Up in the Air (2009)

Up in the Air, one of ten nominees for Best Picture of 2009, is a melancholy little masterpiece of a film. It's a remarkably skilled movie about the economic conditions of our times, yet it also is an engrossing study of the consequences of choosing to be isolated from your fellow human beings. I found it to be a brilliant, insightful examination of how one man attempts to find a sense of meaning in a world that seemingly has little to offer him other than a chance to escape the mundane details of the day-to-day existence that most of us have to endure.

George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, who has the unenviable job of being one of the most successful members of a corporation whose job it is to fire people in large numbers. Bingham flies from city to city--we are always told on the screen which city he's in at the moment--dispensing bad news. He's actually, in an odd way, very successful and talented at his work. He manages to defuse some very difficult situations with employees who are, unsurprisingly, upset at learning that they will be unemployed. Bingham always seems to know just how to let people know what they need to be feeling or doing at particularly tense times.

He's also managed to rid himself of almost any sense of a personal existence. He has a tiny room that he rents, but he never sleeps there if he can avoid it. He's always in a hotel or on a plane or in some company's headquarters because of his job. And he loves it that way. He's managed to amass a huge number of frequent flyer miles, and he has set as a goal for himself the attainment of a magical number: ten million. If he reaches that goal, he will only be the seventh person in American Airlines history to do so, and he will receive some remarkable perks, including having his name on the side of an airplane.

You can't really be good at this type of job or manage to spend so much time away from home unless you've severed almost all personal connections, and Ryan has been especially good at that as well. He rarely talks to or sees members of his family. His younger sister is getting married, and he's reluctant to join in this little game she and her fiance have devised of having people taking pictures of a cardboard cutout of the two of them in "exotic" places throughout the country. Instead, he's busy giving motivational speeches about what we all pack into our backpacks. You see, he's trying to convince other people that we should travel through life much lighter than we do. We are, he seems to suggest, too bogged down by all of our commitments, particularly those links (it seems) to other people.

Into his life steps Alex (played by the enchanting Vera Farmigia). They meet at a bar, and it isn't long before they are comparing all of the cards for which they receive travel benefits. They have sex that night and even schedule their next encounter based upon where they will be traveling. They make for a charming couple together, and they seem to share many of the same ideas about life. She describes herself as a female version of him--well, those aren't her exact words, but it's the gist of what she says. He even invites her to join him for his sister's wedding, and they have a lot of fun walking around his old school.

Of course, while this budding romance is underway, Ryan's company decides that it is going to shift to a new form of business. Thanks to an idea by a young woman named Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), the company plans to begin firing people over the Internet, making a dehumanizing process even more remote and distant. Ryan successfully lobbies his boss (Jason Bateman) to have one last chance to prove that his methods are more successful than what Natalie has proposed, but his boss surprises him by having Natalie tag along as Ryan goes to several different companies to fire workers. Needless to say, Natalie is unprepared for what she encounters on the road, and the film clearly suggests that technology cannot replace the human element in an unpleasant business like the one these two are engaged in.

I like Kendrick as an actress. She was one of the best things about the charming little movie Camp a few years ago; I'll never listen to Stephen Sondheim's "The Ladies Who Lunch" the same way after her performance in that film. However, as good as she is, her character here is too narrowly written. When the most sophisticated way you have to show her adapting to a new situation is allowing her to take her hair out of its permanent ponytail, then you know you've got some work to do to flesh out the character more. Still, I can appreciate how hard Kendrick works to make a seemingly unsympathetic character into someone we actually want to see succeed.

Farmigia has played supporting parts in big movies for years, and she seems to be just on the cusp of breakout stardom. I thought she was terribly underused in The Departed a couple of years ago, but she has much more of an opportunity in Up in the Air to make an impression. She's warm and funny here, especially in the discussion she has with Natalie about how women's priorities have changed over the years. It's a knowing discussion between a more experienced and knowledgeable woman and a more naive, if intelligent young woman, and Farmigia makes it work. You can instantly see why Ryan would be so attracted to her that he would consider giving up his life on the road for someone like Alex.

Clooney has never been better than he is in this film. He allows us to see just how isolated Ryan has become and how much he seems to enjoy that sense of isolation. He makes all of the surface moves of being a part of society, but you get the feeling that he'd really rather be alone. He admits to avoiding emotional attachments, and even his phone calls and conversations with his sister reveal that he cannot make himself confront the pain that human connections sometimes bring. It's a gutsy move for someone as charming and handsome as Clooney to take on a part like this. It would be very easy to dislike Ryan Bingham because he seems like such a narcissist, yet when he takes the first steps to let Alex into his life, you also sense that he really does have the capacity to love someone else. He's just never felt comfortable about doing so.

I would like to mention how seamlessly the film's creators have incorporated actual people who have been fired from their jobs into the narrative. Yes, there are actors like the great J.K. Simmons and Zach Galifianakis who have more extended roles as workers being laid off, but the most emotional ones (for me, at least) are played by non-professionals. They bring a true sense of just how devastating such a change in one's life can be. You empathize with them because they are so open and honest about how much they've come to love or enjoy their jobs, and they just have no sense of how to carry on with their lives. More than even a television news report or newspaper article could do, Up in the Air captures in those moments that sense of loss so many people in this country are feeling now.

Much has and will be made of the ending and its ambiguity. And much will probably be made about the treatment of the female characters in the film, especially since there is a discussion about the different generations of feminists and feminism. However, at its heart, Up in the Air isn't about happy endings or the lack of them, and it certainly isn't about--not really--relationships between men and women. It's about a type of individual who has chosen for most of his life to concentrate upon his work and not his personal relationships, to spend much of his time away from close human contact so that he can avoid being hurt the way that he has to hurt other people thanks to his job. It's unsettling to watch parts of this film, but it's one of the most brilliant character analyses I've seen in years.

Avatar (2009)

Having worn glasses since I was 13 years old, I am not always comfortable going to see movies in 3-D. Putting the 3-D glasses over my own glasses makes for a difficult viewing experience most of the time. However, when I went to see Avatar, a nominee for Best Picture of 2009, I decided to check out the 3-D version because most of my friends told me it was the best way to see the film. After the film enters the world of the Na'vi, I forgot that I was wearing two pairs of glasses and became completely entranced by the world created by director James Cameron and his crew. If the future of film making is truly represented by what they have achieved in Avatar with motion-capture technology and other forms of animation and special effects, I am ready for the future. Avatar is likely to be the pinnacle in the use of this kind of technology, at least for a while, but it bodes well for the movie-going experience.

The story involves a disabled Marine, Jake Sully (played by Sam Worthington), taking his dead twin's place in a scientific experiment on the planet of Pandora. A huge team of people from Earth are there, but they have different purposes in mind for this strange world. The military is there to assist in the corporate efforts to mine for something called--unironically, it seems--unobtainium. The soldiers, essentially, try to keep the native people and animals away from the people trying to locate this precious mineral. A group of scientists, led by Sigourney Weaver's Dr. Grace Augustine, are trying to learn as much about life on Pandora as possible before the military destroys the ecosystem, and she and her team are particularly interested in the unusual link that the native people have with the natural world. Several of the film's key moments are about the inevitable conflicts that must come when scientific interests are at odds with those of the private sector and the military.

