If I Ruled the World: My Picks of the Year

I think you meant Carey Mulligan...

          Yes, it's the week of Oscar nominees and Oscar gripes. Nobody got what they deserved (besides Moneyball and Rooney Mara) and, yes, it's all political and self-congratulatory. What did we expect? This is the 84th time we've gotten nominations. After 84 times of being burned, who should we even be mad at? If film awards were really for the most artistically daring and skillfully presented works, what would this year really look like?

        Well, have no fear. I'm taking this awards season into my own hands. These are the real winners, here (In my opinion, obviously.) I ain't got the politics. 

       Also, before we start, I should note that I have not yet seen The Artist, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, A Separation, Shame, and Albert Nobbs. 

Let's get this show on the road. 

Best Female Supporting Performance

          

          Jessica Chastain has had an incredible year in film. She was the embodiment of grace in Terrence Malick's Tree of Life, a woman trying her best to be the embodiment of grace in The Help, and the best supporting performance of the year in Take Shelter. While Chastain's many performances could have all ended up on this list, I choose Take Shelter for its high demands. Chastain had to act against the mighty tower of superhuman skill that is Michael Shannon. And she completely stole the show. Her performance is powerful and honest, and by far the best supporting performance of the year. 

Other Nominees:

Charlotte Gainsbourg in Melancholia

Carey Mulligan in Drive

Shailene Woodley in The Descendants

Chloe Moretz in Hugo

Best Male Supporting Performance

          John Hawkes terrified audiences everywhere in last year's Winter's Bone, and I was eager to see what came next. And boy, did he deliver. Hawkes is mesmerizing in Martha Marcy May Marlene. I believe everything he says as if I'm one of his devotees in the film's cult. Hawkes is one of those rare performers that can say everything he needs to say with a look. Here's hoping he continues down this line of terrific script choices. 

Other Nominees: 

Patton Oswalt in Young Adult

Jonah Hill in Moneyball

Albert Brooks in Drive

Ryan Gosling in Crazy Stupid Love

Best Screenplay

          Say what you will about Diablo Cody's other endeavors, Juno and Jennifer's Body. Talk about her sentimentality, or her reluctance to break free of a certain style over substance, or her "quirky" dialogue. But when you see Young Adult, I promise that you will be blown away. This is some of the most mature and confident writing I've seen in a very long time. Cody's film, inexplicably marketed as a comedy, is one of the saddest movies I have ever seen in my life. Stripped from the screenplay is any of the charm, the quirk, the smugness of her previous work. All we are left with is a lonely, depressed alcoholic trying to come to terms with her meaninglessness. The work is dark, haunting, melancholy, and excellent. One of the best screenplays in a long time. And absolutely what Sofia Coppola wishes she could do, but clearly can't. 

Other Nominees: 

Aaron Sorkin and Steve Zaillian, Moneyball

Sean Durkin, Martha Marcy May Marlene

Lars Von Trier, Melancholia

Jeff Nichols, Take Shelter

Dan Fogelman, Crazy Stupid Love

Best Cinematography

         

          Call it boring, pretentious, endless, rambling, or silly. On some days I'd agree with you. But take one look at any frame of this fantastic film, and you'll see that Emmanuel Lubezki's work in The Tree of Life is nothing short of miraculous. This is the most beautiful movie I have ever seen. Any screenshot of this movie could be framed on my wall as a perfect piece of art. Seeing this movie in the theater was one of the greatest movie experiences of my life, if only for those amazing creation shots. 

Other Nominees:

Manuel Alberto Caro, Melancholia

Jody Lee Lipes, Martha Marcy May Marlene

Janusz Kaminski, The Adventures of TinTin

Newton Thomas Sigel, Drive

Wally Pfister, Moneyball

Bob Richardson, Hugo

Alwin H. Kuchler, Hanna

Best Leading Female Performance

          Kirsten Dunst blew me away in Lars Von Trier's elegant, devastating Melancholia. Every second with her on screen is electric, dynamic, fascinating. Dunst, who I've never really thought much of as an actor before this film, has officially solidified herself as one of my favorites. With just one movie. She's that good, here. Dunst takes great material and makes it excellent. I love her performance in this movie. 

