This Year's Crop of Oscar Nominees, Part One

After each year's worth of slogging through mostly mediocre movies, I delight in the two months that lead up to Oscar night, when a spate of well-made films suddenly pours into cinemas and my biggest entertainment challenge is not finding something worth seeing but getting out to see the most promising ones before they exit the theaters.

I love the annual array of serious, high-toned movies that fill dark winter weekends with high-quality cinematic angst. My annual January birthday ritual involves taking the day off work, treating myself to a nice lunch at a favorite restaurant and then seeing a matinee showing of one of the darker new dramas. Some selections have been too dark—much as I enjoyed "Platoon" and "Angela's Ashes" they were a too full of suffering even for me, the Queen of Filmic Angst, to enjoy fully on a birthday.

This year I celebrated with "Frost/Nixon," which I quite liked since it was so cerebral and felt very much like seeing a good Broadway play (which, in fact, it was before being adapted for the screen). I'd already watched the majority of the other Oscar contenders I've most yearned to see this season, and I knew better than to see Mickey Rourke's highly touted performance in "The Wrestler" for my birthday treat. It's not that I doubt his talent—he's a fine actor in the right film with the right director to rein him in (he was wonderful in "Diner"), and a story of a promising talent who's wasted his opportunities and all but destroyed himself is too close to Mickey's own reality to be anything but compelling viewing. However, knowing the director of this latest film (Darren Aronofsky, who made the devastating and extremely disturbing "Requiem for a Dream") and the story behind it convinced me that the bleakness and suffering that make "The Wrestler" extraordinary in the eyes of so many reviewers would likely take the bounce out of my bungee and leave me dejected and sorrowful for days afterward, which wasn't the bundle of birthday emotions I was going for.

After having seen a good sampling of fine films lately, I have a few thoughts to share on some of the higher-profile Academy Award nominees. Here is the first of two blog entries about this year's Oscar-nominated films.

Slumdog Millionaire

"Slumdog Millionaire" is powerful, moving, thrilling and kept me and a theater full of people on the edges of our seats for the full length of the film. This is the story of an orphaned, homeless teen from Mumbai's slums whose seemingly unexplainable successes on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" draw the suspicion of the police. It was directed by Englishman Danny Boyle (who directed the also thrilling and disturbing "Trainspotting") and was co-directed in India by Loveleen Tandan. I must admit, the film is often hard to watch because of the brutality of the subject matter and the shocking mistreatment of children. There is also, in true Danny Boyle fashion, a gag-inducingly repulsive scene involving a public toilet disaster; Boyle made millions of theater-goers retch over another funny/disgusting public toilet scene in "Trainspotting" involving "The Worst Toilet in Scotland"—I do wish he'd choose a different theme in his next film to highlight the themes of obsessive desire and addiction, but I must admit, he does over-the-top gross-out toilet humor as artfully as anyone I've ever seen.

Boyle works well with children; he also did a charming film adaptation of the lovely children's book Millions. The children he directs in "Slumdog Millionaire" feel very natural and fresh, and never remind us that they're actors doing a job.

As tense and difficult to watch as "Slumdog Millionaire" can be, it is also well paced (sometimes breathlessly so), beautifully filmed and edited, clever and satisfying. The stunning score by Indian composer A.R. Rahman adds immeasurably to the tension, power and pleasure of the film, as in the piece "Mausam and Escape," which moves from gentle ethereal beauty to the powerful, throbbing pulse of one bent on escape from imminent danger. Singer M.I.A. joins forces with Rahman on "O... Saya," while "Jai Ho" has more of the traditional style and excitement of classic Bollywood movie musicals. The soundtrack is definitely worth listening to both during and after the movie.

Milk

As I mentioned elsewhere in this blog, I found "Milk," the story of the life and assassination of gay activist and San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk, moving and surprisingly uplifting despite the hero's tragic outcome. While the script is at times labored and too heavy on exposition, the direction is engaging and Sean Penn is riveting in the title role. Penn regularly dissolves and disappears comfortably and completely into his roles; here he mixes bravado and vulnerability fluidly, as he does in all his best work, and he manages to portray a man who is a bigger-than-life hero to many as a real man, brave and charismatic, but also frightened and flawed. Penn (and director Gus Van Sant) give Milk human dimensions, and this makes his successes and the tragedy of his death more moving than if he were elevated on some phony pedestal.

Josh Brolin's seething and disturbing portrayal of Dan White, Milk's fellow supervisor and eventual assassin, is also worth seeing; I actually enjoyed him more in this role than in his starring role in "No Country for Old Men" last year because this character had more range and more opportunity to twist, turn and evoke both horror and even pity as his tortured mental state becomes clearer and deadlier.