Yet the most intriguing part of the film, to me, is not the overarching story about whether science or business will win this struggle. It's about the process of learning about the native people called the Na'vi that Jake and Grace and another scientist, Norm Spellman (Joel David Moore), undergo. Really, though, it's Jake we follow for much of the film. He's ideal for the project, which involves having a link to an artificially created Na'vi-human hybrid. Through his link to this avatar, Jake is able to walk again, and the joy he feels in being out in the world and having adventures is really the key to we as viewers having the same sense of amazement at this strange place and its inhabitants.

On his second day as an avatar, Jake is separated from Grace and Norm, thanks to an attack by a hideous looking beast. He spends the night in the jungle fending off creatures, and he has to be saved by a Na'vi woman named Neytiri (voiced by Zoe Saldana) when a group of dog-like creatures surround him. She despises him for interfering with the natural order; she calls him a "baby," suggesting his level of naivete about Pandora and its environment. Nevertheless, thanks to an intervention by Eywa, the deity for the Na'vi, she decides to take him to her tribe. There, her father and mother (voiced, respectively, by Wes Study and CCH Pounder) tell her that she must teach Jake the ways of the Na'vi. What follows are a series of spectacular adventures and, perhaps unsurprisingly, a growing affection between Jake and Neytiri.

The film is very eco-focused. There are many scenes where Neytiri tries to explain to Jake the connection between the Na'vi and their surroundings. The Hometree, for example, serves as a base for almost all activity, and the Na'vi seem to have almost a biochemical relationship with it and the other plants. It's this link that Grace is attempting to discern. However, the Na'vi are also capable of creating a connection between themselves and other animals, such as the horse-like creatures many of them ride. The long ponytails of the Na'vi somehow intertwine with appendages on these animals' heads, and suddenly Na'vi and creature are psychically linked. It's pretty intriguing stuff to watch, especially when Jake takes a few tries to perfect his talents at making the connection.

I suppose in a science fiction or fantasy film like this one, you don't expect the acting to be spectacular, but I was delighted to see Weaver in this film, reunited with her Aliens director after all these years. Even when she's in her avatar form, she retains a sense of the spunk that her character needs in order to confront the military and corporate types when they threaten the extinction of the Na'vi people's world. Giovanni Ribisi is a bit over-the-top as the executive in charge of the project; he seems so single-minded about getting the unobtainium that no reasonable explanation can penetrate into his consciousness. He's fun to watch, but the real scenery chewer, and the one you can't help but find fascinating, is Stephen Lang as Col. Miles Quaritch. He's there to play the gung-ho military officer who'd rather use firepower than negotiations to get what he wants. Everything about his character, from his speeches to the scars on his head, is designed to make him seem almost like a cartoon villain, which, in a way, he is.

Worthington is a relative newcomer to American film, and he is the focus of a great deal of the movie, both as Sully the Marine and as an avatar. We have to believe that he is capable of tremendous growth as he learns more about the Na'vi, that he isn't just another disillusioned Marine who's here to serve his commanders in order to "get his legs back." Worthington keeps a mostly blank expression when he is among the humans, but his avatar gets numerous chances to express joy at the life he's allowed to live. Perhaps it's the stark contrast between a world that sees him only as a guy in a wheelchair versus a world where he can still prove himself, where he can still be what he considers himself: "a warrior." I tend to prefer the avatar version myself, but Worthington acquits himself well here in both worlds.

If I have any complaint with the film, it's the dialogue. I wasn't at all surprised that the script was not included among the screenplay nominees. The overall story itself is certainly an interesting one, and we get to behave almost like anthropologists as we follow Jake's learning about the ways of Na'vi. But when Michelle Rodriguez's Trudy has to say, "I didn't sign up for this shit" in the middle of a battle between the humans and the Na'vi, you know you're going to be subjected to several more cliches. I thought the dialogue for Titanic was its weakest component, too, so it's obviously a consistent problem with a Cameron film. He even gets to recycle one of the more annoying lines from that earlier film--"What's happening?"--in a scene where it should be quite obvious to the speaker what's happening. It's a shame that the dialogue isn't up to the same level as the visuals for Avatar.

The planet, of course, is named Pandora as an homage to the mythical woman who opened a box filled with woes and problems for the world. I suppose we're supposed to make the parallel to having people from Earth try to overtake another planet; we'll just create more problems for ourselves, perhaps, in doing so. And the name of the precious metal, unobtainium, is a bit too literal when you think of all of the agony that the humans go through in order to locate more of it. Maybe that, too, is meant to suggest that we should leave alone that which seems unobtainable. If so, that's a bit like hitting someone in the face with a 2x4 in order to get their attention. And you really didn't need to have this much firepower involved to know that the military sometimes can get out of hand in its attempts to reach its goals. Likewise, you probably won't be too surprised to learn that most of the humans treat the Na'vi as if they are merely savages, little more than another set of animals standing in the way of getting the unobtainium. The ethnocentrism, if that's the right word for this, is pretty blatant.

Still, I don't think those kinds of small details detract too much from the overall experience of watching this movie. I won't soon forget the sequence where Jake meets and tames his iklan, a sort of flying dragon. He and Neytiri have some remarkable flights side by side, and they exchange glances that suggest how much excitement they feel in being able to share these moments. There's tremendous beauty in some of the night sequences, when the plants themselves light up, or when the Tree of Sorrow is shimmering above Jake and Neyriti on the night that they make love for the first time--yeah, we get to watch some animated creature sex. I also won't forget the sight of those floating mountains, suspected far above the ground and linked only by a series of vines. It's a remarkable world that Cameron and his collaborators have fashioned, and that makes Avatar a worthy nominee for Best Picture.

Oscar Wins: Art Direction, Cinematography, and Visual Effects

Other Oscar Nominations: Picture, Director, Film Editing, Original Score, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing

Best Picture of 1978

The Winner: The Deer Hunter

The Other Nominees: Coming Home, Heaven Can Wait, Midnight Express, and An Unmarried Woman.


My Choice: Coming Home. This was a particularly strong year for movies. All of the nominated films are excellent, but Coming Home has always resonated with me because of the relationship between Jane Fonda's Sally and Jon Voight's Luke. This is a mature film for grown-ups. It makes its viewers consider the repercussions of war, but it does so without ever taking us to the battlefields in Vietnam. By suggesting that the war doesn't end when the soldiers return home, Coming Home manages to demonstrate that the United States in 1978 still had a lot of unfinished business regarding the Vietnam War. The film also shines a light on an issue that became a national disgrace, the treatment of the veterans when they got back home. I realize that many people might consider this film to be unpatriotic, particularly given the final speech Luke delivers, but what is more patriotic than asking for your country to be a better place for everyone? And it's also an intensely romantic film with an emotionally satisfying relationship between the two main characters. I truly admire all five of the nominees for Best Picture of 1978, but I have to go with the film that has the most courage and the greatest heart, and that is Coming Home.

