Inessentials

Spoiler-filled discussion of the Toy Story and Bourne franchises

I watched the satisfying Toy Story 3 yesterday, which is not only setting box office records (Pixar’s highest grossing opening weekend) but critical ones (one of the highest rated films on Metacritic, for instance). The story follows the further adventures of the beloved Woody, Buzz, Jessie, and the gang, as their owner Andy prepares to leave for college. There are some stunning action sequences (the film’s opening is a highlight) and some emotionally moving moments (a moment when the characters hold hands is especially poignant). But what stands out to me the next day is the rich political messages the film offers.

Firstly, there is throughout the Toy Story franchise an emphasis on the emotional rather than commercial value of toys, most clearly exemplified by the evil collector in Toy Story 2. That gets extended in Toy Story 3 by the film’s final sequence which shows 17-year-old Andy passing on his toys to young Bonnie. In addition to being yet another Pixar paean to imagination it’s a reminder that there is a joy to reusing old toys and passing on those old toys to others when they have more use for them which cuts to the heart of a consumerist aquisition of whatever is newest. Caring for old toys is a recurring theme throughout the Toy Story films, which goes beyond mere nostalgia. In the Toy Story films, imagination plus an old box, a paper plate, and some old toys make a perfectly workable spaceship game that are superior to any video game. (Computer games make a brief appearance in TS3, but the suggestion is that these are best enjoyed as a shared experience rather than a solitary one.) Re-using, sharing, and donating wisely are virtues at the heart of the Toy Story films. Disney may make a billion dollars from TS3 merchandise, but the Pixar folks would rather have you playing with your original Toy Story Buzz Lightyear than replace it with every sequel.

Secondly, and more remarkably, the middle third of TS3 showcases a fascist dystopia from which the toys must escape, The Great Escape-style. The Sunnyside Day Care is run by Lotsa Huggins, who smells like strawberries but rules the toys with an iron fist. In the midst of a Disney-financed blockbuster that will earn hundreds of millions of dollars in theaters, and more than that in merchandising and tie-ins, there is a surprisingly seamless tribute to Animal Farm. Orwell’s novel chronicles how easily totalitarianism can arise within democratic societies and how socialist ideals are easily corrupted. Toy Story 3 runs Animal Farm in reverse, beginning with a totalitarian regime (complete with brainwashing, violence, surveillance, torture) and ends with a benign ruler who encourages everyone to contribute what they can to promote the greater good. Like all Hollywood films, we’re required to have a trauma in Lotsa Huggins’ life that leads him to be such a cold, calloused teddy bear. And it’s not as though Toy Story 3 is running a political allegory of the sort that Orwell offered. My point is simply this: Toy Story 3 is a rich, complex story, and (like all rich, complex stories) it is an imagining of how the world works; such imaginings are inherently political.

It’s become commonplace for film critics to encourage viewers to see a film because it is “apolitical.” This happened a great deal with The Hurt Locker, a film that was praised for being “apolitical.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen a truly apolitical film, but it would be awfully dull. Every film is political because every film says, in some limited way, “This is how the world is or could be.” So, sure, The Hurt Locker was not political in some narrow, crude sense of saying you should vote for a particular political party. But it was a highly political film in saying, this is one narrow glimpse of what war is like. In understanding what war is like for a bomb diffuser, we are better able to make political decisions like whether we should go to war. Now, critics say The Hurt Locker was apolitical in part because they wanted people to see a very good film and didn’t want them to avoid it for fear of getting Michael Moore’d by it. And some films suffer for trying a bit too hard to make a political point, such as Paul Greengrass’ The Green Zone. But every film, from romantic comedies to big war spectacles, contains depictions of human beings interacting with one another that can shape the way we understand the world. And your politics grows out of your understanding of people and how the world works.

Every year there are a few surprises at the Academy Awards that fly in the face of conventional wisdom. Here’s your chance to wow your party guests by yelling out a surprise correct pick just before the names are read. This is your guide to Oscar night upsets.

