Countdown to the Oscars: Best Director

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

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Actor

Eddie Redmayne is the frontrunner for Best Actor for his portrayal of Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything.

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 Actor

The nominees are:

Bradley Cooper for American Sniper

Michael Keaton for Birdman

Steve Carell for Foxcatcher

Benedict Cumberbatch for The Imitation Game

Eddie Redmayne for The Theory of Everything

Best Actor is easily the most stacked category every year, with a ton of worthy contenders and too few spots to put them in. This year, for instance, you could put together a list of great performances that would make a tremendous list of nominees without including a single one of the actual nominees. As a thought experiment, here is my alternative list: Jake Gyllenhaal for Nightcrawler; Timothy Spall for Mr. Turner; Brendan Gleeson for Calvary; David Oyelowo for Selma; and Phillip Seymour Hoffman for A Most Wanted Man.

I could go on like this all day with Oscar Isaac in A Most Violent Year, John Lithgow in Love Is Strange, Joaquin Phoenix in Inherent Vice, Ellar Coltrane in Boyhood, Aleksey Serebryakov in Leviathan, and on and on and on. The point is that while the five nominated performances are each fantastic in their own right, the Best Actor category at the Oscars is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the best performances of the year. It is not just this year either, as similarly long lists could be made for any year. If you want to talk about Best Actress, it could fall the same way, though the contender field there is often unfairly narrow, and that is a good discussion to have another day.

What we have, then, are the five performances Academy members liked best, and all credit to them, they liked some damn good performances. Maybe most remarkable is that four of the five nominees, including the two frontrunners, are first-time nominees. None of these actors has won an Academy Award before. In fact, this is the only acting category this year not to feature a previous winner. The last time not one of the nominees was a previous winner was in 2006, so no matter who wins, it will be a history-making night for someone.

Michael Keaton for Birdman – No one in the Best Actor category this year had the same task as Keaton. While the other four nominees were all playing real people – meaning they had books, interviews, videos, etc., to base their performances on – Keaton created a whole new person from just the words on the page. Great words though they may be, they mean nothing without Keaton’s incomparable contribution. He is the heart and soul of Birdman, the burning fire at the center of the film. His performance lends poignancy, gravitas, and humanity to an otherwise caustically satirical endeavor.

Keaton is Riggan Thompson, not because of who he is in life but because of who he is as an actor. Keaton is not great as Thompson because he once played Batman and Thompson once played a Batman-like superhero called Birdman. A lot of actors have played superheroes at one time or another, and more now than ever before, but no other actor could have brought the deep wells of pain and anguish that Keaton brings to the part. This is not a case of stunt casting. It is an instance of casting the perfect actor in the role of a lifetime.

Keaton embraces all of the flaws and contradictions of a man who just wants to be seen as an artist but who has a history of selling out that goal. Every time he walks on stage, he takes with him the hurt of a failed marriage, a washed up career, and a lack of respect. Birdman does not tell the story of a man overcoming all these grievances but of a man who finally channels these grievances into the art he so desperately wishes to make. The words of the writers create this world, but it is Keaton who makes them fly off the page.

Eddie Redmayne for The Theory of Everything – In a relatively brief career, Redmayne has been involved in a number of highly prestigious projects, including Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables, My Week with Marilyn, and The Good Shepherd, but perhaps none has carried more inherent prestige than this biopic of Stephen Hawking. For The Theory of Everything, Redmayne takes on the unenviable task of portraying a famous and beloved figure who is still very much alive and very much in the public consciousness.

Redmayne handles the project by going above and beyond the call of duty and does not so much play Hawking as become him. He has the look, the walk, and the attitude of a man whose body keeps him trapped but whose mind takes him places the rest of us could not even dream about. Characters with disabilities have always been seen somewhat derisively as Oscar bait, but Redmayne does not attempt to milk Hawking’s motor neuron disease for pathos. Instead, he treats it as a fact of life to be dealt with and overcome so that he may attend to more important matters.

In the film’s best scene – and one of the best scenes of the year – Hawking becomes frustrated that he cannot keep up with the pace of a dinner with friends and excuses himself from the table. He attempts to climb the stairs but collapses. He cannot go up or down. Then, he sees his son standing at the top of the stairs behind a safety gate, but the son does not seem as locked in as Hawking in this moment. He tries to reach out to his child, but he cannot connect with him. Redmayne is able to show us this haunting and tragic moment with his body, but he makes us understand it with the longing and despair on his face.