Coming Home (1978)

Coming Home, one of two movies about the Vietnam War nominated for Best Picture of 1978, takes place entirely in the United States. Unlike the Oscar winner that year, The Deer Hunter, which devotes about one third of the narrative to what happens to its male characters in Vietnam, Coming Home is primarily about the consequences of the war back home, particularly on the women left behind and on the veterans who have been injured or disabled by war. It's one of those women and one of those veterans who are the focus of this gripping, emotional movie. Even more than the final third of The Deer Hunter, Coming Home suggests just how much of an effect on people's lives fighting in Vietnam had.

Jane Fonda plays Sally Hyde, a woman who has never led a truly independent life. She's married to Captain Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern), who's about to leave for Vietnam and is busy preparing himself for whatever the war might bring. Hyde is a bit of an idealist. He hasn't been to active duty yet, so he's destined to be disillusioned by what he encounters once he's there. For proof of that, all we need to do is look at Jon Voight's Luke Martin. Luke is a former football star who's been injured in battle and cannot walk. He's angry over his condition, certainly, but he's particularly angry because he cannot understand why his country sent him to fight in a country like Vietnam.

Sally and Luke attended high school together, and once she starts volunteering at the veterans' hospital where Luke is being treated, she begins to understand what he and the other veterans feel about their time in the service. She's surprised because it doesn't initially fit what she thinks her husband believes, but eventually, she comes to develop her own ideas about the consequences of the war. It's because she listens to the veterans. She even tries to enlist the help of some other other military wives, but they are reluctant to improve conditions for the injured veterans at the base hospital. They don't feel it's their "place" to do so. Sally, though, begins doing what she can to make Luke's transition into a normal life easier, inviting him to dinner as a first step to understanding him better.

Fonda and Voight won Oscars for their work here, and both are exceptional. Fonda shows us Sally as a woman without a clear sense of her own identity at the start of the film, but she grows into a fully realized individual by the end. She takes a place of her own near the beach and even buys a car (a convertible, that traditional symbol of independence) for herself. She comes a long way from being a volunteer entrusted only with handing out juice and coffee to a woman who's ready to leave her husband for her lover because it will make her happier. I wouldn't normally spend a lot of time discussing sex scenes in a film like this, but you merely need to look at those involving Sally and Bob to sense how different the experience is with Luke. She finally achieves an orgasm with Luke, perhaps further freeing her from her sense of obligation to her husband. That's a huge step for someone like Sally.

Fonda's Sally also undergoes a physical transformation as the film progresses. When we first see her, she's dressed in what would have been considered proper attire for a housewife married to a military man. In fact, her dresses could be considered a kind of uniform. Her hair is straight and carefully tied with a ribbon, never a strand out of place. Later, though, she allows her hair to be curly, its more natural state, and even her clothes become looser and more, well, "fashionable." It's quite a shock to see her revert to her earlier look when she visits her husband for a while in Hong Kong. We've gotten to accustomed to the "new" Sally that we feel almost as uncomfortable as she does.

Voight has the harder acting job, though, I think. When we first meet Luke, he's lying on a gurney, pushing himself around with crutches. He yells at Sally because she knocks his colostomy bag off the gurney. He drinks too much, and he's usually in a foul mood around the hospital workers. They even sedate him sometimes just to keep him under control. When you contrast that image of Luke with the one of him as Sally's lover, it's clear why Voight won the Oscar. Luke is such a different man after Sally comes into his life. He's still disillusioned with the war, enough to chain himself to the fence at the recruiting center, but he also finds a sense of joy in spending time at the beach with Sally. The wheelchair ride they take is particularly romantic, as is the scene where she tells him she's going to Hong Kong to see Bob. It's tough to pull those moments off without looking too self-pitying, but Voight does so.

The film is also blessed with strong work by the supporting cast. One of the strongest performances is by Penelope Milford as Sally's friend Vi. Vi is not married to the soldier who leaves her for Vietnam, but she wishes for his return as much as Sally initially misses Bob. Vi also has a brother, played by Robert Carradine, who's suffered a nervous breakdown due to his involvement in Vietnam, perhaps adding to her concerns about her absent lover. Milford is so good in the scenes where Vi's emotions are the most revealed, such as when she and Sally go back to a hotel room with two guys, only to have Vi begin crying over the sadness of her life without Dink (Robert Ginty). It's a resonant scene, and it undoubtedly was a strong reason Milford was nominated for Best Supporting Actress.

Dern was likewise nominated for Best Supporting Actor. It's perhaps the best acting I've ever seen him do in his long career. Here he portrays a man who becomes disillusioned with what the soldiers are doing in Vietnam, only to discover that while he has been gone, his wife has started an affair--even more disillusionment. There's always a sense that Dern's Bob is carrying a level of barely concealed rage, even in the movie's early scenes before he leaves for battle. He also isn't a very loving husband at any point in the film, so it's easy to see why Sally finds comfort with someone else. He has to reveal that the injury which has brought him back to the United States is embarrassing, not an injury suffered by a hero. Bob seems to come to a realization about what he's achieved in his life, and Dern's playing of the final scenes with Bob are particularly tense even though you know what he's planning to do.

There's an interesting series of scenes involving the U.S. government's surveillance of Luke. Particularly after the incident where he chained himself to the recruiting depot fence, Luke is considered a potential threat to national security. There are tapes and photographs of the times that he and Sally are together, and they always seem to have a van following them wherever they go. When Bob returns, it's the FBI agents who tell him about Luke and Sally's affair, prompting the confrontation between the three of them that is one of the film's most intense sequences.

The most devastating sequence in the film, though, comes near the end. Luke has been invited to a high school to speak as the counter-argument to a Marine recruiter. The film allows quite a few characters to discuss patriotism, actually, including one ironic speech at a Fourth of July picnic attended by the disabled veterans. Luke's speech to the teens is about what he was asked to do in Vietnam and what he wanted to achieve: "I wanted to be a war hero, man. I wanted to go out and kill for my country. And, now, I'm here to tell you that I have killed for my country or whatever. And I don't feel good about it. Because there's not enough reason, man, to feel a person die in your hands or to see your best buddy get blown away. I'm here to tell you, it's a lousy thing, man. I don't see any reason for it." It's a powerful anti-war speech. I know that many people think that all war movies are truly anti-war, but Coming Home certainly allows us not only to see the perspective of those who opposed Vietnam, but their reasons for arguing against America's involvement.

Oscar Wins: Actor (Voight), Actress (Fonda), and Original Screenplay

Other Oscar Nominations: Picture, Director, Supporting Actor (Dern), Supporting Actress (Milford), and Film Editing

Naughty Marietta (1935)

The songs are the key to the success of Naughty Marietta, a film nominated for Best Picture of 1935. This film was the first collaboration between Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy, a successful pairing of talented, classically trained singers. The story is a slight one, of course, but you don't really watch a film like Naughty Marietta for the depth of its plot. You want to hear MacDonald and Eddy singing. Solo performances, duets--whatever it takes. I found it tough to stop smiling throughout this film, despite my ignorance of operatic singing and my reluctance to fall for some of the more unrealistic elements of the plot. In the end, MacDonald and Eddy won me over.

