OVP: Best Production Design (2016)
The Nominees Were...
Patrice Vermette & Paul Hotte, Arrival
Stuart Craig & Anna Pinnock, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Jess Gonchor & Nancy Haigh, Hail, Caesar!
David Wasco & Sandy Reynolds-Wasco, La La Land
Guy Hendrix Dyas & Gene Serdena, Passengers
Stuart Craig & Anna Pinnock, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
Jess Gonchor & Nancy Haigh, Hail, Caesar!
David Wasco & Sandy Reynolds-Wasco, La La Land
Guy Hendrix Dyas & Gene Serdena, Passengers
My Thoughts: We finish up the 2016 visual categories this week with Best Production Design (previously referred to as Best Art Direction, and I'm not changing my tags on this one so they're both housed under that if you're looking for past contests). This category, unlike some of our other profiled races, wasn't really a carbon copy of the Best Picture race. Say what you will about the quality of the nominees, but when only two of the cited films are Best Picture nominees, you're looking at a branch that did its homework. That said, I love any entry I can find into figuring out how to start these discussions, so let's begin with those two Best Picture citations, shall we?
La La Land continues its streak as one of the most-nominated films in Oscar history (it's the first of the four films that won fourteen nominations that we've profiled in this fashion). Like a lot of the visual work in the film, this is a solid effort and a worthy citation. The big scene in the film is the end dream sequence, recalling An American in Paris, with lavish sets, dance numbers, but always tasteful design, but the entire film is gorgeous on this front. Think of the pool party, which borrows tastefully from the movies of Frankie Avalon & Annette Funicello, or the look of the apartment, its perfectly small kitchen intimately setting the stage for the couple's increasingly conflicting romance. The film admittedly is borrowing from a lot of other pictures, but it does so well enough to occasionally create its own motif. Again, I've got problems with the movie, but we haven't hit them yet in these write-ups.
The other nomination is Arrival, which continues the recent trend of citing space-age adventures for nominations in this category. Arrival makes sense-the sort of odd vacuum where Amy Adams speaks to the aliens is mesmerizing, and the perfect setting for such a strange and wonderful interaction. That said, this isn't Gravity or The Martian where the sets continually remain fascinating. The tents and some of the party scenes aren't as interesting as that one set design in the ship, and it doesn't have the benefit of those two films of being largely in space. Maybe if we'd spent more time with the creative design of these ships, it might have felt like a worthier nomination, but as it stands it's the only one of these nominations that feels like it got in more on the basis of its Best Picture status than fully earning it.
Arrival is a much better film than Passengers, but that doesn't stop Passengers from having the more intriguing set design. Unlike Arrival, the entire film is shot in space, and we're thus given more creative license from the plot. The ship is awesome, a weird combination of 1990's mall meeting Star Trek. Recall the great gold-and-reds of Michael Sheen's restaurant, or the way that the plants start to seep into the shops around the ship toward the end of the picture. There are times I think the sets have more to say about this world, with its hyper-consumerist culture and people who would be willing to leave behind everyone they know-and-love for a chance to inhabit a different earth (but still want to spend cash at food courts) than the actual script does.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them gets arguably the best subject for its creations. After all, Stuart Craig has forged ahead some truly mesmerizing worlds in his time in the mind of JK Rowling. He delivers on occasion-the look at an early 20th Century Central Park is beautiful, and I loved getting into the creatures that Newt so carefully monitors, but the American Ministry is a bit of a snooze, and one wonders if this is just more of the same for Craig, who could create these worlds in his sleep. Impressive, but most of this we've seen before.
Finally we have Hail, Caesar!, which gets the showy backlots of classic Hollywood as its motif, but while I loved some scenes (particularly the glow-y Esther Williams sequence with Scarlett Johansson), this movie fights itself. There are scenes where the sets feel true & authentic, like the sequence involving Channing Tatum as a gay, tap-dancing naval officer, while others (such as the apartments off the set) feel cheeky and outrageous, not really rooted in reality. This is kind of the problem in general with this good-but-not-great Coen Brothers movie-it can't really decide what its direction is so we get noteworthy, but not really coherent, work from Gonchor & Haigh.
La La Land continues its streak as one of the most-nominated films in Oscar history (it's the first of the four films that won fourteen nominations that we've profiled in this fashion). Like a lot of the visual work in the film, this is a solid effort and a worthy citation. The big scene in the film is the end dream sequence, recalling An American in Paris, with lavish sets, dance numbers, but always tasteful design, but the entire film is gorgeous on this front. Think of the pool party, which borrows tastefully from the movies of Frankie Avalon & Annette Funicello, or the look of the apartment, its perfectly small kitchen intimately setting the stage for the couple's increasingly conflicting romance. The film admittedly is borrowing from a lot of other pictures, but it does so well enough to occasionally create its own motif. Again, I've got problems with the movie, but we haven't hit them yet in these write-ups.
