Oscars 2017 - Not the usual crop of Best Picture nominees

Given the brilliantly diverse selection of Best Picture nominees this year, it feels like we need to talk about tokenism. Because it it just me or is there always at least one true story of a white American man struggling, often in wartime, against some group of Others, and it feels like they get a token slot regardless of merit. Now sometimes, these are pretty good like Bridge of Spies or Captain Phillips. But sometimes you get American Sniper. Or this year, Hacksaw Ridge. Now to be fair, Hacksaw Ridge is superior to American Sniper and it is a bit less racist. But the film is based on a truly amazing story that really deserved a better telling. It has its moments, and Vince Vaughan does a surprisingly effective turn as a drill sergeant. Andrew Garfield does a pretty good job but not enough to overcome the film's shortcomings. It's trying to be too many films at once, and I could have done without the ridiculously cheesy and cringe-worthy attempt at a sweeping epic romance. I'm still not sure I really liked Hugo Weaving's performance and given how the long the film was, it could have cut down the sections with his parents as it started to feel like I was being hit over the head with them (having said that, why does his brother just disappear from the film midway through?). But my biggest problem is with the battle at Hacksaw Ridge itself. The Walking Dead likes its guts and gore, but it also knows that to be effective, you need to use them in short, shocking bursts, otherwise the impact doesn't land. But Hacksaw Ridge gives us what feels like 40 minutes of unrelenting and over the top gory violence which just completely disengaged me with the horror it was trying to portray. But the biggest missed opportunity in what should have been the apex of the film - Desmond Doss's long post-battle vigil as he finds badly wounded colleague after colleague, rescuing and caring for them in an incredible act of compassion and bravery, driven by firm religious conviction. The scene stars fairly effectively, until an awful, cloying, stirring Hollywood score interrupts it with completely the wrong emotional tone and totally undermines the power it could otherwise have.  Hacksaw Ridge won't won Best Picture. It doesn't deserve to be on the same list as these other films.

I'd probably put Lion and Hell or High Water on a slight lower scale than the other six contenders. They're both really good films but didn't quite have the same impact on me.

Lion is another fascinating story that could maybe have been told even better. The first half with the young Saroo is particularly brilliant, affecting and terrifying in equal measure. Not only is young Sunny Pawar utterly fantastic as the young Saroo, he's surrounded by a fantastic supporting case in this section who make a big impact with a tiny number of scenes.  Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman are also excellent in the second half, but the film drifts a little. Perhaps it's because of the quite disruptive jump forward 20 years. Perhaps because the story isn't quite told how I expected, seeming to overly wallow in Saroo's guilty feelings and the impact on his not-so-interesting relationship with his girlfiend rather than engage more with the process of searching for his family. It is only in the final few scenes when older Saroo seems more connected to the younger Saroo that we were so connected to. A film that was nearly there, but a bit of a missed opportunity.

Hell or High Water was another film that I did genuinely like, but which I didn't fully connect with, possibly because of its slightly off-putting unrelenting maleness or perhaps because it felt a little old-fashioned and like something that's been done before. Having said that, it is a very well-made, well-acted film, particularly by Jeff Bridges, and the story doesn't go exactly where you're expecting (although it doesn't feel that fresh either). It looks stunning, and is directed and edited very effectively.  It's one of those films that in isolation, I admired and enjoyed, but just couldn't quite understand why other people were quite so enthusiastic about it, to the point that I probably remember it slightly less fondly than I experienced it at the time.

But that still leaves us with six, brilliant, unique and different films, any one of which I would be happy to see win Best Picture. And because I refuse to rank them or pick a favourite, I'm just going to write about them in alphabetical order.

Arrival is a terrific piece of grown-up, intelligent sci-fi, centred round a brilliant performance by Amy Adams. It is beautiful to look at, with stunningly expansive cinematography and the most incredible sound and score. The story unfolds like a puzzle, in fact like the linguistic puzzle that the central character must solve. It starts dreamily and then builds and builds momentum towards a dizzying rush of emotion and story resolution. It doesn't talk down to the audience, letting each person watching get to the ultimate revelation in their own time. The moment I realised what was actually happening was such an emotional punch to the gut and I was in tears. Without preaching or over-egging its message, it says a range of things and leaves you with as many questions or answers. Arrival is a film that should probably be more in the mix for Best Picture than it has been.

Although Fences has been criticised for being too stagey (which is not totally unfair, a couple of moments don't quite work and some of the editing does give the odd scene the feeling of filmed theatre) it is a film whose excellent script and quite phenomenal acting more than overcomes any shortcomings. Quite simply, I cannot think of a better pair of performances than those given by Viola Davis and Denzel Washington. They are utter perfection. The film is endlessly interesting and moving. It's not easy and it defies you to sympathise with Troy but demands you understand him. I could go on for pages about the clever way it shows the effect of the insidious poison drip-drip of racism on the lives of Troy and his family. It is not just racism that has caused Troy to be the way he is, but it is a constantly lurking shadow, alongside Troy's inability to live up to the moral code he sets for himself and the world. The tension can be unbearable as you do not know where the next splinter of Troy's anger will land. The twisting and twisted effect it has wife Rose is emotionally devastating. Perhaps the film does not do a huge amount that seeing a filmed version of the play could have done, but it is nonetheless a compelling watch.