MacDonald is the charming Marietta, a princess who has been promised to a man she does not love, Don Carlos from Spain. He arrives with a black wedding dress and plans to proceed with the marriage as quickly as possible. She feels as trapped as the birds that she keeps in her aviary at home--one of the most heavy-handed symbols ever put on film. She wants to be free to choose her own husband, so rather than submit to her uncle's will, she trades places with a servant and sails for America on a ship filled with women. (She lets the birds free before she leaves, too, just so you don't miss out on the obvious symbolism.) These women are so-called "casquette girls," who have accepted a dowry from the French king as a condition of their marrying colonists once they arrive in America.

A reward is offered for Marietta's return, so she has to assume a disguise in order not to be detected. It's really just a pair of glasses and a plain dress, a sort of precursor to the set-up of those teen make-over movies that do the same thing with the girl who's going to be revealed to be a great beauty before the film's end. Do film makers really think that glasses make people so unappealing and so unrecognizable? Nevertheless, Marietta successfully escapes being discovered, and she even bonds with one of the girls on the boat, a romantic dreamer named Julie (Cecelia Parker), who still thinks she will fall in love with the man she eventually marries.

An attack by a pirate ship and a rescue by a group of mercenary scouts led by Eddy's Captain Warrington leave Marietta and the other women in the care of the soldiers. The fight between the mercenaries and the pirates, unsurprising, is completely unrealistic, but we know it's merely a plot device to get MacDonald and Eddy together so that they can begin some verbal and vocal sparring. He finds out that she isn't interested in marriage the way the other women are, and he begins calling her "your highness" due to her superior attitude. Eddy's performance in these scenes is pretty overwrought, to be honest, but he's not really called upon to act here. He's just meant to be the center of attention. Then again, it's tough not to be noticed when you lead your men through the forest singing "Tramp, Tramp, Tramp" at the top of your lungs.

It is easy to see why MacDonald's Marietta would find Eddy's Warrington attractive. He completely unlike Don Carlos; Warrington is a man of action, not leisure. He's decked out in fringed buckskin and possesses a strong voice for singing. He also has a sense of confidence that can be mistaken for arrogance, but of course, he has to come across that way at first in order to make their inevitable romance more enticing. The fact that he says his men are all happily unmarried might cause a raised eyebrow or too, but you know someone as handsome as Warrington has many women who would be interested in him. MacDonald, too, is appealing. She has a strong sense of her own identity and what she wants, and she is everyone's equal when it comes to quick-wittedness. And, no matter whether she's wearing an expensive gown or the garb of an ordinary woman, she also manages to look beautiful. Her hair and make-up are always flawless, perhaps a stretch for a woman in the backwoods of Louisiana, but again, we aren't searching for realism in a film like this one.

She lies to Gov. d'Annard (Frank Morgan) about her moral character in order to avoid having to fulfill the contractual obligation to marry. That's apparently how she acquires the title designation of "naughty." Shockingly, this intrigues the governor even more, and he tries to conspire with Warrington to bring Marietta to him. Of course, Warrington has his own designs on Marietta, and the governor's wife, played with gusto by Elsa Lanchester, intends to keep her husband as far away from Marietta and the other women as possible. Warrington finds Marietta singing in a puppet show and starts to take her to various locations around the city, even taking a canoe ride at one point so that he can sing "I'm Falling in Love with Someone" to her and she can swoon over his singing. People don't swoon in movies the way they used to, and MacDonald shows how it's supposed to be done here.

When news of who Marietta truly is reaches New Orleans, she is forced to revert to her previous way of life, with everyone bowing down to her and treating her as a princess destined to marry someone of a noble background. She finds it all rather boring after her adventures with Warrington. Her uncle (Douglas Dumbrille) and Don Carlos (Walter Kingsford) make the trip across the Atlantic to carry her back to France. It's at a ball given for their honor that Marietta finally sings the song she's been trying to write throughout the film, a song that expresses how she truly feels about Warrington. The song is "Ah! Sweet Mystery of Life," perhaps the most famous number associated with this film and its source material, and it's what prompts Warrington to attempt to rescue her and take him with her into the wilderness and on to the West where they can be together without interference from anyone else.

There are several scenes that should indicate to you that the storyline is not the most important aspect here. At the film's beginning, for example, Marietta goes to a pet shop to purchase some lovebirds. She also gets a puppy, and when she goes to visit her old singing teacher, the puppy comes along as a gift. It's a very musical building she visits. Each floor serenades the princess, and the puppy just keeps following her as she climbs higher and higher to hear the next level of music. She eventually listens to four floors of music, only to have people in other buildings also start to sing to her. I started to think the whole movie might just be an extension of this one song. In all, MacDonald and Eddy and the various members of the chorus make their way through eleven numbers, especially for a film that clocks in at a brisk 100 minutes or so. That's a lot of music in a short period of time.

The film is based on the famous operetta by Victor Herbert, and most of the music is Herbert's. There are additional lyrics in some songs to adapt them to the setting for the film, changed a bit from the original stage production, but for the most part, Eddy and MacDonald are performing the originals. My limited knowledge of operettas includes the notion that they are meant to be rather light-hearted, typically romantic in nature and often comedic in tone. Naughty Marietta certainly represents those traits, and it's an entertaining introduction to the duo of MacDonald and Eddy that would

Random Harvest (1942)

If you can get past the fact that Ronald Colman is a bit too old to play the main character in Random Harvest, a nominee for Best Picture of 1942, you will quickly find yourself entranced by a sad, beautiful love story between a man who has lost his memory and the woman who stands by him even when he forgets who she is. Colman, with that marvelously fluid voice of his, is Smith (or "Smithy"), who has lost his past thanks to shell shock from World War I. Greer Garson, a possessor of quite a beautiful voice in her own right, is the woman who rescues him from life in an asylum only to lose him again after several years of idyllic existence. These two actors are so well matched, and their chemistry is so strong, that they make Random Harvest one of the most romantic films of the 1940s.

Colman's Smith is at the Belbridge County Asylum recovering from his injuries when the war ends. He has faced one disappointment after another as people have come to the hospital looking for lost sons and husbands; no one recognizes him. When the guards leave their posts to celebrate the end of the war, he walks out of the asylum and into the streets of town, where he is quickly overwhelmed by the crowd. He's in his military uniform, so he's treated with a great deal of respect and generosity, but the crowd gets to be too much for him. Thankfully, Garson's Paula takes him to her dressing room to get a break from the noise of the streets. She decides to take care of him when he readily admits to his mental problems. She just thinks that he needs to be on the outside and he'll recover. She's the one who dubs him "Smithy."

After a guard from the asylum comes looking for Smith in town, Paula takes him to the countryside, abandoning her life as a stage performer in order to be with him. Before they depart, we're actually treated to one of her numbers, a truly awful song about a girl named Daisy that she performs in a deep Scottish brogue. If that's the quality of the material she has to perform, she's probably made the right choice in leaving the stage behind and assuming control of Smithy's life. He seems to be much calmer and even starts writing articles for a newspaper in Liverpool. He wants to ask her to marry him, but she says to him, "Do I always have to take the initiative?" That must have been a rather bold statement to make in a film in 1942, given its potential implications. They marry, have a child, and begin to enjoy a peaceful life in the country.

