Elvis (2022)

 

Like so many of the movies directed by Baz Luhrmann, Elvis is a wild pastiche of moments that add up less to a fully coherent narrative than to an overwhelming emotional response. Sure, we do get many key moments in the life of the primary subject, Elvis Presley, but we also get a sense, a feeling if you will, of what it was like to be present during many of the events of his life that are depicted in the film. I wouldn’t turn to this film for a straightforward recounting of the events of Elvis’ life – although the film does touch upon some pretty significant moments of his life – but you can’t say that it’s not an exciting journey to take. It was one of the most thrilling movies to watch in 2022.

I’m going to address the least successful aspect of the film first, the portrayal of Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis’ longtime manager, by Tom Hanks. Frankly, the film focuses too often on Parker instead of Elvis, and that’s to its detriment. Hanks is just not at his best in this performance, and the cartoonish accent doesn’t help. Most of the film is narrated by Parker through some sort of morphine-induced fever dream, so you might be willing to accept that some of the details might be fuzzy or less than historically accurate. However, having the man who is ostensibly blamed for getting Elvis hooked on drugs, ultimately leading to his death, seems like such an odd choice.

The film’s structure is mostly but not strictly chronological. We see how Elvis began touring as a young performer with Hank Snow, someone that anyone familiar with country music should know from “I’m Moving On.” As the show stops at various locations throughout the southern United States, you see Elvis’ billing keep getting higher and higher on the posters because he’s doing something that other white singers aren’t doing, playing what was then termed “black music” or “race music.” Of course, music is always more universal than it’s given credit for being, so when we see how Elvis as a young boy seems to have been struck (quite literally in this film) by the dual strains of blues in a juke joint he’s not supposed to be at and gospel music at a revival meeting, you sense how that blend of different styles will have an impact on his performances and why so many people responded to his music the ways that they did.

Austin Butler plays Elvis, and he doesn’t initially strike a viewer as really looking much like the King of Rock and Roll. However, when he shows up at a gig wearing a pink suit that makes him look quite beautiful, you see why the women in the audience respond in the, um, rather primal way that they do. The movie is really good at capturing the thrill of watching a live performance with the noise and the movement, and that is really one of the best aspects of the film overall. It’s tough to watch Butler sing “Baby, Let’s Play House” without feeling like you’re in the audience being overwhelmed by the shocking newness of Presley’s style.

We meet lots of people who influence Elvis besides Col. Parker, but they go by so quickly that you sometimes are retrospectively remembering how important or significant they were to his career. Sam Phillips at Sun Records, for example, started Elvis’ recording career. Well, a secretary at Sun Records probably deserves a lot of the credit, but Sam ran the company. We watch Big Mama Thornton performing “Hound Dog,” a song that Elvis would later make into a huge hit. And there’s brief moments featuring B.B. King, Little Richard, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe, but don’t blink or go to the restroom or you’ll miss their time on screen.

Because Elvis broke so many racial barriers and sexual taboos, everyone, it seems, tried to control him and his behavior, usually to little effect. One of the more interesting moments in the film happens in Mississippi, Elvis’ home state (and mine), when Senator Eastland tries to get him arrested. Rather than take the safe path, Elvis chooses to perform “Trouble.” The film features some great closeups of Butler as Elvis during this sequence, writhing on stage and deservedly earning the praise for his performance. He certainly gets the gestures and movements right, and the press frenzy that surrounded Elvis gets highlighted effectively in this sequence too.

One of the hallmarks of a Luhrmann film is quick editing. It leads to a blend of reality and hyperreality. The montages that show us how he reacted to becoming famous feature the womanizing and the drugs that became the fodder for lots of gossip. The 1960s is really almost a blur of images: the various bad movies into which Parker pushed him, his marriage and its dissolution, the birth of his daughter Lisa Marie, so many things. And then the film slows down a bit to let us see behind the scenes a bit for the so-called “comeback special.” Was Elvis ever sexier than when he wore that black leather suit? The Colonel wants a family-friendly special with “Here Comes Santa Claus” as the climactic moment, but Elvis is too troubled by what’s going on the world to concentrate upon something so frivolous. This was the period when Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy Jr. were assassinated. The performance of “If I Can Dream” – with Butler’s note-perfect rendition of how Elvis did the number originally – is truly a highlight of the film.

By the time the film gets to the Las Vegas years and the record-breaking residency at the International Hotel, we’re back to spending too much time watching what’s going on with Col. Parker and his mounting gambling debts. The use of split screens and multiple images during the reimagining of “That’s All Right, Mama” is reminiscent of the concert films that Presley released at the time. We get the obligatory depiction of “Suspicion Minds” in the white jumpsuit and of Priscilla’s departure from the marriage, but the key result of this sequence is Elvis learning the truth about the colonel’s background and how much of his money Parker had taken from him over the years. Elvis dies about sixteen minutes before the end of the film, leaving us to listen to Hanks as Parker rather than allowing us to feel grief over the loss of one of the greatest entertainers of all time.

The film Elvis was certainly well liked by the voters of the Academy, who nominated it for eight awards. However, it now stands as one of the most-nominated films in history to receive not even one Oscar. When you consider the film editing and the cinematography and the makeup and hairstyling and the costumes – the costumes! – as well as the great portrayals of Elvis performing his songs throughout this career, you’re left with a remarkable achievement. The film might have been at least 30-40 minutes shorter with less attention on Col. Parker, and that could have made the achievement even greater.

Oscar Nominations: Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Austin Butler), Best Achievement in Hair and Makeup, Best Sound, Best Achievement in Cinematography, Best Achievement in Costume Design, Best Achievement in Film Editing, Best Achievement in Production Design

Gladiator (2000)

 

Gladiator begins with an epic, brutal battle sequence that lasts about twelve minutes, and it’s a brilliant strategy to start with something so physical and action-packed. Director Ridley Scott has always been good at directing action movies, and while this might have easily been a throwback to those earlier, rather corny gladiator movies from the 1950s and 1960s, Scott’s film is filled with great sequences, many of them taking place in various arenas and featuring intense encounters between some of the biggest gladiators imaginable.

The film follows the story of the Roman General Maximus Decimus Meridius (played with more stoicism than probably necessary by Russell Crowe), who leads the Roman army to victory over the forces in Germania in the opening sequence. So beloved and revered and successful is Maximus that the Emperor, Marcus Aurelius (Richard Harris, who departs the move far too quickly), favors him over the presumptive heir to the throne, his son Commodus (Joaquin Phoenix, channeling evil personified). Commodus is not a good person and not a promising leader, and Phoenix lets us see the jealousy and hatred that have rotted him to the core of his being.

Marcus Aurelius dislikes his son so much that he plans to make Rome into a republic again rather than have Commodus succeed him, and he wants Maximus to be the leader under the new republic. Do you even have to guess how Commodus responds to this? In short order, he kills his own father, has Maximus’ wife and son murdered, and tries to have Maximus himself killed. Commodus assumes the title of Caesar and gives the people what he thinks they want or need: a seemingly endless supply of distractions like gladiator battles and bread. It keeps them pacified, but he seems to think that it will make them love him. Why are there so many movies about men who turn into awful humans because they think they didn’t get the love they deserved from their fathers? It must be because there are too many men in real life who turned out that way.

