OVP: Best Adapted Screenplay (2015)
My Thoughts: I'm aware I missed last Wednesday's article, and we should be through writing headed into the acting categories this week, but unfortunately work (and fortunately personal life) got in the way, and so I am one article behind. Not sure what the day will be, but I'll be getting three ballots out this week to stay on-track as I've now completed not just one more year but two as of yesterday, so I've got a LOT of articles coming your way in the near future. But let's stop with the excuses and start with the movies.
One of the things about the expanded field of Best Picture nominees is that these categories end up filled with Best Picture contenders, which kind of takes away from some of the cache, the uniqueness that pops up with a Trainspotting or American Splendor randomly showing up and getting "Oscar-nominated" attached to its name. This year, that cache is completely gone, as we're left with only Best Picture nominees. So let's lean in and start with the Oscar winner for the top prize.
Moonlight is the sort of film that feels almost instantly like you'll be studying it in screenwriting classes. While there's a lot to recommend the film, it's really its story that grounds you through the characters. The way that the triptych unfolds is delicate-there's no part of this movie that is "easy" or going to give you the obvious answers, even though there is solid symmetry in all three acts. The dialogue, particularly that of Mahershala Ali & Naomie Harris' characters, is biting and profound. The movie moves so briskly it needs to-you don't know when you're going to be giving up a character or when a chapter is suddenly going to leap forward.
This isn't the case with Lion, which is structurally similar to Moonlight but doesn't find ways to subtly introduce dialogue or a symmetry between the two stories. The tale of Saroo doesn't have the same sort of play between the two different phases of his life, with the adult Saroo more fitting a convenient plot than he does the young boy we see riding trains across India. Combined with a script that doesn't quite know how to deal with the white savior characters in the forms of Kidman & Wenham, and never equals the better first half, and this is undoubtedly the script I was most surprised to see nominated for this category a few years after the fact, even if it made total sense at the time.
Arrival is the one that felt more a question mark at the time, but I don't know entirely why in retrospect. This is a movie that lives-or-dies off of its screenplay, and it probably would have been genre bias that would've kept it out. The film has the tough pair of twists late the film (that I won't ruin here), that both work entirely well-you may see one of them coming, but that doesn't mean that they don't work in the story, and the dialogue coming from Adams' character is haunting, and just adds to a killer performance. All-in-all, this is a great script, and one that stands apart from many other prestige Sci-Fi films in recent years.
Hidden Figures is the lightest of these movies (though it says something that a movie about racism, sexism, and a pretty intense space flight is the "lightest"), but don't confuse that with lazily-plotted. The film occasionally veers into fantasy (the showdown between Octavia Spencer & Kirsten Dunst seems more how we hope that scene would play out today rather than how it would have played out in the 1960's), but the lines are funny, the actresses excellent at delivering them (few people can land a punchline quite like Octavia Spencer, and Hidden Figures is funnier than you might remember it), and you get a true crowd-pleaser. Nothing for the ages, but certainly quotable & worthwhile.
Our final nomination is hard-to-reconcile. August Wilson's Fences is a Pulitzer & Tony-winning masterpiece, with dialogue and conversations that are impossible to deny. On-the-surface, this feels like a home run with lines such as "from right now, this child's got a mother-but you're a womanless man" and that whole speech where Denzel proclaims he doesn't need to like his son...brilliant. The problem is that it's not really an adaptation so much as it is a filmed play. The Oscars threw a similar issue onto our plate with Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet in 1996, where virtually every line is from the original text. As a result, I struggle to combine the masterpiece that Wilson created (truly) with the film that doesn't entirely know how to tell this story in a way that is a movie and not just something you'd see live from Shubert Alley.
One of the things about the expanded field of Best Picture nominees is that these categories end up filled with Best Picture contenders, which kind of takes away from some of the cache, the uniqueness that pops up with a Trainspotting or American Splendor randomly showing up and getting "Oscar-nominated" attached to its name. This year, that cache is completely gone, as we're left with only Best Picture nominees. So let's lean in and start with the Oscar winner for the top prize.
Moonlight is the sort of film that feels almost instantly like you'll be studying it in screenwriting classes. While there's a lot to recommend the film, it's really its story that grounds you through the characters. The way that the triptych unfolds is delicate-there's no part of this movie that is "easy" or going to give you the obvious answers, even though there is solid symmetry in all three acts. The dialogue, particularly that of Mahershala Ali & Naomie Harris' characters, is biting and profound. The movie moves so briskly it needs to-you don't know when you're going to be giving up a character or when a chapter is suddenly going to leap forward.
