Awards Dump! 'Maestro,' 'Poor Things,' 'American Fiction,' 'Zone Of Interest'
#252: "Maestro," "Poor Things," "American Fiction," "Zone Of Interest"
Edition 252:
Hey movie lovers!
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This week: I’m trying to cram in as many of the awards movies as I can before the end of the year, hoping to sort out which ones are worth your time. One on Netflix, three in theaters.
Maestro
Bradley Cooper is the kind of guy who has always had it all. Movie star good looks AND an artist’s sensibility. The attention of the box office public AND the respect of the critics. The love of the bros (The Hangover), the hard-o’s (American Sniper) and the entire city of Philadelphia (Silver Linings Playbook). In recent years, the ability to act and write and produce AND direct.
Were jealousy not enough to stoke some resentment, what’s always bothered me about Cooper is his disguised ambition (this is why, to me, his perfect role will always be The Place Beyond The Pines). He’s just so…thirsty. The first time anyone saw him on camera he was sitting front row (of course) for “Inside The Actors Studio” to ask Robert De Niro a question about acting. “There was a moment, Mr. De Niro, when I noticed you….” It’s the type of question that would draw eye rolls if he were a journalist – a show-off question, designed not to learn but to impress.
Because of his talent and charm, he’s never found impressing all that difficult. Before directing A Star is Born, he kneeled at the foot of Clint Eastwood. Now, for his second directorial effort Maestro, he’s got Martin Scorcese AND Steven Spielberg on as executive producers. To hear Cooper tell it, Spielberg was developing the movie to direct himself before seeing Cooper on set of A Star is Born and telling him the job should be his. On talk shows and the awards campaign trail, which he plays so well, he presents these things with an aww shucks humility (literally crying at compliments from Spike Lee), even as he basks in the light of their halo effect.
The fact remains that one cannot possibly co-write, produce, direct and star in any movie without a healthy ego. And when the subject of each of his movies happens to be a narcissistic, Damaged Genius type whose flaws are (as Michael Scott might say) loving too much and trying too hard, it’s hard to see Maestro as anything other than autofiction.
The maestro in question here is Leonard Bernstein, a musical giant of the 20th century who was quite aware of his own Great Man bonafides. The movie highlights his career as both a internationally renown conductor and the composer of Broadway smash hits like West Side Story and On The Town, yet chooses to focus primarily in on his marriage to Felicia Montealegre, a rocky and complicated saga. Much like Napoleon, I can appreciate the idea of deconstructing the Great Man myth, it rings as a false note.
The movie soars in its scenes of Bernstein at work, displaying his genius. The scene of Cooper conducting Mahler’s second symphony is some of the best pure moviemaking of the entire year, proving both Cooper’s obvious talent as a director and performer, as well as his effort.
If this is the reason the movie exists, the fact that he would then bend the story around the female counterpart (aww shucks, she’s the real hero) is a false humility that actually damages the storytelling. This is by no fault of Felicia, played brilliantly by Carey Mulligan (one of the most consistently brilliant actors working today). Her character isn’t given much to do aside from fuss to Bernstein or fuss about him behind his back. Put bluntly, there wouldn’t and shouldn’t be a Felicia Bernstein movie on its own.
That leads to a wildly inconsistent experience of great moments and long stretches that drag. Cooper is, already, one of less than a dozen filmmakers in the entire world for whom their work looks and feels like big, important, capital “C” Cinema. His scenes carry the weight of a Scorcese or Spielberg, which is no small feat, and reason enough to sit through it.
But if you’re coming for story you’re going to be disappointed. The movie may be restricted by a faithful adherence to historical record, the way Napoleon was, and though I don’t know enough about the true events to say definitively, I came away asking the same questions. What was the point of that, or what was he trying to tell us? The movie opens with a quote perhaps meant to combat this, saying that great art is supposed to ask questions rather than give answers, but it didn’t give me enough to want to grapple with or think about after the fact.
Ultimately, the movie is hurt most by its proximity to last year’s Tar, a movie that is proving to be one of the most enduring of the past few years. Set in the same world, grappling with the same themes, anchored by similarly brilliant lead acting performances, Tar just does this story better and more interestingly on nearly every level. The only thing left to be seen with whether Cooper’s immense effort, and sly campaigning, can lead him to the Oscar stage in a way Cate Blanchett could not.
Poor Things
There’s irony in the fact that Barbie is the highest grossing movie of 2023 (THE definitive movie of the year) and Poor Things is lining up to be a serious awards contender, and the two basically have the exact same story. Emma Stone’s protagonist is basically Frankenstein, and much like her doll counterpart, enters the “real world” in a grown woman’s body with no knowledge of how society works. Whereas Gerwig’s social commentary starts from authenticity and then bends it almost all the way to satire, Yorgos Lanthimos starts from fantasy then more earnestly targets the human condition.
