Oscar 2012 “Best Movies”: An Overview

The Artist (M. Hazanavicius). I am no lover of silent movies. The fact that not only I stayed awake but that I deeply enjoyed two hours of complete silence is enough to make me say that this movie is truly amazing. A film that makes you laugh (literally, a lot of people in the theater were laughing) and cry (figuratively, although the projection of Valentine (Jean Dujardin)’s last movie was quite “eyes-watering”) without saying a word makes you rethink all you thought you know about movies and the importance of dialogues. This is not one of those times when one pretends to like an artistic movie to look intellectual: the simplicity and universality of the story, the masterly executed direction, the games of dark and light, the talent of the actors…all these elements make this movie talk without words.

The Descendants (A. Payne). I like George Clooney, I do. But that is not enough for me to like this movie, which I found really useless. It is a very ordinary story: a barely standing family and tragic events that unfortunately can happen to anyone and that often do, especially in movies. However, this is not the point: there is no need for an alien apocalypse or incredible special effects for a movie to be extraordinary. An ordinary story can make a great movie, but it has to have an angle. Maybe it is me, but I could not see any angle whatsoever in this movie. I came out of the theater wondering: what did I just watch? Not always the perspective that the audience see in a movie is the one the director or the writer were thinking; but this is what’s cool about films: according to anyone’s experience and sensitivity, movies can say different things. From this movie, I did not hear a thing.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. This movie left me quite torn: I am not sure what to think of it. Mostly, I have to say that I did not really liked it because I found it too histerical and left me stressed and with a start of an headache. Of course, if a movie can affect you so much it has to mean that it is well done, right? However, if it affects you negatively, it may be that it either was not well done or that leaving a bad taste in your mouth was the purpose. For sure, evidentiating so much the tension and "crazyness" of Oskar (Thomas Horn) throughout all the movie, helps the sense of liberation he feels at the end to stand out. But the final peace was such a small fraction of the whole drama and tragedy that it did not give me the same feeling of the usual happy ending. I liked some things of the movie, some tiny details like the recurrence of the number 6; or the way in which the present and the memories are built together like a puzzle. It is weird to say, but in this film the main character was too much: too much frantic, too much crazy, too much intelligent and so on. And his very presence was too much, so much that at one point I started to find him annoying. Once again, if the purpose of who put this film together was to comunicate the restlessness that results out of such a horrible trauma, then mission accomplished, great movie. If not, this film was a big, stressing mess.

The Help (T. Taylor). I may be biased, but I love this stories of historical victims sticking it to the man (to say it as Jack Black would). What I liked most about this movie is that it conveys the anger, frustration and repression the characters feel: I don’t know how many times I felt the urge to slap Bryce Dallas Howard (the evil racist Hilly Holbrook, who, by the way, gave the best performance in my opinion). I also “enjoyed” the way we were conveyed with the anti-Medea absurd: children killing their mothers (not the birth ones, but the real ones that actually raised them) in the moment where they start looking down to them because of their skin color. However, there is something off with this movie and it is probably Emma Stone’s (Miss Skeeter) performance: I thought she was out of place, quite fake in her expression and definitely underperforming compared to her co-stars, almost ruining the tone of the entire movie.

Hugo (M. Scorsese). Again, bias will have the best of me because I have a thing for this kind of romantic movies. Not the usual romance between a Romeo and a Juliette, but the much superior romantic atmosphere that lingers above the love between mother and son, friends, strangers finding each other or, as in this case, a man (or a child) and his purpose.  I do not want to mention here the photography, the editing, the special effects or simply the colorfulness of this movie, because many have done it and because it is clear to everyone that those are great. I want more to defend the story, which I have heard been diminished by many (including the co-author of this blog). I found very interesting the choice of been lead to the real purpose of the movie (which is an ultimate homage to film-making) slowly, more than halfway through the show: after having decided that this is a movie about a kid and a machine, you find that it is not, or at least not only. It is an effective metaphor of research of meaning in real life, which is a pervading theme of this work: a man with no purpose is sad like a broken machine. It is also funny to notice how both Hugo and The Artist, although in different ways, reverence the dawn of cinema.

