Oscar
thoughts
About those Oscar nominations announced
January 13 ... not a lot of surprises. (See
the full list at: https://oscar.go.com/news/nominations/oscar-nominations-2020-list-nominees-by-category.)
Although Joker is a controversial
choice to lead the pack with 11 nominations.
It won’t win, except perhaps for Joaquin Phoenix in the best actor
category. He’s as amazing as the movie
is deeply disturbing. Good to see the South Korean Parasite included for “best picture” as well as “best international
feature”, which it will surely win. The Two Popes should have been included to
compete for the top prize instead of Ford
v Ferrari (but at least Two Popes has
acting nominations for Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins and one for its
screenwriter Anthony McCarten). Also
good to see Parasite director Bong
Joon Ho recognized in the directing category, though it’s another all-male list
excluding Greta Gerwig for her wondrous remake of Little Women. What should
win is Scorsese’s The Irishman but
will Netflix productions be snubbed again like Roma was last year? Tom
Hanks gets a deserved nod for A Beautiful
Day in the Neighborhood, but in the “supporting role” category for what is
clearly a lead performance that carries the film. I’ve reviewed the five best documentary
features, all excellent. Missing, however, is the exceptional Apollo 11. With two on the Syrian conflict, there could
be a slight edge to American Factory
(on Netflix). Below I review another outstanding doc about the late great
French filmmaker Agnès Varda. Interesting
that the fascinating docudrama Honeyland is
also nominated for “best international feature”, which must be a first. And see
below for reviews of several other nominees in that category, including the
submission by France, a somewhat controversial choice that overlooked the
luminous other Cannes festival favorite Portrait
of a Lady on Fire. Oscar night is February 9.
In my last post I reviewed Just Mercy which provides some
inspirational uplift in its true story of overcoming injustice in the American
legal and penal systems. This harrowing prison-centred drama, awarded a grand
jury prize at the 2019 Sundance film festival, doesn’t offer the same hopeful
relief notwithstanding a title suggesting merciful promise. Writer-director Chinonye Chukwu focuses
attention on the experience of a female African American prison warden
Bernadine Williams (Alfre Woodard) whose job requires supervising the execution
of death row inmates. Early on her steely resolve is tested by an execution
that goes horribly wrong. Then the
deadline approaches for the execution of another victim of the system, a
hapless soul named Anthony Woods (Ailds Hodge) who steadfastly maintains his
innocence and whose aging legal advocate Marty Lumetta (Richard Schiff) expresses
understandable weariness at waging another losing battle for reprieve. Through
all that, and a strained marital situation, Bernadine seems determined to
maintain an implacable professional face as a functionary of the system.
However soul-destroying, she can’t let on. Do the demands of “justice” multiply the
victims? That abiding question makes for
some very tough viewing. A-
Master Belgian-French filmmaker Agnès
Varda died in March of last year at age 90 but not before this superb evocation
of her work, documentary as well as dramatic (and often combining both),
premiered at the 2019 Berlin film festival. She is the irrepressibly curious
animating spirit behind this illuminating retrospective that covers decades of
innovative cinematic explorations. Part of the film includes an on-stage
presentation before a rapt audience in which she comments on that legacy and
presents clips from a body of work that will be treasured by any movie
lover. Varda is such an engaging
personality that no one could give a better master class on why she will be
remembered as one of the most significant film artists of the past 65 years. A
This Parisian tale brings a fresh modern-day
narrative in contrast to historical adaptations of the classic 1862 Victor Hugo
novel (or, even more so, Tom Hooper’s 2012 screen version of the popular stage
musical, much more successful than his recent movie revival of “Cats” badly
scratched by critics). Sharing the jury prize at Cannes, it’s helmed by
Mali-born Ladj Ly who co-wrote the screenplay. Amazingly this is his feature debut,
expanded from an award-winning short. The setting, shared with Hugo’s
masterpiece, is the crime–ridden low-income 93rd district of
Montfermeil, now multicultural with a large multi-generational Muslim
population of African descent. Ravaged
by riots in 2005, it’s familiar territory for Ly.
The
action opens and ends with sensational sequences involving a young boy Issa (Issa
Perica) who gets into trouble. The beginning atmosphere of joyous celebration
as France celebrates a soccer World Cup win disappears on the mean streets of
Issa’s neighborhood patrolled by a feared and loathed “SCU” (plain-clothes
street crime unit in an unmarked car). It’s led by an aggressive white alpha
cop Chris (Alexis Manenti, a co-writer of the script)—at one point he screams
“I am the law”—whom the locals call “pink pig”.
His partner is a black man Gwada (Jibril Zonga) who is from the area. In
the back seat is a newbie Stéphane (Damien Bonnard) who’s just joined the
team. When Issa nabs a lion cub from a
traveling gypsy circus it sets off a chaotic chain of events. In the course of a frenetic pursuit we get
introduced to key local figures including an unofficial “mayor” and a former
thug turned Muslim leader who owns a café.
The chase culminates in an incident where Issa is shot in the face by a
flash-ball gun. Chris’s realization that it was filmed by another young boy
operating a drone triggers a further frantic effort to find and destroy the
evidence. Chris is more concerned with
cover up than Issa’s survival, provoking tensions among the trio of cops. As Issa becomes the battered face of police
misconduct, the youth of the ‘hood, with its rundown graffiti-covered housing
blocks, rise up in vengeful anger using their homemade weapons. The last image freezes in a heart-stopping
face-off, its potentially lethal outcome left unresolved except for a direct
quotation from the Hugo novel: “There are no such things as bad plants or bad
men. There are only bad cultivators.”
This
film beats with a gripping propulsive force and growls with a gritty immersive
realism. Want to see a story with real “cats”
on screen? This is the one. A
This was among my 10 best films of 2019
so I’m thrilled that it is also among the five Oscar nominees for best
international feature, having already received numerous awards. It’s director Jan Jomasa’s third feature and
draws inspiration from actual instances of priestly impersonation.
We are introduced to the central
character, a young man Daniel (a remarkable performance by Bartosz Bielenia),
through the hard knocks of a juvenile detention centre. His criminal record rules out pursuing a
religious vocation. But although no stranger to sins of the flesh when released
on parole, Daniel holds on to a spiritual side. Sent to the workshop of a country
sawmill he instead takes advantage of an opportunity to replace the elderly
parish priest of the nearby town which is suffering from a recent trauma
involving loss of life. Daniel claims to
be a recent graduate from the seminary and assumes the identity of “Father
Tomasz” (which was the name of the prison chaplain). Even if he has to “google” how to perform
certain functions, Daniel embarks on a pastoral journey of ministering to a
grieving, troubled, and divided flock. As if by divine intervention, his needs
and theirs overlap. As director Komasa
puts it: “For Daniel, spiritual guidance is the only pure thing left in his
life. I see his actions as a desperate attempt to tell the world what he would
do if he were given a second chance.” Can
Daniel’s deception possibly last?
Whatever happens, for as long as it does his story carries with it the
power of redemptive grace. That in
itself is blessing enough. Let’s hope
the Oscar boost leads to a decent Canadian release. A
For Daniel, spiritual guidance is the only pure thing left
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