After being captured by slave traders while trying to recover from his wounds, Crowe’s Maximus starts developing a real talent for killing others in the battle arenas as a gladiator, and the series of scenes featuring those battles are among the best in the film. They’re particularly well shot. He acquires the nickname of “the Spaniard,” for reasons that were never fully clear to me. However, he becomes quite proficient at using his anger and hatred and pain to kill gladiators who would be expected to overpower him. By the time he delivers the famous “Are you not entertained?” line in the film, we have to agree that, yes, we are being very entertained, especially if we like watching grown men beat each up and blood flowing all over the ground of the arena.

Just as an aside, the fight scenes are so spectacular that The Boyfriend kept saying to me while we were watching the film again in preparation for Gladiator II that these battles were the Romans’ form of entertainment since they didn’t have movies or television. He’s not wrong, and I guess it’s pretty clear to anyone who watches the film that these “entertainments” were clearly used as a means to keep the people in check while their government engages in horrible acts. Thankfully, no one does any such actions these days. Right? Right?

Maximus’ goal, of course, is to get his revenge against Commodus, not necessarily to be a free man again, so as he keeps learning new and bloodier ways to kill someone, we acknowledge that he’s really in training to kill Commodus. He even tells the emperor this to his face after Commodus meets him in the middle of a large arena and asks Maximus to remove his mask. This, naturally, does not sit well with Commodus, so he starts scheming to have the gladiator killed. One of the most astonishing sequences has Maximus facing off against a gigantic guy from Gaul while chained tigers try to attack them if they ventures too closely to the large, hungry beasts. I don’t know how historically accurate such an approach might be, but it certainly does keep your attention.

The role of Maximus is a physically demanding role, and Crowe seems fully committed to the hard work of being an efficient killing machine in the arena. By the time he faces Commodus in the ring face-to-face, he’s clearly destined to kill the emperor, but you know that someone like the emperor is never going to play fair. He hasn’t been fair at any point during the film, so why should he start now? The ending of the film is a bit too, um, comfortable for my tastes, but after seeing flashbacks of his wife and son throughout the film, it’s no surprise that Maximus would want to “reunite” with them. There is often some sort of spiritual dimension to Scott’s film, and sometimes it’s more plausible or acceptable than at other times.

Gladiator features a strong supporting cast. I’ve already mentioned Harris, who has only a few moments on screen at the beginning. Djimon Hounsou plays a fellow gladiator, and the great Oliver Reed, in his final film role, plays Proximo, the “owner” and trainer of a band of gladiators. Derek Jacobi is Gracchus, a key member of the senate who faces reprisals from Commodus after the emperor learns that Gracchus and his own sister and others have been plotting against him – as you would if you were being ruled by a tyrant. The sister, Lucilla, is played by the talented Connie Nielsen. Her scenes with Crowe give more than a few hints that the two were former lovers, and they seem to have had a child together as well. How else can you have a sequel? The child in question is played by Spencer Treat Clark, whose face is very expressive.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention the production design for the film. It’s very evocative of the era that it depicts, and the recreation of the Colosseum is spectacular. The locations of the emperor’s residence and of the senate meetings and even Gracchus’s house, which is seen only for a few seconds, get a great deal of attention. The production design was nominated for an Oscar, and the costume design deservedly won in its category. The various costumes demonstrate the kind of stratification of Roman society, and the smallest details on someone’s robes, for example, are visible and perfect. Scott’s films that cover historical periods are always very attuned to displaying what would have been common at the time. It’s just another element in a film that strives to be entertaining, and isn’t that what Maximus wanted for us, after all?

Oscar Wins: Best Picture, Best Actor (Russell Crowe), Best Sound, Best Costume Design, and Best Visual Effects

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Director (Ridley Scott), Best Supporting Actor (Joaquin Phoenix), Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen/Original Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Art Direction, Best Cinematography, and Best Film Editing

Sound of Metal (2020)

 

I don’t normally start a discussion of a film with an examination of the sound design, but Sound of Metal does such an amazing job that, even though it’s odd to point it out, you can’t really experience this film without acknowledging it. The central character learns that he’s suffering from severe hearing loss, and we as viewers and listeners get to experience what he’s going through. The film features subtitles throughout – although it does withhold telling us what’s going on at a couple of key moments – and the difficulties that we have in hearing replicates for us what Ruben (played with great physicality by Riz Ahmed) experiences. When he cannot hear anything but distorted voices, that’s what we hear. When the sounds for him almost disappear, they do the same for us. It’s a spectacular aspect of the film, and it truly helps to make the impact even greater for us as an audience.

We may not realize it when the film starts, but we’re already in Ruben’s auditory world. We see him on stage with his girlfriend. It’s a loud blast of music, which contrasts to the many moments of absolute silence we get later in the film. They’re a heavy metal act – or punk metal or something like that – and much of her singing is rather inaudible. We might think at first that it’s the quality of the singing or the music more generally, but we’re already getting a sense of how much difficulty Ruben is having. When he cannot hear at all on a subsequent night, he realizes (as do we) that he is suffering from hearing loss. A doctor’s appointment arranged by a pharmacist reveals that he only has 24-28 percent of his hearing capacity. The film really only takes about ten minutes or so at the beginning to convey how much Ruben’s life is going to change.

Ruben is also a former addict, and he wants a solution quickly so that he can resume his life on the road. He would need $40,000-$80,000 for cochlear implants, money that they don’t have as struggling musicians. Lou (Olivia Cooke) is worried about him, though, and they contact Ruben’s sponsor, who finds him a spot in a deaf community in a rural area. She has to leave him there because the community is only for those who are deaf or hard of hearing; those who are not hearing impaired would be a distraction, according to the rules of the community leader, Joe (played with great stoicism by Paul Raci). It’s tough for her to leave him, and it’s tough for him to let her go. Their separation is painful to watch.

Ruben doesn’t immediately fit in, of course, and we also get to be a part of feeling his alienation. The others in the community mostly use American Sign Language, but he doesn’t know how to sign yet. He senses they’re talking about him sometimes, but he cannot respond. Only those who can lipread can understand what he’s saying, and he feels rather isolated at first. However, Joe is committed to getting Ruben to become more integrated into the community. Ruben goes to classes for ASL with children and slowly begins to bond with them. He even brings in music and drumming to their classroom so that they can get a sense of what his life was like. The moments with the kids are really some of the more delightful ones in the film.

His comfort in the rural community – which is beautifully photographed, by the way – is short-lived, though. He becomes impatient when he sees online that Lou has gone to France to live with her father and is now singing a very different style of music. His career as a rock drummer might be coming to an end, and he wants to return to that life if he can. He sells almost everything he owns: the music equipment, their RV they used to tour, whatever he can. Of course, he also is impatient for the implants to work immediately after surgery, but what he hears first is really distorted and painful to listen to. He’s warned by the audiologist to give it time, but Ruben leaves almost immediately for France to meet with Lou. He seems to think that if they just get back to their music, he’ll regain some sense of what he considers “normalcy.” The film has repeatedly questioned what “normal” is, but Ruben isn’t quite to the point of accepting his new life as normal just yet.

The pacing of the film is rather interesting. Very intense moments are followed at times by very slow passages. We even see how Ruben’s reactions can mirror the film’s pacing or vice versa. He’s often very quiet or still, but then he will have an explosion of emotions. He holds in his feelings at times when you know he’s not as happy or accepting as he claims to be. It’s a thrilling performance in many ways, and you can sense how very committed Ahmed was to learning how to play the drums and how to use ASL to communicate. The film editing was honored with an Oscar, as was the sound design, so you do have a sense that the voters really appreciated what the filmmakers were doing.