Midnight in Paris (W. Allen). After the disappointing You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, Woody Allen makes another brilliant movie. Watching that, I felt like Woody Allen was trying to stop being Woody Allen. Personally, I never understood this need that artists have to be versatile: if you are, good for you; but if you are great at one thing, stick to it please. This movie is oneiric in many dimensions, the predominant one being that basically the whole thing takes place inside a dream (or is it reality?!?). The contrast between the “coolness” of the dream and the dullness and numbness of reality is striking like the difference between night (the dream) and day (reality), dark (the dream) and light (reality). The message I received from this movie is that it is easy to think that the dreams are better than reality and to wish to be born somewhere else sometimes else; the hard part is opening your eyes to what you have before your life goes by unlived while you dream of having another one. The role of Marion Cottillard is the key to understand this, the role of a delusional romantic that she plays greatly. One last note of appreciation goes to the costumes of the 30s characters: it is really lovely to see the people in this film.

Money Ball (B. Miller). One more nominated movie that hits one of my great likes: sport movies. I like sport movies almost as much as I dislike sport. Just so that we are clear, I am one of those people that jumps off the couch one the hero scores. This movie was therefore bound to be in my graces. And it is. However, this movie is not just about sport, although I deeply enjoyed the winning in the face of the detractors. To me, this movie was more about fighting against frustration and lack of means: that’s the real sport challenge that Brad Pitt need to face. Many say that this is Clooney’s year, I think it is Pitt’s year: two of his movies are nominated for best movie and I think he would deserve the best lead actor more than Clooney precisely because of Money Ball: his clenched jaw is  a great add on to this film. The rhythm is classic of this kind of movie: the hero is eating dust, then he fights against resistance to his new strategy, then the come back. However, there are a few peculiarities. The hero is not the one who comes up with the revolutionary idea in the first place and, more importantly, he does not seem to believe in it per se: he is desperate and he is clinging on to it out of stubbornness, pride, nothing-to-lose-stage desperation. Also, the ending is quite odd. For once, we see the “fall back” after the come back and we are reminded that if you do not win it all, for many it is like you won nothing. Then, a sparkle of hope in knowing the success of others applying the hero’s principles. And in the very end, with the credits running on the screen, the words of the manager’s daughter bring back an unexpected sense of inevitable failure and loss. I thought that was brilliant.

The Tree of Life (T. Malick). When I was talking about The Artist I said I am not one of those person that pretend to like very artistic movies out of intellectual pride. For the same reason, I cannot pretend I liked this movie more than I actually did. My meter to measure if I really liked a movie is very easy: would I watch  it again? It is very empirical, I know, and sometimes it made me had to admit that I like trash; but it is honest and it works. The answer for this case is no, I would not. When I came out of the theater I was pretty enthusiast about it: the whole thing had put my brain at work, I wanted to talk it through to see what other people had understood (almost like after the last episode of Lost!). I cannot deny that a movie that stimulates your mind like this must be good. And it is. The love-hate between old and new generations, the trying to do what’s best for your kids and ending up screwing them up, the unconditioned love of parents that somehow hurts: this are all ancestral themes that are here treated with touching boldness and sensitivity, and with a very confusing time-space sequence that lives you breathless.  However, I thought it was overdone: the 20 minutes of music-only with the dinosaurs and the beginning of the world are the main evidence of that and the main reason why I would not watch it again. Is that the Tree of Life? Was it really necessary? Or is it just an excessive artistic stretch that falls into showing off? I once read that Miro thought that a painting of his was complete and perfect and artistic when one thing more or one thing less would make it worse. Now, the guy painted a black line on a white canvas and I liked it because I saw his point. Here, I think that this movie would have been perfect with less frantic research for originality and more focus on real original consideration. The scene, immediately after the 20 minutes with the dinosaurs (forgive the distaste in my words) is a very close close-up on the new born baby. I am too young to have a maternal instinct, but to me The Tree of Life is all in those 10 seconds.

War Horse (S. Spielberg). Another romantic movie, with the heroic love between a man and his horse. The setting  is a bit odd: usually, the movie makers preferred war is WWII. This movie is centered on the first world conflict instead and this was quite refreshing. The themes are universal, likable and quite rhetoric: heroes fighting against their fear, good people and good feelings, home sweet home, survival despite everything, enemies united by basic feelings and so on. I will not lie: I enjoyed it quite a bit and I thought that all these clichés were treated with intelligence and style. In my opinion, this is mostly because of the circularity of the plot: every person the horse “meets” could be an independent story and this gives freshness and rhythm to the narration and avoids its becoming trivial and boring. However, it is not fragmented because everything is kept together by a red line, which is the boy waiting for his beloved horse and symbolized by his dad’s war relic. I honestly do not thing that this movie is as good as others running this year, but it sure is a good movie that I enjoyed, a family movie about friendship and courage, shot on a great and always changing scenography, which really helps.