OSCAR SYMPOSIUM
with your host Nathaniel and five very special guests
February 2009continued from intro / pg 1 / pg 2
ED: As for Slumdog Millionaire, I know several people who were surprised to learn that that it didn't set off my bullshit detector. It's not a great movie by any means, but I was ready to give it a pass simply for refusing to go the route of The Constant Gardener and Blood Diamond by subjecting us to the horrors of the third-world through the eyes of some noble white humanitarian (though some would say that it still does, specifically through the lens of Danny Boyle). But beyond that, I love the flashes of inspiration in the film: its understanding of pop as a life force (and escape) for many people in third-world countries, which is never more striking than in the scene where young Jamal dives into the shit hole so he can get an autograph from one of his favorite actors.
Does anyone ever struggle with throwing their weight behind fine performances in awful movies? Seems that I had to grapple with this more in 2008 than ever before: Robert Downey Jr. in Tropic Thunder; Penélope Cruz in Vicky Cristina Barcelona; and Melissa Leo in Frozen River. Especially Cruz. I loathe the character Woody Allen wrote for her, but I love the choices she makes as an actress, especially during the scene where she preys on Scarlett Johansson's paltry grasp of the Chinese language. Of course, I also had to grapple in 2008 with disliking quite a bit of performances in some really good movies: I've taken (mostly silent) issue before with Nat's disgust for Clint Eastwood, but I have to admit that I'm glad the man didn't end up in the Best Actor lineup, though Gran Torino would have been a better Best Picture nominee than any of the five films that did make the cut. I think Manohla Dargis would agree with me on that.
NATHANIEL: Disgust is a... uh, that's a strong word.
KARINA: To me, Mickey Rourke is the only nominee in the Best Actor category. Sean Penn's Milk impersonation too often feels like a big show from someone who knows how and when to hit the notes that make critics and Academy voters take note. Both Richard Jenkins and Brad Pitt were better in Burn After Reading (sorry, haters). Again, I didn't see Frost/Nixon, but in the commercials, Langella sounds like a Muppet. Rourke may not have another performance like this in him, but that's all the more reason why he deserves to win over Penn, who proved with I Am Sam that he can bait Oscar in his sleep, and will surely do so again real soon.
ED: Boo! There goes my theory about the Penn and Rourke camps playing nice. Don't make me bust out the Rourke-is-just-playing-a-version-of-himself card, Karina. But you're right about everything else: that Pitt and Jenkins are better in Burn After Reading and that the hambony Langella sounds like a Muppet in Frost/Nixon (which is no surprise, since Ron Howard directs the movie with all the visual grace of a "Muppet Show" episode).
Question, what do we have to do to get a performance such as Juliette Binoche's in Flight of the Red Balloon nominated for an Oscar, or are the odds impossibly stacked against you once you decide to appear in a Hou Hsiao-Hsien production? I know that Flight of the Bed Balloon isn't everyone's cup of tea (admittedly, I wasn't terribly crazy about it), but I can't imagine anyone not being bowled over by the masterwork of nuance and naturalism that Binoche delivers in the film. (She's also smokin' in Summer Hours by the way.)
KRIS: All due respect Ed, but I feel like the "Rourke-is-playing-a-version-of-himself card" has been the laziest criticism of this performance all year long, and certainly throughout the Oscar season. Certainly you can understand the amount of dedication to the craft and bravery that goes into being that open on screen, which, in and of itself, is a certain kind of performance art that deserves recognition.
But that having been said, have you ever met Rourke? I mean sat down and had a conversation with the guy? I am sure you have at some point along the line. These two beings couldn't be further apart. So they have a parallel classification of "washed up," but last I checked, Rourke never had a lot to atone for with any offspring that he dropped the ball raising, nor does he put forth the kind of regret that comes pouring out of Robinson on that screen. Did he do some things he's ashamed of? Sure. And there was probably some of that deep down in the performance, but the notion that the character is some kind of carbon copy of the man and the career has been dragged out like the echoes of some attempted smear at the beginning of the season or something. It doesn't hold water.
