OSCAR
SYMPOSIUM
with
your host Nathaniel
and six very special guests
February 2008
Our Seven Participants
day one / day two / day three
day two
KIM: I have to clarify the ham aspect to Plainview. He's a formidable and eccentric character, and men like this DID exist -- men, who in their real or political lives, were at times, I suppose, HAMS. And though Plainview’s no Huey Long (a colossal ham), I keep thinking of Sean Penn and how he couldn’t handle Long’s Louisiana Kingfish in the All the King's Men. He simply could not play a “ham” and a “real person” – he was just a hollering, overacting, badly accented mess. I imagine Daniel Day Lewis could have – or at least put a unique spin on such a larger-than-life human being. Again, this is hard to do. I think we’ve discussed DD Lewis enough, and I want to get into Plainview as an American gone insane; not a good man, obviously, but something of an anti-hero regarding his repulsion towards the hypocrisy of religion, something that would seep into the corporate world and especially politics…subjects Upton Sinclair and especially Sinclair Lewis explicated in Elmer Gantry and something we definitely see now… but that’s enough of that.
And Tim, enjoy Juno or rather, Ellen Page playing a 16-year-old girl playing Dennis Miller. Seriously, close your eyes and think of Dennis Miller quipping: “You should've gone to China, you know, 'cause I hear they give away babies like free iPods. You know, they pretty much just put them in those t-shirt guns and shoot them out at sporting events impression for an hour and a half…cha-cha.” (OK, I added the cha-cha Miller-ism).
Maybe Miller’s the secret script doctor on Juno, like that longstanding rumor regarding William Goldman and Good Will Hunting. That Soupy Sales joke leads me to suspect as much...
SASHA: Dennis, regarding Juno -- in a different year, yes, it would be a tremendous threat. As it is, though, Little Miss Sunshine probably would have won if films like this could still win. When you think about it, the "lite" films that have won Best Picture have had undercurrents of broader themes, like Driving Miss Daisy. Annie Hall is probably the one exception but that was beloved Woody Allen, not mildly tolerated Diablo Cody and Ivan Reitman's son. Now I can't get Kim's Dennis Miller thing out of my head. Damn you, woman! And I enjoyed Juno - I can even say, I loved it. I know that makes me uncool but guess what? I've been uncool forever. The older I get, the more uncool I am. I am embracing it, though, along with the cholesterol medication and the high fiber breakfast cereal.
The one thing I like about Juno, and Atonement, is that they have actual women in them. And these women have actual ideas. They have actual thoughts and feelings. They make decisions. Those decisions weigh on their minds. They have minds! They have bodies. With so much male-dominated fare out there, these films stand out for that reason. I'll also say that strong female protagonists were pretty much flushed down the toilet by mostly young male audiences and critics. Maybe the movies were just plain bad. Maybe the male characters were more interesting. Either way, the best picture lineup was looking like it was going to be five movies, all about men.
Ellen Page has said that Juno is Holden Caufield for girls. What it's really like is The Gilmore Girls, that now defunct WB series, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'll admit that I'm bringing up a nine year-old who doesn't have a lot of interesting female characters to discover beyond Hannah Montana and various other pop tarts.
NICK: There will be the last word on DDL and TWBB, and we will all, I'm sure, reach for it! Tim, I take your point about my over-quick assumption that Anderson's film "has to" be an allegory, and Kim, I hear what you're saying about the funny way hams have of showing up in real life. (For the record, though, I'm not interested in "comeuppance" for Plainview, and I don't think Day Lewis could have thrived under Zaillian's misconceived direction any more than Penn did.) I would say, though, that Sinclair is a surprising author to reach for if you aren't interested in allegory; he's as saturated with parabolic overtones as is Anderson's own innovated title, and since the film makes so, so, so much work of scraping naturalist-realist context off its agenda -- amazingly little about the townships, nothing about labor or politics, barely anything about the War, that score sawing away at any contented relationship with period realism or human-scale psychology -- I feel like Anderson can't be surprised if abstract allegory or parable, rather than historically situated character study, is the canvas people detect or presume beneath his picture.