While in Liverpool for a job interview for a permanent post at a newspaper, Smith is hit by a car as he is crossing the street. A series of images of the war, including exploding bombs and attacks in foxholes, indicate that he's experiencing a flood of memories from his past. He realizes that he's really Charles Rainier, and he's lost three years of his life since the end of his service. He's also forgotten all about Paula and his child. He returns to his family's home, Random Hall, on the day of his father's burial and gradually starts to assume control of the family business. He even picks up an admirer, a girl named Kitty (played by Susan Peters), who is only 15 but seems to know just what she wants in a future husband. I should point out here that Colman was in his 50s when this film was made, and he looks far too old to have been merely a captain in the army and much too old to have some 15-year-old girl chasing after him. No amount of make-up can erase the obvious gap in their ages. Colman is really a good actor, and he is very effective in the role, but I just couldn't accept the romance between these two. Maybe that's what the film's creators were hoping too: that we'd see what a better match Garson's Paul is for him.

After the passage of a few years, we see him talking to his secretary, the efficient Miss Margaret Hanson, who is (of course) Greer Garson. She has seen his photograph in a newspaper and come to work for him in the hopes that he will remember her. Their child has died, and she's been unsuccessful at a series of jobs, so she imagines that he will recognize her when he sees her. He doesn't, though, and his announcement of his impending marriage to Kitty shocks Paula. She's still in contact with Smith's doctor from the asylum, but the doctor advises her not to tell Smith who she is during such a delicate time. He worries about the possible consequences for Smith's health of such a confrontation. Realizing that he will marry someone else without ever realizing who she is, Paula has Smith declared officially dead so that she can move on with her life (and he won't be considered a bigamist).

There are moments when Smith has momentary flashes of his years with Paula. A piece of music at the wedding rehearsal, for example, is all the signal Kitty needs to realize that he loves someone else even if he doesn't remember who it is. She leaves him, and he then starts to devote himself to his career. He's even elected to Parliament, but he tells Paula that he cannot be an MP without her support. He proposes marriage, not in a romantic sense but as a "sincere friendship." Perhaps out of a desire to regain his love, she agrees. You know that she's going to be frustrated that he still doesn't recognize who she truly is and that she's going to be upset when their relationship remains platonic rather than becoming romantic. It's an amazing performance that Garson gives her. She's got to show us just how much it pains her to be by the side of the man she loves but not have him realize it.

There are clues all around Smith, if he would only pay attention. He's been carrying a key that was found on him when he was struck by the car in Liverpool. He doesn't know what it fits, but it's always on his key chain. He sees a necklace he gave Paula when they were enjoying their romantic days in the countryside, but it fails to register with him. Paula has even tried jogging his memory by having him look for evidence of why he was in Liverpool, anything to bring Smith back to her. It's a very odd series of circumstances, resulting from his attempts to settle a strike at the Melbridge Cable Works, that leads to him having increasing awareness of what happened to him during those three years he was Smith instead of Rainier.

No doubt a modern viewer of Random Harvest would question the likelihood of so many coincidental occurrences, and the film does sometimes stretch credulity. However, it really isn't the mystery of what happens that draws us into these people's lives. It's the love they have for each other and our growing desire to see them reunited as they once were. We perhaps empathize with Paula the most as the movie progresses because she is our surrogate in wishing to have Rainier's memory restored to him. What we know now about repressed or lost memories might make the ending itself seem unlikely, but emotionally, the payoff is tremendous. There's a joy to be found in Rainier's pushing the key into the lock of the cottage he shared with Paula--make of that whatever metaphorical importance you'd like--and her calling him Smithy (and him recognizing her as his wife). Only a cynic would argue with the outcome of that last scene in Random Harvest.

Anthony Adverse (1936)

Anthony Adverse, nominated for Best Picture of 1936, is a sprawling historical epic set during the 18th Century in Europe. Warner Brothers, the studio behind the film, seemingly spared no expense in recreating the time period, and the actors chosen for the various roles give enthusiastic performances. This is, in many ways, old-fashioned entertainment, but when a movie is as skillfully made as Anthony Adverse, you can't help but enjoy it. The word "lavish" is often used to describe expensive movies, but a film like this one truly deserves the designation. It takes the viewer from Italy to Switzerland to Cuba to Africa to France and back again, and the journey is always worth taking.

The title character of Anthony Adverse is the child of Maria (Anita Louise) and Denis (Louis Hayward). Denis has followed Maria after her unfortunate marriage to the Marquis Don Luis (the great Claude Rains), a brute of a man known for beating his servants and always getting his way, no matter the cost to anyone else. Maria and Denis meet in secret several times while the Marquis is being treated for what appears to be a case of gout. When the Marquis discovers the affair, he kills Denis is a sword fight and takes the pregnant Maria to a Swiss chalet. She dies in childbirth, and he deposits the child at the Convent of the Holy Child. He's conveniently left Maria's luggage with the baby, luggage that includes a statue of the Virgin Mary that Anthony carries with him throughout this life.

Anthony faces a lonely life at the convent. He's the only boy at a school for girls, so he must be kept apart from the other students. His only real contact with the outside world is Father Xavier (Henry O'Neill), and the kindly priest realizes that Anthony might be better suited to an apprenticeship with a businessman in the local town of Leghorn. He asks for the help of a Scottish merchant, John Bonnyfeather (Edmund Gwenn), who almost immediately recognizes that the 10-year-old boy is the image of his late daughter Maria. Yes, that's right. The Marquis abandoned the child in his mother's hometown, and now he's been reunited with his grandfather. It's the devotional statue that clues Bonnyfeather in, but he chooses not to inform Anthony or anyone else.

Anthony grows up to be Fredric March, and he's started a budding romance with the daughter of two of Bonnyfeather's servants. They've even promised to marry each other when they grow up. Her name is Angela, and she's played by Olivia de Havilland. Bonnyfeather thinks that Anthony should socialize with more people his own age--Anthony is always at work, it seems--and then Vincent Nolte (Donald Woods) shows up. A banker's son, Vincent is a good candidate for Bonnyfeather's plans, so he encourages Anthony to spend more time with the handsome young man. I know where you think I'm going with this--and I easily could--but so much of the film is devoted to Anthony's attempts to be reunited with Angela that it would take a bit of effort to trace the homoerotic tension that is also present between Anthony and Vincent.

What follows are a series of meetings and separations between Anthony and Angela and adventures around the world for Anthony. She returns to Italy with a new name and a reputation as a rising opera star; he goes to hear to the opera one night and realizes that he's hearing Angela sing. She, however, is attracted to life on the stage, and he will likely never get Bonnyfeather's consent. They make love, but she then tries to get him to leave her. It's clear that she's hiding a relationship with another man from Anthony. Meanwhile, thanks to the loss of business during the Napoleonic Revolution, Bonnyfeather sends Anthony to Havana to get some money from a couple of creditors here. Unless the money is recovered, the business in Leghorn may have to be closed forever. While in Havana, Anthony learns that the creditors only have one remaining aspect to their business, the slave trade in Africa. In order to recoup the money owed to Bonnyfeather, he then spends three years overseeing the enslavement of Africans. He even begins a sexual relationship with a native woman, Neleta (Steffi Duna), to try to compensate for the loss of his beloved Angela. He leaves the slave trade after discovering the body of a friendly priest who had taken care of those who were too infirm to be enslaved.