Best Picture: Avatar, The Blind Side, District 9, An Education, The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire, A Serious Man, Up, Up in the Air

Conventional wisdom says this is Avatar‘s race to lose, but if it loses it will lose to The Hurt Locker. There’s also been a little speculation recently that Inglourious Basterds is making a late push and could pull a dark horse upset. While Avatar is still the best bet in this category, I think it is worth considering how the method of Oscar voting for Best Picture could lead to an upset here. Academy members rank the nominees from 1-10. In counting the ballots, all ballots are stacked by their first place vote. If one picture has 50%, the counting is over. If not (which is much more likely), the film with the lowest total is eliminated, and those ballots’ second place votes are counted. This process continues, eliminating one picture at a time, until there is a film with 50% of the ballots. What does this mean? It means that a film could have only a medium-range number of first place votes, but if it has a lot of second- and third-place votes, it could win Best Picture. And this seems pretty likely. The films most likely to be eliminated first (A Serious Man, An Education) seem more likely to have The Hurt Locker ranked higher than Avatar. So unless Avatar begins with a very sizeable lead (say 25% of first-place votes with nothing else over 10%), I think it is very likely that The Hurt Locker or Inglourious Basterds wins. Also, the Academy loves violent films (No Country for Old Men, The Departed, LOTR: Return of the King, Gladiator), which favors The Hurt Locker and Inglourious Basterds. Also, a science fiction film has never one; Avatar (or District 9) would be the first.

Best Director: James Cameron, Kathryn Bigelow, Quentin Tarantino, Lee Daniels, Jason Reitman

Everyone has handed over this award to Kathryn Bigelow already. Since no woman has ever won Best Director, many assume now is the time. But of course, that’s as much a reason to say Bigelow won’t win as that she will. That logic could also work with Lee Daniels, since he is only the second African-American to be nominated. (The first, John Singleton, didn’t win for Boyz n the Hood.) Remarkably, QT has only been nominated once before; if IB picks up some technical awards early in the night, he could pull an upset here. But I think the real upset will be Cameron defeating his ex-wife Bigelow. The Academy loves traditionalist men who command large epics. For the last six years, Best Picture and Best Director have gone together, so it’s hard to believe that the Academy will go for Bigelow for directing and Avatar for film. If there is a split, expect it to be the reverse, due to the voting procedures.

Best Original Screenplay: Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker), Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds), Alessandro Camon & Oren Moverman (The Messenger), Joel Coen & Ethan Coen (A Serious Man), Bob Peterson & Pete Docter (Up)

This category usually goes to the most inventive or innovative script and rarely aligns with Best Picture. Going by innovation, QT is the winner here. But the Academy has recently been leaning toward first-time writers (Dustin Lance Black, Diablo Cody, Sofia Coppola), which could favor Mark Boal. Oddly, if Hurt Locker gets shut out of the other major awards, expect a win here; if it does well elsewhere, then this one is for Tarantino.

Best Supporting Actress: Penelope Cruz, Vera Farmiga, Maggie Gyllenhall, Anna Kendrick, Mo’Nique

There is nearly universal consensus that Mo’Nique will run away with this award. But that runs against a strong precedent. This is the award that Hollywood gives to some pretty young thing like a glistening tiara in a beauty pageant. Cruz, Weisz, Blanchett, Zellweger(!), Zeta-Jones, Connelly, Jolie, Sorvino, Tomei… the last 15 years have almost always gone to some under-35 up-and-comer. (Sorry, Carey Mulligan, but you need a fake accent or heavy make-up to win Best Actress like Witherspoon, Theron, or Kidman.) Reasoning that Anna Kendrick and Vera Farmiga will split the votes of Up in the Air fans, this award goes to Gyllenhall. But don’t be too surprised if Up in the Air snags one or two acting wins, and this is the place to do it.

