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| Alejandro González Iñárritu is nominated for Best Director for Birdman. |
Each day as we make
our way to the Academy Awards ceremony Feb. 22, Last Cinema Standing will take
an in-depth look at each of the categories, sorting out the highs, the lows,
and everything in between. Check back right here for analysis, predictions, and
gripes as we inch toward the Dolby Theater and that world-famous red carpet.
Best Director
The nominees are:
Alejandro González Iñárritu for Birdman
Richard Linklater for Boyhood
Bennett Miller for Foxcatcher
Wes Anderson for The
Grand Budapest Hotel
Morten Tyldum for The Imitation Game
We could run down the list of great directors who have never
won this award – as so many who like to gripe about what the Oscars mean tend
to do – but no award recognition, or lack thereof, will change the historical or
cultural perspective of anyone. A great director is a great director, Academy
Award winner or not, but boy, it sure is fun when our favorites win this award.
That is the thing that most people who complain about the Academy miss. As
Sasha Stone puts it so succinctly over at Awards Daily: “The Oscars don’t mean
anything, except when they do.”
I would amend that to say that while they may or may not
mean something to those of us who watch the game, the Oscars always mean
something to the people who win them – perhaps excluding the rare person who
refuses the award. For any one of these five nominated directors, an Oscar has
the power to change the trajectory of his career. Maybe his next project will
be easier to finance. Maybe he will have more creative leeway to make the kind
of film he wants. Whatever the desired effect, an Oscar is a great way to open
doors in the industry.
This is the first time since 2007 that none of the nominated
directors has previously won the award and the first time since 2002 that none
is a previous winner in any category. That is not to say these folks have never
been to the dance. They just have never been voted king. Anderson is a six-time
Academy Award nominee, and Iñárritu and Linklater have five nominations apiece.
This is Miller’s second nomination for Best Director, while Tyldum is the lone
first-timer in the group. One of these men, however, will be a first-time
winner, and no matter who it is, it will be exciting to see what doors he
chooses to open next.
Alejandro González Iñárritu
for Birdman – Speaking in a
general sense, Iñárritu is the best director in this group, by which I mean his
career, taken as a whole, is the most impressive of the nominated filmmakers.
He has made just five feature films, but each one could be considered a modern
masterpiece. His loosely connected communication breakdown trilogy – consisting
of Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and Babel – constitutes one of the sterling achievements of 21st
century cinema.
Now, we have Birdman,
about a communication breakdown on a global scale as seen through the eyes of a
washed up actor just trying to put on a play. Leaving aside for a moment the
considerable technical prowess of the film, one of Iñárritu’s gifts has always
been to bring out the best, most raw and wrenching performances from his
actors. Birdman lives and dies on the
success or failure of its talented ensemble, but under the guidance of Iñárritu,
none of the actors ever steps wrong. Each performance is finely calibrated to
the tone of Iñárritu’s pitch-black satire, and nothing ever feels out of place.
About that technical prowess, though, there is nothing else
like Birdman. This is a film set
almost entirely backstage at a Broadway theater, and it is built on intimate
conversations and quiet moments of reflection. So, why does Birdman feel like one of the biggest
movies of the year? This is a small scale production that would not be out of
place in a lineup with the kind of superhero films it satirizes. The epic
camerawork, the grand art direction, the stunning sound design – it all comes
together in a film that feels massive, even as it embraces its smallness. This
may be Iñárritu’s finest hour – so far.
Richard Linklater for
Boyhood – Because Linklater is a
daring filmmaker who has never been afraid to try different genres and
different styles, there is an interesting split among his fans. Some prefer him
in populist entertainer mode with such movies as Dazed and Confused, School of
Rock, and his Bad News Bears
remake. Others prefer his more formally daring experimental films such as A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life. While still others would
rather he focus on more talky, low-key dramas such as the Before trilogy. Boyhood
finally is the film that could unite all the three groups.
It is an immensely relatable coming-of-age story full of pop
hits and memorable performances; the 12-year filming process constitutes one of
the most daring filmmaking experiments in recent memory; and while never
boring, most of the three-hour runtime is made up of characters simply living
their lives. If we cannot quite call Boyhood
a perfect movie, it is most certainly a perfect Linklater film.