I realize that you might have had a tough time following all of that, but this is a movie that clocks in at more than two hours long, and it has a lot of plot threads woven throughout its narrative. I haven't even mentioned the attempts by the Marquis and Bonnyfeather's housekeeper, Faith (Gale Sondergaard), to keep Anthony from inheriting his grandfather's fortune after the old man's death. Faith, in particular, has realized that Anthony is Bonnyfeather's grandson and attempts to keep news of the merchant's passing and the whereabouts of Angela from Anthony during the time that he is in Cuba and then in Africa. And there's also a silly subplot about Napoleon himself being entranced by Angela, now called Mademoiselle George, and realizing that he has a rival in Anthony. A lot happens in this film, and it's a rather engrossing series of events that draw the reader into the narrative.

March was frequently cast in intense parts like this one. He manages to make Anthony a complex character, one who spends his life devoted to the woman he loves yet capable of supporting the enslavement of other people in order to achieve his own ends. He has to remain sympathetic throughout the film, and March is a strong actor who can make you see just how conflicted his emotions are when he's in Africa but wants to be home in Italy with Angela. As Angela, de Havilland gets far less screen time, of course, this being a film primarily about the title character of Anthony. She's a charming presence, though, even when she's performing as an opera singer. I don't think it would be a surprise to anyone to learn that her singing voice was dubbed, but de Havilland is rather good at lip syncing. She, too, has to show just how much Angela desires to be with Anthony despite the other obligations she must fulfill.

The supporting cast is headed by Rains as the Marquis. As in most of his films, Rains seems to be having a blast. He gets to chew the scenery in a couple of his scenes, and he has the chance to portray a character with no apparent redeeming qualities. His performance is nicely contrasted by Gwenn's Bonnyfeather, one of the kindest of old men, someone to serve as a mentor and benefactor to Anthony. Gwenn would later become better known as Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street from 1947, but he was a solid character actor in many films. And I'd also like to single out the performance by Donald Woods as Vincent. He's just the kind of friend a handsome young man like Anthony should have: devoted, cheerful, attractive, always available--if you know what I mean.

I'd also like to remind you of a little bit of Oscar trivia. Sondergaard, who plays Faith, was the first recipient of the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She truly gives a stellar performance here, a most welcome beginning to a long tradition of having an actress give support to the stars of a movie yet manage to steal almost every scene in which she appears. I can't imagine a much better way to start off this award than by giving it Sondergaard, who plays Faith with such a malicious leer and sense of delight in her ability to outsmart others. She is scheming and manipulative, and it's great fun to watch her as the movie progresses. Those sideways glances of hers are very telling; you know she's a woman to be avoided if possible or, at the very least, handled cautiously.

Oscar Wins: Supporting Actress (Sondergaard), Cinematography, Film Editing, and Score

Other Oscar Nominations: Picture, Assistant Director, and Art Direction

Madame Curie (1943)

Madame Curie, one of the ten nominees for Best Picture of 1943, is of a science lesson than a biographical movie at times. The story of how Marie and Pierre Curie met and then devoted themselves to the discovery of radium, Madame Curie is really not really just about the title character; it's about both of the influential scientists. The film is ostensibly a love story intermingled with recreations of the experiments that drove the two scientists to spend many years of their lives (and endangering their health) for the sake of scientific discovery. While I might have wished for less time in their laboratory and more time with them at home, the film does a nice job of showing the grueling work they undertook in order to better the lives of other people.

The film begins with Marie Sklodowska (Greer Garson) as a student at the Sorbonne in Paris. She's come from a poor family in Poland, so she doesn't always have the money for such necessities as regular meals. She's working on a master's degree in physics and mathematics, and she's distinguished herself in her classes. However, without any money, she will have to return to Poland to live with her father and perhaps abandon scientific research. One of the more sympathetic professors at the school, Professor Perot (Albert Bassermann) recommends that she take on a project that will help to keep her at the university so that she can continue her studies. The only catch is that she must share laboratory space with another scientist, Pierre Curie (Walter Pidgeon), and he's very particular about how his lab operates. Just ask his assistant David (Robert Walker), who tries to spell out the rules to Marie on her first day. And Pierre's particularly unhappy about sharing space with a woman, "the natural enemy of science."

They are, however, exceedingly polite to each other upon meeting. They don't interfere with each other's work, and she manages to stay quieter than David does. One evening when Marie and Pierre are departing the building in a rainstorm, he walks her home under his umbrella and they discuss matters related to physics while on their way. I had, of course, no idea what they were discussing, give that my last physics class was in high school about thirty years ago now, but they seem so immediately drawn to each other's minds that you know that's just the scientific way of showing love. Hot stuff, those deep conversations about physics problems.

Imagine Pierre's shock when he discovers that she will be returning to Warsaw after finishing her doctorate, apparently abandoning a life of science in the process. He goes to her apartment and finds her packing to leave, so he invites her to the country home of his parents for the weekend before she leaves Paris (and him). His parents, played by reliable character actors Henry Travers and May Whitty (later Dame May Whitty), can see that he's in love, but Pierre is a scientist, not a romantic. It takes a long night of pacing the floor in his room for him to develop the nerve to ask her to marry him. Of course, he doesn't put it in such terms. To him, it will be "a wonderful collaboration," just like salt. No, I'm not kidding. He compares their relationship to the one between the different elements in salt. When you have such a romantic devil like that on your hands, you'd best marry him even if he's never even kissed you.

After a honeymoon that includes a great deal of discussion of her planned experiments with radiation, they return to the lab to begin work. It's another scientist who earlier got them interested in the work that will consume much of their lives. He had found that a material called pitchblende seems to give off x-rays on its own. Both Pierre and Marie found this intriguing at first, but they went back to the work they had already started. It's only after their marriage, when starts working on the puzzle the other scientist prompted, that she starts to find some anomalies in the measurements of radiation, and that gets Pierre to thinking so much about the problem that he doesn't even pay much attention when his father keeps talking about grandchildren. They'd rather produce a scientific discovery than an heir, it seems. When you watch them rush back to the lab, you can only imagine that this must be a form of foreplay for the two of them.

What follows is a lot of scientific mumbo jumbo, something about thorium and measurements and residue and such. I don't know that we are really meant to follow all of this scientific discussion in detail, but I suppose the film's creators didn't want to gloss over the work of the Curies too quickly. They did make remarkable contributions to science--Pierre says it's really "the secret of life itself"--and the film is careful to give a thorough overview of the amount of work it took for them to have any breakthroughs. Garson and Pidgeon sweat lot, for example, when their boiling down the pitchblende. I don't know that we need as much information as we are given by the narrator, but I suppose viewers with a more scientific bent will find it all intriguing.