Best Actor: Jeff Bridges, George Clooney, Colin Firth, Morgan Freeman, Jeremy Renner

Bridges has this one locked up, the experts say. But will enough people have seen Crazy Heart to give it to Bridges? He hasn’t been nominated in 25 years, but don’t give too much attention to an actor’s being “due.” Freeman could win simply because the Academy so loves bio pics (Sean Penn, Forest Whitaker, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jamie Foxx). But everybody loves them some Clooney, and who wouldn’t like to see Firth win? Especially since, like Hoffman and Penn, he is playing a gay man. I have trouble seeing how Renner wins this, but since no one is talking about anyone but Bridges, let’s at least mention his name, too.

Best Actress: Sandra Bullock, Helen Mirren, Carey Mulligan, Gabourey Sibide, Meryl Streep

This is being pitched as a heavy-weight fight of Bullock vs. Streep. Recently, Streep has only been the bridesmaid and never the bride, while Bullock has (understandably) never been nominated before. I can see an Erin Brockovitch-type win here, but that film had Steven Soderbergh’s pedigree behind it. This award never goes to a performance in a Best Picture winner, but that doesn’t seem to be a concern here. (Mulligan’s and Sibide’s films are nominated, but are very longshots.) Let’s call this one for Bullock because she used an accent and because we know she’ll squander the Oscar love on terrible films, just like Halle Berry.

So those are the categories where there’s a stand-out favorite, but why there could be an upset.

Still not enough to impress your friends? Tell them Up in the Air has no shot because only one comedy in the last 30 years has won Best Picture (Shakespeare in Love, during Miramax’s heyday). The Hurt Locker would be the lowest grossing film to ever win Best Picture. (Obviously, Avatar would be the highest.) When Christoph Waltz wins best Supporting Actor, tell them that Tarantino had given up on making Basterds until he found Waltz to play the multi-lingual Col. Landa. Tell your friends that you think Michael Giacchino should win Best Original Score for Up, and that you love his work with J.J. Abrams on television (Lost, Fringe, Alias) as well has his film scores for Abrams and for Pixar (The Incredibles, Ratatouille, Star Trek).

Thematic spoilers for The Hurt Locker

I was talking with my father-in-law recently about The Hurt Locker, a film that my wife and I had recommended to him. Turns out, he hated it. He hated it because he thought it was glorifying character traits that he thought were destructive, dangerous, and repulsive. He’s not the sort of man to use the word “asshole” but that’s a fair way to describe the central character in The Hurt Locker, whose machismo jeopardizes the lives of his fellow soldiers. Whereas he saw the film glorifying this character, my wife and I had seen it as an indictment – an indictment of the military that both requires people to act the way this character acts but destroys the person and his relationships in the process. Whereas he saw the film praising a man who couldn’t live a “normal” life, we saw it as explaining how the psychological barriers he constructed to do his job prevented him from entering into well-adjusted familial relationships. Whereas he saw glorification of war, we saw an explanation of its devastating effects on soldiers.

Why did we view this film so differently?

When my wife and I watched the film, we were sitting in our local art house theater in a Northeastern college town, with a hushed, reverent audience. When he watched the film, he was sitting in his living room in a rural Red State with people whooping and hollering at the explosions and complaining that the soldiers didn’t just “shoot all the Muslims.” It’s as though we watched two different films: one a sensitive exploration of the difficulties of war and the effects on the soldiers, the other a propaganda film like those shown for the National Guard or Air Force in a theater before the movie starts. The audience made all the difference.

So were there really two films? Two equally good readings?

No. Despite the differences, I think there is really only one film here. And frankly, there is only one “correct” reading of the film, which is the one my wife and I had. Some readings of a film are closed off, and I think the one my father-in-law had is the wrong one. It is understandable why he had it. The whooping and hollering of the audience overwhelmed the comparatively subtle notes that the film uses to make its point. He got that the lead character is a prick and was willing to see that this was caused or exacerbated by his position as a bomb-diffuser, but he held this view coming into the film, and missed that the film was trying to show this.

Is the film a failure if people can misread it so badly?