Granted, I actually *like* Anderson in his faux-allegorical mode - what is Magnolia if not an ostensible parable that isn't a parable of anything in particular? And I still think Magnolia works brilliantly, for energy, for rhythm, for its harrowing playfulness with impossible archetypes. The sobrieties of History, for me, actually get in the way of TWBB occasionally, since PTA is so much better at momentum and suggestive exaggeration than real complexity; I'm not sure Anderson has been freed up or opened out by having "at last, a real subject," as Manohla Dargis and so many others contend, or at least I'm not sure that his new freedoms and exciting experiments don't also come with the cost of tethering him to inextricable frameworks (historical precedent, economics, social rather than psychic reference-points) that seem to intimidate or freeze him up. And that finale feels intimidated and frozen-up to me, not least because we're watching DDL and Dano rehearse that scene more than sell it as a finished idea, and PTA, of all people, shouldn't be so quick to let go of camera movement and sonic texture. (In a weird way, it's as hermetic a scene as Wahlberg in front of his mirror at the end of Boogie Nights, but there's still a humor and facetiousness about that BN ending that seems much more PTA than the engrossing but dubious derangements of the TWBB finale.)
All of that said, I was wowed by TWBB and happy to feel so deeply conflicted and aggressively shaken by a movie. I may be in the anomalous position of feeling almost evenly split about whether TWBB or Juno is my favorite for Best Picture. They seem like the two films least likely to have the same fans, the mad technical virtuoso going to prom with the sly doodler. But I'm with you, Sasha: Juno really works as a character for me, and as the center of a credible gallery of
characters. Maybe because I teach college students, I'm surprised how many people are convinced that teenage girls are "never" this witty or perspicacious or sardonic or fond of the unexpected cultural reference. A real cinematographer and less aggressive song-scoring surely wouldn't kill Jason Reitman, but of the five nominated directors, I think he can at least claim the surest hand at guiding and blending his ensemble, and I don't think the movie is any more overwritten, especially by its second half, than that Shiva God of Death stuff or I Gave Them Their Happiness stuff or Friendo or Milkshake. Over-writing is the new black, as far as I can tell. I mean, when anyone actually is writing. (Can't take your side on Atonement, though, Sasha: I'm glad you found a real woman in it, but I'm way behind you. I'm still looking for an actual PERSON in it.)
I will say that first, I agree -- there’s not enough interesting female characters in current cinema. This is one reason why I covet older actresses like Barbara Stanwyck or Katharine Hepburn or Carole Lombard or Gloria Grahame or Tuesday Weld or Jeanne Moreau or just about any actress in a Douglas Sirk movie or all those sublime, complex film noir femme fatales and on and on and on. And though I loathe to throw this out, sexism is alive and well, even among women (if I had to read one more fucking review about a “chick flick” where even female critics write things like “Watch out fellas! Your gals will drag you to this movie…. Get ready to load her up with hankies…blah blah…” I will stab things.) I’m not rushing out to see that Hilary Swank Gerard Butler movie. I hate Sleepless in Seattle. I don’t cry while watching Ghost, and I loathed The Holiday.” OK? But I also didn’t dig Juno and all her “shenanigan’s either. And for me, just because there’s not enough “real” or intriguing or smart female characters in cinema, doesn’t make Juno a credible entry into the pantheon of eminent female movie characters.
To me Juno is a movie of endless shtick in which we only grow to know how much the character loves The Stooges or Mott the Hoople (a band that was actually used creatively in Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore– a movie about yep, an interesting, real woman). Alright, she does learn to feel something for an uptight future soccer mom (and I do think Jennifer Garner is quite touching in this movie) but that’s about it.
