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| Jeff Bridges (left) and Gil Birmingham in Hell or High Water, nominated for Best Original Screenplay |
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 leading up to the ceremony for
analysis of each of the Academy’s 24 categories and more.
Best Original Screenplay
The nominees are:
20th Century Women,
written by Mike Mills
Hell or High Water,
written by Taylor Sheridan
La La Land,
written by Damien Chazelle
The Lobster,
written by Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthymis Filippou
Manchester by the Sea,
written by Kenneth Lonergan
Each of the films nominated here is defined by its
singularity of vision. They could only have come from the minds of their
respective writers because they present ways of looking at the world that are
wholly unique. Four of these films were also directed by their writer or
co-writer, which is for the best because in most cases it would be folly to
hand over one’s point of view to an outside perspective.
Every one of these films is a fully realized universe unto
itself, whether a Santa Barbara boarding house in the 1970s, the desolate South
amid a recession, a dreamer’s fantasy of Hollywood, a singles retreat in a
dystopia, or a small fishing community in New England. All of these writers, through
their words and stories and characters, have taken us somewhere new, somewhere
unexpected, and showed us lives we never thought we would see and of which we
never knew we needed to be a part.
The Lobster – Dystopias have been all the rage for a while now.
It perhaps has something to do with the success of The Walking Dead on TV or perhaps all those young-adult adaptations
like The Hunger Games. Whatever the
case, everyone seems to be piling on, and it seems every week we get a new
version of our post-apocalyptic future. Each new creative team wants to go
bigger, darker, and scarier than the last, trying to top whatever the newest
invented threat is. Truthfully, and some of you must agree, it is exhausting.
I say all of this by way of introduction to the world of The Lobster, a dystopia in which
co-writers Lanthimos, who also directed, and Filippou argue the tools of our
oppression are already at hand and they are as mundane as a dinner party at a
stuffy hotel. The writers do not need to invent a new threat for their world.
What greater threat could there be to our humanity than bureaucracy, which by
its very nature is inhumane?
Beyond this of course, The
Lobster is set in a world in which humans must pair off or face being
transformed into an animal of their choosing. The premise alone, executed as
well as it is here, would be enough to earn a nomination, but Lanthimos and Filippou
are not satisfied with just their intriguing and admittedly oddball scenario.
Their script is a scathing satire of the ways in which we live today, a dark
warning not of where we are headed but of where we already are.
La La Land – Now, if I may flip 180 degrees in the other
direction, Chazelle’s bright, poppy fantasia is the world as we wish it would
be. Set in a Hollywood where dreamers and their dreams matter, La La Land is the story of what it is to
struggle and chase and search, of getting knocked down and wondering if you
have the strength to get back up again.
Chazelle rightly does not pretend achieving one’s goals
comes without sacrifice or does not require hard work and dedication, and as we
all know, even those qualities sometimes are not enough. The fantasy of La La Land is not success without
struggle but that our struggles ultimately will prove worth it, that we are not
simply spitting into the wind.
The coup de grace of course is to make all of this a musical
in the grand tradition. In a culture in which cynicism is cool and winking at
the audience is expected, Chazelle plays it straight with sincerity and
earnestness. You want to doubt him and scoff at his creation, but from its
opening song-and-dance number, you are too busy being enthralled and delighted
to remember you came to laugh at the movie, not with it.
Manchester by the Sea – What springs immediately to mind with
this film is grief. Oh, there are a few other words, to be sure, but grief is what
stands out. The beauty of Lonergan’s script is that it is not about Hollywood
grief, the kind of all-consuming sadness and recovery we have seen in countless
films before. You know the movies. They would be called weepies in another
time. Characters experience loss and tragedy and are devastated, but through
some force of will or outside strength, they move on happily. Manchester by the Sea is not that kind
of film.
Lonergan instead examines the true nature of grief in all
its messy, painful, frightening, and sometimes humorous ways. His characters
experience a tragedy and loss with which we are all familiar, and they react in
ways that feel real and human, which in itself is shocking enough to see in a
film. Lonergan knows there is no magical cure-all, and there are some wounds
even time cannot heal. The people in Manchester
by the Sea grasp for meaning and search for ways to make sense of it all,
but unmoored by grief, they really are just looking for connection to anything
or anyone.
Hell or High Water – Sheridan is probably best known as an
actor, particularly for his long-running role on the TV show Sons of Anarchy. Another couple scripts
like his first two, though, and he will not be known primarily as an actor much
longer. His first produced screenplay was for last year’s popular slow-burn
thriller Sicario, which creates
tension and intrigue mostly through silence. This is what makes his script for Hell or High Water such a surprise and
delight.
While ringing all the tension and thrills it can out of a
story of Texas outlaws, Sheridan’s screenplay is also highly literate, gifting
its characters with the kind of sinewy monologues and smart, rapid-fire
dialogue actors just devour. And the audience eats it up as well. There is,
however, a third level to Sheridan’s brilliant script beyond its sturdy premise
and whip-cracking dialogue. Underneath it all, it tells a tale of an area of
this country left decimated by the recession and still struggling to survive.
Bank robbers have long been portrayed in movies as heroes,
but here, that classic trope takes on an even deeper meaning. The banks
represent the institutions that have destroyed these towns and these people,
and these men’s crimes, as the community sees it, are extracting payment for
the debts these banks owe us all.
20th Century Women – Writer-director Mills has made just three
features, with five years passing between the first two and six years between
the second and this one. One imagines the problem is more of financing than
will or desire to work. If that is the case, let us hope some brave studio
steps up and gets Mills working again because I cannot not imagine waiting
another five or six years for the next Mills gem.
Like his wonderful previous feature, Beginners, Mills sketches the lives of his characters in a gorgeous
array of images and impressions, offering up a kaleidoscopic view of the whole.
20th Century Women is the story of
five very different people and how they are defined both by their actions and
their reactions to the rapidly evolving world around them. Mills takes the kind
of characters we think we know – the arty punk girl, the quiet shy boy, the
down-to-earth bohemian, etc. – and explores the choices and contradictions that
make them who they are, not simply who we think they are.
The final analysis
This award has gone to the Best Picture winner the previous
two years and a Best Picture nominee each of the past 11. So, while The Lobster and 20th Century Women would both be deserving winners, they are probably
out of the running, their profiles not high enough to compete in this group.
There was a time early in this Oscar season when it looked
like Manchester by the Sea might be a
serious Best Picture force and like Lonergan would be a shoe-in for this award.
The film, after all, rests almost entirely on his shoulders, and his script
carries most of the burden. However, that time seems to have passed, and even
the award Manchester by the Sea
looked assured of (Casey Affleck for Best Actor) is in doubt.
That leaves Sheridan and Chazelle, Hell or High Water and La La
Land. The smart money of course is on the big, bold Best Picture
frontrunner. Only once since 2001 has the Best Picture winner been nominated in
this category and not gone home with the prize – in 2011, when Woody Allen won
for Midnight in Paris over The Artist, the script for which was
most likely undervalued for being for a silent film; also, the Academy just
really loves Allen’s writing. The point is if La La Land really is going to sweep its way to Best Picture, it
better win here. But the Academy is not above throwing a curveball just to keep
us all honest, and Hell or High Water
is the exact kind of dialogue-heavy, intricately plotted script they have loved
in the past and will love again, sooner or later.
Will win: La La
Land
Should win: The
Lobster
Should have been
here: Jackie
Tomorrow: Best Adapted
Screenplay