This isn't the case with Lion, which is structurally similar to Moonlight but doesn't find ways to subtly introduce dialogue or a symmetry between the two stories. The tale of Saroo doesn't have the same sort of play between the two different phases of his life, with the adult Saroo more fitting a convenient plot than he does the young boy we see riding trains across India. Combined with a script that doesn't quite know how to deal with the white savior characters in the forms of Kidman & Wenham, and never equals the better first half, and this is undoubtedly the script I was most surprised to see nominated for this category a few years after the fact, even if it made total sense at the time.
Arrival is the one that felt more a question mark at the time, but I don't know entirely why in retrospect. This is a movie that lives-or-dies off of its screenplay, and it probably would have been genre bias that would've kept it out. The film has the tough pair of twists late the film (that I won't ruin here), that both work entirely well-you may see one of them coming, but that doesn't mean that they don't work in the story, and the dialogue coming from Adams' character is haunting, and just adds to a killer performance. All-in-all, this is a great script, and one that stands apart from many other prestige Sci-Fi films in recent years.
Hidden Figures is the lightest of these movies (though it says something that a movie about racism, sexism, and a pretty intense space flight is the "lightest"), but don't confuse that with lazily-plotted. The film occasionally veers into fantasy (the showdown between Octavia Spencer & Kirsten Dunst seems more how we hope that scene would play out today rather than how it would have played out in the 1960's), but the lines are funny, the actresses excellent at delivering them (few people can land a punchline quite like Octavia Spencer, and Hidden Figures is funnier than you might remember it), and you get a true crowd-pleaser. Nothing for the ages, but certainly quotable & worthwhile.
Our final nomination is hard-to-reconcile. August Wilson's Fences is a Pulitzer & Tony-winning masterpiece, with dialogue and conversations that are impossible to deny. On-the-surface, this feels like a home run with lines such as "from right now, this child's got a mother-but you're a womanless man" and that whole speech where Denzel proclaims he doesn't need to like his son...brilliant. The problem is that it's not really an adaptation so much as it is a filmed play. The Oscars threw a similar issue onto our plate with Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet in 1996, where virtually every line is from the original text. As a result, I struggle to combine the masterpiece that Wilson created (truly) with the film that doesn't entirely know how to tell this story in a way that is a movie and not just something you'd see live from Shubert Alley.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes combine their writing categories so there is no adapted or original distinction, though that doesn't mean that they didn't find room for an additional nominee in Nocturnal Animals to go next to the original La La Land, Hell or High Water, and Manchester by the Sea, as well as the adapted Moonlight (La La Land won the trophy). The BAFTA Awards do split their categories, picking Lion as their victor with Moonlight weirdly going original (they did this despite Moonlight being based on a play by Tarell Alvin McCraney), and substituting out Fences in favor of Nocturnal Animals and Hacksaw Ridge. The WGA Awards also put Moonlight into original, giving their trophy to Arrival while Lion missed for this trophy, giving Nocturnal Animals & Deadpool the final two slots. All-in-all, you have to assume Tom Ford was pretty bummed on Oscar nominations morning since he'd swept nominations at all of the precursors but couldn't land with AMPAS.
Films I Would Have Nominated: There were honestly so many strange designations throughout the Oscar season in 2016, that I'm reluctant to endorse any categories in hindsight (I look at my notes, and I gave what were clearly original screenplays adapted designations, and vice versa, so I'm not trusting my notes too much here). That said, Silence is definitely adapted, and a fascinating meditation of a story, and I surely would have nominated regardless of its position.
Oscar's Choice: Original or adapted, Moonlight could not be denied, and took this, probably over Lion if I'm making a guess.
My Choice: With the caveat that I don't think it's particularly "well-adapted," I'm going with Moonlight over Fences. Behind them we'll take Arrival, Hidden Figures, and Lion.
Those are my thoughts-what about you? Does everyone agree with me that Moonlight is the big triumph here, or do we go with a different film? How do you think we should handle something like Fences in the future (because this problem is coming up in future OVP's)? And anyone want to be a fly on the wall the morning Tom Ford found out he wasn't getting cited here? Share your thoughts below!
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