Even when he’s in France, we get to experience what Ruben is hearing. The distortion returns at times, and he has to adjust the implants to accommodate the volume at other times. When Lou and her father duet in French at a party, we don’t get subtitles telling us what they’re singing. If you know French, it’s probably a charming song. However, Ruben apparently doesn’t understand French, so we aren’t allowed to experience a moment differently than he does if we also don’t understand French. It can be distancing or alienating at times, certainly, but once you’ve caught on as to what’s happening with the sound, you can’t really help but appreciate the commitment of the filmmakers to let us into the world of someone experiencing the loss of their sense of hearing.

Sound of Metal also teaches us a bit about the technology available to the deaf or hearing impaired. We witness the use of sign language and lipreading and speech-to-text programs, all of which help us to see what someone just learning how to live with hearing loss might experience. The deaf community of the film is a rather insular one, but the movie takes some time to introduce us to the controversy surrounding cochlear implants. Some fear there’s nothing to be fixed in someone who cannot hear, so they oppose the use of implants. That’s why Ruben has to leave after he gets them. He no longer fits into the community like he did before when he was learning to accept himself as someone without full hearing.

I’ve mentioned the cinematography already, but it’s exceptional and was overlooked by the Academy. The rural landscape would likely be what many would notice, but watch the camerawork as Ruben and Lou are traveling in the RV from gig to gig, or look at how beautiful Paris looks as he walks to her father’s place. The wind in the trees, the wheat moving gracefully, the kinds of moments that those of us with full hearing take for granted are presented here as the marvels that they are. You may be able to hear that wind blowing, but the subtitles on the screen remind you that not everyone experiences it the same way. Our immersion into Ruben’s experience is likely not to be replicated easily after the stellar achievements of this film.

Oscar Win: Best Sound and Best Achievement in Film Editing

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Riz Ahmed), Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (Paul Raci), and Best Original Screenplay

Rosemary's Baby (1968)

 

Rosemary’s Baby tells what could have been a very heartwarming story of a young couple (played by Mia Farrow and John Cassavetes) who move into an old New York apartment building with lots of history and some very gregarious neighbors. Of course, what the two new tenants don’t realize yet – and what we as viewers quickly start to suspect – is that these neighbors are quite strange. A couple of them, the Castavets (played to perfection by Ruth Gordon and Sidney Blackmer), are really quite nosy and pushy. Gordon’s Minnie, in particular, likes to insinuate herself into Rosemary’s everyday life as much as possible, and Cassavetes’ Guy Woodhouse actually befriends Blackmer’s Roman Castavet almost immediately. I suppose if you rent an apartment that is now available because the previous tenant died (thankfully, not in the apartment, which is quickly established to the relief of the Woodhouses) and you also know that a young dancer who lived in the building fell to her death – unless, perhaps, it wasn’t a fall – then you might find comfort knowing that some older, seemingly kind people are looking out for you. Oh, if only it were that simple. What’s really going on starts to become clear when Farrow’s Rosemary has either a dream or a vision (or is it neither one?) of being raped by a demon while others watch. When she becomes pregnant, everyone starts making a fuss over her and tries to get her to drink some strange smoothies and go to a particular doctor and… it just never seems to end. Minnie shows up almost every day to check on Rosemary, who starts to look especially sick. No one, including her neighbor-endorsed doctor, wants her to worry, but Rosemary starts to think something might be wrong with the baby. Farrow’s thinness and famous (or infamous, as the case may be) short hairdo help to convey the potential illness perfectly. This may be the only film that includes a testimonial for the work of Vidal Sassoon. She gets little support in her concerns from her husband, who seems especially distant after she reveals she’s pregnant, and it’s only in the company of her friends from outside the building that she seems to get any sympathy. I suppose, though, that when you confess that you think you might have been impregnated after some sort of bizarre ritual performed by a coven of Satan-worshipping witches, your friends need to comfort you. Yes, that’s right. The building is filled with witches, and they’ve chosen Rosemary to carry the devil’s child so that they will then have someone evil to take over and cleanse the world. Well, “cleanse” might be the wrong word for what they have in mind, but you get the picture. We have several occasions when we have to wonder if Rosemary might be delusional or if she is right about the witches. When she notices that Roman has pierced ears – which is supposed to be a sign of a male witch, I guess – it only takes a book from a former landlord to convince her. I suppose it’s a good thing she didn’t go to a dockyard or the Village; all those pierced ears would have really freaked her out. Rosemary’s Baby is considered a horror classic, and it certainly builds in suspense as we learn more and more about the neighbors and their plans. I’m not sure I fully appreciate the enigmatic ending, though, since it’s unclear exactly what Rosemary might do with respect to her devil baby, but such endings were becoming more common at the time. The film raises some interesting questions about the bodily autonomy of women, and Rosemary is almost treated as little more than an incubator by so many people in the building. It also forces us to consider what we know about others in our lives and what kind of influence they might be having over us. Some aspects of the film are, naturally, dated, and we certainly have seen far more horrifying tales on the screen, but Rosemary’s Baby serves as quite a strong origin point for what many modern films do with female characters, in particular. I’m certain that’s not really a good thing, but I suppose you can never imagine just where or how a film’s impact might spread.

Oscar Win: Best Supporting Actress (Ruth Gordon)

Other Oscar Nomination: Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium

Napoleon and Samantha (1972)

 

Napoleon and Samantha is a children’s movie released by the Walt Disney company, but it has one of the weirdest plots imaginable for a film aimed at children. Johnny Whitaker plays Napoleon, who’s living in the woods with his grandfather (Will Geer, right about the same time he started playing the grandfather on The Waltons). They run across a circus clown one night who has a lion with bad teeth who only drinks milk. The clown, who’s been looking for a way to retire, unloads the lion on the youngster and his grandpa, who decide to keep it in their chicken coop. Apparently, the chickens are safe since the lion can’t eat meat. When Grandpa dies, Napoleon has to hire an out-of-work grad student named Danny (played by Michael Douglas, of all people) to help bury the old man. Napoleon lies to Danny about an uncle who’s going to come take care of him because he doesn’t want to get caught living alone and face being sent to an orphanage. Danny, who herds sheep when he’s not in grad school because that’s something that lots of people do while studying for an advanced degree, lives in isolated cabin (is there any other kind?) several mountains away. You know where this is headed, right? Napoleon decides to take his lion across miles of wilderness so that he can live with Danny—without having asked Danny if he could move in with a large feline. Jodie Foster plays Napoleon’s good friend Samantha, who naturally wants to make the journey with him despite his objections that there won’t be enough food for them both. They face some danger along the way, some of it nature itself such as a stream they have to cross or cliffs that one of them almost falls off. They also face natural predators like the cougar that tries to eat Samantha’s pet chicken that she’s brought along because… you can’t leave a chicken along with your guardian if you just received it as a gift the day before? Said guardian, Gertrude, is played by Ellen Corby, who played the grandmother on The Waltons, but she and Geer are never in a scene together, robbing us of a big-screen pairing to rival the small-screen one. There’s also a bear attack, but the lion always seems to scare off whatever comes near, which is surprising considering that it only seems to want to lie down all the time and rest. Surely, this is one of the most lethargic lions ever filmed. When they finally arrive at Danny’s cabin, he rightfully suggests that someone tell the people in town where they are, so he leaves the kids with this guy who just recently showed up out of nowhere, Mark, who’s wearing the trademark serial killer glasses that all filmmakers use for shorthand. Danny goes back to town, promptly gets arrested for child abduction, sees a Wanted poster with Mark’s face on it, and escapes on a motorcycle that leads to a remarkable chase up mountain roads that seem to have an awful lot of construction going on for such a small town. It’s a Disney film, so you know there’s going to be a happy ending after all, and there’s little suspense that things will turn out otherwise. Whitaker and Foster were both very good child actors, and Foster has had a long and distinguished career. This was her first major film role, and you can see why she kept getting hired for movies. There’s a natural charm and looseness to her performance. Whitaker would continue to make movies and TV shows, but I still know him best from Sigmund and the Sea Monsters. Hey, people have different career paths; some win two Oscars and others act next to someone in a costume that resembles a pile of leaves. Napoleon and Samantha also features lovely outdoor cinematography, which is not surprising when you consider that the producer was the great Winston Hibler, who was responsible for so many of the great Disney documentaries about the wilderness.