Other Nominees: 

Elizabeth Olsen in Martha Marcy May Marlene

Rooney Mara in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Charlize Theron in Young Adult

Viola Davis in The Help

Best Leading Male Performance 

         

           Michael Shannon's performance in Take Shelter is not only my favorite performance, of any kind, all year, but it is one of my favorite performances of all time. He is so convincing, so scary, so effortlessly terrifying in this role that I will have a hard time seeing him as anything else. Shannon works with his eyes, his body language, and silence to craft an intense and emotional performance that is unlike anything I have ever seen. Go see this movie. Now. Michael Shannon is unbelievable. 

Other Nominees:

Ryan Gosling in Drive

Brad Pitt in Moneyball

George Clooney in The Descendants

Asa Butterfield in Hugo

Best Director

          Nicolas Winding Refn had already made a name for himself with Bronson, the Pusher trilogy, and Valhalla Rising before his outstanding Drive, but nothing could have prepared me for what he did with the film. The material itself is quite barebones and minimalistic -- the screenplay based on a novella of the same name that consists mostly of interior monologue. But Reft, after meeting with Ryan Gosling and listing to REO Speedwagon, found a way to make the film something more. With impressionistic cinematography, long takes of silence punctuated by unspeakable violence, and performances from some of the best actors working today, Refn turned Drive into the must see movie of the year. The style, the performances, the soundtrack, the story. Everything works, here. And it's because of Refn's skill as a filmmaker that it all came together so well. 

Other Nominees:

Lars Von Trier, Melancholia

Sean Durkin, Martha Marcy May Marlene

Steven Spielberg, The Adventures of TinTin

Kelly Reichardt, Meek's Cutoff

Martin Scorsese, Hugo

Bennett Miller, Moneyball

Joe Wright, Hanna

Best Film of the Year

          Despite his insistence that he's a Naze. Despite his inability to have a charming persona in public, Lars Von Trier really is one of the great living directors. Dancer in the Dark, Breaking the Waves, Antichrist, Dogville, and Europa are all masterpieces. And then, even further up the spectrum, there is Melancholia. This is the movie Trier has been trying to make for over twenty years, and he has finally done it. It has his dark humor, his knack for pulling incredible performances from his female stars, his gorgeous cinematography, his ever-present need for some kind of gimmick (another planet in the sky!), and signs of his devastating depression. Melancholia is a near-perfect movie. The best film of the year. 

Other Nominees: 

Drive

Young Adult 

Moneyball

The Tree of Life

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Take Shelter

The Adventures of TinTin

Hugo

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

The Descendants

Crazy Stupid Love

Insidious 

Hanna

Who are some of your picks for the year? Let me know in the comments or on Facebook!

Movie Review: Melancholia

          It's another week, and it's another review of an apocalyptic film that deals with crippling mental disorders. However, unlike last week's Take Shelter, which had fun playing with our perceptions of what's real or what's imagined, Lars Von Trier's take is decidedly less subtle.

        Melancholia is the second film in what I can only imagine to be the most devastating film trilogy of all time. Of course, Trier does not make trilogies in the literal sense, but he always works in threes stylistically and thematically. His most famous "trilogy" is the Golden Heart Trilogy, consisting of Breaking The Waves, his breakout masterpiece, The Idiots, his most unwatchable film, and Dancer in the Dark, a film that makes my tear ducts hate me. These three films are called the Golden Heart Trilogy because each movie's protagonist is mentally incapable of rational thought, yet they are overwhelmingly loving and generous to others. Each film ends with the almost Christ-like protagonist suffering a terrible fate.

       His other trilogies, while more loosely connected, also share similar themes. He has a paranoid detective trilogy from the late '80's and early '90's that shared many stylistic qualities, but his writing was not yet as unified and mature as it has become. His Dogville trilogy, which as of this review is not yet finished, shares the same protagonist through the films, but very different thematic material.