If my father-in-law’s friends could misread the film so badly, and see it as a work unreservedly praising the brave soldiers who are defending the country from those evil Arabs/Muslims/terrorists, does this mean that the film is a failure? Surely sometimes a film fails to achieve what it sets out to do. A film could try and fail to do what I think The Hurt Locker does successfully. But it doesn’t follow from this that everyone will understand it. Understanding a film (or “reading” it) is a skill that takes practice. We don’t think about it much because most of us have grown up absorbing the clues subliminally, and we don’t often reflect on how a film uses certain elements to tell its story or convey its elements. Most of us don’t know the 180 rule, couldn’t tell one lens from another, and could only guess at what an “establishing shot” is. But we might still suspect when the conventions surrounding these things are broken, even if we are not sure what the convention is or why it is being broken. And some of us spend time learning these elements because we want to become better readers of film, more engaged viewers, more reflective critics. It’s no more the film’s fault if people can’t read it than it is Shakespeare’s fault that a high school English student doesn’t get it. Like diffusing a bomb, “getting it” takes time, patience, and training.

Discussion of Jennifer’s Body (no spoilers beyond the trailer), Whip It (extremely mild spoiler), and The Hurt Locker (no spoilers)

The early numbers show that Whip It, the roller derby film directed by Drew Barrymore, bombed with $4.9 million in its opening weekend. Jennifer’s Body opened three weeks ago to a disappointing $6.9 million, and has earned less than $15 million in three weeks. That’s a very low number for a horror film that had received a lot of attention. (Compare to Zombieland, which grossed $25 million in its opening this weekend.) I’m a little surprised by how low both of those receipts were, but I think the Whip It numbers were especially surprising. (The people who have seen it have given it very high marks, so at least one person is hopeful that it will have staying power.)

One thing that stands out about these two films is that they are both written by, directed by, and starring women. Jennifer’s Body was penned by Oscar-winner Diablo Cody (Juno); Whip It is Drew Barrymore’s first film as a director; both feature some of the most-talked about young actresses in Hollywood (Ellen Page, Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried). So what happened? Why did so few people go to see this films?

I’m not completely sure why these two films didn’t fare so well, but they both clearly have one thing in common. Not only are women prominently featured on camera and behind the camera, both of these films represent gender reversals of traditionally male genres. Whip It is in large part a traditional sports film in which the hero(ine) must overcome familial obstacles to do what (s)he really loves and take the team to a championship. But this isn’t an all-male basketball or football film in which the female parts are the always-saying-no mother and the always-has-your-back girlfriend, it’s about the bruises-as-power feminism of Drew Barrymore, who has also produced the girl-power Charlie’s Angels films and Never Been Kissed. Jennifer’s Body (which I haven’t seen yet) is supposed to invert the horror genre by positioning the pretty, seemingly defenseless high school girl as the killer, which has a couple predecessors but is still atypical.

It is tempting to say that women will go see “guy films” (sports and horror films), but that guys won’t go see films about women. And perhaps that is the case here. But these two cases don’t seem enough to judge that. (It would be interesting to see the gender breakdown of the audiences for these two films, which might help show who was coming.) What’s sad is that at a time when over 90% of Hollywood films are directed by men, the failure to bring out crowds to these films directed by women can only make it more difficult to see that imbalance corrected. Two of this year’s best reviewed films are directed by women (Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker and Jane Campion’s Bright Star), but neither of them will shatter any box office records.

But more than just being about larger trends, it’s a shame that people aren’t going to see these films. The Hurt Locker is easily one of the best films of 2009, and it is absolutely thrilling. It’s wonderfully acted, and has more tension and excitement than any film I can remember seeing recently. Whip It isn’t a great film, but it is a good one. It is incredibly likable (an underrated quality) and very well acted. Ellen Page’s performance simply blew me away. I enjoyed her in Juno and Smart People, but I had never before appreciated the subtlety, range, and power she brings to a role that most young screen actors would play for charm and melodrama. You expect the great performances that Marcia Gay Harden and Daniel Stern give, but Barrymore brought something wonderful out of Page, Alia Shawkat, and Kristen Wiig. The film respects its actors, and subsumes all other aspects of filmmaking to draw us into these performances, which are worth it. It’s an incredibly good film, and one worth seeing.