Oscar Nomination: Best Original Dramatic Score

Beetlejuice (1988)

 

If you’ve not seen the original Beetlejuice in a while – and I hadn’t seen it in decades until it was time to refresh my memory for the release of the sequel – you might have forgotten that Michael Keaton’s title character actually isn’t as much of a focus as you might think. A lot of the first half of the movie really involves the somewhat mundane lives of Adam (Alec Baldwin) and Barbara (Geena Davis) Maitland, a yuppie couple who are restoring a lovely but old-fashioned house in Connecticut until they die in an automobile accident and find themselves stuck in a sort of afterlife limbo. The Deetz family moves into the house, and Delia (the great Catherine O’Hara) decides to make it into the most postmodern nightmare of a house you could imagine. With the help of her clearly gay-coded “designer” Otho (Glenn Shadix, oozing with that bitchy gay demeanor for much of the film), she offends the aesthetic tastes of even the dead couple, who decide they need to find a way to rid their home of the Deetzes. They have just one issue: proto-goth child Lydia (Winona Ryder), who has the ability to see the couple even though they’re dead. Keaton takes over the plot about halfway through the film after his Betegeuse is hired (well, sorta?) by the couple to drive away the Deetz family. He’s a sort of “bio-exorcist,” someone who allegedly can frighten people in the real world away from a place like the Maitlands’ house, but really, he’s just a scam artist who wants to marry Lydia so that he will have the power to wreak havoc in the real world. Keaton brings such a crazy, insane, manic energy to the proceedings, a sharp contrast to the slower paced first half, that it’s probably good that we remember his character as having a bigger role than it actually does. He really does bring a level of spectacle that had been missing earlier in the movie. The film won an Academy Award for its makeup, and Keaton’s title character has to be a major part of that win. The edges of his face are masterfully done. However, it wasn’t nominated for its production design even though that too is spectacular. The house becomes such a focal point, which is appropriate since it’s the epicenter of so much of the film’s action, and the twists and turns in the bureaucratic halls of the afterlife are mesmerizing in their detail. The legendary Sylvia Sidney shines in a tiny part as the couple’s world-weary or afterworld-weary caseworker; that husky voice of hers is on full display in this film. Who knew the afterlife was so much like an overburdened social services administration? The original film is funnier than I initially remembered, and the running gag over trying to say (or not to say, as the case may be) the offensive demon’s name plays for solid laughs throughout the story. And any movie that puts the music of the great Harry Belafonte to this much effective use has to be applauded. You may never listen to “Day-O” or “Jump in the Line (Shake Senora)” the same again, and that’s a good thing.

Oscar Win: Best Makeup

The Zone of Interest (2023)

 

The Zone of Interest raises some very intriguing questions, such as how we can live so close (in the movie’s case, literally) to horrible atrocities but maintain some semblance of normalcy. Wouldn’t the awfulness of what we are close to begin to affect us? Wouldn’t we start to behave differently if we were constantly so close to terrible events and activities? What if we are complicit in the atrocities that are happening? Doesn’t that alter who we are and what we do? The film shows us what kind of effect living next door to a site of such evil might have, but it does so gradually. The Zone of Interest moves at a very leisurely pace, in some respects, but it grows increasing more tense as the film progresses.

The Hoss family lives next door to the concentration camp at Auschwitz. The father, Rudolf (played by Christian Friedel), serves as the commandant at the camp whose idea it is to exterminate the Jewish prisoners around the clock. He even oversees the installation of a new crematorium at Auschwitz that blazes throughout the night.  He seems rather cold and methodical at first, and he’s so efficient at his horrific occupation that he’s transferred to take command of all of the camps under Nazi control. He also demonstrates the more mundane aspects of life, such as turning off the lights and closing all the doors before going to bed at night. Those moments are often filmed at a rather astonishingly leisurely pace.

His wife, Hedwig (the great Sandra Huller, who had a great year in 2023 with this film and Anatomy of a Fall), keeps the household running efficiently, but she likes a comfortable life and doesn’t want to move away even though she and her children (two young boys, three young girls, including a baby girl) live next door to a concentration camp. She gets other benefits from being so close to the camp besides a nice house, though. Her husband sends her all kinds of clothing and other items taken from the Jewish prisoners. She keeps a fur coat (and a lipstick from its pocket) and gives other items to her servants. She’s rather distant and methodical about all of this herself, particularly when she’s overseeing the various upgrades to the house. She knows what’s on the other side of her garden wall, but she doesn’t acknowledge what is going on at the camp. In fact, she’s rather indifferent to his news about a promotion or his prowess at murdering other human beings.

Interestingly, we as viewers never see any of the camp or its activities. We can hear the screams and gunshots, but we aren’t witness to the killings themselves. Fires burn all the time, and we know what that means, but again, the filmmakers have chosen not to depict the atrocities on screen. The gunshots and furnaces are very disconcerting, as is the musical score, which is really very disorienting. It makes sense, though, for the music to bother us since we at least need to feel some of the anxiety that the characters should be feeling. Otherwise, we might think that this is a rather idyllic depiction of life in the country. The family goes swimming in the nearby river, they acquire a new canoe, and Hedwig even grows beautiful flowers and lots of vegetables in her garden. The garden happens to be on the other side of a wall from a concentration camp, but that doesn’t seem to bother the family members. We see just a few moments, such as when ashes start to flow down the river where Rudolph is fishing and his children are playing in the water, where the activities of the camp enter into their lives.

People in the family start to be affected by their proximity to the concentration camp. Again, how could you live next door and not be affected? Hedwig’s mother arrives for a visit, and she seems blasé about the prisoners next door, even wondering at one point if the woman she used to clean for might be one of them. (She missed out on purchasing the woman’s curtains in an auction of stolen property.) She begins coughing a lot almost immediately, perhaps from all the smoke in the air. At night, the sky is red from the fires, and it becomes too much for her. The fire and the smoke and the gunshots lead to her departing in the middle of the night; she leaves a note for her daughter and just disappears. The older son becomes much crueler as the film progresses, as if he has been given license by the awfulness of what’s happening at the camp. At one point, he locks his younger brother in the greenhouse and laughs at the boy’s predicament.

Rudolph, however, might be affected the most. Despite his claims during a medical examination that he’s well, he starts to dry heave after a party attended by Nazis and others. He tells his wife over the phone that he’s been calculating (or fantasizing) about how might be able to kill entire room full of people. It’s a chilling moment, and then he gets sick to his stomach. I don’t think this makes him sympathetic. It’s just another puzzling moment for us as viewers to ponder. Is his body trying to tell him something? He doesn’t seem to be listening to it or learning.