The film does a good job of demonstrating just how radical the work of the Curies was to the scientific community. The professors at the Sorbonne, for example, refuse to grant the Curies more money and laboratory space to conduct their research. One of the critics dismisses Marie as "young, inexperienced, and a woman." They wind up with a leaky shed--and it seems to rain all the time when they are working--with no budget or equipment. They remain steadfast in their efforts, though. At times, I felt like the movie was recreating all four years of efforts to isolate radium. The most innovative aspect of this long sequence is the use of time-lapse photography to depict the process of crystallization the Curies used to locate radium. Thankfully, we are not subjected to all 5,677 crystallizations they undertook. The voice-over narration spares us from having to watch some of the more mundane details.

The movie also skims over a few relevant details along the way, at least relevant to those wanting more than just a movie about science. Marie develops burns on her hands, but after being warned of a possible threat of cancer by her doctor, she returns to the experiments. So dedicated is she to the possibility that their work could eventually be used to destroy cancerous tissue that she risks her own health. The couple also have two children, so I suppose there must have been a couple of times when they didn't spend all of their nights boiling pitchblende or spreading out little dishes of isolated material to crystallize. We also, sadly, don't get much else in the way of the love between the two of them. It's only near the end of the film that Pierre seems to start thinking about his wife as a woman instead of a colleague.

Garson is very good here. She always was such a warm, caring presence in films that you can't really hide that with all of the scientific talk that she's asked to deliver. Her lovely nature and generous spirit shine through whatever guise she has to adopt. And Pidgeon, who had a long career in films, is a solid counterpart to Garson's warmth. He's frequently called upon to reflect Pierre's absent-mindedness, and he brings a gentle sense of humor to those moments in the film. They are a nicely matched couple, and the film's greatest strength is their chemistry. They subtly manage, even if Madame Curie doesn't, to reveal the love that Marie and Pierre Curie had for each other as they worked side-by-side all those years.

Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire (2009)

I'm not really sure why the creators of 2009 Oscar nominee Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire decided to give so much emphasis to the source material. The title would be much more effective, I think, if it had been shortened just to Precious. I'm not going to keep typing the full title over and over in this posting. Instead, I'll focus on the shortened version by which the film and its title character are better known. It's a remarkably ironic choice of name for her, a young girl saddled with more problems and issues than any movie protagonist in recent history. It's a name that suggests something rare and beautiful, something treasured. Clareece "Precious" Jones feels anything but loved or cherished, however, and that's what makes viewers empathetic to her plight.

Precious (played by newcomer Gabourey Sibide) has what seems like some pretty insurmountable odds stacked against her. She's 16 years old and almost illiterate. She's unlikely to learn how to read and write in her school, given how disruptive the environment is. She's pregnant with her second child, and the father of them both is her own father, who has been raping her for years. Her first child, cared for by her grandmother, has Down's syndrome. Precious is also cursed with the most monstrous of mothers ever committed to film, Mary, played with ferocity by Mo'Nique. You'd expect a movie about a character with all of those problems to be a downer, and Precious (the movie) pulls very few punches in depicting just how bad life is for this young woman.

It's only "cheat," really, is in the way that it depicts the physical violence to which Precious is subjected by her mother. Each time we see Mary mounting the stairs to her daughter's room, the screen fades to black before a new scene starts. I'm not suggesting that it would make a better movie if the film showed us just how horrific Mary's actions are; the suggestion of them is enough here. Besides, when your mother hurls as many insults as Mary does, you understand the toughness of the environment out of which Precious has to endure.

What saves her, at least at first, is her imagination. The film frequently interrupts some of the more painful disclosures by showing us what's going on inside Precious's mind. She dreams about being a star and walking the red carpet at the premiere of her movie. She imagines herself the focus of a music video. She even thinks of herself as a part of a gospel choir. In most of these moments, she's joined by her image of her ideal partner, a light-skinned black boy who seems to love only her, who wants to take her away from the desperate life she's living. Interesting, in one of her fantasies, the one where she sees an alternative version of herself in the mirror, she's a white girl with blond hair, quite a contrast from her own dark skin and black hair. The movie raises some issues about whiteness and its privileged position in society, but it doesn't address them fully.

Of course, it isn't just her imagination that saves Precious. She needs the help of others. Thanks to the intervention of her high school principal, Precious is sent to an alternative school where she meets her new teacher, Blu Rain (Paula Patton). Ms. Rain is the kind of teacher one only sees in the movies. She's completely dedicated to the students in her class and never seems to have a bad day. She's all good, a model teacher in ways that real teachers could never be. She even manages to have a fulfilling home life with her partner, so she has apparently learned how to achieve the perfect balance in life. Yes, she's a lesbian, and the revelation of that makes Precious rethink her own ideas, passed down from her mother, about gay people. When you have a teacher as giving and generous as Ms. Rain, you have to be just as open-hearted as she is.

I found the scenes in the classroom itself to be among the most interesting in the film. Each of the girls is there for a different reason, and they have differing abilities to express themselves. I particularly enjoyed watching the performance of Xosha Roquemore as Joann; she's hysterically funny. What occurs over time, slowly, is a bonding among these girls. They all seem to understand what the others are going through, and they become a pretty powerful support system for each other. The best example is when Precious is in the hospital to have her baby. The other girls visit her and bring her pictures and take her journals back to Ms. Rain. You'd expect far more tension between this group of people from disparate backgrounds, but Precious needs a "safe place" where she can express herself, and that's what the classroom provides for her.

The film's greatest strength is in the performances of its two leads, Sibide and Mo'Nique. Sibide has to convey a great range of emotion. She has to grow and evolve over the course of the narrative. She has to have ups and downs, good days and bad days. It's quite a remarkable performance. There are scenes where she unleashes the rage that Precious has been building inside of her, and they are shocking to watch. Then she has to show just how hurt she has been by Mary's constant barrage of negativity. Precious cowers in the kitchen, making dinner for her mother, never knowing when the next act of violence might occur. Sibide also gets to display some remarkable acts of tenderness with Precious's baby Abdul. It's quite a performance for someone who had never acted in a film before this one.

The real revelation, though, is the performance of Mo'Nique. Best known for her years as a stand-up comedian, Mo'Nique here is capable of portraying the essence of darkness. As a woman embittered by her husband's leaving her bed for their daughter instead, she spends a great deal of her time on screen revealing her hatred for Precious through her eyes. She also takes the simple props of a chair and TV tray and television set and uses them more effectively than most actresses could use an entire bag of tricks. And the way she smokes her cigarettes is like the unleashing of an inner poison. I don't think anyone who's seen this film can forget Mo'Nique's performance, especially after the revelations of her last moments on camera.

There are two other performances that are surprising too. Mariah Carey, best known to moviegoers for her infamous Glitter, plays Mrs. Weiss, a social worker who gradually starts to piece together what has been happening to Precious. She's almost unrecognizable at first, so plain has she made herself. I think that once the shock dissipates, though, you find her quite believable. The other supporting cast member who caught me off guard was Sherri Shepherd, perhaps most famous for being one of the hosts of The View. After I saw this film the first time, I read that Shepherd was in the film, but I couldn't remember seeing her. It was only after I discovered that she plays Cornrows, the receptionist at the alternative school, that I realized how much she, too, had de-glamorized herself to play the role.