Hidden Figures is a total joy of a film. It may not be the most subtle or originally told film, but it takes its story and characters and just runs with it in a way that means the audience can't help but be swept along. The three central performances are universally great and wonderfully distinct, each actor holding her own and complementing the others' performances perfectly. I really appreciated that it didn't make the racism and sexism that all three encountered subtle but instead blatant and in the foreground. It felt like the film was giving the ridiculous barriers they faced the massive eye-roll that they deserve. That is not to say it doesn't show the more subtle, less easy to fight against racism and sexism too. It manages to be a film showing its time but utterly of ours and it's told in a way that appreciates that a fantastic story, smartly told and joyously acted can inform, entertain and inspire like little else in film.

I'm not sure there's much I can say about La La Land that hasn't already been said a million times (have many films been talked about this much around an Oscar season? There's been hype, backlash, backlash-against-the-backlash and I think we might now be into backlash-against-the-backlash-against-the-backlash). I've seen it twice, and although I noticed a small number of flaws the second time, it still left me with a grin on my face, a song in my head and joy in my heart both times. When done right, there can be little more enjoyable than a move about the joy of the movies. Emma Stone is just brilliant in it and the first two song and dance numbers, and the late montage, are particularly wonderful. Who can tell if it will stand the test of time, and perhaps it doesn't quite live up to the films it clearly loves, but for sheer cinematic delight, it ticks all the boxes.

Manchester-by-the-Sea managed to  be both funnier and sadder than I was expecting, perhaps sadder than I could have ever expected without ever being depressing. It's grounded in a brilliant script by Kenneth Lonergan and illuminated by terrific performances, particularly of course by Casey Affleck. It is so hard to speak about without revealing a central plot point which I will try to skirt around. What it does is be a film about a community that is not like my own particularly, dealing with circumstances beyond most of our experiences yet manages to be utterly relatable and incredibly moving. It absolutely worms into your heart and refuses to move, and I couldn't get it out of my head for days.

Finally, Moonlight, which is probably going to be the one of this year's crops that is most remembered. It is a beautiful and technically brilliant film, with an amazing all-round cast, none of whom gets much screen time but who all stay in the memory.  I perhaps didn't emotionally engage with it quite as much as many people (not that I didn't find it very moving) because I was so aware of its technical brilliance, meaning I couldn't quite turn that part of my brain off and slip totally into the film, but that was definitely my problem and not the films - I suspect if I catch it on telly in a couple of years unexpectedly I will get completely hooked and devastated. The technical brilliance is mostly in the cinematography (though a big shout out to the music and sound) which communicates to us so much of Chiron's emotions and feelings when he cannot himself articulate them. The camera moves from watchful, to frantic, to afraid, to contemplative and shows every little layer of identity that Chrion builds as he moves through his life. Mahershala Ali and Naomie Harris are particularly brilliant, but so are all three actors who play Chiron. It is a character study like few others, and a film of a visual beauty that few others reach too.

Oscars 2017 - it's time to expand the Best Actress category to ten nominees....

This year has been particularly strong for the acting contenders, so it seems fitting to start off ramble number one with the acting categories. And I might as well start in the category that I've seen the fewest of but which is so strong that there could have probably have been ten or more nominations with little dip in quality.  Mainly I'm hacked off that Kate Beckinsale wasn't nominated for Love and Friendship and that Amy Adams wasn't nominated for Arrival. If they just asked me to pick 5 performances, Royalty Hightower would have been in there for The Fits too, but I do realise that it was a very low budget film and that wasn't going to happen at the Oscars. But how was Amy Adams not nominated? Was she in 6th and 7th (with her performance in Nocturnal Animals too)? Maybe, and that's why it wouldn't be the worst thing for the Academy to do what they do with the Best Picture and allow for more than five nominees. And even better, it might have seen Viola Davis put forward for Best Actress where she belongs and which I think she would have deservedly won. 

Since I haven't seen Florence Foster Jenkins (oops, just didn't get round to it) and Elle (not out in the UK yet), I'll only be able to comment on three of the nominees. 

Emma Stone seems to be favourite for the award, and although it's a bit contradictory, she probably wouldn't make my top 5 for the year, but I also would be fine with her winning, as it's a trickier performance to pitch right than it seems at first sight. She really carries the movie, her comic timing is as usual completely on point, but she also has just the right emotional depth and intensity for the film, never overwhelming the lighter tone of the film, but also finding some real emotional punches, particularly before and during her big audition scene. 

Having said that, I feel like Ruth Negga and Natalie Portman give the better performances.  I wasn't completely taken with Joel Edgerton in Loving but Ruth Negga completely made up for that. It's a mostly quiet and unshowy but still emotionally impassioned performance, sweet and sad and strong, often at the same time, always expressive but never over-the-top. She portrays a Mildred Loving who is both believably an ordinary (in the best sense of the word) person but who quite believably can do the extraordinary when she needs to, and what she has to go through is very extraordinary and terrifying. But you always believe that Mildred can do this, and take her family along with her. Quiet strength is not the easiest thing to get across on camera, but Ruth Negga nails this.