The film is based on a novel about real people and events. We all know about the horrors of the Holocaust, but this may be the first film to depict those horrors without showing them on the screen. You don’t get to see what actually happens in the camps, but do you need to at this point? That’s another one of those questions that are raised by the film. Is it awful enough that we witness Hedwig talking to her husband about what they’re going to do when the war ends? She’s obviously under the impression that the Germans are going to win, and she has plans for further renovations and improvements at her home.

I will readily admit that I don’t understand everything that occurs in the film. For instance, the movie features a couple of scenes where a young girl leaves apples for workers in the fields outside the concentration camp. It’s shot in what appears to be night vision, and it’s never entirely clear to me who she is or why she’s leaving the food. She always seems to appear in the movie when Rudolph is reading a fairy tale to one of his children. We also watch several women cleaning a Holocaust museum in the present day, presumably the camp at Auschwitz. We’ve seen some of the displays before, such as the massive number of shoes taken from the prisoners, so this sequence’s purpose in the overall film is unclear. The dog, Dilla, also steals the movie at times, probably because we need some relief from the intensity of everything else that’s happening on the screen. Perhaps the dog is meant to show someone or something innocent since it doesn’t know what’s going on and just wants to follow people around. Even that idea, though, comes with some questions about who could be truly innocent in circumstances like these.

The film starts (and ends) with a black screen and very disturbing music. We have no legend to tell us as viewers when or where we are as the film starts, and we have to figure out as details emerge that we’re actually witnessing Nazi atrocities. We also pause in the middle of the film and have a red screen accompanied by discordant music. Such moments don’t really allow you much of an opportunity to process how you’re feeling about what you’ve seen and heard. The music just puts you off any sort of quiet reflection.

Oscar Wins: Best International Feature Film and Best Sound

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Achievement in Directing (Jonathan Glazer), and Best Adapted Screenplay

The Ten Commandments (1956)

 

Since it’s become an Easter tradition to show The Ten Commandments on network television, I probably don’t have to explain that it’s the story of the life of Moses, who led the Hebrews to their freedom from Egyptian rule. So many people have seen this film on television over the years, but I still don’t understand what it has to do with Easter. It’s a film that is truly spectacular in every sense of the word. You won’t see production design and costume design and scale of production at this level nowadays without a great deal of assistance from computer-generated imagery. In those days, they actually had to have lots of people and actual sets for much of what we see on the screen.

The film’s director, Cecil B. De Mille, serves as the narrator for The Ten Commandments, and he even does an introduction to the film that explains that it’s historically accurate, and he has the big books in front of him to prove it. I’m not sure that anyone needs a movie to teach them accurate history, but it’s probably more important that it gets the details right for the viewers who have spent time with their Bibles and know what happened to Moses there. Does the film truly follow the Biblical story of Moses? I don’t know; it seems to take a few liberties here and there for the sake of the visuals. Does it truly matter? Probably to some people, probably not to most. The hyperbolic voiceover narration frequently glosses over any sort of questions a viewer might have, so in the midst of the narrative, you’re just going to have to accept what happens.

The film begins with the prophecy that a man will be born who will deliver the Hebrews from bondage, so the pharaoh orders that all newborn Hebrew males be killed. Moses’ mother places him in a basket and sets him adrift in a river. He’s found, of course, by the daughter of the pharaoh, who raises him as her own child and as a prince of Egypt. Should that be Prince of Egypt? I’m not sure of the appropriate grammar for a film like this one. Charlton Heston plays Moses as an adult, and he’s just as stoic and wooden here as in Ben-Hur or, really, almost any movie that he starred in. I suspect he’s trying to treat the religious material with a great deal of seriousness, but it really does come across almost as camp. It’s not easy to feel a great deal of emotion for someone who comes across as so stolid all the time.

 

Yul Brynner plays Ramses, the actual son of the pharaoh and Moses’ rival for the throne and for the attentions of Anne Baxter’s Nefretiri. Brynner can really strut when he walks, and when you look as good in a skirt and a cape (and only a skirt and a cape) as he does, you’ve probably earned the right to strut. Heston shows up in roughly the same outfit at one point in the film, and sadly, he just can’t compete with Rameses’ hotness. Having the two of them side by side to compare, it’s all the more confusing that Nefretiri has the hots for Moses instead. Rameses certainly lets her know – more than once – that he’s very much interested in her, but her rebuffs make him all the more upset at the attention that Moses gets. It probably was the same for Brynner, wondering why Heston was always considered such a sex symbol. I hope his Oscar for Best Actor for The King and I this same year served as some consolation.

The Ten Commandments features lots of stars in smaller roles. It’s really a cast of thousands, and we get a few moments with some of these famous actors. The great Dame Judith Anderson is a servant who finds out the truth about Moses’ background and tries to use that information to stop Nefretiri from chasing after him. Baxter, though, didn’t play women who were too gentle, and Nefretiri has Memnet killed so that she can continue to pursue Moses. Vincent Price plays a master builder who spends a great deal of time talking about this amazing city that Moses is in charge of building for the Pharaoh Sethi (Sir Cedric Hardwick, imperious as he can possibly be). Most inexplicably, Edward G. Robinson plays Dathan, a Hebrew overseer who is consistently trying to undermine Moses and prevent him from fulfilling the prophecy of freeing the Hebrew people. I do like Robinson as an actor, and I think he was underappreciated by the Academy for several of the roles he played in films over the years, but his accent is so out of place in this film.

The film also features a subplot involving John Derek’s Joshua and Debra Paget’s Lilia as young lovers who keep getting separated from each other. Lilia actually winds up being enslaved by Dathan, and Derek keeps trying to rescue her. He often does so while shirtless, and he gives Brynner a serious challenger for who looks best wearing as few clothes as possible. These two characters are also responsible for Moses rescuing an older woman who’s almost crushed by a large stone that the Hebrew slaves are being forced to move in order to make this city for the pharaoh. Of course, Moses does the right thing, and he also order that food and water be given to the slaves. Little does he realize that he’s also Hebrew (and that the older woman is actually his mother).

Baxter’s Nefretiri tells Moses about his background, but she doesn’t care. She thinks they should continue to keep his secret, but he decides instead to join his people and starts working in the mud to make bricks. He wants to find his family, his heritage, so that he can understand himself better, I suppose, but of course, this just gets the attention of Sethi and Ramses. Sethi has always treated Moses as a sort of adopted son, and he certainly seems to like Moses much more than he does Ramses.

The film clocks in at almost four hours running time, so we have plenty of time for Moses to wander through the desert after Sehti banishes him from Egypt. He finds his wife Sephora (yes, that’s how it’s spelled in the film) among the seven daughters of a Bedouin sheik named Jethro. He becomes a shepherd, but he winds up seeing the Burning Bush while wandering around Mt. Sinai. By this point, Joshua has shown up in the desert to convince Moses that he’s the deliverer of the Hebrew people who was prophesied many years earlier. After hearing the voice of God in the Burning Bush say pretty much the same thing, Moses agrees to return to Egypt, where he tells Ramses, who is now the pharaoh and married to Nefretiri, to “let my people go.” Even after all these years, and despite the fact that Moses has married another woman and has grown some wild hair and a beard, Nefretiri still comes on to him. She’s still hot for him despite being married to Ramses and having a child with the pharaoh.

As proof that Ramses must release the Hebrews, Moses does a few parlor tricks like turning his wooden staff into a cobra and turning water into blood. The plagues show up, and he even notes that the first born son of every Egypt will die. That includes the pharaoh’s son, and after the boy’s passing, Ramses relents. The scenes where the Hebrews leave Egypt demonstrate the remarkable scale of moviemaking involved. Hundreds of people, plus sheep and cattle and other livestock, depart the city and make their way into the wilderness.

