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| The 15th anniversary screening of O Brother, Where Art Thou? at the New York Film Festival (photo credit: Sean DiSerio). |
With the end of the New York Film Festival today, fall
festival season is mostly at a close. The big ones – Telluride, Toronto,
Venice, New York – have had their say and launched a great majority of the
films that will compete for the top Oscars come January and February. For the
most part, the movies that were meant to play like gangbusters did, and a
little below, we will take a look at some of the reactions as the first phase
of the run-up to the Academy Awards wraps up.
I have lived in New York nearly two years now, but this was
the first year I was able to attend any of the New York Film Festival. As you
might imagine, it was quite the experience, one I hope to expand on in the
coming years. No, I did not get to attend any of the big premieres or see any
of the new films. I will catch up with those in theaters like most of you will.
Instead, my 2015 New York Film Festival experience was focused on the past.
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
On Sept. 29, I was invited to the 15th anniversary screening
of Joel and Ethan Coen’s O Brother, Where
Art Thou?, the brothers’ adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey transposed to Dust Bowl America. In attendance for the
post-screening question-and-answer session, moderated by festival director Kent
Jones, were the Coens, stars George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake
Nelson, and legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins.
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| Tim Blake Nelson, Geroge Clooney, and John Turturro in O Brother. |
The Coens are as rye as their films suggest, and at any
mention of their genius – which came up a lot from the audience – they demurred.
As far as they are concerned, they are just two humble guys who like to make
movies. In their introduction, Joel Coen said they rarely re-watch their films,
and the last time they had was at a similar event for their debut feature, Blood Simple. He joked they came away
with 15 or 20 minutes of edits to make and added the next time we see O Brother not to be surprised if it is
about 15 minutes shorter.
For the most part, they seemed reluctant to discuss any
deeper meaning or intent behind their film – a trait that can be seen in almost
all their interviews, as well – but that did not stop the rest of those
assembled on stage from gushing about their work. Nelson in particular was
complimentary and also offered that the Coens and this film essentially launched
his career.
Deakins, who was Oscar-nominated for the film and has worked
with the Coen brothers 12 times, spoke about the digital intermediate process used
to capture the faded-postcard look of the film. The technique involves
digitizing a film to alter the color and other characteristics of the image in
post-production. It was the first time the process had been used in a major
motion picture in the U.S., and its success is further proof of Deakins’
brilliance behind the camera.
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| Ethan Coen, Kent Jones, and Nelson at the afterparty. |
Clooney, whose third collaboration with the Coens you may
have seen
a new trailer for this week, is every bit the star you imagine him to
be, and his reputation as a charming, impish troublemaker seems well deserved
if you believe Clooney himself. He told tales of playing the Coens off each
other, trying to trip up the famously simpatico siblings, and just generally
being a puckish presence on set. He was similarly puckish on stage, much to the
audience’s delight.
The evening concluded with an afterparty at the Landmarc
restaurant in Columbus Circle and drinks with the Coens, Deakins, Nelson, and a
number of festival luminaries. Clooney did not attend the afterparty, which is
probably for the best. Stars like that have a tendency to suck all the air out
of a room just by showing up. As it was, it was a loose affair full of good
conversation, tasty food, and free-flowing wine.
I told Deakins what he must already know – that he is a
master of what he does and his work on this year’s Sicario is breathtaking. I listened to Nelson, Jones, and Ethan
Coen chat it up on one side of the room as Joel Coen held court on the other.
At the end of it all, I stood on the sidewalk and joked with Ethan Coen about
the rain, which had started sometime during the party. He chuckled, but the
joke was clearly on me as he made his way to the car he arrived in, while I,
dressed for the occasion but not the weather, walked to my train.
Heaven Can Wait
If you are a film nerd – and if you are here, you are either
a film nerd or related to me somehow – there is no more rewarding experience
than listening to Martin Scorsese speak. Hearing Scorsese talk about film and
film history is like hearing Hank Aaron talk about baseball or Ernest Hemingway
about writing. There is nothing you can say that will add to the conversation,
so just shut up, sit back, and listen.