      The trilogy he is working on now, beginning with the much misinterpreted Antichrist, is built around the philosophy that there is nothing worth loving in this world. The protagonists in both Antichrist and Melancholia deal with a depression that makes them immobile. Charlotte Gainsbourg's She in Antichrist is sent into her depression because she feels responsible for her son's accidental death. Her suffering has a concrete cause, a catalyst, that the audience can relate to and sympathize with.

      Kirsten Dunst's Justine in Melancholia does not have such a good excuse. Of course, this does not make her depression any less serious, or real, but it does put the audience in a strange position. Unlike She, who is constantly reporting the reasons behind her feelings, Justine remains silent on the subject. When she does speak, she is lashing out against the people who are controlling her life. She is a character who almost defies sympathy. She is a box we can't open, just like the people in our lives who really suffer from this disease.

     The film begins with a wedding,  Justine's wedding, which has been meticulously planned by her sister, Claire, and we quickly realize that Justine is hiding a deep depression behind her smile. She constantly finds reasons to escape the house, the spotlight, her sister, her new husband. She is suffocated by the ritual of the wedding, by the people who surround her. She doesn't want any of it and she doesn't know how to tell them.

One of the first shots of the film

     Okay, I lied. The film actually begins, as Antichrist does, with a beautifully shot, slow-motion prologue. In the opening shot, Justine has electricity shooting from her fingers and Claire is running across a golf course, sinking into the grass, holding her son. A giant planet is looming over Earth, twenty times its size, sucking the atmosphere into its oceans. And then Melancholia, the titular planet, smashes into Earth, exploding it.

    We get all of this before a single line of dialogue is spoken. Just a few extraordinarily staged shots (most of which can be spotted in the trailer) and one terrifying vision of the end of the world.

    And then the wedding starts. Tens of characters are introduced, not unlike the very best Robert Altman films of the early seventies, and something weird happens. For the first time in a Lars Von Trier film, I had a lot of fun. There is humor and warmth to the first half of this film. Apart from, you know, the destruction of the planet. John Hurt plays a lovable grandfather, Keifer Sutherland plays an arrogant, rich scientist who is trying to please his unpleasable sister, Udo Kier plays a tragically underutilized wedding planner, Stellan Skarsgaard plays a hilariously forthright advertising agent, and the list goes on. The characters are all written quite well, and the scenes often play like the very best sections of Nashville.

     It's a little stunning how warm and funny the first half of the film really is, considering how dark and nihilistic the films final half becomes. This tonal shift is placed almost completely on Dunst's performance, which is, I have to say, remarkable. I have never really seen true talent in Dunst before. She's passable, but I've mostly written her off as beautiful and one-note. But here, she is really doing something special. She is given the almost impossible task of carrying the ridiculous ambition of Von Trier's script, which includes tens of characters, an apocalyptic, science-fiction plot, and wild tone shifts between light-hearted comedy and deeply moving chamber drama.

      I'm not sure how Trier knew she could do it, but she can. And not only is her performance adequate for the film, it's really one of the more nuanced and profound performances I've seen in quite some time. Meryl Streep might be the queen of impersonation and accents, but Kirsten Dunst is the one to beat during this year's awards season. Her performance is stunning.

      The other performers do a good job, particularly Charlotte Gainsbourg, who is relegated to playing what is essentially the audience. Justine's brick wall of emotion is so indecipherable that Trier had to add a character who substitute's all of Justine's emotions for us.

     For the last couple of decades, Lars Von Trier has been writing and directing films that show us exactly what he is afraid of. He is famously scared of everything, having never ridden an airplane in his life, or gone overseas, or even left Europe. He has attempted suicide, accepted Hitler into his heart, and forced Bjork to quit acting, and yet he continues on in his quest to make the world's bleakest movie. I thought that maybe Antichrist, in all of its excruciating, violent, and upsetting glory, was the end result of this quest.

    I was wrong.

   Melancholia is. And it is also the most brilliant movie of his career.


I give Melancholia 9/10 electric fingers

[Note: One small problem I had with the film is that Claire and Justine are sisters, yet one of them has a French-British accent and one sounds like she's from Maryland. Their parents are both British, as well as pretty much everybody else in the movie who isn't Keifer Sutherland. But I got over it.]