Our Oscar Volleys series is down to our last two categories. Here are Tim Brayton and Eric Blume to talk Best Director. (This volley was recorded before the BAFTA announcement but since those nominations are juried they probably won't have much bearing on Oscar outcomes.)
Eric Blume: Tim, I'm thrilled to talk shop about the Best Director category. Let's start with Jane Campion, Denis Villeneuve, and Kenneth Branagh who all seem unlikely to miss. I'm personally thrilled that Campion might ride her crest all the way to a win. Nobody else could have made The Power of the Dog work so layered and subtle, or told that story without it seeming heavy-handed, obvious, or silly. The film gives Campion the chance to do her specialty: embroiling us in a narrative and in character motivations so intensely strange yet fully human that we're transported by our own confusion and curiosity. She has that special ability to deliver a rare grounded sense of whatthefuckery in her movies. There are moments where so much is happening psychologically, where so many meanings are transpiring simultaneously, that you can't even fully process it until it's passed you by.
I'm also a huge fan of Villeneuve, a natural-born filmmaker if there ever was one...
He has made one of the oddest, most disorienting Hollywood blockbusters of all time with Dune, and balanced an absurdly dense narrative with images both grotesque and intoxicating. You always feel carried by him when you watch his films. Moment to moment, Dune can be a little obtuse, but when you're lost you just let him pick you up in his arms and Jesus-Footprints you across that sand.
Finally, the (online) backlash against Belfast is a little insane to me, as I thought Branagh's direction was, overall, wonderfully smart: it's a complete conception by him, a world that is realistically developed but with extreme embellishments: the casting of the absurdly gorgeous Balfe and Dornan as his parents; the black-and-white shooting for a film only set in 1969; the various historical anachronisms, etc. His conception may not work for you, but it is a thorough vision. What do you think of these three, Tim?
Tim Brayton: Campion's glass-smooth path through awards season has been an unadulterated joy. She's been one of my favorites since I tore through her entire canon in the run-up to Bright Star back in 2009, and other than the fact that everybody (correctly) loves The Piano, it's never felt to me that any of her tough, cunning character dramas have anywhere near the visibility or love they deserve. That she is both a lock for her second nomination and, as you point out, the clear frontunner would therefore be gratifying under any circumstances; that she's made it there with a film that doesn't feel, to me, like she's had to sand off any of her edges or make things "friendly" to the Academy. Even better!
I cosign everything you've said, and I'll add that she's so unbelievably good here at maneuvering us through some very difficult character swerves: the reveals about the cruel protagonist that make him understandable without forgiving his actions, or the balance that goes into making Kodi Smit-McPhee's character land the way he does considering the choices he makes. It's tricky stuff, and she makes it all look nevitable.
I think you're right on the other two locks. Villeneuve, unlike Campion, isn't a favorite of mine, but I was still knocked out flat by Dune. Not least, I am sure, because it was the first film I saw on IMAX in over two years, but making a film that can stand up to that kind of scale is a skill all by itself. I think the trick to this particular version of Dune, which succeeded where two previous adaptations and a legendary unmade film by Alejandro Jodorowsky failed, is that it perfectly mixes a huge, galactic scale with images that feel grounded and pragmatic on a shot-by-shot basis. He manages the extraordinary feat of making Arrakis feel like a grand real location there's only a very limited feeling of "gawk at my incredible sets and flashy visual effects!". He's positioning his actors and the camera to make striking images, but they're fundamentally human images, and while there's something to be said for the delirious phantasmagoria of the David Lynch film from 1984, there's something better to be said about Villeneuve's approach: it ended in a comprehensible, watchable film.
Branagh is another filmmaker that I don't have a great deal of pre-existing affection for, but I do have to admit that Belfast is the best thing he's done in years and years. Not that the likes of Artemis Fowl and Jack Reacher: Shadow Recruit put up a lot of competition, but it's still nice to see him make a film that actually feels like there are human characters inhabiting a real community. Granting all of that, I still do think that it's a bit too "busy" as a work of direction: there aren't a whole lot of individually over-the-top moments, but the accumulation of choices ends up making the whole thing feel a bit cluttered. There are a lot of moments where he indulges in staging the action across the width of the frame and on multiple layers of depth, and while that's very impressive, I'm not always sure what it does. He's got a pretty firm hand on his cast, no question, but the images and cutting sometimes feel like they got a way from him a bit.
Are there any other locks? Very recently, I would have said four and added Steven Spielberg (who did secure a DGA nod). West Side Story is a terrific bit of old-school filmmaking dressed up with digital technology, and you can tell for so much of the film that he's having a huge blast making a musical, something he's been talking about trying for decades. Honestly, I have some of the same qualified admiration I do for Branagh: I think Spielberg is making a lot of big, complicated choices, and I'm not always sure why he's making those choices. For every number that I think he did fantastic work staging, there's one that just feels kinetic for the sake of it. In the former corner: "Something's Coming," a song that's always been one of my least-favorite in the show, but here turns into a terrific little visual depiction of who this film's Tony is, how he wants to fit into his world, how he actually fits into his world. In the latter: "Gee, Officer Krupke," which isn't nearly as funny as it thinks it is, and uses some very weird angles to show the jailed sex worker watching the Jets goofing around randomly. Still, there's such life and energy, and I don't know if any American director is as good at Spielberg at deciding where to put actors in an anamorphic widescreen frame - not a small consideration for a musical!
