So I Watched All the Oscar Nominees for Best Picture... Again!

 

Last year I wrote a post called "So I Watched All the Oscar Nominees for Best Picture." I didn't set out to do so, but at some point I realized I had seen a few of the nominations and figured I might as well complete my tour. So I did! And it was mostly pretty fun. It didn't hurt that my favorite, Everything Everywhere All At Once, was the winner.

Well, dear reader, as Britney Spears once said, "Oops, I did it again." 

Like a lot of other people, I was caught up in the Barbenheimer craze last summer. And I caught a few more of the movies at home and a few more in theaters. I wasn't sure I'd get to The Zone of Interest, but as the Oscar fates would have it, my local theater was showing it yesterday afternoon, so I was able to complete the set once again in 2024.

I don't have a clear personal favorite like I did last year, but like last year, I thought this was a pretty good crop overall. And a diverse one, too; it's hard for me to really rank movies as different as Barbie and Anatomy of a Fall or American Fiction and Killers of the Flower Moon or Poor Things and Past Lives. And like almost everyone else, I think Oppenheimer is probably going to win. But we'll see Sunday night.

It's hard for me to rank these movies, because I appreciate all of them for different reasons. I probably personally cared for Maestro the least, but I can appreciate its artistic merits. I'm not confused by any of this year's nominations, like I was last year (Top Gun: Maverick? Really?). So these are not in any specific ranking order. Sometimes I feel the need for rankings crowds out more interesting discussions (much like the fixation on grading and peer review in academia). In any case, I'll leave the business of ranking these films to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Oppenheimer

My initial impression walking out of Oppenheimer in IMAX last summer: this is a horror movie. It's not just a particular scene where a cheering crowd is juxtaposed with a vision of atomic horror, but the whole tragic failure of the initially plausible idea that atomic weapons could bring peace. Oppenheimer is not a hero, but a complex tragic figure. In perhaps a great advertisement for a wider liberal arts education rather than narrow specialization, he really did know some Sanskrit, and his translation of the Bhagavad Gītā is the famous line people quote whether they know the source or not: "Now I am become death...". It's also fun to see all these famous scientists depicted on screen. Cillian Murphy is great. Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh do well with what they're given, and almost every A-list white dude in Hollywood is there. There's almost no treatment of Japan, where the bombs were actually dropped--check out Godzilla Minus One for more on that (nominated for Visual Effects!). There are few things the Academy loves more than a celebration of white male genius, and Oppenheimer is a really white dude-centered movie (which was US nuclear physics at the time, I suppose). Christopher Nolan's films tend toward a cool, abstract affect. But for all his failings, Nolan usually makes me feel and think deeply (my favorite is still Interstellar). And there's no denying the aesthetic accomplishment of Oppenheimer. I'm glad I saw it in IMAX first, although it was still great watching at home again. Ludwig Göransson's score propels the viewer through a movie that jumps around in time during its three-hour run. Oppenheimer is a film that I think people will be talking about in 10 or 20 years. And I'd be surprised if it doesn't win Best Picture this year.

Barbie

The other half of Barbenheimer! Say what you will about Barbie (and many people have), I think it's one of the most philosophical movies on this list. It's also just a lot of fun, especially for a movie that delves into death and existentialism so explicitly and starts with an homage to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. It really is too bad that Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie weren't nominated for directing and acting, but America Ferrera is totally deserving as is Ryan Gosling. Some have criticized Barbie for not going deep enough into feminist theory or for being too tied to white feminism. Sure, maybe, but one has to start somewhere, and this film is astonishingly complex for a movie about a mass-market toy. It's also just really funny, and along with Poor Things, one of the few films on this list that could be considered science fiction or fantasy. And the soundtrack is fun, too. I imagine I'll rewatch this one more than any other movie on this list, so maybe that's a point in its favor (but I'm not giving points, of course).

Past Lives

I've been thinking about Past Lives since I saw it the other day. It's one of those films that makes you feel all the feels. It follows two childhood friends in South Korea over 24 years. One emigrates to Canada and then the US while the other remains in South Korea, but occasionally they get in touch with each other over the years. Greta Lee and Teo Yoo are both doing some subtle acting, and anyone who has ever felt unrequited love or similarly complex feelings will find something to relate to. I really enjoyed Greta Lee's nuanced portrayal of Nora's immigration experience, and Teo Yoo as Hae Sung is able to break your heart with a look (John Magaro also does so once or twice). The score sets just the right level of moodiness. I'll look forward to what director Celine Song does next. I really enjoyed the use of the Korean Buddhist concept of In-Yun, which involves people finding and losing each other repeatedly over thousands of lifetimes. This mostly works in Past Lives as a metaphor for the complexities of the Korean diaspora in the digital age, but I've been thinking lately about the mind-expanding possibilities of Buddhist cosmology even for those of us who were not born in a position to believe in rebirth more literally: our lives and connections to each other are vaster than we think, and maybe there's a tragic beauty and melancholy comfort in that.

