Oscars 2020 Series

In an ongoing series, Drew Trotter of the Consortium of Christian Study Centers is sharing his reflections on this year’s Academy Awards Best Picture Nominees. For the whole series, click here.

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (R, 161 mins.)

Director: Quentin Tarantino. Writer: Quentin Tarantino. Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Emile Hirsch, Margaret Qualley, Timothy Olyphant, Dakota Fanning, Bruce Dern, Al Pacino, Lena Dunham.

Genre: Comedy, Drama.

Plot Outline: A faded television actor and his stunt double strive to achieve fame and success in the film industry during the final years of Hollywood’s Golden Age in 1969 Los Angeles. —summary drawn from IMDB

Where to find it: Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu, Youtube

Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood is Quentin Tarantino’s most recent movie and is set in Los Angeles at the time of the Manson murders. One of the most difficult tasks for a Christian when writing about film—far too large a discussion to do justice to in this space, but I need to mention it—is to balance the discussion of the quality of a film over against the view of the world that it espouses. When it comes to the genius of Quentin Tarantino, this assignment is especially problematic. Suffice it to say that in Hollywood, Tarantino’s superb abilities and his frighteningly corrupt moral sensibilities are both hugely on display.

Hollywood is a masterpiece, the best film by Tarantino since the classic Pulp Fiction. The structure of the plot, centered in the idea constantly lurking in the back of the viewer’s mind that the Sharon Tate murders are waiting, serves perfectly a completely fictional story about Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), a self-doubting, wonderfully believable, television and movie star and his close friend and stunt man, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt, who won his first acting Oscar for this role). DiCaprio is as good as ever, and it must be difficult to play a movie star, when one is one, because it is a certain type of confession: hey, you out there Mr. and Ms. Viewer: here I am with all my flaws, my pride, my vanity, my selfishness, my doubts, my second-guessings. There is an extraordinary scene, one of the best in the film, when DiCaprio does nothing but sit, stand, pace, smoke, drink, yell, and scream at himself, going over and over the mistakes he has just made in take after take of a scene, beating himself up, all in jump-cut, one camera seclusion. Perhaps only DiCaprio of all the actors in Hollywood today has both the star status and the self confidence to do this entirely improvised scene; I don’t know. What I do know is that the scene both fits perfectly into the film and stands out as a remarkable acting tour-de-force.

Pitt had perhaps as hard an assignment: he was supposed to play a stuntman, who didn’t care to be anything but the support for the star, and yet who has to carry a lot of the plot as it unfolds around the clueless, self-absorbed Dalton. He also does as good a job as he has ever done; I wonder how much he fed off the amazing DiCaprio and how much the reverse was true. In any case they were both very good under the sure hand of Tarantino’s direction. I felt sorry for poor Margot Robbie because her role simply didn’t allow the screen-time to do much. She also was very good, though, in what she did do, as was the remarkable Margaret Qually, Bruce Dern in a cameo appearance, and all the other supporting cast.

There were so many good things about this movie. The script was flawless, not only in its dialogue, but in its pacing, its twists and turns, and its all-important denouement. The locations were brilliantly used, the cinematography (Robert Richardson) as good as any I’ve seen in a long time, and the sets, costuming, and make-up perfectly matched to late sixties California. One could say the plot is too much like Tarantino’s World War II movie, Inglorious Basterds, but everything was so different between the two movies (except the presence of Pitt) that I don’t think many guessed the ending. When DiCaprio came out of his pool house with the flame-thrower, I thought what a perfect job the script did of tying up loose ends, and of making red herrings. DiCaprio had already been seen using a flame-thrower in a movie earlier in Rick Dalton’s career that mimicked the Inglorious Basterds scene of the killing of Hitler and his cronies in a theater, so the viewer was primed to think the quotation of that movie had already happened. Tarantino, who famously quotes shots, dialogue, and even plot points from classic Hollywood films, is now quoting himself, and justifiably so. Hollywood is just a superb piece of filmmaking in every way.

As great as this film is as a work of art, Tarantino’s moral foibles are, however, on show once again. His nihilistic world-view, so deeply embedded in the ultra-violence that is a chief element of all his movies, comes out again, in the violent killing of the three attackers, who enter Dalton’s house, bent on killing anyone there. Heads are repeatedly bashed against walls, people are cut up with knives and burned alive; the violence is gory and extended, as only Tarantino can do. It is only fair to mention that in this film, though, bloodshed and mayhem are limited to this last scene, and that the victims here certainly get what they deserve (cf. e.g. the poor guy in the back seat of the car in Pulp Fiction!). For the viewer to be able to say at the end of the film, “This is the way it should have happened,” as I did, is at least something, though the Christian knows that vengeance is not ours, as we sometimes think it is, and as Tarantino regularly espouses.