Frost/Nixon

It would be easy to assume that a movie about the making of a series of interviews with Richard Nixon after his political downfall could be painfully dull for all but the most dedicated political junkies (among whose ranks I must admit to belonging). However, this adaptation of the 2006 play which premiered in London with the same principal cast (Michael Sheen as David Frost and Frank Langella as Richard Nixon) and went on to win Langella a Tony on Broadway, is well-paced and well-thought-out. It is more direct and intellectual and less emotionally manipulative than most of director Ron Howard's works, and I like that he's proving himself skilled at creating a crisp and compelling film without resorting to as many touchy-feely shortcuts as he has in the past. Here he does a bit less emotional spoonfeeding than in most of his previous work, though there is still a lot of exposition, most obviously in the clunky scenes with Frost's advisors, played by the very capable Oliver Platt and Sam Rockwell, who simply have too much expository baggage to carry to be able to shine as they might otherwise.

"Frost/Nixon" tells the story of a series of history-making television interviews done in 1977 in which popular British television interviewer David Frost, widely considered to be a lightweight talking head and not a true journalist, was able to elicit from a famously wily and disgraced ex-president what more serious journalists could not: the admission that Nixon broke the law, and a tacit apology to the American people. It also shows the competitive nature of interviewer and interviewee, and the ways in which their motivations overlapped and the insights each made into the other. It shows Nixon in a sometimes sympathetic light even as we know we're being manipulated by him. Langella's performance is powerful and nuanced, and he evokes a number of emotions from pity to revulsion; one can see why he won the Tony for best dramatic performance and why he's nominated for a best actor Oscar.

The Visitor

This lovely little film featured a gem of a performance by Richard Jenkins, the talented and realistic character actor best known as the dead patriarch of the Fisher family in the television series "Six Feet Under." It was a pleasure to see Jenkins given the opportunity to carry a film with his talent, which he did easily. "The Visitor" centers on a lonely widower whose private life is unexpectedly (and positively) intruded upon by unexpected guests whom he must rewire his life to accommodate. It was directed by Tom McCarthy, who was also responsible for another indie treasure, "The Station Agent," a quirky little film I find touchingly amusing, surprising and worth multiple viewings.

Rachel Getting Married

Anne Hathaway, so well known for light, charming romantic comedies, has rarely been able to show the more serious side of herself since surprising us all in "Brokeback Mountain." In "Rachel Getting Married" she creates a memorable, exasperating and pitiable young woman with deft strokes. It is painful to watch her character Kym, a long-time addict in and out of rehab, revelling in and stoking family dramas and trying valiantly to steal focus from her sister Rachel in the run-up to Rachel's wedding. However, the film, directed by Jonathan Demme, is also an amusing and insightful glimpse into the upper-class New England bohemian-chic subculture. Long (sometimes overlong) atmospheric scenes paint a picture of Rachel's rich and entitled but artsy and seemingly laid-back family's underlying brittleness and competitiveness. Her parents are masterfully played by Debra Winger, who has been off screen far too much in recent years, and Bill Irwin, who did a turn as George in a recent Broadway revival of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" that was hailed as remarkable; he won a Tony for the effort. Irwin here is a subtle character, fascinating to watch in each scene even when in the background, not because he's a scene stealer but because he reacts so completely and fully realistically to each moment. I first saw him years ago doing amazing physical comedy and stunning dance and mime performances on "Sesame Street," of all places. If you ever get to see the PBS documentary on him, "Bill Irwin: Clown Prince," do. He started as a clown with the Pickle Family Circus in San Francisco and his talents appear to be boundless.

I found the film a bit drawn out and the group dynamics quite often painful, so I probably wouldn't want to experience it a second time, but I found Hathaway's performance powerful and brave; she lays herself bare and makes herself quite unappealing at times, something Oscar loves to see beautiful and charming young women do. I wouldn't be surprised if this role wins her an Academy Award.

Doubt

Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman are stellar actors, each so intelligent, contained, supple and compelling to watch, so putting them together in a film based on a talky Tony Award-winning Broadway play nearly guaranteed that the result would be at least worth watching. Happily, the fine direction by playwright John Patrick Shanley and the strong screenplay for "Doubt" make it the exceptional film I'd hoped it would be. The characters are presented at first in rather black-and-white fashion: a bitter nun, principal of a Catholic school, who is wrapped tightly in the traditions of the Catholic Church but seemingly has no vestige of real human love within her, comes into repeated conflict with a friendly, popular and modern priest who engages well with the schoolchildren and embraces change. A naïve nun, well portrayed by fresh-faced Amy Adams, plays go-between, trying to get the mother superior and priest to work together even as she attempts to work out her own doubts about whether the priest has had an inappropriate relationship with a student at the school, something Meryl Streep's character is convinced of despite a lack of proof.

