The Last Cinema Standing Countdown to the Oscars is your guide to the Academy Awards. We will cover each of the categories in depth, talk about history and what the award truly means, and predict some winners. Check back all month as we make our way to the big show, one category (each as important as the next) at a time.
Best Production Design
The nominees are:
Dune
Nightmare Alley
The Power of the Dog
The Tragedy of Macbeth
West Side Story
Going back to at least 2000 (and only that far because I am just one person), this is the only time the lineups for the Production Design and Cinematography Oscars have matched five for five. Since the nominations are determined by members of each branch, there is no funny business going on here – such as the Academy choosing five films it thinks looked nice and filling them in for both categories. It is just an odd, historical coincidence.
Or, perhaps, coincidence is the wrong term. Well made films tend to be well made in every aspect, so it should come as no surprise that films where the art of cinematography was allowed to thrive are the very same films where nothing is spared in bringing their worlds to life. We are talking about Production Design today, which can mean the very big, the very small, or everything in between, and the five examples branch members selected this year offer five wholly unique, original ways of exploring the world of crafting worlds.
West Side Story - If you followed any of the reports on Twitter while this movie was shooting, you know Steven Spielberg filmed on location in the streets of New York. And if you have been to New York any time in the past couple decades, you know it looks nothing like the Upper West Side of West Side Story. The task of believably turning back the clock fell to production designer Adam Stockhausen and set decorator Rena DeAngelo, both previous nominees for Spielberg’s Cold War legal thriller Bridge of Spies. Stockhausen is a four-time nominee who previously won for The Grand Budapest Hotel.
The neat trick that Stockhausen and DeAngelo pull here is to make real city streets look like a stage without losing any sense of depth or space. West Side Story needs a certain staginess to work, and the fire escapes, storefronts, and construction sites of this film provide a perfect proscenium for the action. The final shot of the movie, even, is a perfect demonstration of Stockhausen’s and DeAngelo’s particular magic. Spielberg allows the camera to drift up and up, revealing the totality of the characters’ world, which is quite small but feels so big.
Dune - Speaking of feeling big, the grandeur of Dune is among its defining qualities. For a film this strange and this dense to work, it must be transportive. The audience must be made to feel part of a world it could never have comprehended before being set down in it. Production designer Patrice Vermette, on his third nomination, and set decorator Zsuzsanna Sipos, a first-time nominee, revel in the opportunity to craft larger-than-life spaces that bring viewers right into the story.
For as much is made of the sandy deserts and open-air scenery of Dune, an equal amount of the movie takes place in the halls of power. All the razzle-dazzle aside, at its core, the story is about statesmen and warlords ironing out mining agreements in opulent palaces. Vermette and Sipos succeed in making each of these palaces and each of the rooms in these palaces feel unique, full of a personality all its own. From Paul’s room on Arrakis to the room where Duke Leto makes his last stand, care, thought, and imagination are on display.
The Tragedy of Macbeth - Joel Coen’s stripped down take on Shakespeare’s Macbeth is all artifice. It is not reality but surreality. The castle at Dunsinane is a house of horrors made spookier by the fact that it is so empty, so unlivable, so foreign. It is what happens when a diseased mind conceives of power but has no concept of what to do with that power. Long halls, giant windows, and steep, narrow staircases abound, evidence of the emptiness of what Macbeth has tried to accomplish.
Production designer Stefan Dechant and set decorator Nancy Haigh build everything from the ground up. Dechant is a first-time nominee, while Haigh is a two-time winner from nine nominations, most recently winning a statue for her transformative work on Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood. Here, they craft spaces where nothing is real but rather a simulation of reality. It is a thoroughly literal interpretation of another of the bard’s most famous lines: “All the world’s a stage.”
The Power of the Dog - It’s that house. That dark, angular, oppressive house that sits at the center of a story about repression and hostility and the rot at the heart of the American myth. We have seen the capital “W” West on screen a thousand times before. We know what it looks like. The brilliant trick here, by production designer Grant Major and set decorator Amber Richards, is to give us what we know, then twist it in ways we could never have imagined.
Yes, we get the ranch and the barn and the shops and the old-timey cars, and it is all beautifully rendered. But, then, there is the house called home by the Burbank family and its newest members, Rose and Peter. It should be an oasis, a respite from the unrelenting heat and loneliness of the land. Instead, it is a dreary prison, controlled in more ways than one by a humorless warden. We are never comfortable here, and that is exactly as it should be.
Nightmare Alley - Grand set pieces are right in the Academy’s wheel house – the West Side of Spielberg’s West Side Story or the magnificent estates of Dune – and this year, there is perhaps no grander set piece than the carnival of Guillermo del Toro’s Nightmare Alley. It takes up only the first half of the film but leaves an impression that lingers over our characters for the rest of the story. It is fully immersive, transporting the audience directly into the wonders and dangers of a Depression-era traveling circus.
The production design by first-time nominee Tamara Deverell and set decoration by previous winner Shane Vieau (del Toro’s The Shape of Water) is a marvel in every dirty, dusty detail. But, their artful touch extends beyond these early sequences into the cold elegance and sleek sophistication of Dr. Ritter’s (Cate Blanchett) office, the imposing halls of Ezra Grindle’s (Richard Jenkins) mansion, and the smoky gloom of the hotel. Every locale feels completely lived-in and true to the universe del Toro wants to explore.
The final analysis
The Power of the Dog is the Best Picture frontrunner, and Dune is going to sweep a lot of the crafts awards, but if West Side Story is going to take home anything in the below-the-line categories, it will be this. Voters love work that takes a real location and transforms it into something new (see the aforementioned win in this category for Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood). The work is thoroughly deserving and grand enough in scale that it stands a good chance of being recognized by the Academy.
Will win: West Side Story
Should win: The Tragedy of Macbeth
Should have been here: Spencer
Next time: Best Editing
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