Quentin Tarantino has always delighted in putting the hilarious alongside the super-disturbing, wrenching the viewer back and forth between the comfortable and comic on one side and the disconcerting and brutal on the other. He once said of Pulp Fiction that he was seeking to make a movie where at any moment, the viewer might be either falling off their chair laughing, diving under their chair from fright, or doing both at the same time. To entertain customers in this chaotic, anarchic way, building in them an experience that travels with them outside the theater, encouraging them to embrace a disordered view of life, is ultimately destructive and, yes, despicable. Add to that the positive portrayal of bloody vengeance as a noble virtue, and this is even more so. But you have to appreciate his ability to pull off exactly what he is attempting. Excellence has its evil face, too.

In an ongoing series, Drew Trotter of the Consortium of Christian Study Centers is sharing his reflections on this year’s Academy Awards Best Picture Nominees. For the whole series, click here.

1917 (R, 119 mins.)

Director: Sam Mendes. Writer: Sam Mendes, Krysty Wilson-Cairns. Cast: Dean-Charles Chapman, Charles MacKay, Daniel Mays, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch, Richard Madden.

Genre: Drama, War.

Plot Outline: Two young British soldiers during the First World War are given an impossible mission: deliver a message deep in enemy territory that will stop 1,600 men, and one of the soldiers’ brothers, from walking straight into a deadly trap.

–Summary based on IMDB Entry

Where to find it: Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, Google Play

1917 was the odds-on favorite this year to win the Academy Award for Best Picture that Parasite, the Korean thriller, of course won. If 1917 had won, though, it would have been for all the wrong reasons. Hollywood loves war pictures (though one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history was the loss of Saving Private Ryan to Shakespeare in Love in 1999), happy endings with tragedies in the middle, quests that are satisfied, and strong British films. This movie has all of those well-worn elements.

Of course, neither not winning, nor being filled with clichés, makes 1917 a bad movie, and it decidedly is not. Two great performances by relative unknowns, outstanding sets and the cinematography (Roger Deakins justly won the Academy Award for his work on this film) to go along with them, and a powerfully emotional story support this tale. It focuses on two lieutenants chosen for a dangerous mission across enemy lines to get a letter to British troops about to make a fatal attack into a trap set by the Germans. The quest is made personal by the knowledge that one of the soldiers will be rescuing his older brother, if he succeeds, though both these young men are so attractive as people that the viewer hardly needs any help rooting for them. Simple, enjoyable, yet very different from one another, Lance Corporals Blake and Schofield are played by Dean-Charles Chapman and Charles MacKay, respectively.

The signature device used by director Sam Mendes (American Beauty) in the movie is to have the camera follow the two men the entire time, as if the film were one, long, continuous hand-held shot. It is not, but it appears that way, and this can be distracting. Mendes—who also wrote the film—does enough with the plot, however, to make the movie proceed at a good pace, mixing events like the collapse of a tunnel and the death of one of the soldiers with contemplative dialogue by the two, walking along like two Joes.

1917 is emotionally very moving and avoided the kiss of death for melodramas: it never goes over-the-top. The single shot device with its hand-held “jitters” and eye level POV makes audience members feel as if they are really there, and the engagement factor might well have won it an Oscar. Great movies always have a great supporting cast; this movie had two little-knowns in almost every frame, but Mark Strong, Colin Firth, and Benedict Cumberbatch in minor, though significant, roles. Not too shabby.

One difficulty with the film is the thin plot, which has a few too many coincidences that are hard to swallow. No German in the film has even the faintest ability to shoot straight as Corporal Schofield (MacKay) is shot at repeatedly with none of those shots hitting the target. On the other hand, he is able to pop up and pick off a German sniper on the third shot. At one point, a soldier is floating downriver with no idea where he is and gets out at exactly the spot where the troops are for which he is searching. There is no explanation for how one of the two main characters is shot point blank and hit with such force that he falls down a flight of stairs, yet simply wakes up later and is able to go on. But somehow, one is able to put those suspension-of-disbelief problems aside, since one so badly wants the corporal to succeed in his mission.

The thinness of plot extends to the underlying moral fabric of the characters, too. While there are occasionally interesting conversations between Schofield and Blake, there is so much time spent running for their lives or simply establishing place with long landscape camera shots that the characters end up less well-developed than they might have been. There were nice touches like the discussion of cherry trees by Blake, who surprises Schofield with his knowledge and sensitivity, but then, when the cherry-tree image is brought in at the end of the film, it feels clumsy, without the depth needed for the empathy of the viewer to be fully engaged.