The other nomination is Arrival, which continues the recent trend of citing space-age adventures for nominations in this category. Arrival makes sense-the sort of odd vacuum where Amy Adams speaks to the aliens is mesmerizing, and the perfect setting for such a strange and wonderful interaction. That said, this isn't Gravity or The Martian where the sets continually remain fascinating. The tents and some of the party scenes aren't as interesting as that one set design in the ship, and it doesn't have the benefit of those two films of being largely in space. Maybe if we'd spent more time with the creative design of these ships, it might have felt like a worthier nomination, but as it stands it's the only one of these nominations that feels like it got in more on the basis of its Best Picture status than fully earning it.
Arrival is a much better film than Passengers, but that doesn't stop Passengers from having the more intriguing set design. Unlike Arrival, the entire film is shot in space, and we're thus given more creative license from the plot. The ship is awesome, a weird combination of 1990's mall meeting Star Trek. Recall the great gold-and-reds of Michael Sheen's restaurant, or the way that the plants start to seep into the shops around the ship toward the end of the picture. There are times I think the sets have more to say about this world, with its hyper-consumerist culture and people who would be willing to leave behind everyone they know-and-love for a chance to inhabit a different earth (but still want to spend cash at food courts) than the actual script does.
Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them gets arguably the best subject for its creations. After all, Stuart Craig has forged ahead some truly mesmerizing worlds in his time in the mind of JK Rowling. He delivers on occasion-the look at an early 20th Century Central Park is beautiful, and I loved getting into the creatures that Newt so carefully monitors, but the American Ministry is a bit of a snooze, and one wonders if this is just more of the same for Craig, who could create these worlds in his sleep. Impressive, but most of this we've seen before.
Finally we have Hail, Caesar!, which gets the showy backlots of classic Hollywood as its motif, but while I loved some scenes (particularly the glow-y Esther Williams sequence with Scarlett Johansson), this movie fights itself. There are scenes where the sets feel true & authentic, like the sequence involving Channing Tatum as a gay, tap-dancing naval officer, while others (such as the apartments off the set) feel cheeky and outrageous, not really rooted in reality. This is kind of the problem in general with this good-but-not-great Coen Brothers movie-it can't really decide what its direction is so we get noteworthy, but not really coherent, work from Gonchor & Haigh.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Art Directors Guild gives us fifteen nominees to sort through, in three separate categories: contemporary, fantasy, and period. Contemporary obviously saw La La Land emerge victorious, with Hell or High Water, Lion, Manchester by the Sea, and Nocturnal Animals coming in behind it, while Fantasy embraced Passengers over Arrival, Doctor Strange, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and Rogue One. The final category, where Oscar usually gets most of his nominees, only cited Hail, Caesar!, and it didn't even win. That honor went to Hidden Figures, who also bested Cafe Society (is this the last major award a Woody Allen film will ever be cited for?), Fences, Hacksaw Ridge, and Jackie. The BAFTA Awards went with Fantastic Beasts (I didn't remember this race being so wide-open, but apparently it was) besting Doctor Strange, Hail, Caesar!, La La Land, and Nocturnal Animals. At the time this was one of my worst predictions of the cycle, only getting Fantastic Beasts and La La Land right. Of the three I predicted, my gut is that Jackie was probably closer than The Handmaiden or Silence given the precursors, but there were a lot of contenders here.
Films I Would Have Nominated: Maybe I was projecting, as I definitely would have gone for Jackie over any of the nominated films here, with its immaculate reconstructions of the White House. I'd also find room for Silence of these contenders, as it's difficult reconstructing a world that is unfamiliar to most of the audience, even though its their own (albeit an ocean & 400 years apart). Finally, I think that occasionally Oscar would be smart to consider animated features here, as who did a better job of world-creating in 2016 than Zootopia?
Oscar’s Choice: La La Land becomes the rare modern film to win this award, probably in a tight race over Fantastic Beasts (considering it won Best Costume, and these awards oftentimes go hand-in-hand).
My Choice: I swear I'm not doing this on purpose (I have no problem giving La La Land an Oscar), but I'm going to give it the silver again compared to Passengers, which feels more like it's adding to the story while still being glorious. I'll follow with Fantastic Beasts, Arrival, and Hail Caesar.
Those are my thoughts-how about yours? Are you with me that Passengers should have won here despite its lack of quality, or was this another trophy I should have given to La La Land? Where does Arrival rank among the recent prestige "space age" films? And why do you think Jackie missed yet another category here? Share below!
Also in 2016: Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup & Hairstyling, Previously in 2016
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