And for those reasons and the mere fact that he's Steven Spielberg, I was comfortable considering him a lock right up until the film had that jaw-dropping miss at the ACE nominations for its editing. Now that's just one award, from just one guild, but it shocked me so much that I'm wondering if the film's entire trajectory through awards season is going to be rockier than expected.
What do you think? Am I being unreasonably pessimistic about Spielberg's chances? Who else do you think is right in the hunt for a nomination?
Eric Blume I'm not confident about Spielberg getting a nomination this year. Maybe my opinion comes from being a trained musical theater person, but let's just say moving people through time and space to music does not come naturally to Spielberg. I think he does some of his best work in years with West Side Story in terms of keeping the whole locomotive running, having genuine love for the musical form, and delivering BIG. But he doesn't really know how to conceive musical numbers dramatically as Jerome Robbins did. I enjoyed stretches of the film, but what can you say about a movie where about half of the dance is taken out of the show, and the three biggest numbers in the piece (Jet Song, Dance at the Gym, and America) were conceived better, staged better, choreographed better, and shot better in the 1961 version?!
And what he did to "Cool" and "Somewhere" is just abominable. But I thought he invigorated all of the Tony/Maria scenes (thanks to Kushner's smart rewrite), and nobody delivers spectacle like Spielberg. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm divided AND I think Spielberg and the film are divisive. Both will have their passionate fans, but there's a lot to nitpick; I won't be shocked if he makes the list or if he misses it.
Let's talk about the other DGA nominee. I don't think Licorice Pizza is even in the top five films by the great Paul Thomas Anderson, but I think he'll make the nominee list this year. I'm personally a bit mystified by the passion for this movie, but PTA is deeply revered by other directors, and it was a pleasure to see him abandon the strict formalism he's forged with There Will Be Blood and The Master and Phantom Thread, and return to a looser style he had early in his career that will not go unnoticed by those who follow him. Directors like when other directors make a career zag, especially when they do it so artfully.
Tim, what do you think of PTA as a likely nominee? Also, if you're feeling Spielberg for fourth, who might be fifth? Who else are you passionate about?
Tim Brayton: Licorice Pizza is a tough film for me to know what to do with. The problem basically seems to be that it's a "vibe" movie, and I never caught its vibe, so the whole thing ended up just feeling like a long, flat expanse of nothing in particular. I certainly respect the unabashed love that a lot of people have for it, even if I have no idea where it's coming from, and I do expect that love will be enough to propel it to a Best Director nominations. For that matter, I have far more problems with Anderson-the-screenwriter here than Anderson-the-director. In the latter capacity, he's done an excellent job of channeling nostalgia into a rich, lavish recreation of a very specific time in a very specific place. This isn't an "L.A." movie, it's a "Valley" movie, and I don't know if I would have been able to draw that distinction before watching it. It's maybe the year's most lived-in film, which is the result of a lot of people doing very hard work to build the film's world, but it's also so clearly the director's vision. And then, taking that extremely precise sense of place and just letting the story splash out shaggily and leisurely... it's definitely a bold move. I do think the film would benefit from the first-time actors in the lead roles having been given a bit more guidance, but I know that's anathema to the spirit of the thing.
So to answer you question, I actually have Licorice Pizza as my fourth in Best Director, and Spielberg and West Side Story as a wobbly fifth.
What makes it hard for me to remove either of them from my predictions is that nobody else feels like a genuinely strong possibility. Looking just at the other big Best Picture hopefuls, I can easily imagine Reinaldo Marcus Green having made the cut for King Richard back in the 1990s, even the early 2000s, but that kind of proficient, meat-and-potatoes filmmaking doesn't really makes it into this category any more. Same with Sian Heder for CODA. If Aaron Sorkin couldn't land here last year with The Trial of the Chicago 7, I can't imagine that Being the Ricardos would do it for him in a more competitive year. And so on. I have been wondering if Adam McKay might possibly show up with Don't Look Up - he did get nominated for Vice, after all - but that's surely the most divisive film within spitting distance of a Best Picture nom.
So I'll wrap this leg of our conversation up by answering "who might be a fifth?" with my answer to your other question "who am I passionate about?" - Joel Coen, making his first movie as the Coen Brother (Singular) with The Tragedy of Macbeth. It's an extremely weird and alienating film, but it's making big choices at every opportunity, and for my tastes, those choices mostly pay off. The brittle artifice of the staging and his work with the actors isn't great (or even very good) Shakespeare but it is electrifying as image and sound-making; it's certainly one of the films that has gotten me the most energized this year. I don't actually think it's going to break the Directing top 5 (right now I have the movie as my tenth-place Picture prediction) but there's at least some pro-Coen faction in the Directing branch, so I don't think it's completely outside of the realm of possibility.
