The Academy Awards ceremony has taken place on 5th March, 2018 . While
there were not many surprises for the winners, it is a great idea here to
review a few of these wonderful films from 2017.
‘The Shape of Water’ has won the Best Picture Oscar, and Guillermo
del Toro has won his first Oscar for his stunning directorial effort. Del Toro
has been acclaimed as a visual and imaginative director over the years, and
while ‘The Shape of Water’ has similarities with another of his masterpiece,
‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, these films are about the potential of imagination and
fantasy within a harsh reality. The two protagonists of ‘The Shape of Water’
were both underdogs – who were the victims in a paranoid and prejudiced world.
There should be no surprise that the story took place in a setting of the Cold
War because that was exactly the time when people did not put much
consideration on the well-being and dignity of individuals – even if it was a
blue, fish-like creature – and subject to bouts of electric shocks and
vivisections. Yet, del Toro is willing to offer us hope – the setting was
exactly where fantasy and love could become possible, when the mute protagonist
and the creature could fathom a compassion beyond human. The scenario is very
similar to ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, when the little girl has to imagine a fantasy
world with the creature with horns to ‘detox’ her really stressful situations.
The evil clutches may prevail sometimes in the real world through the brute
force, yet those with golden hearts deserve more than just the world. Just like
the 2 protagonists in the film, they can reach a realm where they can be happy
together, and this is what a visionary filmmaker like del Toro can offer. After
all, the analogy of water (which somewhat recalls Bruce Lee’s philosophical
statement – ‘Be water, my friend) is related to humanity. Water is
free-flowing, can come in all sort of forms and shapes. It only depends on the
context, and gives meaning to itself. And, what you can make meanings out of
your existence depends on you.
Gary Oldman and Frances McDormand won the Best Actor and
Best Actress respectively for their brilliant performances in ‘Darkest Hour’
and ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’. All the nominees in the Best
Actor category are wonderful, and it really is a bit of a Mexican Standoff
there. Gary Oldman has steadily proved to us that he is a spectacular actor who
deserves to be loved throughout the years. One can never forget his killer
performance in ‘Leon: The Professional’, when he played the Beethoven loving
bad cop. Just like when he was portraying Winston Churchill, he put all his
feelings and efforts into the character, and with the stunning makeup effects
he literally became Churchill. I suppose many of the film lovers would feel
great about Oldman finally winning the Oscar. Frances McDormand, who has
already won the Best Actress Oscar years ago in ‘Fargo’, completely nailed it
as the obsessive, foul-mouthed, and determined mother in ‘Three Billboards’.
Her intense look only showed her determination of getting things right, and she
would drop F-bombs and go NBK (interesting that Woody Harrelson was also in the
film – a bit sad he did not get the Oscar, but then Sam Rockwell is also great)
on the injustice that befell around her. The three billboards represented her
modus operandi when facing with the disjointed time, direct and to the point. McDormand
is channeling Klaus Kinski here – her character is obsessive about her aim, and
she can easily go a bit too far – at a certain point throwing Molotov cocktails
(and F-bombs and racial slurs) to the police station. I do not feel the
director was asking the audience to judge his characters. There is no point to
ask whether McDormand’s character is good or evil, so are Harrelson’s and
Rockwell’s, because the flaws are what make them so human and realistic. The
dark sides portrayed in the film – the prejudice, obsession, anger – are
something present in our world, and we have to be courageous and confront them
often. Ms. McDormand’s talent should be lauded because, as a leading lady often
in Coen Brothers’ films, ‘Blood Simple’, ‘Fargo’ etc., she always delivered the
first rate performance of surviving and fighting in an absurd, bigoted, and to
be plain, effed-up universe. The intensity of her performance testified the
fighting back of the individual, something that humanity should really cherish
and celebrate.
