The central theme of many of 2013’s best and most important films is survival – in both literal and metaphoric ways. 12 Years a Slave, Gravity, Captain Phillips, All is Lost, and Dallas Buyers Club are all about a protagonist’s literal struggle to survive. While other films dip more figuratively into survival. In Before Midnight, the marriage must survive. In The Butler, survival depends on taking a job that goes nowhere to support a family’s survival, and in Inside Llewyn Davis the dream of success struggles to survive amid the unbearable pull of futility. In Nebraska, a son is trying to help preserve the memories of his aging father who is quickly losing them. In Labor Day, it’s love itself that strives to stay alive.
In the heart-stopping frames of 12 Years a Slave, a free man played by Chiwetel Ejiofor is thrust into bondage. He can’t be freed from the color of his skin and the financial opportunity he represents to criminals is too tempting for them to resist. We follow Solomon Northup as he is bought and sold, and then must learn to live as a slave to somehow escape and return to his family. In the film he says “I don’t want to survive. I want to live.” That sums up the theme of Gravity, too. Sandra Bullock’s Ryan Stone’s desire to live isn’t just to keep herself alive so she can come back to earth and wait to die. Her desire isn’t to survive. She wants to LIVE.
Bullock’s character must find the strength within herself to accomplish this wish. Director Alfonso Cuaron’s choice to have a woman star in this film brings up broader notions of what it means to be a woman in our culture. It isn’t just gravity that pulls us physically down, but actresses begin to age out of Hollywood, and the male gaze at the same time. The metaphor in Gravity has everything to do with the star of the film being a woman. Our survival is not universal, but specific because of what we are born with. You’d think, given Hollywood’s typical treatment of older women, that we might as well just pack it in at about age 50. But, you know, there is more to us that our allure as one of the 31 flavors of the month. Maybe you might see this as Eat, Pray, Love territory. Gobbledegook seen by some men too embarrassed or too cavalier for them to relate. But here is a film that dares enter that sensitive mine field. Those men open to exploring what it might mean will come out the other side dazzled — a revelation to the very target demographic that has mostly selected out the inner world of the American female in film.
Bullock’s character isn’t just a woman looking for inner fulfillment. She is overcoming the very thing that defined her identity. It can’t really be revealed here because it’s a major spoiler. Still, it’s the kind of thing, the kind of pain, that can often render a woman obsolete in her own mind. That’s big stuff for a sci-fi film. In 2013.
In Captain Phillips and All is Lost we have two men at sea. One is a ship’s captain under siege by Somali pirates — a small band of barefoot teenagers trying to extort the big, bad, USA. Phillips, however, is not representative of our empire. He’s trying to command a cargo ship to bring aid to poverty-stricken countries like Somalia. The film represents the good and bad of our amassed power in the world. But there is no doubt that Captain Phillips has something worth surviving for on the other side of his struggle. Tom Hanks is marvelous as a man torn between becoming the US-identified enemy and relating to these kids he sees before him. Throughout, he’s trying to make sure everyone survives, not just himself. But you can’t fight America and win. It’s really about who has a dog in the fight — the size of that dog and its aggressiveness.
By direct contrast, JC Chandor’s All is Lost is about how much fight is left in the dog. It’s a more metaphysical look at survival — it has no such homeward angel. Don’t give up, that’s the moral of the story with all of these films but it is especially so, and beautifully delineated in All is Lost. Try this. Okay, that didn’t work. Try that. Where Life of Pi was a similar idea that put our faith in God front and center, All is Lost doesn’t factor in a higher power, but merely the agility of the human brain. Our adept adaptable intelligence remains our best weapon against the elements.
In Dallas Buyers Club Matthew McConaughey’s Ron Woodroof is using the same tenacious fight in the dog to work outside the system, to stubbornly ignore what authoritative voices are saying. With death nipping at his heels he simply refuses to die. He won’t let the AIDS virus take him until all is lost. He saved countless lives with his buyers club.
Why this, why now? We are at the twelve year mark of September 11, 2001, when everything we thought we could count on in America changed, maybe forever. The baby boomers are headed for old age. We are a culture afflicted by every fear and global catastrophe we could imagine. Super storms, incurable viruses, poisons in our food, radioactive oceans, pollution, cancers — and all the while we’re pumped full of anti-depressants to take the worry all away. Happiness is still the goal in America, the ultimate luxury. That we keep seeking satisfaction when we know we’ll never fully find it is tribute to our instincts — the resolute endurance of survival psychology.
If the Oscar race is usually about the one film that isn’t about the others, what are we to make of a year with so many important films? Will voters only want to reward movies that have that kind of heft to change our view of the world? Or will they flee from the more intensely serious films towards the easy favorite, the one that asks nothing of you but merely entertains you, down to the lowest common denominator? What film might that be? Well, The Monuments Men, for one. Its breezy nature, covered in a veneer of apolitical importance, with Clooney at the helm just might turn out to be the one relief from the hardcore nature of the others. But we don’t know yet because Clooney is punking the Oscar scene this year by selecting himself, and his film, out of early previews. Will this be one of those years when the Oscar race dramatically changes course at the 11th hour?
Since 2004, when Million Dollar Baby took the Oscar race by storm in the last act (though I think it played Toronto), all Best Picture winners have opened before festival season or during. So if any film that didn’t open in a festival setting wins it will be a big change in recent Oscar patterns. What also happened around 2003 was that Oscar changed their date, pushing the Oscars back a month. When that happened, the earlier the films got out there to run the gauntlet the better.
This week the post-festival Oscar coverage had 12 Years a Slave emerging as favorite to win the final vote at the Oscars. That would mean it would take the PGA, the DGA, maybe the SAG and then Oscar. It would be like Slumdog Millionaire or Return of the King, becoming an unequivocal winner. Brad Pitt would finally win an Oscar — for producing. History would be made. The Oscars will have made themselves relevant again by finally doing something daring.
But Gravity and Captain Phillips are giving 12 Years some heat as well. These three films are each as intense as filmmaking gets. They do not let you breathe for their entirety. And when you do, wow. All you can say is, wow.
How would or could any other film surpass them for the big win? Only by being the one that’s not like the others. We’re not quite there yet. But we have seen a year in film where the work is so utterly brilliant it will be hard to define any as best. They are all so good.
2013 will go down in film history as a record-breaking year for black directors. It will probably also match last year’s Best Picture success with many of the nominees making upwards of $100 million. The theme of survival is woven throughout. In its own way, that survival mirrors the film industry. The Oscar race is the only thing that provides a blood supply for great films anymore. We must all remember to pinch ourselves that this crazy industry has helped greenlight, fund and perpetuate films that are made “just to win awards.” Yes, it would be nice if there was still a market for daring films that don’t fit into the awards category, or the mainstream category but just exist for art’s sake. Perhaps the effect will be cumulative and eventually audiences will return again to enjoying movies not because they are winners but because they are simply so good.
Best Picture rankings right now:
1) 12 Years a Slave
2) Gravity
3) Captain Phillips
4) Nebraska
5) The Butler
6) Inside Llewyn Davis
7) Dallas Buyers Club
8) Labor Day
9) Fruitvale Station
10) All is Lost
Yet to land:
1) The Monuments Men
2) The Wolf of Wall Street
3) Rush
4) American Hustle
5) Saving Mr. Banks
6) Her