What about you? Any big passions that you're hoping might get in (or that you're sadly certain won't?). And am I overlooking anybody with a good chance to break into the nomination list?
Eric Blume Tim, I think you've done as intelligent an interpretation of Licorice Pizza as anyone has. When I question people who love it, usually the response is just, "I don't know, man, it's just cool!" which to me is not exactly a powerful argument. Agreed that it is absolutely a director's vision.
Agreed too on your dismissal of the other possibilities. Green's directing is proficient but he really wasn't able to direct Will Smith into giving the character surprise or dimension. Every scene is the same: Richard is right!
And while Sian Heder has a lovely touch with actors, her directing (those god-awful montages!) never transcends the movie's on-the-nose problems. I fear McKay could grab that fifth slot if Spielberg doesn't nab it...the directors' branch has nominated him twice already so they feel generous about him. I'd argue that McKay's directing of Anchorman, Talladega Nights, and Stepbrothers is far, far better than his work on the last three prestige films. His broadness works so beautifully and effectively for big comedy like that, but less so when you need finer calibrations and a more delicate touch with tougher narratives and themes.
I suppose the other name being bandied about for that fifth slot is Ryusuke Hamaguchi for Drive My Car. I'd prefer to see him nominated than Anderson, Spielberg, or most others in play. But man, Drive My Car is a tough sit...really long and languorously paced, so I just can't imagine it breaking through. And while I admired the film enormously, and Hamaguchi's crazy-high ambition with it, I also felt it was unnecessarily overlong. Before people yell at me in the comments: he is capturing Murakami's writing style perfectly, the movie is about listening, blah blah blah, I get it. But you could easily take 30-40 minutes out of that movie and not rob it of any of its tone or power. But I must say that Hamaguchi's presence or absence from this category is one of the things I'm most interested in about the nominations on Tuesday.
Quick note on your thoughts on Joel Coen: I can't disagree, it's absolutely a director's conception and he executes it to the hilt. I just thought that his conception made the piece feel very, very small. In the recent Justin Kurzel version, with all those huge Scottish landscapes, you never forgot that the fight was over power of an entire country. In Coen's version, there was no exterior, so the dramatic stakes seemed tiny... it was like a beautifully filmed college stage production?
As for passions, I'm rooting for Pedro Almodovar, whose Parallel Mothers is a deeply felt, masterfully controlled story that blends genres in the way only he can. I think we take him and his artistry for granted now, which is a shame. I also feel in complete lock-step with what Pablo Larraín is doing in his movies including Spencer and find his work completely compelling and bold and strange and unique. Asghar Farhadi kills it once again with A Hero...again, just such a master. And I dont want to close this conversation without saying that Lin-Manuel Miranda, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Rebecca Hall all made astounding first features this year: there are some amateur mistakes and limitations in each, sure, but they got all the big/hard stuff right.
Before we sign off, tell me more about your passions beyond Coen...other major directorial feats and stuff that made you say, wow, they really aimed big...?
Tim Brayton: I can't believe I forgot about Larraín when you asked me to think about the directing I really loved this year! I think that I'm already resigned to Spencer underperforming - down from "Ooh, maybe Picture, Cinematography, Directing..." earlier in the season all the way to "God, I hope Kristen Stewart still scrambles her way up to fifth slot" - that I've just blocked it out. But it was a real "fall back in love with the movies" movie for me personally, and I remain agog at how much he's able to extract from these arch, theoretically-oriented biopics - with this film coming in the wake of Jackie and Neruda, both from 2016, he's spent the last half-decade threatening to make me love the genre that reliably interests me the least.
Some other particular loves: I think what Joachim Trier can do with actors is never less than sublime, and The Worst Person in the World (Finally in theaters -- see it!) saw him returning to his very best strength, the lives of everyday young people lost and confused in Oslo. I get that it fell victim to the "qualifying release" problems, but I really wish it had been getting more traction with critics, at the very least.
And speaking of a weird releases killing any hopes a film might have had at finding the right kind of attention, I am simply in awe of what the great Thai art film master Apichatpong Weerasethakul achieved with Memoria, even as I only got to see it on a crummy DVD screener. The mixture of still images and aggressive sound design, all centered around Tilda Swinton at her most inward and minimalist, was the most dreamily abstract filmmaking I saw all year, and I live in hope of watching it on the big screen, if NEON ever figures out what the hell they're doing with this strange "only one screen in all of North America for one week at a time" release strategy. And for sure I co-sign on Asghar Farhadi, who I think makes the most difficult, nuanced character work look so damn easy that we risk taking him for granted.
Thanks for chatting with me! I think it's clear that there's a lot of work to love this year, even if it's not entirely going to be reflected in the final five at the Oscars. But with Jane Campion in the lead I'm having warm feelings about the whole category. It's been great reflecting on all the interesting work out there with you!
Eric Blume: I will get our Team Jane Campion t-shirts printed up right now.
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