American Fiction

American Fiction is probably the funniest movie on this list, at least at the level of biting satire. Jeffrey Wright is fantastic as a literature professor called Monk (after "Thelonious"), who's frustrated with the American publishing world's treatment of Black authors. In one scene he finds his books on ancient Greek mythology in the African-American Studies section of a bookstore, and he's alarmed/jealous of the success of a fellow author who wrote a book that panders to white audiences through Black stereotypes. The other author is played by Issa Rae, who is amazing as always, as are Sterling K. Brown, Tracee Ellis Ross, Keith David, Leslie Uggams, Erika Alexander, and more. In a moment of alcohol-fueled frustration, Monk has the idea to write the type of "Black book" the mostly white, affluent publishing industry wants and submits it to his agent under a pseudonym as a satirical joke. And then it turns out this is exactly what the publishers want, of course, and just to make it even funnier (and perhaps the best cinematic nod to Du Bois's concept of double-consciousness since Get Out), he ends up on a literary award committee judging his own book. I probably laughed harder and more often through American Fiction than any other film on this list, which is saying something because I laughed a lot during Barbie and Poor Things, too. I can't wait to see what director Cord Jefferson does next. As a white college professor myself, of course, I have to wonder about my own relationship to this film and its relation to the still mostly white Academy (both the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the academic establishment of which I am part, however ambivalent I may be).

Poor Things

Poor Things isn't all that similar to Everything Everywhere All At Once, but like last year's winner for Best Picture, I'm pleasantly astonished that a film as strange as Yorgos Latnthimos's Poor Things would be nominated at all. It's based on a novel Alasdair Grey, which is a fun riff on Frankenstein, which continues to inspire over 200 years after Mary Shelley published it. Emma Stone is obviously having fun playing Bella, the Frankenstein-type Steampunk experiment of Godwin ("God" played by Wilem Defoe, in a nod to Mary Shelley's father, William Godwin, and the concept of a Creator). Bella embarks upon adventures in a strange and highly stylized 19th century Europe. Some of her coming of age is sexual, and this film does not shy away from sexuality (sex is pretty funny if you think about it). Is there something skeevy about a grown woman with the mind of a child having lots of sex with men (like Mark Ruffalo's buffonish Duncan) who seem all too willing despite her condition? Yes. But is that offset by her character development and becoming her own person later despite being made of parts for unknown reasons (as we all ultimately are) outside of all the boxes the men in her life (and a few women) want to keep her in? Maybe. The viewer, I suppose, has to decide for themselves. Poor Things also shows that philosophy may be more mainstream than I think, when a character played by Jerrod Charmichael tells Bella that philosophy is a waste of time and then proceeds to give his own philosophical explanation for his view (as people who hate philosophy almost always do).

Killers of the Flower Moon

Martin Scorsese still knows how to direct a film and Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro are fine actors as always, but I think Lily Gladstone stole the show in Killers of the Flower Moon. If Gladstone doesn't win an Oscar, I'd be surprised. Killers of the Flower Moon tells the story of the Osage people in Oklahoma in the early 20th century, many of whom became extremely wealthy due to oil on their land. And because this was the US (the Tulsa race massacre happened around the same time and is mentioned in the film), white people felt the need to step in to prevent such things. In this case, one strategy was for white men to marry Native women and thus receive their oil wealth, often through outright murder of the women and their family members. It's a grisly tale, and a long one (over three hours). Scorsese is no stranger to grisly tales, of course, nor long films. There could be criticisms of a white director's treatment of this issue, although the treatment feels balanced overall (or so it seems to this white viewer). The costumes and the score are also great (the detail of Osage women wearing military outfits as wedding attire is a great one). The film ends with footage of a 21st century powwow, reminding viewers that the Osage and other Native people are not confined to historical dramas by white directors.