I'd like to talk just a little bit about the ending without necessarily spoiling it for anyone who hasn't yet seen this amazing little film. There are more revelations about Precious's life than the ones I've mentioned above, and let's just say that knowing that the film is set in 1987 means that the future does not bode well for Precious. Some have suggested that the ending is an attempt to leave on an upbeat note, but I'm not sure that's what the film's creators have in mind. Too many bad things have happened to Precious, and while she may have made some changes in her life, the odds against her achieving all of the dreams she describes one day to her classmates and teacher seem overwhelming. I think the ending is ambiguous about what lies ahead, but I suppose some viewers need a bit of optimism after watching a couple of hours of such downbeat material.

The Hurt Locker (2009)

The Hurt Locker wastes no time putting us into the action of the war in Iraq. The opening sequence involves attempts by members of an Army bomb unit to locate and detonate an IED (improvised explosive device) that has been hidden in what appears to be a pile of refuse on the street. Guy Pearce's Sergeant Thompson takes command of the situation when the remote unit they've been using loses a wheel on its wagon. He dons a suit that allegedly offers protection during a blast and walks toward the bomb's location. However, as he approaches, a man emerges from a butcher shop and punches some numbers into a cell phone, exploding the bomb and killing Thompson. It's a real eye-opener of a beginning to a film, and after that sequence finishes, you're left in shock for a little while. After all, it isn't every film that kills off in the first few minutes a character being portrayed by a movie star with some name recognition.

What follows is a series of encounters with various bombs. We watch one incident after another as the soldiers respond to calls about potential threats and then attempt to eliminate or reduce the threat of harm. The unit is now under the leadership of Staff Sergeant William James (played with remarkable intensity by Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner), and he leads these men through some dangerous situations, such as a series of bombs that are linked to each other or to explosives that have been strapped to and then locked onto an Iraqi man. As the film progresses, we learn how many days remain in the unit's time in Iraq, how much more time they have to keep taking on these dangerous missions. They only have about a month left when the movie begins, and it's a tense countdown to see if the three men in the group will all survive until the last day of their duty.

The reason for that tension is, of course, SSgt. James himself. He's a rebel in a job that calls for people who are willing to live on the edge a little, but doing so can also put his fellow soldiers and the citizens of Iraq in danger. James doesn't like following orders or doing things the way that they've always been done. He has too much of a drive to figure out situations, and he's really very cocky about his abilities at times. When he's working on defusing a bomb, for example, he will throw off his headset if one of the other men is talking too much and distracting him from the task at hand. He even takes off the protective suit during one encounter, claiming, "If I'm gonna die, I want to die comfortable." It's little wonder that the other two men become very cautious around James.

We never truly find out what it is about defusing bombs that thrills James so much. He's an adrenaline junkie, to be sure, but the cause is never explained. We do get to see the stark contrast between his days in Iraq and his time back home with his (estranged?) wife, played by Lost's Evangeline Lilly, and his baby boy. There's little danger facing him as he goes grocery shopping or cleans the leaves out of the gutters. Perhaps the film is trying to suggest that some men—and it does really seem to be a movie about men—just can't be happy with a mundane existence. They need the constant possibility of danger, a thrill at all times.

The film raises some interesting questions about masculinity and what it takes to be a "real man." James and Sgt. Sanborn (the great Anthony Mackie) talk about having sons. James, of course, already has one, proving his cocksmanship, I suppose. He's not a particularly good father, though, especially considering the conversation he tries to have with his baby boy about the loss of expectations that you have when you grow up. All the little boy wants to do is play with his jack-in-the-box. Sanborn isn't ready for a child, he claims, although his girlfriend talks about wanting to have a baby. James suggests that Sanborn, in so many words, "give her your sperm," but Sanborn hesitates. At one point, a drunken Sanborn asks James if he (Sanborn) is ready to put on the bomb squad's protective suit and try to defuse a bomb himself. James, also drunk but still lucid, says no. Apparently, only "real men," makers of babies like James, can handle this kind of work. Maybe that explains James' impatience when he has to work with other people. They just don't live up to his standard of masculinity.

The Hurt Locker doesn't necessarily take sides in the debate over the war. Its politics, if it has any, are not readily apparent. At times, I think we are meant to pity James, but at other times, you have to admire the determination his job requires. He's a soldier doing his job, just like his two colleagues, and they all readily admit that there are always risks. This isn't a film, though, where the characters are always having debates about why they are fighting in this desert country (although our central characters sometimes express this dislike of it). It isn't meant to be a war film in the traditional sense. It chooses instead to focus on the different kinds of soldiers who go to war.

The film also doesn't make all of the Iraqi people out to be villains. Certainly, there are some bad guys in the movie, such as the snipers who attack the bomb unit while they are trying to help a group of English soldiers whose vehicle has a flat tire. And those who planted the IEDs, usually invisible people in the narrative anyway, are meant to be villainous. However, there's a genuine friendship that develops between James and a young Iraqi who calls himself Beckham after the English soccer player. It's that attachment to Beckham that causes James to do some of the most foolhardy of his actions, perhaps indicating the possible danger that arises when soldiers and civilians become friends, especially when you have someone like James who might be considered almost fanatical in his determination.

The film actually begins with a quote from journalist Chris Hedges: "The rush of battle is often a potent and lethal addiction, for war is a drug." We don't really understand the context for the quote until Renner's SSgt. James appears and starts approaching the job in such a radical way. James is obviously addicted to the danger that his kind of work presents. It's as if he wants to cheat death constantly, that he wants to put himself in the greatest danger possible, just to see if he can come back alive. There's an almost maniacal chuckle/laugh Renner has when James is particularly proud of some stunt he's pulled. It's a telling gesture about the kind of man James is portrayed to be.

I've spoken already about Renner and Mackie, but I'd also like to mention the third man in the unit, Specialist Owen Eldridge, played by Brian Geraghty. Geraghty has such a baby-faced innocence to him that we can't help but imagine that Eldridge is as naive as his appearance would lead us to believe. He lives in constant fear, expressed to the company's resident psychiatrist, that he will be killed in battle. It's a rather morbid obsession he has with dying during wartime, yet he's also the soldier who perhaps best represents the conflicting emotions held by most soldiers. While he wants to serve his country and perform his duties to the best of his ability, he also wants to return home safely and be able to reintegrate into mainstream American society, leaving Iraq behind. It's a challenging role, but Geraghty does a fine job as the character with whom we as an audience might empathize the most.

I'd also like to mention at least one technical aspect of the film, the use of slow motion at various times to depict an explosion. What could be a hokey device in lesser hands than director Kathryn Bigelow's is, instead, effective here at making the devastation even more dramatic. Watching the opening sequence, especially the rust vibrating off an abandoned car, is jaw-dropping. You can almost feel the shock waves in the theater itself. Bigelow and her crew use this device sparingly, but when it does appear, it's quite powerful in its impact on a viewer.

Oscar Wins: Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Achievement in Directing (Kathryn Bigelow, the first woman ever to win this honor in Oscar history), Best Original Screenplay, Best Achievement in Film Editing, Best Achievement in Sound Mixing, and Best Achievement in Sound Editing

Other Nominations: Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Jeremy Renner), Best Achievement in Cinematography, and Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures/Original Score