Anyone who has seen his other movies – The Lobster, The Favourite, The Killing Of the Sacred Deer – knows his penchant for eclectic characters and strange worlds, and this one is no exception, a sort of retro-futuristic mix of science fiction and turn of the 20th century society. The production is meticulous, and the quality obvious. Plus, he’s assembled a strong cast: Stone, Mark Ruffallo, Willem Dafoe, Ramy Youssef and Jerrod Carmichael, not to mention both of my rising stars to watch in Christopher Abbott and Margaret Qualley.
Stone may be the most commendable of all the female movie stars of her generation, consistently taking roles that are not only interesting but could be considered altogether risky. She’s a magnetic screen presence but also a surprising one, and here she’s stripped bare (quite literally) of all the glamour one might expect from an A-lister. Fair warning, the movie features a lot (like a lot) of sex scenes, and most not of the steamy variety.
This movie is a great example of the Academy’s “Overton Window” shifting over the course of the last five or so years. In the near past, this would be considered far too weird and idiosyncratic for awards consideration. Now, it seems like exactly what such bodies are looking for, a distinctive artistic vision that’s mildly provocative on the surface but underneath affirms the popular social messaging of the times. In this case, you go Frankenstein Barbie!
American Fiction
Comedies are not respected by awards bodies. A pure comedy, at least as “pure” as this, has really never been nominated for Best Picture. A voter might say it’s because comedies aren’t “about something,” but apparently it’s much more of an achievement to find new ways to make computer-generated images of stuff blowing up than it is to make crowds of people laugh.
But aha! There’s a way to circumvent those unwritten rules. Find a keen cultural observer and make those jokes be about this country’s race problem. Now if you don’t respect it, YOU’RE the problem. Brilliant.
Writer/director Cord Jefferson’s story focuses on a novelist whose work is respected but doesn’t sell because it’s not “black enough.” As a joke, he writes horribly stereotypical book about gangsters and crack and absentee fathers, which gets gobbled up by the guilty white literary apparatus, calling it “authentic” and “brave.”
As cultural critique, the movie is whip smart and accusatory without being mean-spirited. It draws a very fine line about exploitation without outright dismissing the genre. And even more admirably, it heeds its own advice by filling out the movie with a touching family drama about dealing with aging parents and unrealized ambitions in a way that would’ve worked no matter what race the main characters are.
It’s a part finally worthy of Jeffrey Wright’s immense talents in the lead role, with a a handful of memorable side parts and a truly scene-stealing performance from Sterling K. Brown as Wright’s brother.
Of the movies I saw this week, it was clearly my favorite. But it’s obvious just from watching one the difference in production quality between this and a Maestro or Poor Things. It’s nontraditional, and I think that could leave it out in the cold. Where it counts — my running 2023 rankings — it’s sneaking into the back of the top 10.
Zone Of Interest
On the spectrum of art vs. entertainment, Jonathan Glazer’s Palme d’Or-runner-up Zone of Interest is certainly near the furthest end of the art side. Its power, and its message, takes place entirety outside the bounds of the movie’s frame, which is pointed toward the pedestrian lives and work of a German family living out in the country. It just so happens that it’s the 1940s, and the family’s house is just on the other side of the walls of the Aushwitz concentration camp, and the work is as commandant designing new ways to kill thousands of Jews.
When compared to Holocaust movies that have come before, this movie can be best thought of as what would happen in those imaginary worlds after the director yells cut. The German soldiers go home, where they have families and chores and aspirations and joys. Yes, the movie humanizes them, but masterfully dances the fine line of not empathizing by sprinkling in frequent reminders of the monstrosity they are carrying out.
If anything, the banality of it amplifies the tragedy. In the background of each serene scene we hear gunshots and screaming. At night we see the fires and smoke billowing from the chimneys. The characters don’t give it a second thought.
Setting out to tell that kind of story, it would be wholly inappropriate to put any kind of thriller or adventure plot. The movie fully commits to its bit, which makes it both more effective and less entertaining. On a scene-to-scene level it’s compelling, well-acted and composed with effective simplicity, yet it’s hard to recommend unless you’re in the mood for a moral reckoning.
On the whole, this joins a class of movies this year – including Killers of the Flower Moon, May December and others – that are really more about the viewers than the worlds of the movies themselves. When you’re watching you’re thinking about real life, not the characters. It’s not prohibitive for good movies, but it can feel at times like it’s preaching at me. The best kinds of movies show don’t tell, and we reach the conclusions on our own.