The balance of power shifts repeatedly during the film, and the nature and source of sin, faith and power are examined, as are questions of whether good ends justify bad means. Like "Frost/Nixon," "Doubt" shows its theatrical roots and it sometimes feels more stagy and less naturalistic than a film written directly for the screen might, but it is a thoughtful and powerful study of right and wrong, very much worth seeing.

Meryl Streep is serious competition for this year's Oscar, but I think Streep's two previous Oscars and Hathaway's determined destruction of her previous good-girl image in "Rachel Getting Married" may turn the tide in Hathaway's favor. However, many handicappers are favoring Kate Winslet's chances for her performance in the Holocaust-related film "The Reader." An exciting and popular actress, she's been nominated for six Oscars in her young life (she's only 33), and I've heard she's the most exciting and compelling element in what is otherwise generally considered to be a strong and solidly crafted but not really exceptional film. I must admit to not having seen "The Reader" despite its association with Winslet, the excellent Ralph Fiennes, accomplished writer David Hare and director Stephen Daldry. Hare and Daldry worked together on "The Hours," and all I have read about "The Reader" leads me to believe I will find it as carefully crafted, but also as self-important, heavy and lacking in pleasure as I found "The Hours" to be. I hope I'm wrong and that when I eventually see it I will enjoy it more than I anticipate. Reviews hail it as a carefully made, high quality film but most say it is largely lacking in emotional force outside of Winslet's performance. Winslet is one of my favorite actors, but she's built a reputation for being willing to do nude scenes at the drop of a hat and to emote extensively. In the past Oscar has felt nudity and scenery chewing to be proof of an actress's fearlessness and merit; I'm hoping her performance in "The Reader" shows more subtlety than she's been asked to portray of late. She's certainly talented enough to be worthy of an Oscar given the right story and direction.

Impressions on Impressionism

When Americans think of art museums and so-called great art, Impressionism usually comes to mind. Impressionist artists and their work are among the most popular in traveling exhibitions and Impressionist paintings are frequently reproduced on coffee cups, calendars, posters, stationery and other gift shop items. The art section of any bookstore is likely to be well stocked with books on Impressionists; in fact, you'll probably find more of them represented than you will artists of any other style or period. If you have children in public schools, any art education they're likely to receive probably includes repeated lessons about and images by Monet, Van Gogh and Renoir, with some nods to Picasso, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci (who should always be referred to as "Leonardo" and not as "da Vinci," by the way, despite what Dan Brown tells you—"da Vinci" isn't a last name, but means "from the city of Vinci").

Is this because Impressionists are better or more important artists than those who came before or after them? Probably not. Were they revolutionary? Yes, some of them were, some of the time. They emphasized a fresh way of seeing and of expressing what they saw, although artists had used loose brush strokes and tried to capture evanescent moments, the shimmer of gold, a quick impression of a lace collar or a glinting eye hundreds of years beforehand with fully as much wit and originality, to my mind. The influence of 17th century artists like Vermeer, Frans Hals, Rembrandt and Velazquez on the Impressionists is well-known. In fact, I find those original, inspiring 17th century works more beautiful, more exciting and more inspiring on the whole. The huge popular appeal of the Impressionists is largely because they're more accessible; the pale colors are pretty, the shapes are indistinct and inoffensive, the subject matter is usually G-rated, universally acceptable and pleasing. Dark portraits of unattractive people, who were the subjects of some of the greatest works of the old masters, don't have the same popular appeal as fields of poppies or women with umbrellas standing in sunny Provençal lavender fields. They look nice on cards to Grandma or on the dentist's waiting room walls or on your office calendar. Pastels are pretty. Waterlilies are nice. We all like flowers.

Of course Renoir and Monet and their pastel-fancying contemporaries did see the world with fresh eyes and provided us with a new way of seeing and of expressing what we see. They are great artists, many of their works do challenge and please, and their works are worth knowing. But there's so much more beauty in the world to challenge the eye and delight the heart, I wish people would look beyond the easy and obvious more often and think outside the Impressionistic box.

Some Impressionists move me greatly and delight my eye, of course. George Seurat's pointillist masterpiece, "Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte" ("A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte"), inspired Stephen Sondheim's Broadway musical Sunday in the Park with George for a reason: it is bold and arresting, beautiful and unusual, and the placement of thousands of dots of paint next to other complimentary or contrasting colors in order to create a freshness, depth and a magical reaction in the eye is delightful and original.