Now, I'm just wondering what Dustin Lance Black was thinking when he said at a panel in Santa Barbara that he was fascinated with Harvey Milk's faults, that he would "be at a bath house when he should be home with his boyfriend," and how he wanted to work that into the script. Because I still have a black eye from that halo smacking me in the face every time Penn was on screen.
ED: Kris, that line was a joke; it was my apparently clumsy way of bringing up the very lazy critical gripe you elaborated upon. I thought my fondness for Rourke's performance was evident in one of my previous emails. (Also, those should-be-nominated picks on the Slant blog from a month ago are mine.) Regarding Penn and the halo around his character's head: I wasn't bothered by Milk's sanctification in the Gus Van Sant film, probably because Harvey Milk is exactly that (a saint) to many in the gay community. I actually think Penn plays against that sanctification in interesting ways in the film, even if the direction does not.
KRIS: Fair enough. I was having a debate about the Rourke thing earlier today, so I saw red.
TIMOTHY BRAYTON: Kris, you've hit on exactly the problem I've had with Milk all season long. Especially compared to the excellent documentary The Times of Harvey Milk, it paints such a simplified picture of a man who's far more interesting than just a martyred saint. I can somewhat understand why Black went the route he did, but to my eyes the results is much worse than any real or imagined slight against an icon of gay Americana would have been: it's just not very interesting. "Here is a man with no faults, except for the vague way in which he mistreats Diego Luna, who is annoying enough that everyone in the audience would have done the same." I wanted to see Harvey Milk the human being, the one who ignored his boyfriend to go to bathhouses and practiced polygamy as a social statement, the shrewd and even conniving politician who got joy from his opponents' failures, the closeted Republican businessman. But the film is content to give us a standard-issue biography of the man who is too perfect at everything to survive in this cruel world.
That said, it amazes me that Penn actually finds something playable in the stock character Black gives him. I don't know that he's necessarily playing the same Harvey Milk who lived and walked the streets of San Francisco, but whatever he's doing, it's electrifying. I see Penn's Milk as the male version of Sally Hawkins's Poppy from Happy-Go-Lucky: confronted by great suffering, he makes the conscious choice to remain happy and optimistic, although Penn shows us a character much closer to the breaking point than Hawkins does. It gives the film's version of Milk a hidden depth that, as far as I can tell, he completely lacks on the page, which means Penn has done the best kind of acting job: saving the film from its screenplay.
Yet, love Penn though I might, I still have room in my heart to love Rourke just as much, for all the reasons that everybody knows about: the rawness of the work, the complete absence of shame as he strips himself naked in front of the audience - y'know, metaphorically-like - and every little touch that makes Randy seem so physical and lived-in. There wasn't a single moment of tiny acting in 2008 that moved me more than the delicate way Rourke handles his hearing aid when he's getting ready for bed.
And for all that, neither one of them gave my favorite performance in the category: I'm still head over heels for Richard Jenkins, one of our best character actors given a chance to carry an entire feature and doing it perfectly. I'll admit to being a Jenkins fan for a few years now, so I'm certainly a touch biased; there's always something about the little shifts in expression on his wonderfully craggy face that I could watch for hours, and the main part of what I love about The Visitor is that it gives me the chance to do that.
At any rate, with three of the best performances of the year all jockeying together like that, Best Actor is easily my favorite of the acting categories this year, even if I agree that Langella is a bit too muppetty - Sam the Eagle, in particular - and find that Pitt gets progressively less interesting the more that he becomes young and pretty. Still, I don't particuarly mind either of them, and I'm not terribly aggrieved by anyone who was left out - the Eastwood fanatic in me wanted to see him win an acting Oscar, but that was clearly not his finest moment as a performer, not even as good as Million Dollar Baby, and there was no chance in hell that the Academy was going to duplicate the Golden Globes triumph of the In Bruges boys.
DAY TWO
box office, Benjamin Button, 'adequate' acting
and the element of surprise