Of course, the sequence that is most famous (and the one that captured the film’s only Oscar, for special effects) is the parting of the Red Sea, and it’s certainly an amazing moment in the film. Ramses and his men are chasing after the Hebrew people in chariots, only to be stopped by a pillar of fire. That gives Moses time to call forth a storm and split the sea into two parts so that everyone can make their way between two walls of water. It’s still a moment that dazzles even with all of the advancements in filmmaking since its release. The only sequence that comes close to its grandeur is the carving of the titular document by fire. The wording is not in English, so I’ll accept that the commandments written on the stone tablet say what they are supposed to say. Of course, this is happening while there’s that weird, almost orgy-like creation of the Golden Calf (again, thanks to Robinson’s Dathan and his meddling) that Moses has to halt, but that’s what you get when you go to see a De Mille film.

It’s not that much of a stretch to consider this film a plea for greater acceptance of people of different backgrounds. It was released during the Civil Rights Era in the United States, and it talks a great deal about the mistreatment of Hebrews, which is clearly a form of racism, and there’s a lot of talk about why people should be able to live their own lives without being enslaved. The dehumanization of the Hebrew people is depicted in ways that show the parallels to the dehumanization that other categories of people have experienced throughout the centuries. If it accomplishes nothing else, if The Ten Commandments made some people a bit more tolerant, then it was worth all the money spent to recreate the events it depicts.

Oscar Win: Best Special Effects

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Best Color Cinematography, Best Color Art Direction, Best Color Costume Design, Best Sound Recording, and Best Film Editing

Best Picture of 1928-29

 

The Winner: The Broadway Melody

The Other Nominees: Alibi, The Hollywood Revue of 1929, In Old Arizona, and The Patriot

 

My Choice: The Patriot! Just kidding. It’s a lost film, so we have no idea how to judge its quality these days. To be honest, this is a very tough choice because this may be one of the weakest groups of nominees in the history of the Academy Awards. Each of them has flaws, some larger than others, but none of them are particularly ideal. The Broadway Melody has more of a storyline than The Hollywood Revue of 1929, but the fluency with the camera isn’t there yet. Alibi and In Old Arizona keep inserting singing and dancing into the plot just to make use of the newfangled sound equipment filmmakers were dealing with then, but that makes for some very distracting moments. I guess I’ll stick with the Academy’s choice for this year, The Broadway Melody. At least, the production numbers are fun and interesting to watch.

In Old Arizona (1928-29)

 

When you watch an older film like In Old Arizona, which was reportedly the first sound era Western and the first talkie to be filmed primarily in the outdoors, you get to see moments that are clearly not related to the plot and don’t necessarily add anything to our understanding of the characters or their behaviors. Those moments, however, do serve to demonstrate the novelty of that “new” invention for the movies: sound. For example, In Old Arizona features an early sequence where four guys are harmonizing the song “Bicycle Built for Two.” There are no bicycles in the film, and there’s no particular reason for these men to be singing together outdoors, and they don’t seem to show up again in the film, but it’s a way for you to marvel at how advanced the sound quality of the film is.

In Old Arizona features Warner Baxtor as the Cisco Kid, an Oscar-winning role he would play several more times in his career. We first meet the Kid as he robs a stagecoach and takes the Wells Fargo box with all of the money. He’s very apologetic and polite as he’s stealing from the stagecoach, and he doesn’t take anything from the individual passengers that he doesn’t give them something in return. It’s an interesting way to meet a character, and it allows us to see that, despite his penchant for taking stuff that doesn’t belong to him, he’s really a good person. The story upon which the film’s plot was based, apparently, treats the Cisco Kid as more of a villain, but he’s clearly meant to earn out sympathy even from the start of the movie.

Almost no one knows what the Cisco Kid looks like, which is rather tough to believe given how dazzling the costumes are that he wears. There’s a lot of work that’s gone into the stitching and details of the various clothes Baxter gets to don, and no other character in the movie is wearing such elaborate garb. Still, this kind of anonymity allows for some funny moments, such as when he’s at the barber shop and is surrounded by men talking about him and his various crimes and how dangerous he is and how they’re going to capture him. He even meets Sgt. Mickey Dunn (played, rather broadly and somewhat badly, by Edmund Lowe) in person, and they talk about women and haircuts and perfume. They also have an intriguing moment when they pat each other’s guns and talk about how big the “guns” are. The guns, of course, are strapped to belts around their waists, so you know the general area we’re talking about here. It’s very reminiscent of a similar scene in Red River, but it sadly doesn’t last very long.

Once Dunn learns from the blacksmith that he’s been talking to the Cisco Kid, the film shifts to being more about a love triangle. You see, the Kid loves a woman named Tonia Maria. He even sings, briefly, to her, perhaps one of the first instances of a singing cowboy in the movies. However, she’s astonishingly unfaithful to him; in fact, she’s getting rid of one of her lovers just as he rides up to her home. Tonia (played by Dorothy Burgess) falls very quickly into the stereotypical sexualized Latina. After she’s spent time with the Kid, she almost immediately goes to the bar in town and meets Sgt. Dunn. She flirts with him, but he initially rebuffs her advances, finding her amusing rather than attractive.

However, once Dunn realizes that she’s the Cisco Kid’s lover, he rides over to her house and starts wooing her. Naturally, he’s just leading her on so that he can find out more about where the Kid is, but she seems to fall for him very quickly. She’s offended when she finds out that he’s trying to earn the $500 reward for capturing or killing the Kid, but once he promises all of the money to her and tells her that he wants to take her back to New York to live, she makes an abrupt change in her emotions. The accent that Lowe uses throughout the film is quite horrible, by the way. It’s almost like a comic version of a New Yorker’s way of speaking.

The Cisco Kid overhears the plans that Dunn and Tonia make, including her desire to have Dunn kill the Kid rather than capture him. He’s heartbroken over this realization that she’s never really loved him (although she certainly liked the gifts he brought her), but he plans his revenge, and it’s a strange one. He intercepts a note she’s written to Dunn and changes it so that it seems he will be dressed up as Tonia and she will be dressed as the Cisco Kid. I’m not sure what prompts such an idea, but the alleged cross-dressing has its expected outcome. The Kid escapes after Dunn shoots and kills Tonia, who he thinks is the Cisco Kid wearing a white mantilla. I know, it sounds very odd, and it is very odd.

The film, being a product of its time, traffics in some offensive stereotypes about Mexicans and other Spanish-speaking people. Several sequences involve dialog that’s in Spanish, and it’s not translated for us on the screen. Instead, their speech ridiculed by the whites in the film. The white characters also use several derogatory terms for the Latinx people in the film (mostly women, by the way). Lest you think the film is only racist about the Latinx population, it also features a short image of two Asian characters talking rapidly during a sort of rally to get the townsfolks fired up about forming a vigilante posse to go after the Cisco Kid. Both of these characters are dressed like Hop Sing on the old Bonanza TV show. It’s tough to watch, but when even the central character of the Cisco Kid speaks with broken English despite the fact that his parents are both well educated, and one of them is from San Luis Obispo, you know the film isn’t going to treat all of its characters with dignity. Having white actors portray the Cisco Kid and Tonia Maria doesn’t help either, of course.

