OVP: Best Costume (2017)
The Nominees Were...
Jacqueline Durran, Beauty and the Beast
Jacqueline Durran, Darkest Hour
Mark Bridges, Phantom Thread
Luis Sequeira, The Shape of Water
Consolata Boyle, Victoria & Abdul
My Thoughts: We are continuing our look at the Oscar categories of 2017 with Best Costume Design, the best (period & fantasy...never contemporary) wares of the film season in Oscar's eyes. 2017 featured a double-dip of one of Oscar's more-celebrated designers (Jacqueline Durran) but across-the-board it's a pretty standard issue collection of nominees. You've got your royalty porn, you've got your World War II, you've got your recreations of a classic storybook, & of course you've got your woman in love with a fish...actually, that's less standard issue so let's begin with The Shape of Water since Luis Sequeira was our only first-time nominee in this bunch.
The Shape of Water has some fantastical elements, but its costume design isn't necessarily grounded in the visual splendor happening around Guillermo del Toro's world. In a similar fashion to Sequeira's second (and pending as of this writing) nomination for Nightmare Alley, the Costume Design gets sort of pushed a bit to the side in favor of art direction & cinematography. As a result, Sequeira's work isn't bad (it has an authenticity & keeps the film grounded), but it also isn't all-that-special, with Spencer & Hawkins regularly wearing the same uniforms, and not a lot of differentiation where we can get new character details through their costumes. It's nice that Sequeira got in with the insular club, but this feels like a coattails nomination.
The same can be said for Jacqueline Durran's Darkest Hour. Here, we have a bit showier costumes, with us trying to get some of the rumpled looks of Winston Churchill next to the more polished ensembles of some of his subordinates during World War II. The only problem is that it seems to be the only interesting character work that Durran, a generally very good designer (I need to caveat she's an OVP winner as she's not going to have a great morning in this article), puts into Darkest Hour. Everything else feels like it was plucked out of a beautiful couture store in the 1940's, but haphazardly. Particularly the outfits worn by Kristin Scott Thomas & Lily James feel like you couldn't pick them out outside of the confines of this picture.
That isn't the case with Durran's Beauty and the Beast, but that's an entirely different problem. I didn't like Beauty and the Beast as a movie (it is the least of the Disney recreations that I've seen), and the costume design is about as good of a metaphor as you can get for why it failed. Every costume feels so meticulously attached to the original Disney picture that there's zilch creativity with what Durran is doing-it's more about trying to create a copy of this iconic movie than giving us something authentic & new. What's worse is that because she's dealing with a film that has been a children's Halloween costume for decades, this looks less like paying homage and more like a cheap touring company production-nothing in this movie seems to be something you couldn't find on a rack at Downtown Disney for $39.99. Compared to Sandy Powell's remarkable Cinderella just two years earlier, this is a disaster.
Victoria & Abdul proves that you don't have to be beholden to an original design or even preconceived notions when it comes to your costume design work, and can still come out a winner. This movie has authentic looks from the late Victorian Era as Judi Dench and her surrounding court have every inch of pomp & circumstance for the audience, but they also give us character work. Look at how heavy some of the dresses are that Dench is wearing, as if it's adding onto the crushing weight & isolation she feels in a world without her great loves (and where her son is basically begging her to die). Look at the way that all of the fabric looks real, as if it might tear or feel the dust of an echoing palace as it passes by. Add in that some of the dresses are just gorgeous (film is a visual medium-it's nice to see something pretty), and you've got a fresher take on Oscar's favorite go-to trope in this category.
But Phantom Thread is the movie that probably cheats its way to the hearts of most when it comes to this lineup. I mean how can one compete? The film is about a fashion designer, and about the world that he creates for himself from silk & chiffon. The danger with Phantom Thread is that Reynolds Woodcock's designs are billed as miracles, and if they don't come across that way the story falters, but Bridges lives up to that hype & then some with gorgeous, iconic looks that feel like they've been plucked out of the closets of Grace Kelly & Joanne Woodward, freshened slightly and given to the world to see. Every look is a creation, adding onto the complicated genius of the main character. A total triumph of costume design.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Costume Designers Guild splits their categories into Period, Fantasy, & Contemporary, so we have 15 nominees for this precursor in 2017. For Contemporary, I, Tonya took the cake (even though it was taking a look at designs from 15 years earlier...contemporary is a loose term with this this awards body), besting Get Out, Kingsman: The Golden Circle, Lady Bird, and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri. Period went with The Shape of Water over Dunkirk, Murder on the Orient Express, Phantom Thread, & The Greatest Showman, while Sci-Fi/Fantasy went for Wonder Woman over Beauty and the Beast, Blade Runner 2049, The Last Jedi, and Thor: Ragnarok. BAFTA went with Phantom Thread besting almost the entire Oscar lineup save for I, Tonya instead of Victoria & Abdul (am I crazy, or would you have assumed the reverse given the awards bodies on that one?). In terms of sixth place, I think it was The Greatest Showman, which was the only prediction I got wrong at the time, rather than the more precursor-blessed I, Tonya. While the latter isn't technically contemporary, Oscar skipped it in a few tech categories it easily could've made it, which makes me wonder if it was a movie that was more of an acting player, and The Greatest Showman feels in this category's wheelhouse.
Films I Would Have Nominated: I know that in the years following Marie Antoinette Oscar has basically pretended that the movies of Sofia Coppola don't exist, but The Beguiled has some of the best kinds of touches that Oscar usually goes for-a rich variety of period costumes but with lots of character touches (the Civil War by way of Miss Havisham). No way I would've skipped such a contender.
Oscar's Choice: I suspect given that CDG snub this wasn't the foregone conclusion we think it is now, but Phantom Thread took out The Shape of Water to get Mark Bridges his second statue.
My Choice: Phantom Thread was already playing with a packed deck, and it didn't drop the cards-an easy victory for me. In a different year, I would've been fine going with Victoria & Abdul, a solid rise-above the traditional royalty looks that Oscar always goes for. Behind these two are The Shape of Water, Darkest Hour, and Beauty and the Beast. And with that, we officially hit the longest streak we've ever had with me siding with Oscar's choices. We'll get to Cinematography later this week to see if it's 5/5.
And now, of course, it's your turn. Are you joining Oscar & I for a tour of the House of Woodcock, or does someone want to venture into one of the other pictures? Will Oscar ever tire of nominating royal looks, or is that going to happen as long as there are movies? And was it I, Tonya or The Greatest Showman just out-of-reach for this category? Share your thoughts below!
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