Matt Petit / ©A.M.P.A.S.
The gentle rain at this time is fitting for tonight’s Oscars®, which feature a slate of bleak, dreary movies. I’m scheduled as a guest for the Mark Isler Show on KABC 790 AM to discuss the movies and awards with other panelists—I’m on at 9 p.m. Pacific time for a few hours—having watched the telecast until then. The Best Picture nominations are as forgettable as last year’s Best Pic winner (The Departed). My 2007 retrospective column will be published on Box Office Mojo soon.
Oscar’s Best Picture nominations include the anti-moneymaking creed There Will Be Blood, which ends in the campiest meltdown since Mommie Dearest, the terribly self-important No Country for Old Men, which posits that nothing really matters, the inscrutable Michael Clayton and the bloated British soap opera, Atonement. Then, there’s the overrated hit Juno. I think Juno might pull off a win since it’s conservative—no abortion for the pregnant girl, of course—and safe and popular, though No Country for Old Men dominates among the intellectuals. Atonement is the closest to the sort of classic epic Hollywood used to favor for Best Picture.
Juno
The title’s pregnant teenager starts droning about her mundane life in a monotone that never lets up and it’s obvious an artificially happy ending is pre-conceived. In the dreary nine-month meantime, deficient parents miraculously dispense sage advice and everyone speaks in clipped, cynical semi-sentences, like characters from Closer, Thank You for Smoking or The West Wing. Gnarly Juno eventually behaves like a decent person in an unrealistic and unremarkable transformation that is treated as if it’s earned, only it isn’t. Unless you get a kick out of watching a crude, nihilistic adolescent girl act like a crude, nihilistic adolescent boy, Juno is also not exactly a comedy.
No Country for Old Men
Javier Bardem’s stone-faced performance as a hit man in No Country for Old Men is similar to that other nihilistically iconic picture, Pulp Fiction, in which the hit man is its moral center—a blank slate meant to convey the notion that nothing matters, evil is omnipotent and we are doomed. On its own terms, it works. The movie is totally absurd, with Texas deputies saying things like, "that’s very linear, sheriff." No Country for Old Men is calculated, economical and as deep as an episode of the Seventies crime drama Cannon and it is definitely less linear.
There Will Be Blood
Like No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood trails off in conclusion. Instead of geriatric Tommy Lee Jones babbling in a downward spiral, Blood gives us Daniel Day-Lewis, focused as ever and quite effective, though talking Texan with an accent from another universe and playing up the histrionics at his highest pitch since he screamed "I’ll never leave you!" in The Last of the Mohicans. The bizarre, anti-capitalist Blood, based on an Upton Sinclair novel, might have worked better had it eased up on demonizing the Day-Lewis oil baron and actually dramatized drilling for oil, an exciting, fascinating prospect that’s barely shown. When it is—when something goes wrong, of course—it rocks the house. With an air raid soundtrack that recalls the Forbidden Zone music of the original Planet of the Apes and the temple siren of The Time Machine, There Will Be Blood purports to show how money (in exchange for oil) corrupts man and turns him into a monster. But it’s fueled by the Day-Lewis performance, not by the script.
Michael Clayton
A ponderous, mildly interesting character drama that doesn’t amount to much. In this generic, anti-business conspiracy story, an attachment with the title character is never formed. George Clooney’s Michael Clayton ends up doing what any third-grader with a decent upbringing would do without hesitation.
Atonement
The uneven but interesting Atonement is slow-moving and overdone. Aided by a visual flourish and an intellectual hook late in the process, it nearly compensates for the flaws. Actress Romola Garai as Briony keeps the laborious showcase from nodding off. The rest of the cast is as neatly arranged as the opening shot’s marching toy animals. A mother with migraines—a leering brother—a frizzy-haired cousin named Lola—a friendly stranger—a pair of pudgy twins—and the story’s two passionate lovers—and each are affected by an act of profound (and implausible) injustice. Atonement’s immersion in war dramatizes that man’s life is finite, not automatic; it can be made—and it can be wiped out. Like a Shakespearean drama, the point is that a single act—a tragic flaw—can cause real, permanent damage. Not much new there, even with a last-minute switch in perspective that makes a subtle and thoughtful point about the role of art. The salient notion that life is not eternal—and love is not all you need—comes through intact and it’s especially relevant in a world at war. But getting there is not entirely earned and it’s a real slog.
