OVP: Best Picture (2020)
The Nominees Were...
David Parfitt, Jean-Louis Livi, & Philippe Carcassonne, The Father
Shaka King, Charles D. King, & Ryan Coogler, Judas and the Black Messiah
Cean Chaffin, Eric Roth, & Douglas Urbanski, Mank
Christina Oh, Minari
Frances McDormand, Peter Spears, Mollye Asher, & Dan Janvey, Nomadland
Ben Browning, Ashley Fox, Emerald Fennell, & Josey McNamara, Promising Young Woman
Bert Hamelinck, & Sacha Ben Harroche, Sound of Metal
Marc Platt & Stuart Besser, The Trial of the Chicago 7
My Thoughts: We are at the close of our 2020 run, and while I didn't quite get this done fully in June, it was darn close. We will be hitting this weekend (likely on Monday-if you're an international reader the US largely shuts down for Independence Day on Monday) the My Ballot, and then kicking off our 19th season next week. I'm still deciding the cadence of how often we'll have these going forward, but it'll likely be 2-3 a week as I am getting very excited about the sharp momentum we've been able to maintain over the past year on getting this series further & further on. But that's enough housekeeping, let's finish off with the eight Best Picture nominees of 2020.
We're going to start with the film that won Best Picture, Nomadland. I think that more than any film this one suffered the most from not getting to have its moment on the big screen, as the film's immersive quality is probably best seen through the forced lens of sitting in a large, darkened room without any distractions. But it's still beautiful, and impossible to deny. I loved the way that McDormand plays against type, a lifetime of cynical characters suddenly washed away with a woman filled with a mournful hope. The cinematography, the editing, the writing, they're all magical in Zhao's ode to an American Dream that greed has forced to look different for all.
Mank is the other film that I think suffered the most from not being in a theater (for the record, I would've preferred all of these films in theaters as I generally think that's the best way to see pretty much any movie, but if I had to corner it down to two it'd be these two). The movie's downward spiral of one man meeting his destiny (likely for the worse, though historically for the better) combines well with the gorgeous black-and-white cinematography and intense, magical set design. The performances are uniformly good, with Amanda Seyfried & Charles Dance standing apart as Hollywood survivors in a way that the titular Mank never could be, and the way that Fincher drifts in-and-out of Citizen Kane, this monument to a long ago Hollywood still beholden to corporate destiny, is divine.
Claustrophobia is also a central component of The Father, which gains so much of its strength not just from a truly seismic pair of performances from Anthony Hopkins & Olivia Colman, but also from the shifting world of the apartment. We get inside of the titular character as he begins to watch his world descend around him. "Wasn't that pillow blue before?" and "why is that couch in a different spot?" become the background of the more obvious questions around what is and isn't real...this movie is perfectly-constructed as a horror movie with a real human element to it. That use of genre & truly adapting to the visual medium of film from the stage play is something that few films are able to truly achieve.
Promising Young Woman also knows how to blend genre & make its film unexpectedly visually arresting to tell its story and upend viewer expectations. The movie plays as a combination of romantic-comedy, thriller, and an increasingly dark tale of grief in ways that you wouldn't anticipate based on the poster, which makes it feel like a revenge flick. Carey Mulligan is superb as the titular character, but honestly the casting department is knocking it out of the park at every level, particularly in the way that Emerald Fennell's film highlights guys in Hollywood like Adam Brody and Christopher Mintz-Plasse (generally typecast as "nice guys" in most films) as the unexpected date rapists, to underline how normal what's happening to Mulligan's Cassie is...she also smartly casts women that we trust implicitly in comedic roles like Connie Britton & Alison Brie as enablers of this culture to show exactly how complicit we all are. The film is smart, and I can't wait to see what happens next from this filmmaker.