I’d rather listen to those girls gab endlessly about cars and men and pancakes or whatever the hell in Death Proof (and they grow pretty damn tiresome until the car chase) than Juno walking around like some 16-year-old, pop culture infused (as I said before and I’m sorry it’s stuck in your head) Dennis Miller impersonation (When Juno grows up, will she say things like “Hey, the current tax code is harder to understand than Bob Dylan reading ‘Finnegan’s Wake’ in a wind tunnel…cha-cha”?) Actually, I might at least enjoy the movie if all of this worked -- but Ellen Page doesn’t sell it. And neither does the script or director. One problem is --there’s no banter between characters. It’s all Juno says this “clever” thing; Juno says that “clever” thing, Juno has another “shenanigan.” She’s an ideal, a scripted creation that never lives and breathes off the page. You can hear the clicking of the keyboard every time she opens her mouth.
In Superbad, there’s a terrific scene in which Michael Cera and Jonah Hill crack a joke about Orson Welles in a convenience store– it’s clever, it shows they’re smart, it reveals their vulnerabilities and it rolls off their tongues naturally. I’d believe a witty teenage girl, but Page never feels natural. And unless Juno had been written by Woody Allen at his best, or even half- best (or Amy Sedaris played Juno – one can dream…) maybe a walking talking quip machine would have been hilarious and illuminating. Instead it's all indie-speak with a muddled message regarding childbirth (not that there’s anything wrong with choosing birth, even as a teenager).
And I had too many questions about this supposedly quirky, lovable young woman. How many smart teenagers take their pregnancy test in the mini-mart? (Is it really so that Rainn Wilson can crack doodle-wise about it?). And why wouldn’t she go to her best friend’s house? And here’s a more important question: What does she learn about childbirth? What makes her decide to love Michael Cera? And for God’s sake, why didn’t he get more screen time? Were we supposed to appreciate the gender bending use of the male as basically, the accoutrement with the long legs and sexy running shorts? I generally don’t like seeing that with women in movies, so why would I want the talented Michael Cera reduced to such a stock character? Even super stacked Jayne Mansfield had a deeper role while causing the milkman’s phallic bottle explosion in The Girl Can’t Help It (though Frank Tashlin’s movie is brilliant and ten million times cooler, so this is a little unfair).
Here’s some current movies where women or young women were actually funny or interesting or complicated that didn’t receive the hype of Juno (no sexy screenwriter backstory, not enough doodles to be un-did) -- Ghost World, My Summer of Love, White Oleander (a great melodrama), Clockwatchers, Lovely and Amazing, Heavenly Creatures. Hell, even Black Snake Moan dared to take a certain type of girl seriously (a slut! Gasp!). And Margot at the Wedding (one of my favorite films of the year) GETS the complex, oftentimes passive agressive relationship between sisters. All of these pictures are better than Juno. And now I feel really harsh, so…I can see someone finding Juno an amusing movie, maybe... But Best Picture? To quote a superior film about teenage girls, “Fuck me gently with a chainsaw.” (And sorry I didn’t get to Atonement.)
BOYD: Thank you Kim. This makes me feel less of a blatant misogynist. I get why people get Juno but I don't "get" Juno. How is it possible that someone so smart, honest to blog, doesn't know about birth control - or did I snooze away during the scene where the condom broke? Is she, underneath it all, somehow just a female archetype who just wants to reproduce despite her veneer of high-school sassiness? It is about as empowering as the scene in Enchanted where the height of girlpower is celebrated by going shopping (!) with a stolen (!!) credit card.
And, yes, Cera's character is absolutely irrelevant to the story apart from his sexy legs. Why would she decide he's the real thing when it comes to men when he seems to care more about his orange Tic Tacs than her -- no, make that: their -- child from the very beginning? And if he's sidelined so easily by Juno, that wouldn't exactly give him good grades on the fatherhood entry exams, cute sweatband notwithstanding. There is more girlpower in Tilda Swinton's fingernail in Michael Clayton than in all of Juno - especially because it can be read as a female executive who feels she has to always give that little bit more than her male equals. That she actually breaks down is not so much linked to her gender as it is to the corrupt system she works in. Perhaps all she needs is a stolen credit card or an unplanned pregnancy to make her feel better?!
NEXT PAGE
Tim has minor qualms about No Country For Old Men, Nathaniel recasts Atonement with Tilda Swinton, Dennis and Nick disagree on Juno and the conversation turns to girlpower