The Zone of Interest

Sometimes I wonder when we'll stop seeing so many movies about the (original) Nazis. It feels overdone, and in the last decade I've started to wonder if humanity really learned anything from the upheaval of WWII and the Holocaust. Maybe all these movies aren't enough. Maybe it's time for filmmakers to give up on WWII and make movies about current day Nazis, both the literal, tiki-torch carrying kind and the close-enough-to-Nazis ethnic/religious nationalisms here in the US and elsewhere. I'm still not sure what to think about all that, but I almost didn't see The Zone of Interest. I was prepared to call this post "So I Watched (Almost) All the Oscar Nominees for Best Picture." But then I saw my local theater was playing one show this weekend, so here we are. Despite my skepticism, The Zone of Interest is a wholly different kind of WWII movie. We see pleasant scenes of a family at home, doing chores, tending the garden, going swimming, and so on, while Auschwitz is literally on the other side of the wall. I'm glad I saw this in a theater so I could fully appreciate the sound design, which is essential to this film. You see a married couple arguing, children playing, a dog sniffing a table full of food, housekeepers sweeping, and so on, all while shouts and gunshots populate the background and smoke rises out of focus beyond the wall. There is little drama and almost no story. There's no explicit violence shown on screen. Aside from a few unusual-looking scenes, you might think you're watching a pleasant period piece if you weren't paying attention to the sound. Yet this is probably the most chilling WWII movie I've seen since Schindler's List. I visited Auschwitz in 2018 on a trip to Poland (you see some of the contemporary museum at the end of this film). While I was there I thought about the flesh-and-blood human beings who lived and died there. It was a profound and horrifying experience. The Zone of Interest evoked a bit of that experience for me, and it represents a new possibility for WWII and Holocaust movies. It's a clear cinematic vision of what Hannah Arendt referred to as "the banality of evil." It also makes another disturbing point, encouraging viewers to think about the horrors on the other side of our own walls here in the 21st century.

The Holdovers

The Holdovers takes place in the early 1970's, and it feels exactly like a film of that period down to the grainy look and extremely groovy folk rock score. Paul Giamatti is in his element as a grumpy literature teacher at a private boys' boarding school. The "holdovers" of the title are those who need to stay at the school over winter break, which includes Giamatti, one student, and one of the cooks, played phenomenally by Da'Vine Joy Randolph (for me, it will really be between Randolph and America Ferrera in the supporting actress category and both are totally deserving). Some viewers might criticize this as yet another story of an ornery white man finding redemption, which is almost as Oscar-baity as Oppenheimer-type stories of white male genius. But I think there are enough other elements here, and it's Randolph's character that really sticks with me, both her heart-rending grief and the message about the costs of war disproportionally handed to people of color in the US. And the early 1970's aesthetic is a thing of beauty in itself. For a fun horror movie version of basically the same premise as The Holdovers, see The Sacrifice Game.

Anatomy of a Fall

Anatomy of a Fall is an interesting film, more so than an enjoyable one (at least to this viewer). You get to learn a lot about the French legal system, and the core mystery of what really happened is engaging. It's nice to see so many films on this list with so much non-English dialogue, although Hüller speaks mostly English as her character's French is not as good as her English (I also tried to practice my French by reading the English captions and then guessing what the characters would say in French, but I need a lot of practice before I could follow a French courtroom drama). Sandra Hüller (also in The Zone of Interest) plays Sandra, a German author married to an American author living in the French Alps. When her husband dies of a fall (hence, the "fall" of the title), the French police investigate and a trial ensues. Caught in the middle are their visually-impaired son, Daniel (Milo Machado-Graner) and their dog Snoop. Did Sandra murder her husband? Was it an accident? Suicide? Speaking of, well, speaking, it's interesting to me that Sandra never speaks her native German in the film. Her son Daniel speaks mostly French, only ever speaking English to his mom, perhaps dramatizing the fact that we all speak different languages to other people than we do to ourselves.

Maestro

It's not that I think Maestro is a bad movie. It's a perfectly good biopic with some interesting artistic elements. I even managed to get past Bradley Cooper's false nose after a few minutes. Maybe I would have liked this more if I were a big Leonard Bernstein fan, but it kind of feels like the film could have been called "Bradley Cooper wants an Oscar." It does have some LGBTQ content and Carey Mulligan is great and gets a lot more screen time than you might think as Bernstein's exasperated wife. She has top billing, in fact. I like learning a bit about the creative process of such a talented composer, although the film oddly focuses more on Bernstein's orchestral directing rather than his composing. Overall, this is not really my thing, but I can appreciate it.