I'm also excited to see the next chapter from Lee Isaac Chung, whose Minari is so biographical I hope this is the start of a long conversation with audiences through film for the director. I loved the softness of Minari, as if Chung is rifling through an old photo album and telling us stories of his life. I do think there are occasionally moments where the film feels too detached, leaving some of the performances without the right amount of catharsis to feel like they've grown later in the film. That's a small criticism (it's a good movie), but when you're playing with a lineup this good, you have to be prepared to nitpick a bit.
The same can be said for Sound of Metal, which is overall a good movie but doesn't quite now what to do with the direction of its main characters. While the film is well-acted (particularly Paul Raci as a mentor to our main character), Riz Ahmed's character doesn't get enough grounding in the clear narrative that he isn't "losing" anything with his hearing going if he takes the opportunity to understand his world better. As a musician, though, he is losing something as while he can always communicate, he has lost his ability to do the thing he loves most, and I don't think the film bridges that enough to the reality of his life. Again, this is nitpicking about a good movie, but it's very apparent that the film isn't as successful as it could've been.
The one movie in this lineup that I genuinely didn't like was The Trial of the Chicago 7. Aaron Sorkin has written some of our best film & television creations (The West Wing, The Social Network), but his work as a director is continually uninspiring, and here, outright bad. The movie has a handsomeness to it that some might enjoy but I felt was too "movie of the week" and while the cast is too stacked to not have some good moments, largely it gets lost in Sorkin's dreadful script. Every character in this movie sounds like everyone else (i.e. sounds like Sorkin), spouting off lines intended solely to advance the narrative and never to feel authentic to the characters. Chicago 7 nearly triumphed here (I think it was second place for Best Picture), which would've been a crime in a lineup this good.
The final nominee is Judas and the Black Messiah, a film that would've been truly bizarre to win since it didn't come out in 2020, but early 2021 (the pandemic made the eligibility window truly odd). The movie handles its politics well, making it a damning indictment of the criminal justice system in the United States, which while it has become more mainstream to talk about, has not changed enough since the murder of Fred Hampton in the late 1960's. But while Daniel Kaluuya is excellent as our lead, his co-lead LaKeith Stanfield plays a part that is severely underwritten, and feels like a blank vessel, an unforgivable sin given that Stanfield is one of our best working actors.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes separate their categories into Drama and Musical/Comedy, so you have Nomadland beating Mank, Promising Young Woman, The Father, & Chicago 7 while Borat 2 bests Hamilton, Music, Palm Springs, & The Prom in Musical/Comedy. The BAFTA's stick to the five-wide (the only people still doing it) pre-2009 lineups that Oscar used to do, and has Nomadland atop Promising Young Woman, The Father, The Mauritanian, & Chicago 7, while the PGA picked the entire Oscar lineup save for The Father and added in Borat 2, Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and One Night in Miami (Nomadland won). I will be honest that while everything points to the Borat sequel getting in (two major victories in the precursors, and acting/writing nods from the Oscars), I don't buy it-I think ninth place was Ma Rainey which is very much Oscar's speed and scored two lead acting nods.
Films I Would Have Nominated: You'll find out later this weekend!
Oscar’s Choice: In a weird twist, Nomadland managed to be a soft-spoken, elegant tale that won every precursor and easily took the Oscar.
My Choice: I am going to go with my gut, which at the time was Mank and despite Nomadland (silver) and The Father (bronze) aging very well in my mind (and Mank being critically-dismissed by film voices I respect), I'm sticking to my guns and giving the top prize to David Fincher's ode to Old Hollywood. Behind these three is Promising Young Woman, Minari, Judas, Sound of Metal, and Chicago 7.
And there you have it-another OVP in the books. Is everyone on Team Nomadland or can I convince at least one friend to join me on Team Mank? Do you think Borat Subsequent Moviefilm could've become one of the biggest surprise Best Picture nominees ever, or is the safe money in an expanded field on One Night in Miami & Ma Rainey? And overall-what is your favorite movie of 2020? Share your comments below!
Also in 2020: Director, Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Original Screenplay, International Feature Film, Animated Feature Film, Sound, Original Score, Original Song, Production Design, Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2020
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