Bradley Cooper for American Sniper – Cooper is the only previous Oscar nominee in this group, and he has been nominated in three consecutive years – for Best Actor in 2012 for Silver Linings Playbook, for Best Supporting Actor last year for American Hustle, and this year. It has been a kind of remarkable career transformation for Cooper, whom many of us first took notice of in The Hangover, though if you are a David Wain fan, you were enjoying Cooper’s comedy chops as far back as Wet Hot American Summer in 2001.

American Sniper was a passion project of Cooper’s, something he has wanted to bring to the screen for years. He chased it through numerous directors and production delays until he and director Clint Eastwood were finally able to bring the story of Chris Kyle to the screen. Cooper’s passion behind the scenes is clearly matched by his dedication on screen, as he transforms himself into a U.S. Navy SEAL.

Cooper has charisma to burn, but here, he channels that energy into a man who has a deep love for his country and an abiding need to defend it but for whom the horror of war gradually begins to take its toll. Cooper looks appropriately warrior-like in his action scenes, but when you watch him at home, that is where the real work appears. Cooper absolutely embodies a man who leaves a piece of his soul on the battlefield every time he goes out and who must fight to keep what he has left when there is no more war to fight.

Benedict Cumberbatch for The Imitation Game – Cumberbatch’s Best Actor case is an interesting one. On one level, he is fantastic in the film as mathematics genius and British war hero Alan Turing, but on another, taken out of the context of The Imitation Game, the performance feels like another in a string of recent performances by actors using the same set of tricks to portray a character who is clearly on the autism spectrum. Cumberbatch, himself, does a riff on the autistic genius who does not get along so well with people on his television show Sherlock. It is a trope that has become commonplace in modern storytelling, so how to judge Cumberbatch’s work here?

Objectively, it is an undeniably solid performance. Given a character who has difficulty showing emotion and who lives so much inside his own head, Cumberbatch communicates a world of feeling and soul simply with his body language and facial expressions. Really, Cumberbatch is marvelous as Turing. The problem is that Turing is not a well written character in the film. Because the character shows little depth, writer Graham Motion does not imbue him with any. Whatever depth we sense in Turing is thanks to Cumberbatch’s excellent portrayal.

Steve Carell for Foxcatcher – Let’s try not to make this about a comedic actor impressing everyone by going dramatic. In the first place, it has been done before with great success, and more than that, Carell already has a demonstrated facility with dramatic acting, even in ostensible comedies such as Little Miss Sunshine and Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. So, it would be great if we could all stop acting so surprised Carell was able to pull off such a magnificent portrayal of a mentally disturbed millionaire in Foxcatcher. He is a great actor, and that is what actors do.

John du Pont, as played by Carell, is a man devoid of either heart or soul. His ghostly pallor suggests a body drained of blood. What he subsists on is power, and he wields it like the only weapon he has. He is an impossibly careful man who speaks with a slow, deliberate cadence and does not so much walk as shuffle. Appearances are everything for him, and the worst fate that could befall him is to be perceived as weak or incompetent. Carell embraces the character as only a gifted actor could and pulls the nearly impossible trick of making a wealthy psychopath understandable, if not sympathetic.

The final analysis

It will be Keaton and Redmayne down to the wire, and Redmayne has a slight advantage, having won the Screen Actors Guild award and the British Academy of Film and Television award. Each won a Golden Globe – Keaton in comedy and Redmayne in drama. Early in the season, some thought Redmayne and Cumberbatch might split the British genius vote, paving the way for a Keaton win, but Cumberbatch’s campaign never materialized. Now, some are theorizing that Keaton and Redmayne may split the vote and clear a path for Cooper to win.

I never have really subscribed to the idea that a split vote could lead to a surprise winner. For that to be true, the third candidate would have to have as much support as the two leaders without losing any votes to them. The math just does not seem to work. I would love to see Keaton onstage accepting an Oscar. It would be one of the highlights of my night. However, all signs point to Redmayne winning for his transformative portrayal of Hawking, and it is hard to argue with that.

Will win: Eddie Redmayne for The Theory of Everything

Should win: Michael Keaton for Birdman

Wish he had been here: Jake Gyllenhaal for Nightcrawler