The film, as I mentioned earlier, was filmed mostly outdoors, and we are treated to some beautiful desert scenery. The opening sequence involving passengers boarding a stagecoach was clearly filmed at a mission (reportedly, the one at San Juan Capistrano), and lovely Joshua trees populate the landscape. The filmmakers have paid a great deal of attention to the look of the film, and even the interiors are shot with a good eye for art direction and set decoration. In Old Arizona harkens back to the early days of sound film and the various ways that the industry was trying to take what it had accomplished during the silent era and apply some of it to the new techniques of moviemaking. It’s good to see that the visual was not always abandoned at the service of the auditory.

Oscar Win: Best Actor (Warner Baxter)

Other Oscar Nominations: Outstanding Picture, Best Director (Irving Cummings), Best Writing, and Best Cinematography

Past Lives (2023)

 

Past Lives allows viewers to ponder questions that many of us may have about whether or not our lives would have been different had we taken a different path in a relationship in our past. “What might have been” is a powerful motivation for some people, and this film explores a relationship over a twenty-four-year period to raise that kind of question. Well, calling it a “relationship” might be a bit of a stretch since the two main characters aren’t actually together except for a short period of time when they are very young. Still, it makes for a compelling and emotional movie that will likely having you thinking about some of the people from your own past that you’ve always wondered about in terms of how happy you might have been had you made different choices.

The film has three distinct periods that it covers, and each of them is beautifully and sensitively handled. Twenty-four years in the past, in the year 2000, Na Young (later Nora) and Hae Sung are classmates in South Korea and just 12 years old. He clearly has a crush on her, and they even manage to go on what is ostensibly a “date” arranged by their mothers. However, they’re very competitive about their grades and sometimes hurt each other’s feelings. When she reveals that her family is immigrating to Canada, he’s clearly pained by the impending move. It’s a very emotional sequence, but you might imagine that the love shared by a couple of 12-year-olds couldn’t really matter all that much, right? Little are we prepared for what happens over the next couple of decades.

Twelve years later, she’s now living in New York (and played by the fantastic Greta Lee) and working as a writer, and he’s an engineering student in Korea (and played by the impossibly attractive Teo Yoo). She finds him on Facebook, that repository of past lives, and discovers that he’s been looking for her. They start to Skype with each other, and you can sense that their feelings for each other are intensifying. However, Nora decides to cut off communication with Hae because they cannot see each other in person, given that she wants to focus more on her writing and he’s about to go to China to learn Mandarin. She leaves for a writer’s retreat (how very literary of her), where she meets a guy named Arthur (John Magaro) and falls in love. Hae starts dating a woman in South Korea and hangs out with his friends, but you can sense that he’s lonely even when he’s with other people. He would clearly rather be with Nora. Did I mention that he’s not seen her since they were both 12?

Another twelve years pass and we’re presumably now in the present time. Hae Sung comes to New York for a week on vacation, and he wants to see Nora again. She’s married to Arthur although they don’t seem to have the happiest or most dynamic of marriages. They are, in that way that couples sometimes are, contented with and accustomed to each other. Hae is single and seemingly wants to reconnect with Nora, maybe just not in a romantic sense. Arthur is, understandably, a bit jealous. I mean, if you look at the actor who plays Hae, you could see why Arthur might be feeling—shall we say—inadequate? Arthur thinks that the story of these two childhood friends is an interesting one, but Nora insists that she doesn’t love Hae. There’s also a bit of a language barrier since Hae’s English is not strong and Arthur’s Korean is even weaker. That makes for some misunderstandings and some apologies for misunderstanding.

The camerawork on Past Lives is really quite extraordinary, and I’m not sure why it wasn’t recognized more for its cinematography and its editing. It’s a gorgeous movie. There are lots of closeups of the two leads, and that allows for some very emotional expressions by the actors. While Hae is in New York, the camera seems to linger just a bit longer than in the other two segments, perhaps to recreate that sense of wistfulness that permeates so much of the movie and that has intensified as it has progressed.

The film discusses a Korean concept called inyeon. Nora talks about it with Arthur during their time together at the writer’s retreat, actually. It’s something about how the past continues to influence us, but it also is about how connected we are or might be to other people. Maybe you see someone in the street, and you actually knew each other in a previous life and that’s why you’re in each other’s presence now. It’s an interesting concept, and you can see that the story is about how much perhaps the memories of Hae Jung still haunt Nora a bit and how much she is still on his mind. There’s no happy ending for these two, of course, since this isn’t a Hollywood movie, but it’s not necessary for us to have a sense of closure when there’s a concept like inyeon out there. You might be sad about the film’s ending, but in a way, all of the characters are somewhat sad and somewhat not. Why should we be any different from them at that moment?

The film was written and directed by Celine Song, and it’s a smashing debut for this filmmaker. It alternates between Korean and English, and it represents in some ways just how international filmmaking (and filmgoing) has become. Song was nominated for her screenplay, but she would have been a worthy addition to the list of nominated directors as well. The story is reportedly semi-autobiographical, but I don’t think we have to know which parts are “true” in order to sense the truthfulness of the emotions being portrayed.

Speaking of portrayals, Lee as the adult Nora is fantastic. She’s complex and thoughtful and reserved, but you can tell what her character is feeling from the way that Lee delivers her lines. Yoo is quite powerful as a young man whose emotions are so visible. You might not expect such a deep performance, but he’s likely to become a major international star if this role is any indication. Magaro’s Arthur is more significant to the final segment of the movie, but he manages to bring some humor and humility to the role, and when it’s just Arthur and Hae talking to each other, Magaro does a great job of demonstrating Arthur’s generosity of spirit. He knows that his wife needed to see Hae, and he also knows by that point that she will not be leaving their marriage.

We’re left at the end of Past Lives with questions that cannot easily be answered. How powerful is a first love? Does it affect you for the rest of your life? Are your other relationships somehow a reflection of what happened with that first love? As philosophical as Past Lives is, you don’t get answers to these kinds of questions, and we don’t really need them, do we? Isn’t it more satisfying to have that sense of mystery than to know definitively? This is a film that is very focused on emotions, and it’s about how we express our feelings and hash out our emotions with other people. There might have been a time in the past when the Academy Awards wouldn’t have noticed a film like this. I’m grateful that those days are, I hope, over.

Oscar Nominations: Best Motion Picture of the Year and Best Original Screenplay

Twister (1996)