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| Martin Scorsese talks to Jones (photo credit: David Godlis). |
For about 25 minutes Oct. 1 at Alice Tully Hall, I had the
chance to do just that. Scorsese was at the Lincoln Center for a screening of
Ernst Lubitsch’s classic Heaven Can Wait
(no relation to the 1978 Warren Beatty movie of the same name), but mostly, he
was in town to talk about The Film Foundation and its ongoing mission to rescue
and preserve classic films for future generations.
Heaven Can Wait is
a beautiful showcase for the foundation’s work. For a movie from 1943, the
print we saw looked absolutely gorgeous, featuring a depth of color and
brilliance of sound we would be lucky to get for a new film, let alone one
produced more than seven decades ago. The set design truly pops, and Gene
Tierney is as luminous as you are ever likely to see her. If you have the opportunity
to see a roadshow screening at a theater or museum of one of The Film
Foundation’s restored prints, I urge you to go. Whether or not you have seen
the films, these restored prints are like seeing them anew.
Jones was back, ostensibly to moderate the conversation, but
in the end, he was just like the rest of us in the audience, an engaged student
humbly taking in lessons from the master. Jones opened the talk by asking
Scorsese to describe how he got involved in the preservation and restoration of
old films, and that was it. Scorsese was off.
It would be an injustice to the experience to pull out of
context a few choice quotes or funny anecdotes. It was not that kind of
evening. When you listen to Scorsese lecture, it is about feeling the
cumulative effect of one man’s life in film washing over you. If you are lucky,
you will grasp just some of it. This man, a giant of the film industry, has
dedicated most of the second half of his life so far to giving back to that
industry. He is an inspiration, through and through, and just given the chance
to sit in awe of him, well, yeah, heaven can wait.
Festival season
The fall festival season is an embarrassment of riches for
film fans. It is the time when
movies we have all been anticipating get their
first public screenings, and when movies we have never even heard of prove
worthy of anticipation. Moreover, the festival circuit is now the prime
breeding ground for Best Picture contenders at the Oscars and, more often than
not, Best Picture winners.
Going back to the Coens’
No
Country for Old Men, each of the last eight Best Picture winners has
debuted at a festival, and just to prove everything is connected in some way or
another, the last film to win without a festival premiere was Scorsese’s
The Departed in 2006. Unsurprisingly,
that was also the last Best Picture winner that was a significantly commercial
proposition from the get-go, although
The
King’s Speech,
Slumdog Millionaire,
and
Argo were all box-office hits.
However, over the last few years, an interesting shift has
taken place with regard to the line between independent, festival hit and big-budget
blockbuster – namely, it has disappeared. In fact, some of the best reviewed
films of this festival season have been commercially minded movies from marquee
directors such as Ridley Scott (The
Martian), Steven Spielberg (Bridge of
Spies), Robert Zemeckis (The Walk),
and Danny Boyle (Steve Jobs). There
is no saying exactly whether these films will have the legs to make it to Oscar
season, but with those names, those reviews, and likely big numbers at the box
office, they have a good shot.
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| Charlie Kaufman's Anomalisa is scheduled for a December release. |
As far as the movies I was less familiar with coming into
the fall, a few have certainly cropped up that I will be putting at the top of
my personal must-see list. Foremost among them, writer-director Charlie Kaufman’s
Anomalisa, a stop-motion animated
feature that won the special jury prize at the Venice Film Festival. I am a big
fan of Kaufman’s writing (
Being John
Malkovich,
Adaptation,
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)
and an even bigger fan of his lone feature directing credit,
Synecdoche, N.Y., so consider me in the
bag for his latest venture.
Another director I have always loved is Tom McCarthy, whose
first three features are unimpeachable –
The
Station Agent,
The Visitor, and
Win Win. He took an odd turn off course
with last year’s simultaneously dour and oddly whimsical
The Cobbler, but he appears to be back in form with
Spotlight, which has gotten some of the
best notices of any film at any festival this year. The film tracks the true
story of the Boston Globe’s attempts to break open the Catholic Church sex
abuse scandal. It sounds like topical, important work from one of our finest,
most underappreciated directors, and I cannot wait.
I could go on, but you get the idea. The festival season is
over, which means it is movie-going season for the rest of us. It is nearly
impossible in any year to keep up with all the great films being released, and
this year looks better than most, so as my idol used to say, I’ll see you at
the movies.