‘Dunkirk’ won 3 technical awards, and Christopher Nolan was
nominated for both director and picture. The film is special because Nolan has
painstakingly turned away the narrative structure common in many American
movies. The idea of the film is very simple, very different from his past work
like Memento or Inception. The plot is sort of similar to The Wages of Fear,
where basically the soldiers were fighting for their lives through round after round
of obstacles, asking themselves when they will hit the wall. What Nolan has
achieved is to present the story through a very visual and aural way, and the
scenarios here would give the audience snapshots and experience of war. Nolan
did not try to give us a coherent story of the evacuation, and this should not
be seen as a shortcoming of the film, as some critics may have assumed. He
deliberately downplayed the importance of the use of dialogue to explain the
story and feelings of the characters, so in a Kubrickian sense - the film is
possibly the closest in terms of his influence from Kubrick - Nolan ‘banalized’
the dialogues and made the characters opaque. Because, like Mildred's case in ‘Three
Billboards’, there was no room for polite society, everyone was just reacting
to survive and passing the round. I really love the fact that since the first
meeting of the 2 main characters on the beach, they have not really said
anything to each other, but no one would deny that they were friends. I believe
this is a testament to Nolan's caliber, where you do not need any sentimental
dialogues to convince the audience they are comrades - all you need is a
creative vision.
How did Nolan achieve this visual experience? It is
instructive that he has taken inspiration from silent films, an era that
dialogues were only presented as title cards, and the filmmaker had to exert
the power 100% by the cinematic images. That is the reason why some of the most
memorable cinematic images come from the silent era, because the filmmaker had
to fully rely on the visual aspects to make the point. Nolan used purely visual
means to portray the stress and excitement when one was locked in battle, and the
spectacular sound effects lead to a cinematic poiesis of action. The effect is
further enhanced because Nolan played in parallel 3 sets of action of various
durations, and the relativity of the time difference clearly heightened and alienated
the effect of viewing the film. The stylized score evoked stress for the
audience, and completely matched the theme of escalation as shown in the film. When
watching the film, I could only think of the famous quote from Churchill, ‘If
you're going through hell, keep going!’
Finally, how can we miss 'Blade Runner 2049', a genuinely
fantastic film from 2017? Though I was a bit disappointed the film was not
recognized by any major category nominations of Oscar - I would be surprised if
the film was not a top 10 film of 2017 - it did finally get the respect from
the great reviews from critics this time, and got 5 nominations in Oscar,
eventually winning 2 well deserved ones - Visual Effects and Cinematography.
Though I will always see BR as a Ridley Scott masterpiece, Denis Villeneuve has given new life to the story, and he has
made significant contributions in terms of the interpretations of BR.
Roger Deakins, a first-rate director of photography who has worked
with the Coen Brothers, Scorsese and Villeneuve, finally won his first Oscar
for BR2049. Deakins is the rare sort of cinematographer
who has a style as distinct as a
filmmaker, some other examples are Vittorio Storaro, Gordon Willis and
Emmanuel Lubezki. Say, in Storaro’s case, no matter it is a Bertulocci, Coppola,
or Beatty film, Storaro always provides his signature fluid camera movement,
and complements with the approach of the director in question. When we look at
Deakins’s style, one can usually identify with a gritty atmosphere, and that is
why he has such fruitful collaborations with the Coen Brothers and also Villeneuve,
as it will be very different if Deakins’s signature style is absent in films
like ‘Prisoners’ and ‘Sicario’. Deakins’s style perfectly fits the future noir of
Blade Runner, and affords a sense of edginess to the not-that-black-and-white
film. Speaking of style, we should also acknowledge and appreciate the original
effort of Jordan Cronenweth, the cinematographer for the original Blade Runner
film in 1982. It was him who gave us the atmospheric feel of the original
masterpiece, and literally influenced every sci-fi or cyberpunk films since then.
Scott has always maintained that Blade Runner was intended to contain elements
of Film Noir, and it should be of no surprise that Cronenweth’s approach to
cinematography was also inspired by the aesthetics of Film Noir. The low key,
expressionistic feel that penetrate both Blade Runner films is exactly what
make them visually stunning and that achievement deserves the recognition from
Oscar.
Really look forward to more wonderful films in 2018!