Most of the Boyhood
campaign has focused on the 12-year aspect of the filmmaking – a feat that is
integral to understanding the achievement of the movie – but that is a
disservice to the deeply human tale Linklater commits to telling. These are not
exceptional people leading exceptional lives. They are not inventors or heroes
or history makers. They are real, and maintaining the passion and commitment to
tell the story of a group of real people over a dozen years may be Linklater’s
most wonderful trick of all.
Bennett Miller for Foxcatcher – With just three feature
films to his credit, Miller has quietly developed into one of the best American
directors of his generation. From Capote
to Moneyball and now Foxcatcher, Miller has found a way to
bring the honest emotions of a chamber drama to the extraordinary stories of
murders, cultural icons, and sports stars. By refusing to sensationalize any of
his characters or situations, Miller has been able to take highly specific
tales of power and struggle and turn them into universally relevant allegories.
Tales of millionaire murderers are about as sensational as
it gets in our culture, and the story John du Pont has all the trappings of an
over-the-top melodrama. It features drugs, money, violence, and mental illness.
Add to that the government contractors and Olympic athletes that come in and
out of the story, and the whole thing starts to strain credulity. Miller,
however, refuses to play into any of that. He rejects the notion that the
sensational must be told sensationally and instead offers up a dark, brooding
tale of ambition, power, and corruption.
Wes Anderson for The Grand Budapest Hotel – Well, it
finally happened. Anderson got the Oscar nomination his fans have been
clamoring for. Though the auteur has several nominations for writing to his
name – and one for Best Animated Feature – this is the one his fans have been
waiting for. I cannot share their excitement. Had this recognition come in 2012
for Moonrise Kingdom, I maybe could
have mustered some enthusiasm, but not for this one.
It is inarguable that Anderson is a stylist of the highest
order. The auteur theorists of the 1960s would love him, advocating as they did
for the authorial role of the director. There is no mistaking an Anderson film
for a film by anyone else, and he is to be applauded for developing such a
unique signature style, but pardon me for not being as taken with his whimsical
fantasies and childlike dream worlds as it seems much of the rest of the
cinephile community is.
Does The Grand
Budapest Hotel hint at darker themes? Sure, but a hint sometimes just is
not enough. Maybe Anderson will become a grownup filmmaker at some point in his
career, but it has not happened yet. The
Grand Budapest Hotel is unique. There is no denying that, but unique does
not equal great. For me, greatness continues to elude Anderson, but maybe I am
just a curmudgeon.
Morten Tyldum for The Imitation Game – It is a little
surprising to me that Tyldum is nominated with this group. The Grand Budapest Hotel may not have worked for me, but I can
appreciate the directorial stamp Anderson has on it. On the other hand, The Imitation Game is so thoroughly
unmemorable that it would be difficult to dissect any part of the production
for either positive or negative critique. It is mediocre at its very core.
Tyldum’s direction is serviceable much of the time,
distracting some of the time, and just generally underwhelming all of the time.
A lot of this film’s problems begin with the script, but a stronger director could
have found ways to accentuate what worked on the page and fix what did not.
Instead, the screenplay’s worst tendencies – repetitiveness, a lack of forward
momentum, and an overreliance on flashbacks to fill in character gaps – are
played up as though the point is to take world-changing events and suck the
energy and intrigue completely from them.
The final analysis
This seems like more of a toss-up than it should. Iñárritu
won the Directors Guild award, his film has been an industry juggernaut, and
for my money, Birdman is the best
film from any of the nominated directors. In any other year, I would predict Iñárritu
and never look back, but this has been a strange year. As much as Birdman has steamrolled through the
industry awards, Boyhood has
collected nearly every critics and non-industry award it has been up for – the
Golden Globe, the British Academy of Film and Television award, the Broadcast
Film Critics, etc.
The last two years have seen a rare split between the Best
Director and Best Picture categories, and many are predicting a similar split
this year, but I just do not see it. If Birdman
really is going to win Best Picture as the statistics suggest it will, I do not
see any way Iñárritu’s flashy, innovative, and spellbinding direction does not
get awarded. By the same token, if the Academy wants to call Boyhood the best film of the year, how
could it not reward the remarkable dedication of Linklater? The numbers tell us
Birdman will win, but my gut tells me
Boyhood, and if I am wrong, well, I
think I can live with it.
Will win: Richard
Linklater for Boyhood
Should win:
Alejandro González Iñárritu for Birdman
Wish she had been
here: Ava DuVernay for Selma
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