This Year's Best Picture
I love movies and I love the Oscars. I enjoy films and picking it apart as an art form. In a past life, I think that I would have wanted to be a film critic. Anyway, I went through the list of Oscar nominees and picked out those that are Oscar bait, as well as some other nominees. I made a plan to watch all of them. My criteria were anything in the big 6: best director, actors, actresses, or picture. As well as anything nominated twice. That list came to 23 films. Before the nominees had been announced, I had seen only six. I watched the rest over the last couple of weeks.
The movie that most people are talking about as a winner is Sam Mendes-directed 1917. I loved this movie, and I thought we could talk about it a little bit.
When I was growing up in Canada (I have a complicated citizenship story), World War One took up most of the history curriculum. I’ve always found it to be a particularly interesting a poetic time. Unlike WWII, where there is a very clear us-versus-them narrative, you know, Hitler bad, America/England good...that sort of disappears when we talk about the Great War of 1914-1918. There isn’t a clear-cut bad guy, and it becomes this metaphor for the futility of war and the pointlessness of it all.
Enter this movie, the latest in a string of movies that show both the small heroisms and dark realities of war. The visual effects are horrifyingly beautiful. Way-too-realistic bodies of people and horses. The makeup makes the entire cast look gaunt and exhausted, and the performances match. It provides a certain weariness of the war that drips realism, but it also accurately shows the stiff-upper-lip of the soldiers as well. It’s also a nice moment of the audience knowing something that the characters don’t as they talk about the “Big Push” and the end of the way, even though the end of the war is more than a full year away.
I think what I like about this movie is that it doesn’t spend any time explaining, and I kind of appreciate this in the exposition-heavy movies that we usually watch. You know what the mission is within ten minutes of the two-hour movie and they get to business. There isn’t any unnecessary dialogue, and it moves with quick efficiency. It’s a full two hours, but it doesn’t feel like it at all. It’s also fairly straightforward. The protagonist needs to go to a specific location, with significant obstacles in between. None of them are contrived or out of place, but it is a tidy plot.
For the cast, the real standout here is George McKay as Schofield. He has both the most screentime and the best overall performance. He isn’t someone that I’ve seen in much, but I’d reckon that is about to change. This movie has some big names in it, like Colin Firth or Benedict Cumberbatch, but honestly you just see them for a moment. McKay is the one who is in nearly every single shot.
1917, based on these reasons, is going to be my Oscar pick this year. The best picture is a big category with nine nominees: Ford v Ferrari, The Irishman, Jojo Rabbit, Joker, Little Women, Marriage Story, 1917, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and Parasite. This was a very strong category this year, but I’m not spectacularly fond of many of them. If not 1917, then I honestly think Parasite deserves to win. I know that it won’t, but it was a wonderfully nuanced film. Again though, I think of the nine, this was the best. The cinematography, score, and acting was stellar and worth the little gold man.
Of those films, I think my preference, in order, is:
1917
Parasite
Little Women
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
Jojo Rabbit
Ford v Ferrari
Marriage Story
Joker
The Irishman
God, I hated the Irishman. Way too long. Martin Scorsese has never met a movie that couldn’t be seven hours long. I’m so glad it was on Netflix and not just theaters because I couldn’t have made it. I also don’t care for Joker or Marriage Story. Everyone in both of those movies was unlikable. Little Women was very good, but I doubt that it’s meant to be a winner this year.
What movie do you think should be the best picture winner this year?