OVP: Production Design (2020)

OVP: Best Production Design (2020)

The Nominees Were...

Peter Francis & Cathy Featherstone, The Father

Mark Ricker, Karen O'Hara, & Diana Stoughton, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom

Donald Graham Burt & Jan Pascale, Mank

David Crank & Elizabeth Keenan, News of the World

Nathan Crowley & Kathy Lucas, Tenet

My Thoughts: After a long and much-needed vacation, we are back to more regular blog articles this week (and fully back next week-I can only tackle so many problems in one full swoop, and being a single homeowner & getting back from a break requires starting up a lot of engines), and so today we're going to finish off the visual categories for the 2020 Oscars with Production Design (links to past races at the bottom of this article).  Production Design is one of the categories that was the least-linked to the Best Picture race (which I love-spread the wealth), with only two Best Picture citations in this field, and both were wonderfully-deserved.

Looking at a movie like The Father on-the-surface, an art direction nomination seems a bit preposterous, and like they were over-nominating a favorite movie.  After all, with the exception of one scene, the entire movie takes place in the same posh London apartment.  But the magic of The Father is that its claustrophobia is never stretched-we are left in Anthony's world, which has no sense of permanence, and is constantly moving.  It's initially a trick of the light, seeing decor in different places or a slightly different shading in the paint or furniture, but it's all meant to disorient-is this different, or is this the same?  The Father is based on a stage play, but it doesn't fall into that trapping, and totally acclimates its production design to the big-screen.

Mank is a far more traditional nominee, but it's also splendid.  While it'd be easy for this look at Golden Age Hollywood to simply be a case of "most" production design, it's far better than that.  We see homages to the world of not just Herman Mankiewicz, but also of Charles Foster Kane.  Similar to The Father, we get scenes that feel like they function as a memory of both men, and of us as an audience-is this gigantic dining room table actually in the 1941 classic, or have we become so engrossed in this world that everything starts to remind us of Welles's opus?  Glorious, grand, but with a hint of decay, Mank makes every drawing room and sound stage feel authentic & just a little bit wrong...as if we're continually scratching behind the Tinseltown dream machine.

Christopher Nolan's films frequently suffer from similar flaws (particularly sound design & overwrought final acts), but few directors make their gigantic budgets count quite in the same way as Nolan, and you see every inch of Tenet's millions on the big-screen when it comes to its production design.  The car chase scenes are effortless, the gears & wheels feeling at-home in this world, and we get a view into impossible wealth as Kenneth Branagh & Elizabeth Debicki's yachts & homes exude a kind of standoffish "we will succeed" dominance that a simple performance couldn't.  Add in the ways that the production design highlights the strangeness of the screenplay (the inverted bullets), and you've got a winner.

I was less enthralled with News of the World's production design.  Part of this is that nature is doing the heavy-lifting here.  Beautiful cinematography & natural outdoor vistas are not really the job of the production designer, but more the location scout.  There are aspects of this that work.  The dimly-lit rooms that give a sense of tightness in these communities (and why Tom Hanks' journey is so difficult) being a highlight, but there's not a lot here.  Covered wagons & old shacks have been done before, and authenticity doesn't necessarily mean creativity (i.e. not everyone who does their job deserves a treat).  This is good, but it's not Oscar-worthy.

The same can be said for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.  The movie picks sets that work well for its story-we want it to feel almost like we're watching an August Wilson stage show, and it shows in the sparseness of the music rooms, but that also makes it look like a filmed play, which pulls you out when they want it to feel realistic.  Minimalism works for the story, but it also feels a bit cheap to give something so sparse a nomination, even when juxtaposing the opening act's fullness to the remainder of the movie's emptiness.  If this was the olden days when Costume & Art Direction were nominated by the same branch, I'd chalk this one up to Ann Roth love overflowing, but without that, I think it's just Oscar running out of ideas.

Other Precursor Contenders: The Art Directors Guild broke its nominations into Contemporary, Fantasy, & Period, so we have 15 nominees to peruse here.  Fantasy went with Tenet as their victor (naturally), with Birds of Prey, Pinocchio, The Midnight Sky, & Wonder Woman 1984 getting losses to its inevitability.  Period film went to Mank against Ma Rainey, Mulan (which feels like it should've gone for Fantasy, right?), News of the World, and The Trial of the Chicago 7, while Contemporary picked Da 5 Bloods against I'm Thinking of Ending Things, Palm Springs, Promising Young Woman, & The Prom (how they skipped The Father I'll never know).  BAFTA wasn't so foolish, nominating The Father, Rebecca, News of the World, & The Dig to lose to Mank.  In terms of sixth place, I'd make an argument it was probably The Midnight Sky, which is both in Oscar's wheelhouse (he's been very into space epics in this category since nominating Gravity), and the ADG nomination seals that assertion for me.

Films I Would Have Nominated: I'd have nominated The Midnight Sky, which might not work as a movie (it's too dull, and the plot needs more focus), but it also has great set work.  Unlike Ma Rainey, it makes its minimalism almost feel like a plot point that never distracts.

Oscar’s Choice: The one Oscar that Mank was guaranteed pretty much from its opening frame, an easy win against Ma Rainey.

My Choice: I'll also go with Mank, though part of me wants to pick The Father since it had the cleverest scene work (it didn't, however, have the scene-after-scene grandeur of Mank).  Third is Tenet, followed by News of the World & Ma Rainey.

Those are my thoughts-how about yours?  Does everyone kind of agree that this was the Mank Oscar that even its haters would sign off on, or do you want to stray from the line?  Why do you think that Midnight Sky couldn't get a nomination after so many other space odysseys did?  And seriously-how did The Father miss Contemporary Design with ADG but land with the much more averse AMPAS?  Share your thoughts below!

Also in 2020: Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2020

Past Best Art Direction Contests: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019