Edouard Manet's portraits of demimondaines in paintings like "Le déjeuner sur l'herbe" ("The luncheon on the grass") or "Olympia" are worldly and confrontational, darker and starker than the sweet mother-and-daughter paintings of Mary Cassatt or the rotund, soft-focus, spun-sugar nudes of Renoir, who sometimes look to me as if they were dipped in frosting and rolled in candy sprinkles. Manet handles the paint roughly and uses flatter patches of light and dark to evoke dramatic lighting and moods, and his characters face viewers unapologetically and draw us into their world with some force.

Van Gogh is justly famous for his sunflowers and irises and his starry night, and I do love them, but his more disturbing portraits of working people and of himself really prove him to be a master. His work reproduces badly because his impasto technique of applying paint so thickly to the canvas as to make it almost a bas relief is so vivid and three-dimensional, it simply can't be adequately represented in a two-dimensional approximation. Also, we've become so jaded by the endless reproductions of his work, it's hard to see them as fresh and original and world-changing the way they were when he painted them.

Among Impressionists one of my favorites is Gustave Caillebotte (roughly pronounced KY-uh-BOT). His compositions are bold but pleasing, and his mastery of perspective and prodigious technical skills are extraordinary. His angles are dramatic and add such movement and excitement to a painting, and the people within aren't frantic even though they are active, on the go, moving toward or away from us at a steady clip and with a sense of purpose. "Jour de pluie" ("Rainy Day") has people walking directly towards us and being cut off at the knees, they've come so close.

The way they're cropped makes them seem that much nearer to us, and we see just the elbow of someone retreating, so he's right on the edge of the picture plane, pulling us with him into the thick of the action. Then there are the smaller figures cutting across the middle and the one carriage wheel moving off to the left, so while our eyes are drawn to the couple approaching us, there's just enough cross-traffic to keep our eyes moving through the layers of activity toward the back.

Finally, there's that marvelous flatiron-shaped building on the left jutting toward us, and the perfectly receding wet cobblestones on the left and the modern sidewalk on the right bisected by yet another diagonal. All those diagonals and perfectly executed examples of perspective are at just the right angles to imply movement without cluttering the composition so much that we'd be left exhausted and distracted by too many competing areas of activity. There are enough places for the eye to rest before moving on to keep us from getting tired out by too much clutter, and those resting points give us enough time to satisfy our curiosity before we move on.

It's pretty nearly perfect compositionally. Consider the languid, calm faces of the couple approaching us; they're engaged and active but not frantic, and that keeps the attitude of the piece right, too; too much animation in their faces would feel like overkill in such a busy painting.

Another favorite painting of mine is Caillebotte's "Les Raboteurs de Parquet" ("The Floor Planers"). The angles of the diagonal lines vary from left to right to accommodate the shift in our perspective because we're standing in front of and above the planers on the right. Again, the perspective feels perfect and makes us feel we're right in the room, part of the action, so close we can hear the wood curls being shaved up from the floor.

I love the shininess of the unplaned wood planks versus the dull pallor of the planed areas, and the fact that the planers are shirtless, their skin buttery and similar in tone to the newly planed wood. The only curves in the room are the curves of their heads and arms and arching backs, the curve of the liquor bottle and glass on the right, which promise relief from their tiring work, and the swirling arabesques of the wrought iron on the balcony shown through the glass door. The men, the bottle and the iron work look so much more sensuous and sinuous than they would otherwise because of the severe contrasting lines of the floor and the molding on the back wall.

This picture makes tiring manual labor and tedious craftsmanship look sexy. The fact that the men are shirtless also makes us think it must be a hot day, and that lets us imagine the smell of the wood shavings and sweat. The exciting combination of perfect composition and the implication of controlled but constant motion and intensity of focus of each man elevates a painting of three hot, tired workmen toiling on their knees to strip a floor, the most seemingly mundane of acts, into something extraordinary.

Again, each setting and each character within the setting is perfectly composed. Not only is the relationship between elements harmonious and pleasing, but the faces of all the people in each setting are calm, unaware of the gaze of outsiders (i.e., we, the viewers) who have burst into their presence. We're just a short distance from them yet they remain distant from us emotionally, which lets us feel safer and less confronted by their proximity, so we can peer at them more directly without feeling challenged by them, like voyeurs. That a painter can create such realism and intimacy with imaginary characters by applying some oily pigments to a stretched piece of fabric astonishes me. To me, that is great art.