Of course courage, perseverance, the banality of war, and a number of other moral issues can all be found in 1917 in order to enable discussion, but there are not any new issues raised, nor any new thoughts added to these older ones. This is an impressive movie, but, on the other hand, the script is just so predictable, maudlin, and “familiar” that nothing feels unique. It’s like a pastiche of scenes from a thousand different, very good, war movies, pushing buttons that one knows are going to create emotions in people. It’s a movie I left with tears in my eyes, but not liking the manipulation that made that happen.

In an ongoing series, Drew Trotter of the Consortium of Christian Study Centers is sharing his reflections on this year’s Academy Awards Best Picture Nominees. For the whole series, click here.

Marriage Story (R, 137 mins.)

Director: Noah Baumbach. Writers: Noah Baumbach. Cast: Adam Driver, Scarlett Johansson, Laura Dern, Alan Alda, Azhy Robertson, Ray Liotta

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance.

Plot Outline: Noah Baumbach’s incisive and compassionate look at a marriage breaking up and a family staying together.

-Summary drawn from IMDB

Where to find it: Netflix

Marriage Story is the powerful, but flawed, telling of a marriage falling apart in the post-modern age. One of the two Netflix entries in the Best Picture race, it fits very well on the small screen with a lot of two-shot, interior location set-ups, and, as with many pictures in this year’s Oscar race, a story that is slow-moving at best is raised to a much higher level by great dialogue writing and superb acting.

Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson play Charlie and Nicole Barber. He is a director—plays, not films—and she is an actress, who would prefer movies and television, but has dutifully moved from California to New York with Charlie and Henry, their eight-year-old son, to act in Charlie’s plays. As the movie opens, we are introduced to the principal characters by the interesting device of seeing them as individuals in a montage of scenes, while their spouse tells in voice-over what the best traits of the other one are. The viewer eventually finds out this is a writing exercise that a marriage counselor has assigned them. The attempt at reconciliation fails, and Nicole answers an offer to shoot a TV pilot in Los Angeles, taking Henry with her. The rest of the movie alternates between divorce proceedings and flashbacks, sometimes of happier moments, sometimes of less than happy ones.

Story was written and directed by Noah Baumbach and seems to be his attempt at saying that marriage is nothing, but family is everything. He offers the relationship of a New York theatre director and an actress who is that director’s star, but who would rather be in California, as his proof. This movie suffers badly from its circumstances: big budget California divorce lawyers, an entertainment marriage and all its accoutrements, and California vs. New York City life decisions just don’t make for a story to which anyone in fly-over country can relate. The performances by Scarlett Johansson, Adam Driver, Laura Dern, Ray Liotta, and Alan Alda are good and the writing is good, but it was just hard to care about these people after you saw who they were. Even worse for the viewer, the plot point that they were going to work this out on their own was just dropped without explanation, and the believability of the whole process after that became less and less possible.

As the tagline description from IMDb implies (“Noah Baumbach’s incisive and compassionate look at a marriage breaking up and a family staying together.”), Baumbach seems to want to say that you can do fine as a family without having the unnecessary burden of marriage. There is a hopeful ending, though it is far from certain that the two will reconcile, much less stay married. An additional problem for the viewer arises as they are shown to be friendlier and friendlier and is embedded in the question, “And, again: why did they split up?”

There are scenes that resonate, particularly one very powerful fight near the end of the film, because those kinds of fights can happen to anyone and because Driver and Johansson give their all in this highly emotional confrontation. But most of the fights have to do with divergent opinions like New York vs. California, theatre vs. television—issues that just don’t have meaningful analogues in the worlds of most viewers. There are some deep, universal issues portrayed like husband domination, wifely submission, etc., but most of these are just not problematic enough in this marriage to sustain the believability of the story.

Another problem with Story is that some of the film’s scenes are so stereotypical, they are downright silly, such as the visit by the family services woman who is a relational nightmare as she tries to assess Charlie’s reliability as a parent. The scene is supposed to be funny but is just silly.

Marriage Story can certainly provide good discussion points about that great institution, but the framing of the story undercuts discussion of most marriage problems. The lack of money; whether to have, and how to raise, children; sexual infidelity and persistence—none of these pose major problems (though infidelity does enter the picture, it is treated as a minor after-thought) for the couple, yet these are the biggest problems nation-wide in keeping a marriage stable. Again, it is almost as if Noah Baumbach is trying to say that really good people can just give up on marriage, and it is no great loss. The important thing is family. No Christian could ever say that.