nomination with this movie. The story unfolds beautifully-with tales like this, frequently the problem becomes that we dwell somewhere too long or that the story becomes repetitive (after all, when you can explain the plot in a sentence, that's a risk). But Nemo avoids that by keeping both of its stories fresh, and with really great comic one-liners uttered by one of Pixar's best-assembled vocal casts (particularly Ellen Degeneres, getting the role of a lifetime).
Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes combine adapted and original into one category, and despite 2003 being a year dominated by adapted screenplays they went with three originals here with Lost in Translation winning against Love Actually and In America. The BAFTA's separate the two, and went with The Station Agent for its victor over 21 Grams, Finding Nemo, Lost in Translation, & The Barbarian Invasions, while the WGA favored Lost in Translation against Bend It Like Beckham, Dirty Pretty Things, In America, and The Station Agent. My gut says that it was 21 Grams (which got way more love with Oscar) rather than the more-rewarded The Station Agent getting into sixth here (and I'm kind of stunned it didn't make it against Dirty Pretty and Barbarian).
Films I Would Have Nominated: I mean, it's hard to grasp that we have a Tarantino film in the running here, one could argue his best this century (it's between Inglourious and Kill Bill for me), but that he missed out for his first take on the Bride's odyssey is a mystery that needs solving one day.
Oscar’s Choice: As the only Best Picture nominee of the bunch, there was no beating Lost in Translation, even against Jim Sheridan's resurgent film (which had a bit of steam at the time).
My Choice: Lost in Translation is one of my favorite screenplays, period. There's no beating this, though Nemo would've made a solid winner in most years. The remainder are such a "meh" crowd I honestly don't care, but for posterity's sake let's go...In America, Dirty Pretty Things, and The Barbarian Invasions.
Those are my thoughts-what about you? Can we all just state that Sofia deserved this rather than pretending there were other contenders who should've shown up? What's it going to take for an animated film to finally win a writing Oscar? And was it 21 Grams or The Station Agent just missing this crew? Share your thoughts below!
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