2010 (1984)

 

2010, sometimes referred to as 2010: The Year We Make Contact, is a sequel to that enigmatic masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey. The second film features a team of American and Soviet (what we now call Russian) astronauts heading back to Jupiter and its moon Europa to discover what happened and to restart the HAL 9000 computer that caused all of the chaos nine years earlier. (That certainly seems like a bad idea given how the original film ended.) 2010, being a product of the 1980s, is filled with almost stereotypical Cold War fears and concerns. The Soviet Union and the United States are on the brink of war while the mission is underway, and there’s a palpable sense of tension and distrust between the U.S. and Soviet astronauts. The dialog in Russian is neither translated into subtitles or dubbed, which only adds to the sense of distance between the representatives of the two countries. The film features good performances from a cast that includes such talented actors as Roy Scheider, John Lithgow, and Helen Mirren (as a leader of the Soviet astronauts). Bob Balaban, always a reliable and welcome presence in the movies, plays the scientist who revives HAL and learns that the computer was being forced to keep a secret about the ubiquitous monoliths that our government had tried to cover up. He gets along well with HAL, and their conversations are intriguing when compared to what happened in the first film, but I feel like 2010 spends just a bit too much time inside that red glow-bathed control room. HAL’s red “eye” isn’t as mind-blowing this time around either. The sequel is rather stylish if slow-moving at times. It owes a clear debt to the first Alien film with the sharp contrast between the dark Soviet spaceship and the brightly lit American ship. The filmmakers also recreated some of the props and costumes from the 1968 film, which begs the question of just how original this Oscar-nominated costume design really is, particularly since the costumes of the original were not nominated. The film asks a lot of questions for viewers to ponder: Will the U.S. and the Soviet Union astronauts work together to get everyone back to Earth? Will HAL interfere again once it/he realizes the purpose of this mission? Will we ever learn what the monoliths are and why they appear when and where they do? What is Keir Dullea, so memorable as David Bowman in 2001, doing in this film? Is he a ghost or an apparition, and what is he trying to accomplish? I’m not certain that we care enough, truly, about the answers to these questions, but fans of 2001: A Space Odyssey might want to know more than I felt I wanted to know. To me, 2010 is almost as bewildering at times as that earlier film; it’s just not as powerful or awe-inspiring.

Oscar Nominations: Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Costume Design, Best Sound, Best Visual Effects, and Best Makeup

Triangle of Sadness (2022)

 

Triangle of Sadness is an unexpected choice for inclusion on the list of nominees for Best Motion Picture of the Year. It’s certainly a very accomplished film from the award-winning Swedish director/screenwriter Ruben Ostlund. It’s also a pretty dark comedy with some rather bleak moments, and the audience keeps getting shocked by where the film goes. Overall, it’s quite an indictment of the rich and also a very stinging depiction of how badly we often treat each other. Maybe its inclusion is a sign that the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences have become more open to considering more unusual films as being award worthy.

The film features what would ordinarily be a typical three-part structure, but here each of the sections is a very distinctly different kind of story. Our focus keeps shifting with the start of each new section, which certainly keeps a viewer on their toes when we have, essentially, three different film genres to connect. “Part 1: Carl & Yaya” features a young couple, both of whom are models. However, Yaya (Charlbi Dean) makes much more money as a female model than her boyfriend Carl (Harris Dickinson) does as a male model. They fight a lot about money and gender roles, and you begin to suspect that the film might be some sort of examination of these issues. They don’t seem to have a very happy relationship – it seems rather toxic, actually – so we could perhaps even expect the film to be an examination of the nature of these kinds of relationships.

However, when “Part 2: The Yacht” begins, we see that the number of characters we’ll need to follow expands. We have the crew of a very expensive private yacht and a range of incredibly rich (and incredibly stupid) people. These rich people are just awful; they have such dumb thoughts in their heads. One of them claims that everyone is equal and, thus, the crew should have a chance to swim just like the wealthy patrons on the yacht do, and the crew has to accommodate their demands, no matter how ridiculous they might be and no matter how much it will interfere with the crew’s ability to do their necessary work. Thus, the preparations for the evening meal gets delayed and the confused crew members slide into the ocean one at a time and then return to their more menial but essential tasks.

It's quite the collection of oddballs on this cruise. There’s a woman who can only speak one sentence in German due to a stroke. There’s a Russian fertilizer salesman who gets into a puzzling debate with the captain over the virtues of capitalism vs. communism. One couple has made their money from selling explosives and weapons used by some of the worst world leaders. And one woman swears that the yacht, which is motorized, has dirty sails despite being assured by the captain and members of the crew that there are no sails. The captain, by the way, is played by Woody Harrelson, whose performance is quite as off kilter as you might expect from him.

