One of the films that is spreading via word of mouth, and flying under the radar nicely, is the Sundance offering Whiplash. Though the reviews out of Sundance did not really paint an accurate picture of how this movie affects audience, it is one to watch out for this season.
While Whiplash, starring Miles Teller and the Supporting Actor frontrunner, JK Simmons, is a bit hard to take at times, it operates on a level of sheer metaphor. It is as much a coming of age story as Boyhood and in fact, the two films could sit nicely side by side if you’d like to take the route that both are really about manhood, as in, becoming a “man.”
Since AO Scott’s magnificent piece about the end of adulthood, this theme seems fitting the times. What does it mean to become a man in 2014? In Boyhood, the young Ellar Coltrane must navigate being a sensitive artist growing up in the very macho Texas. You kind of keep waiting for something to knock him off track but it never happens.
In Whiplash, Miles Teller wants to be a legendary drummer and is pushed to unimaginable limits by a rather psychotic jazz orchestra teacher, JK Simmons. The thing about Whiplash, though, and perhaps I think this because I’m not becoming a man, is that it’s about art, to me. It’s about the desire to achieve something great, no matter what the cost. So universal is this template that I could see Whiplash playing as well with an all-female cast, or an all African American cast. To me, this is about success and what defines achievement.
What a thrill to watch a film where you have absolutely no idea where it’s going to go. While the template is kind of predictable, as in, these movies almost always end one way – but it doesn’t matter because it feels like a surprise as it unfolds. It reminds me of what a writing teacher once told me – people like stories that end the way they expect them to but are told in ways you don’t expect. Try not to read anything about Whiplash before seeing it and try not to be too hard on it in terms of language. I think there are hidden layers of subtext that go a long way towards explaining certain aspects of this film. I could see Whiplash in line for Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actor and Supporting Actor. I have no idea whether this will play out or not but it’s worth considering.
Whiplash is a film I think could do surprisingly well with the Academy, and smart of Anne Thompson at Indiewire to notice this way back when.
Another film that could do something that no one is looking at is Reese Witherspoon and her film The Good Lie. Not a critics’ movie but one that could hit Academy members The Blind Side style. Every so often a movie like this comes along that flies under the radar of people who think the Academy only votes for critically acclaimed films. If you can get enough of them in front of a crowd pleasing, moving film with a social message they’ll likely vote for it.
The Good Lie is being mostly shunned by Oscar pundits but it’s one to watch out for.
Speaking of flying under the radar, I’ve removed most of Get on Up’s Oscar contenders but I am rethinking this, especially in terms of the lead, Chadwick Boseman. I’m also wondering about that grade A cinemascore the film received and it being among the few films to come out this year with black actors in it. Like The Good Lie it is also a film that the critics mostly overlooked.
We know that much of the Oscar race is built on perception and that “buzz” (so-called) is shaped from this perception. None of it has anything to do with reality – it is simply what people are thinking at a given point in time. Years later people wonder: why did anyone pay attention to THOSE movies?
What other films do you think are flying under the radar right now that could pick up some traction? Not films that are coming out later but films that have already been seen.
