OVP: Best Adapted Screenplay (2022)
The Nominees Were...
Edward Berger, Lesley Paterson, & Ian Stokell, All Quiet on the Western Front
Rian Johnson, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Kazuo Ishiguro, Living
Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, & Christopher McQuarrie, Top Gun: Maverick
Sarah Polley, Women Talking
My Thoughts: Moving into the adapted screenplay race, we get to a slate that is not entirely dependent on Best Picture nominees (though they're there, don't you worry). I talked about how the Best Original Screenplay represented the best of 2022, with no losers in the bunch, but the Adapted Screenplay race...is a different story. There are winners here, don't worry, but this is a contest that very much could've used some improvement, even if 2022 was a year where the best movies were originals.
Glass Onion is in a weird area. I am following Oscar's lead here where I consider this adapted (similar to all sequels) even though it's most definitely an original story (with literally just one repeat character), but once you get past category placement, I think it's delicious, in every way an improvement on the original outing. Johnson isn't good at giving us a super twisty, unpredictable mystery (I knew who the killer was before there was even a murder), but the Janelle Monae twist is strong, and the script is funny. Littered with delicious jokes and toning down some of the more ridiculous aspects of Craig's Benoit Blanc, this is another winner from one of Hollywood's most eclectic working directors.
Kazuo Ishigiro became the sixth Nobel laureate to date to be nominated for an Oscar (joining George Bernard Shaw, John Steinbeck, Jean-Paul Sartre, Harold Pinter, & Bob Dylan if you wanted a little trivia in your back pocket this morning). His work here, bringing to life Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru is really well-done. I loved the way that Living gives us the moments of simple pleasure for a man whose life has been lived in such routine, giving it up with a joy he'd never felt before. The ending is too long, but it's hard to tell where to trim as the ending is so predicated on getting it just right to land (softly) all of its delicate punches.
Delicate is not a way you would describe the script of Top Gun: Maverick. While the technical aspects of this movie are hard to deny, the movie is not breaking new ground with the script. Much of it is rooted in the already hyper-masculine nature of the original movie, and what is added is nothing more than father-son relationship crap that you could find in any other movie. The script is rife with cliche, and the jokes aren't clever either. I get the appeal of this movie, even if I don't live by it, but in terms of the the writing-Oscar undoubtedly could've gotten more creative.
Like, how do you compare it to a movie like Women Talking, the final Best Picture nominee that we haven't discussed yet (it got just two nominations)? The movie is a chamber play, all discussion and realizations and richness. The way it unfurls, where we learn not just more about these characters, but also more about the freedom they feel in a world where there are no men for the first time in their deeply controlled lives, is brilliantly done by Polley, giving us a conversation not just about freedom, but about how human beings handle risk.
All Quiet on the Western Front, on the other hand, is startlingly prosaic in the way it handles complicated conversations about war and youth and the propaganda we do to convince the world they are at all compatible. The inter-spliced scenes we have where Daniel Bruhl is trying to save our protagonists isn't so much about gilding the lily as cutting off its head, it takes so much away from the already telegraphed end of our protagonists, and there's little added to the story (or even wrung from the story) that feels new to someone who has seen the other Best Picture winner.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes combine their writing categories so there is no adapted or original distinction, and in 2022 all but one (Women Talking, which lost) of the nominees were originals so not much can be gleaned there in terms of the other films in the conversation. The WGA gave their statue to Women Talking, and tossed Living & All Quiet on the Western Front out for She Said & Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. BAFTA was quite smitten with All Quiet on the Western Front, giving it a win, and picking a largely alien list from Oscar, with Living, The Quiet Girl, She Said, and The Whale their other nominees. In terms of sixth place, it was 100% The Whale-other than it being a terrible screenplay (it's worse than all five of the ones that Oscar picked), I'm still stunned that a stage play somehow got bumped for an acting sequel.
Films I Would Have Nominated: There are obvious weak links here, but I'll be totally real that Oscar didn't have a lot of great choices to go after given how thin adapted was in 2022. Had they gotten over their genre bias, though, a nomination for the metaphors and critiques in The Menu would've been a good place to get inventive.
Oscar's Choice: Oscar thankfully suffered from a bout of good taste and gave the statue to Women Talking against probable second place All Quiet on the Western Front.
My Choice: There is no beating Women Talking for me. In a film that's meant to be an "actor's movie" because of the ensemble cast, the biggest star of the bunch is the script. Behind it I'll go Glass Onion, Living, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Top Gun: Maverick, in that order.
Those are my thoughts-what about you? Is everyone just happy that Oscar decided to go for an unheralded film that got Sarah Polley an Oscar, or does someone want to go in a different direction? Is Top Gun: Maverick the silliest Oscar nomination this decade so far? And given its love elsewhere, what do you think held the writers' back from going with The Whale? Share your thoughts below!
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