The centerpiece of Part 2 is a disastrous Captain’s Dinner. Thanks to some poor choices based on trying to meet the demands of the rich people on board, it occurs in the middle of a violent storm and the food has spoiled because it’s been sitting on hold while the crew was forced into taking a dip in the ocean. You’ve not seen so much vomiting and diarrhea in a film in a while. It’s quite the punishment for the out-of-touch people on this yacht.

“Part 3: The Island” shifts the focus to a survival film. The ship has been destroyed by pirates, and most of the guests and crew have died. Only one person among the survivors seems to know how do anything, and she was the former toilet monitor on the ship – in other words, part of the bathroom cleaning crew. Abigail (played by Dolly De Leon) upends the class system, forcing the wealthy passengers to accept her as “the captain” before they receive any food. She also starts a sexual relationship with Karl in order to grant him food and privileges that he can share with Yaya. De Leon is magisterial in her performance. We may return to focusing on Carl and Yaya a bit more in this third part, but really, we care most about Abigail. De Leon gives what would be an award-worthy performance in any other year.

The ending of Triangle of Sadness is unexpected and rather inconclusive. Given its enigmatic nature, the ending doesn’t especially engender any sympathy for the characters who are still around. I’m not certain what could happen to them next, but I’m also not quite sure that I’d care to know what happens to any of them other than Abigail. Several of the films nominated for Best Motion Picture this year had these rather puzzling conclusions. Maybe that’s a trend for the 2020s to watch out for.

It’s somewhat interesting to note that the sequences on the yacht were filmed on a yacht used by Aristotle and Jackie Onassis. Talk about the wealthy and privileged; that boat must have some wild stories associated with it. It’s also sad that the actress who plays Yaya, Charlbi Dean, passed away before the film received its Academy recognition. I might not like the self-involved character that she plays, but Dean was certainly a talented actress who was still very early in her career.

Oscar Nominations: Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Achievement in Directing (Ruben Ostlund), and Best Original Screenplay

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964; 1965)

 

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les parapluies de Cherbourg) is a gorgeously shot film from France’s Jacques Demy, who wrote the screenplay and directed the film. It’s a sung-through musical, meaning no one speaks any dialogue; they sing everything. I’ve often found this approach to musicals – both film and stage – annoying at times, but not here. This is a charming love story about a failed romance between two exceptionally beautiful characters: a garage mechanic named Guy (Nino Castelnuovo) and a shopkeeper’s daughter named Genevieve (Catharine Deneuve in a career-making role). As is (too) often the case with young lovers in the movies, they want to marry but face opposition from their respective families. Genevieve’s mother (played with a flirtatious passion by Anne Vernon) and Guy’s aunt/godmother (played by Mireille Perrey) seem to want their charges to stick around and help them rather than live separate lives. It doesn’t matter, though, because Guy receives notice that he must complete his required military service, and at the time of the initial scenes of the film, Algeria is attempting to gain its independence from France. The plot is simple yet universal: Genevieve becomes pregnant after she and Guy make love, and then she doesn’t hear from him for long periods of time while he is away in Algeria. She misses Guy but is quite lonely. At the urging of her mother, she meets another man, the slick diamond merchant Roland Cassard, and begins contemplating marriage to someone other than her beloved Guy. The ending of the film is sad, not a typical Hollywood ending, but then many romances do actually end sadly rather than happily ever after. The cinematography is first-rate; this is a simply beautiful film to watch, and all of the pinks and blues on screen just dazzle the eye. Likewise, the musical score by the legendary Michel Legrand is touching and funny and perfect. It seems to rain a lot in Cherbourg, perhaps fitting the title of the film a bit too much, but that rain serves as a consistent reminder of the undercurrent of sadness that permeates the film’s narrative.

NOTE: The Umbrellas of Cherbourg was submitted by France for Oscar consideration for Best Foreign Language Film of 1964 and then released in U.S. theaters later. That’s why it was also nominated for several Oscars the following year. It happened rather frequently in the past that foreign language films would span a couple of years of Academy Award consideration.

Oscar Nomination (for 1964): Best Foreign Language Film

Oscar Nominations (for 1965): Best Story and Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen, Best Original Song (“I Will Wait for You”), Best Score: Substantially Original, and Best Score of Music: Adaptation or Treatment