Here are the just-released stills for Scorsese’s The Irishman
I am imagining a Best Director race where Martin Scorsese, Bong Joon-Ho, Sam Mendes, Quentin Tarantino and Taika Waititi are facing off. That’s before you even get to Noah Baumbach, Greta Gerwig, the Safdie brothers, Todd Phillips, James Mangold, Fernando Meirelles, Marielle Heller, Trey Edward Shults.
The Irishman – a mafioso reflects on his life in crime and the meaning of his life.
Jojo Rabbit – a battle for good and evil inside the heart and mind of a 10-year-old German boy near the end of WWII.
Parasite – a clash between upper and lower class families goes from bad to worse in a domestic pressure cooker.
1917 – heroism during WWI. and bravura directing captured ALL IN ONE CONTINUOUS TAKE.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – finishing off a revenge trilogy that tops off rewrites of Hitler and slavery with the Manson murders.
Marriage Story – the breakdown of a marriage and build up of a friendship involving the care of a child.
Little Women – Little Women retold for the upteenth time, but now through the eyes of Greta Gerwig.
Uncut Gems – insane hunt for one last fix.
Joker – a hollowed out super-villain isn’t just born that way. Some are chewed up and spit out by an America that leaves people behind. Indifference and neglect can breed monsters.
Ford V. Ferrari – about car racing but really about friendship and the art of achievement vs. the thirst for a trophy.
The Two Popes – the old way of corruption that benefits the rich vs. the new way of bring help to those in need.
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood – learning the art of forgiveness from a wise sage and beloved guru Mr. Rogers.
Waves – how a few bad decisions can wreck a life. And how only love and forgiveness can mend the torn pieces back together.
Films never play in a vacuum. What is happening around us in our country and around the world will impact how a film plays, whether it has resonance for right now, or whether now is not the right time for it but that years from now it is picked back up, cleaned off and re-evaluated. Time decides, friends, not Rotten Tomatoes or the Oscars.
Is this a time of hopelessness? Is it a time for forgiveness? Who we are right now will impact how we view the films we see. It will also determine what people WANT to see versus what they are obligated to see versus what they will avoid seeing. At the moment, Twitter still reigns supreme in driving the conversation, at least with the way Film Twitter dissects movies and fuels the feedback loop that bounces off of it from social media. Think pieces, hot takes, and highfalutin analysis will all help shape the narrative for the coming season.
How does anyone know if a movie is actually good without the assist of time to let our feelings marinate? You can’t really know. If it reaches you, if it provokes you, if you can’t stop thinking about it. If it challenges you – or even if it just really entertains the shit out of you, usually that is how we define a good movie, even a great movie.
So who decides? It starts with the film festival crowds. We’re still in the thick of it, with the first reactions to The Irishman dropping Friday. At some point, other films will begin to screen as we head towards the last of these events, the AFI, that is able to launch films into the race. But at the end of the day, we’re talking thousands of people and lots of word of mouth.
People always need a reason to vote for something. That reason is sometimes straight up emotional impact. Jojo Rabbit will benefit greatly from having an uplifting ending that sends you out of the theater full of light, love, and hope. Parasite will benefit from being one hell of a wild ride that packs a gut-wrenching emotional punch towards the end. To name a film in a slot on the nominations ballot, a voter has to be driven by passion. Either it’s true love, or it’s strong admiration. A ‘meh” response isn’t going to be a great motivator towards getting a film in for nominations. There has to be a specific reason, even if that reason comes down to collective acceptance of a film that made a shit ton of money – and so people think, yeah, that one caught fire, so it deserves recognition.
There are quite a few films left to see – though everyone in Cannes has seen Joker, I myself have not gotten the chance (despite numerous begging pleas to the studio). But of the lot mentioned above, it remains the most controversial. People will be asked to take sides and those sides won’t have anything to do with the skill of the lead, or the directing or the writing. It will be solely to do with the social impact the film is thought to have. Keep in mind that many years from now only the art of the thing will remain, as it does with Catcher in the Rye and Taxi Driver. I suspect, not knowing anything about a film I haven’t seen, that one day Joker will be viewed as a more truthful reflection of some of American life in 2019 than a lot of other films that succeed this year. Why? Because it exists in the darkness of so much we know is true right now. Not just the superhero phenom run amok, but the idea of isolation, of fantasy projection, and of course, of violent retribution.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Parasite and Joker are all about retribution, payback, punishment. What happens to people when pushed to the brink? While Tarantino’s film is not told from the Manson point of view, the Joker character sort of reflects what Manson exploited back in 1969. Scorsese’s mafia films also depict characters who live on the outside, on the fringe, where extreme violence is the name of the game. We are not just a violent society, we are a violent species. If there is one thing that humans have always been it’s violent. To animals, to each other. When a consensus votes on films they tend to not pick those that tell that darker truth about us, but rather the beautiful lie that we are good people doing good things.
Part of solving the puzzle of 2020 Oscar race is going to be solving the puzzle of American life, as we figure out who we are right now. Who we are online and who we are in real life. Then we will know what films will most resonate.
We’re not really thinking about Best Picture winners right now, but only nominees. And because we haven’t seen all of the films it’s nearly impossible to make a definitive call. But for what it’s worth, depending on how the campaigns go, I still think you follow the director. True, Picture and Director are splitting more often than not now but you can get pretty close if you follow the director (though that was not as true last year).
These five seem to be strongest right now. I’d rank them this way:
Tarantino
Waititi
Scorsese
Mendes
Joon-Ho
Next tier:
Baumbach
Gerwig
Phillips
Mangold
Meirelles
Safdie brothers
We’ll see how or if that changes in the coming weeks.