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| Winter on Fire is among this year's five excellent nominees for Best Documentary at the Academy Awards. |
Welcome to Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the
Oscars, our daily look at this year’s Academy Awards race. Be sure to check
back every day this month for analysis of each of the Academy’s 24 categories.
Best Documentary
The nominees are:
Amy
Cartel Land
The Look of Silence
What Happened, Miss Simone?
Winter on Fire
Some things the
Academy really likes its documentaries to be about: war, the environment, and
entertainment figures. There are no environmental films nominated this year –
at least, not in the Best Documentary category – but the Academy doubled down
on its other two favorite subjects with three war films and two entertainment
films.
With each of the
five nominees this year playing firmly within the Academy’s wheelhouse,
determining the likely winner could be as easy as looking at the box-office
receipts. Four of the last five documentary winners were the highest-grossing
nominees in their respective years. The only one that was not, Undefeated in
2011, was the second-highest grossing.
If we follow the
money this year, that leaves only one option, director Asif Kapadia’s Amy.
The Amy Winehouse film earned $8.4 million in theaters, positively blockbuster
numbers by documentary standards. Things are complicated a bit by the fact that
two of these nominees debuted on Netflix, but while the streaming company has
been good at getting the nomination, it has not yet delivered a win. After the Beasts
of No Nation shutout this year, it seems fair to say the Academy at
large is still reticent to embrace streaming platforms. So, if money talks as
it often does in the documentary category, this year, it is screaming Amy.
Amy (directed by Asif Kapadia) – As presented by this film, Winehouse’s tragic life is a
cautionary tale but not in the way we might initially think. This is not a
classic perils-of-fame doc, though it is possible to read it that way as we
watch Winehouse’s downward spiral into depression and addiction. Instead, the
true subject of the film only becomes clear once Kapadia turns his lens on the
lenses, so to speak, on the members of the press who hounded Winehouse day and
night.
The film argues
that though Winehouse was a troubled young woman, prone to various forms of
self-harm, her downfall ultimately was the result of the intense media scrutiny
under which she lived. Of course, a film of this subject matter does not exist
in a vacuum, and sadly, Winehouse’s experience in the spotlight is more the
rule than the exception. If anyone will understand and relate to that, it will
be the members of the Academy, people much closer to this material than the rest
of us.
Working in its
favor as well is that Amy also plays like a love letter to art
and artists – another favorite topic of the Academy’s, be it fiction or
non-fiction. The footage we see of Winehouse is of a gifted songwriter and
brilliant performer who loved to create. The strongest moments in the film are
those when Kapadia just allows Winehouse to perform for the camera – and us.
The film absolutely has an agenda in its portrayal of the tabloid press, but in
its quietest, most intimate moments, it also proves to be a genuinely moving
human document.
Cartel Land (directed by Matthew Heineman) – This film is both
an intense portrait of the struggles of everyday citizens living amid the
Mexican drug wars and a miraculous piece of boots-on-the-ground journalism.
Heineman is in near-constant danger as he embeds himself with the cartels and
with the groups fighting the cartels. As bullets whiz by the camera, you
realize the filmmakers could have been killed at any moment, and in some
instances, it seems more likely than not.
Much of the story follows a group of Mexican citizens who
join forces and rise up with the intention of defending their towns against the
drug cartels. However, corruption runs rampant, and the organization begins to
morph into the very thing it formed to stand against. This turn is as heartbreaking
as it is inevitable since we realize there is nothing in these border towns the
cartels do not have some say in. The cartels sow devastation wherever they go,
reap the benefits, and leave the scorched earth behind to do the same
elsewhere.
There are other passages in the film about a group of racist
American yahoos who arm themselves to defend their not-in-any-danger town from
the borders wars. These sequences are less effective narratively, but they help
make an interesting thematic point. Bravado is easy when the war is not yours.
The citizens of Mexico are fighting to protect themselves and their
livelihoods. The battle is real. The Americans, well, they are just playing
war.
Winter on Fire (directed by Evgeny Afineevsky) – For three
months in 2013-14, Ukraine burned as the nation’s citizens revolted against the
president’s alignment with Russia and refusal to move Ukraine closer
politically with the European Union. The streets became a warzone packed with
men, women, children, students, and the elderly, all fighting against a police
force set loose like a guard dog off its chain.
Afineevsky’s film shares much of its DNA with Cartel Land, exploring as it does a
violent people’s revolt against an oppressive ruling class. As with the
anti-cartel group Heineman chronicled, the Ukrainian revolution is infiltrated
by criminals working for the government who are sent in to destabilize the
movement. Afineevsky then shows us firsthand the bravery and blood required to
take back a nation from its usurpers. The people are arrested, beaten, and
killed, and the camera never stops rolling. As viewers, we become a part of the
uprising, and we are forced to wonder why such basic human rights must be paid
for with the lives of so many.
The Look of Silence (directed by Joshua Oppenheimer) – A
follow-up to Oppenheimer’s Oscar-nominated critical darling The Act of Killing, The Look of Silence considers the same events – the Indonesian
genocide of the 1970s – through a different lens. This time, rather than
letting the war criminals damn themselves with their own testimony, Oppenheimer
follows one man whose brother was among the one million slaughtered during the
military coup.
The film is not as formally daring as its more experimental
predecessor, but it may be more emotionally taxing as we watch Adi Rukun
confront the people who killed his brother. Many of these men are old and
infirm, but as the victors, they have no regrets about their actions. Rather,
they take great pride in their roles in advancing the cause, and their
callousness is shocking for both Adi and us.
Oppenheimer’s film is methodically paced and expertly
stitched together so that the full weight of Adi’s inquisition only becomes
clear at the end. If The Act of Killing
is about the monsters that terrorized a nation, then The Look of Silence is about the fear and anger those monsters
still inspire in the people forced to live under their rule.
What Happened, Miss
Simone? (directed by Liz Garbus) – Garbus, who previously was nominated for
The Farm: Angola, USA, has spent most
of her career focusing on the stories of people misunderstood by the world. In
films such as The Execution of Wanda Jean,
Girlhood, and There’s Something Wrong with Aunt Diane, Garbus has taken subjects
with prescribed narratives in the public consciousness and offered up a fuller picture
of their stories. Here, she accomplishes the same feat with the life of
singer-songwriter-political activist Nina Simone.
With Simone’s daughter, Lisa Simone Kelly, on board as an
executive producer, Garbus is granted access to strikingly intimate details of
Simone’s life. In particular, her diaries and letters reveal the complex inner
struggle of a woman whose personal life was a wreck at the same time as her
professional career began to take off. The film lays out clearly the cycle of
abuse that took place between her manager/husband and her and the way that
abuse informed her actions. The audience comes away from the film richer for
having viewed it and with a deeper understanding of someone of whom we may have
known but about whom we knew little.
The final analysis
Amy has won most reliable precursor awards.
It has the box office. It is the kind of film the Academy generally loves. It
may not be the most accomplished or daring film in the lineup, but it will
resonate with a group of voters who understand the struggles of life in the
media eye, whether directly or indirectly. Cartel Land is popular, and there are some who
will want to award Oppenheimer for the twin achievements of The
Act of Killing and The Look of Silence,
but by any measure, Amy will be tough to beat.
Will win: Amy
Should win:
Winter on Fire
Should have been
here: Racing Extinction
Tomorrow: Best
Documentary Short
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