However, in the absence of Viola Davis from this category, I think Natalie Portman for Jackie would be my preferred winner. At first, I was pretty alienated by her performance. The recreation of a stilted TV tour of the White House that Jackie Kennedy had done felt like an awkward impression. Yet, as the film went on and on, I completely forgot I was watching a performance and became more and more wrapped up in Jackie's unravelling psyche and careful rebuilding. Somehow Natalie Portman managed to show every little barrier Jackie puts up, every facade she builds, every tiny bit of control she tries to exercise and yet at the same time shows every little innermost feeling that Jackie is suffering. It's really quite an incredible technical performance, but also a very moving one that never lets you forget the horror that she has just suffered and the historical, life-changing importance of any slight move that she makes. It's not something I think I've seen from Natalie Portman before, but I hope she gets tonnes of opportunities to do as complex and multi-layered characters in the future.

In the Best Actor category, there are surely only two contenders.  Andrew Garfield was fine in the mostly terrible Hacksaw Ridge, managing to do a decent interchange between wide-eyed naivety and fervent determination. Viggo Mortensen was also fine from what I remember of Captain Fantastic and clearly had fun with a quirky, emotionally varied part, but it didn't really stick with me. Ryan Gosling is also fine in La La Land, though his comic timing didn't always land as well as it has in other films, and he was definitely outshone by Emma Stone.

So it comes down to Casey Affleck and Denzel Washington, and if you'd have told me that I would see a better performance than Casey Affleck's by a male actor this awards season, I would have been incredibly dubious. It's a performance that really deserves all the plaudits it has been getting. Lee Chandler, his character, is not someone who ever seemingly says what's he's feeling. But Casey Affleck manages to get it all across with great depth. Lee has been both imprisoned by grief but has also imprisoned himself through guilt and grief many times over. It's not something he can really let on but it is something he is doing to himself continuously. And somehow the performance gets this over in the most emotionally devastating way. The conversation with Michelle Williams towards the end of the film, and the way Casey Affleck conveys both Lee's heartbreak and his absolute refusal to let anyone feel for him, is astonishing and haunting.

But I think Denzel Washington may have managed to conjure something even better as Troy Maxson. To me, he does pretty much everything Casey Affleck does, in communicating the multitude of swirling feelings that Troy is frequently fighting against and trying to hide from everyone and yet also manages to also deftly switch to much bigger emotional outbursts without the quieter, subtler work being lost. In fact, it enhances the quieter work to an even greater degree. Perhaps this is the benefit of having previously played the character for weeks on stage - it is an absolute masterclass of a performance. Troy is very much a ticking timebomb, but not one that is just going to go off in one big explosion. Instead, he is one that has been compressed into being by his experiences and generations of racism that is fizzing away, sending off little splinters into everyone around him. Although like Casey Affleck he benefits from a tremendous script, what he does with the material is brilliant. You can see the way every little piece of his life has burrowed into him, the racism past and present, his horrific early life, his strong moral code and his inability to quite live by it, on Denzel Washington's face at all time. It never has one simple effect or response. He is flickering all the time between rage and bitter resentment, hope and despair, friendship and soul-destroying uncertainty, and about a million other emotions all playing across Troy's face. He's both a charismatic person to spend time with and a tragic and horrible figure that you can never make your mind up about because you can see all the hundreds of layers things that have affected him and made him who he was, which makes you want to empathise with him, but at the same time you sense he knows the destruction he is causing and that he both wants to continue causing this destruction and is slightly helpless in doing so. Given the source material, in any decent actor's hands, Troy would surely have been fascinating. In Denzel Washington's he is like nothing else I have ever seen on screen. I sincerely hope he wins a very well deserved Best Actor Oscar tonight. 

I've not got time to go into the Supporting categories in any depth. There is not a single less-than-excellent performance among them, though I'd argue that Dev Patel and Octavia Spencer should perhaps be in the Best Actor and Best Actress categories (though that would maybe be harsh on Octavia Spencer-s co-lead Taraji P Henson). 

But a quick word for the two rightful favourites. Mahershala Ali has only a little screen time in an incredibly strong ensemble cast and no emotional outburst but does so much with Juan. The film is always honest with exactly who Juan is, yet Mahershala Ali makes him the exactly right amount of sympathetic without letting him off the hook for the lives he is helping ruin. He radiates both warmth and control and is also incredibly important in helping us understand the near silent young Chiron and understand why Chiron develops as the person he does. And all in a few scenes.

As for Viola Davis, her performance is utterly sensational, and possibly the best of all of those nominated this year. Even with a performance as good as Denzel Washington's, we would not be able to feel any empathy for Troy if Viola Davis did not show us the ways. Troy dominates every part of her life and yet she builds this incredibly beautiful and multi-dimensional character who is both utterly entwined with Troy and also massively complex as a separate person. When the bomb under their marriage detonates, the devastating emotional power that Viola Davis finds is heartbreaking and captivating and just digs right into your heart and refuses to leave. She is the most overwhelming favourite in all the categories and deservedly so.