The tornadoes in Twister certainly look realistic even though technology has improved special effects so much since the film’s original release in 1996. The movie follows a group of so-called storm chasers, led by Helen Hunt’s Dr. Jo Harding and Bill Paxton’s Bill Harding, as they try to get this gadget called Dorothy (which looks like a metal garbage can filled with silver balls) to get whisked away by a tornado. If they’re successful, the sensors inside Dorothy (obvious shout-out to The Wizard of Oz and its tornado) will provide all kinds of data from inside the whirlwind, and that could perhaps lead to a better and earlier warning system. Several of the attempts fail, and we know just how many copies of Dorothy there are: four. You can count down to the end of the film by keeping track of how many of these trash cans get lost or destroyed. Oh, and in order to make the plot seem more complex, Bill and Jo are in the midst of getting a divorce so that he can marry Jami Gertz’s Dr. Melissa Reeves, a reproductive therapist, who is one of the first characters on film that I can remember being obsessed with taking phone calls at the worst possible times. I’m not overly fond of how badly the film treats Gertz’s character, to be honest; she’s an outsider who is subjected to a lot of awful stuff in a short period of time. She barely misses being hit by a truck that’s falling from the sky, and she has to overhear her fiancé confess his love to the woman who is still officially his wife. She does get one of the funniest lines in the entire movie – “I gotta go, Julia. We got cows!” – but it’s all just too much for her, and you certainly can understand why. Gertz is also unfortunate in having Philip Seymour Hoffman as her scene partner too many times. Hoffman seems to be acting in another film altogether, and many of his line readings are far too odd to come across as realistic. The supporting cast includes other great actors like Alan Ruck and Jeremy Davies and Todd Field (best known now as a great film director). It even has Cary Elwes as a rival storm chaser who has corporate sponsorship and more high-tech equipment, but he doesn’t have the instincts that Paxton’s character has for tornado behavior. Money can’t buy everything. The film also features the great Lois Smith in the relatively small role of Jo’s Aunt Meg, whose house collapses in spectacular fashion after being almost leveled by a tornado. She’s a warm presence when she’s on the screen trying to feed all of Jo and Bill’s crew at her home surrounded by kinetic sculptures that clearly have something to do with a later plot point. Still, much of the focus is on Hunt and Paxton’s characters; they share an excitement over storms, and you know almost from the start of the film that they are destined to be together. They fight together through rain and hail and strong winds to get Dorothy to work, so why wouldn’t they have worked harder on keeping their marriage alive? We don’t really know much about why they broke up, but do we even really care? Don’t we just want to see how the visual effects artists can convince us that a drive-in theater showing The Shining is being destroyed? There’s a weird thrill to seeing Jo and Bill drive though a house that’s been dropped by a tornado and is directly in their path as they’re driving to the next stop. Those are really the best moments of Twister. By the way, I’ve also seen Twisters (2024), and its special effects are also top-notch. Even though it follows a few of the same plot beats as the original, the newer film does spend more time letting us get to know the characters and their histories.

Oscar Nominations: Best Sound and Best Visual Effects

That's a Wrap on 1927-28

When I started this project, I thought I would only view the films that had been nominated for Best Picture, but as I started to see opportunities, I expanded my search to see any film that had been nominated for any of the Academy Awards. It’s led me to some interesting finds and some frustrating outcomes. I was able to watch eighteen complete (or mostly complete) films that were acknowledged during the first year of the awards, and some of them are truly gems that I enjoyed a great deal. Here’s what I was able to see:

• Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness
• The Circus
• The Crowd
• Glorious Betsy
• The Jazz Singer
• The Last Command
• The Patent Leather Kid
• The Racket
• Seventh Heaven
• A Ship Comes In 
• Sadie Thompson
• Speedy
• Street Angel
• Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans
• Tempest
• Two Arabian Knights
• Underworld
• Wings

Of course, success doesn’t come without a struggle. I’m not able to see quite a few of the other nominees because they’re lost or have been partially lost or are locked away in archives that aren’t particularly easy to access. Of the following films, I was only able to see a few minutes of The Way of All Flesh, which contains one of the Oscar-winning performances by Emil Jannings:

• The Devil Dancer
• The Dove
• The Magic Flame
• The Noose
• The Private Life of Helen of Troy
• Sorrell and Son
• The Way of All Flesh

So I got to watch about 72 percent of the first year’s nominees and winners, and considering how many films have been lost over the years – particularly ones from the silent era – that seems like a pretty good average to me. If they’re found and/or become more readily available, I’ll do my due diligence and watch them. Until then, I’m considering this my final post about the Oscar nominees of 1927-28.

By the way, the first Academy Awards had nominees and even one winner for whom there were no specific films mentioned. The eligibility period covered August 1, 1927, to July 31, 1928, and someone could be nominated for a single film or multiple films or, apparently, every film they completed that year. You can see this easily in the acting wins with multiple performances being mentioned. Janet Gaynor was honored for three films, and Emil Jannings for two.

However, what is more intriguing are the four nominations for individuals that don’t mention any particular film at all. For example, Joseph Farnham (sometimes just credited as Joe Farnham) won the Oscar for Best Title Writing. Here’s the thing: he wrote the title cards for at least eighteen films during the eligibility period, including The Crowd. However, whether he was considered for that film or for Laugh, Clown, Laugh or Telling the World or The Fair Co-Ed or for all eighteen films, we just don’t know. A fellow Best Title Writing nominee, George Marion Jr., has thirty credits listed for the same one-year period, including Oscar winners Underworld and Two Arabian Knights and Oscar nominee The Magic Flame. Again, was he being acknowledged for his work on one of those films or all three of them or other films or all thirty of the ones for which he has been credited with writing the intertitles? Perhaps this confusion is why the category only existed during the first year of the awards.

Another category, Best Engineering Effects, has two nominees with no specific film listed. However, a look at their credits reveals something quite interesting. Ralph Hammeras is credited with supplying what we now call visual effects to just one film during the eligibility window, The Private Life of Helen of Troy. Likewise, another nominee, Nugent Slaughter, is credited with just one film for visual effects during 1927-28’s eligibility period, The Jazz Singer. Now, why aren’t those single films mentioned as the reason for these two artists being nominated? The winner in the category, Roy Pomerory, got the award for his work on Wings, but his two competitors only worked on one film each during the year and have no films mentioned as leading to their recognition. Odd, isn’t it?

No one ever said Oscar history was simple and uncomplicated.

Tempest (1927-28)

 

One of the key delights of watching Tempest is seeing the great John Barrymore on film. He does, indeed, have a great profile, and he’s also a wonderful film actor. Why he was never considered for an acting Oscar remains a mystery. In this film, which is most definitely not an adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Barrymore plays Sgt. Ivan Markov, a dragoon who is ambitious to receive a commission as an officer, an unlikely event given that he is a “peasant” and the officers all seem to be aristocrats. The film pivots on the transitional era from the tsarist era to the revolutionary era in Russia, and there’s even a socialist recruiter – for lack of a better phrase – who looks like a dried-up version of Rasputin and who sports a big gap where a tooth should be. Markov gets his commission on the day that he meets Princess Tamara (Camilla Horn), who just happens to be the daughter of the general who has been his champion (George Fawcett) and the fiancée of the captain who has been his biggest antagonist (Ullrich Haupt). She’s not particularly fond of Markov, thinking his status as a peasant is beneath her attention. He winds up in her bedroom, drunk, with a bouquet of flowers and a locket that he’s engraved “I Love You, Ivan.” Why he’s fallen in love with her is not quite clear; she’s been very condescending and exhibited nothing but disdain for him. And, yet, we all know that she’s probably either also in love with him or at least intrigued by him. These plots are easy to follow now that we’ve seen them replicated hundreds of times. Markove gets stripped of his commission and sentenced to prison as a result of his actions. Silent film actors had to master the art of closeups, and Barrymore was exceptionally good at facial expressions. For example, he’s much more subtle playing drunk than most actors tend to be. When his character is left behind, alone, in the prison after everyone else has been “recruited” for battle, he becomes more haggard and delusional. When Markov and the Princess find their roles reversed after the revolutionaries win, Barrymore is very tender and sweet in his scenes with Horn. Louis Wolheim plays Sgt. Bulba, Ivan’s best friend who gets himself kicked out of the army so that he can join his friend in prison and do hard labor. I know that Wolheim’s character is meant to be comic relief, but getting yourself sentenced to hard labor is going a bit far for a friendship, isn’t it? Tempest features a number of interesting camera tricks, such as when writing in Russian dissolves into English and when the camera looks through the bottom of the glass that Markov has emptied (again) at the Princess’ birthday party. The film is satisfying entertainment on many levels, and it’s certainly a good choice to watch if you’d like to see why Barrymore got so much attention.  

Oscar Win: Best Interior Decoration