1943 - Madame Curie

Well, I mentioned the possibility of having to change the next year of review and, indeed, circumstances now require that I do just that. My plan to see The Apartment at the TCM Classic Film Festival was thwarted. It seems too many festival pass holders had the same idea so there was no room for any extras. Fortunately, the festival screens several movies at once, so Kat and I hopped over to one of the smaller venues instead to catch another Best Picture nominee from a different year.

So, we'll come back to 1960 another time, but for now, we begin our review of the Academy's nominated films of 1943...

Madame Curie
Director:
Mervyn LeRoy
Screenplay:
Paul Osborn and Paul H. Rameau
(based on the book by Eve Curie)
Starring:
Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, Henry Travers, Albert Bassermann, Robert Walker, C. Aubrey Smith, Dame May Whitty, Victor Francen, Elsa Bassermann, Reginald Owen, Van Johnson, Margaret O'Brien
Academy Awards:
7 nominations
0 wins

In late 19th century Paris, Marie Sklodowska (Garson) is completing her doctorate at the Sorbonne and is in need of some lab space. When she is introduced to physicist Pierre Curie (Pidgeon), he agrees for her to work alongside him. The two share a love of science, which soon turns into a love of each other. Together, they run experiments in order to discover what Marie theorises is a new previously unknown radioactive element.

As a science enthusiast, I'm not deterred by films set in academia but I imagine that such scientific themes could be uninteresting for some. Madame Curie, however, cleverly borrows from other less boring genres to create an engaging story in which science is really just the backdrop. First, the picture is a somewhat traditional boy-meets-girl romance with fleeting glances and bashful repartee. Then, it's a suspense drama as the two lovebird scientists attempt to discover a new mysterious element.

As such, the science is occasionally portrayed in a simple manner, which I suppose is a necessity given the rather complex principles involved. But by incorporating those aforementioned genres, it's always compelling. So when Pierre and Marie have their first in-depth scientific discourse, the concepts they discuss may be difficult for a lay audience to comprehend, but the mutual fondness they both have for chemistry is clear and we watch as the sparks fly. Or when Marie demonstrates her investigation of pitchblende to Pierre by testing its composition in an electrometer, it's a struggle to understand what's actually going on in scientific terms, but the suspense permeating the scene as the experiment unfolds is truly captivating.

Then again, perhaps this method of pushing the science into the background goes a little too far when, on occasion, the renowned scientists appear to miss the absolute obvious. They spend years breaking down the same eight tons of pitchblende in the hopes of extracting the elusive element that they've now named radium. But in a fit of incompetence, they dismiss the stain that remains in their mortar after all the other elements have been removed. Um, maybe the stain is the radium? To be fair, later that night, they return to the lab and stare excitedly at the glowing radiation (pictured), but it took them long enough to figure it out. (By the way, I think I now know what's in that briefcase in Pulp Fiction.)

This is the 1940s so there is definitely some melodramatic acting on display - probably a result of the melodramatic dialogue - but it isn't constant and it nonetheless remains fun and engaging. Greer Garson is fantastic in the title role, which earned her a Best Actress nomination from the Academy. In opposition to the out-dated stereotypes during her era, Marie Curie is portrayed as supremely intelligent and confident, a genuinely strong role model. As her husband and collaborator, Walter Pidgeon - who, incidentally, also played Garson's husband in the previous year's Best Picture winner Mrs. Miniver - also received recognition in the Best Actor category for a droll performance of a neurotic but affable man. Also of note is Robert Walker in a funny and bright role as Pierre's lab assistant. And Henry Travers and Dame May Whitty both deliver memorably witty turns as Pierre's parents. Interestingly, Travers and Whitty, along with Reginald Owen, also appeared in Mrs. Miniver. That's no less than five principal actors in common with Madame Curie. Quite the repertory company.

Best Picture of 1996

In sharp contrast to the last year of review, this one has gone from first review to verdict in under two weeks. I haven't managed that in a very long time. I can't guarantee this will last, but let's continue to ride the wave, shall we? Here now are my thoughts on these five fine films.

The nominees for Best Picture of 1996 are:

• The English Patient
• Fargo
• Jerry Maguire
• Secrets and Lies
• Shine

Interestingly, four of these pictures are independent movies, produced outside of the studio system. That correlates well with the fact that many of them were helmed by writer/directors. I don't have official statistics at hand, but I suspect it's relatively unusual for 80% of the nominees to fit that category. Additionally, all five pictures feature some brilliant ensemble acting, so all in all, it's a tough bunch to separate.

I genuinely liked each of these films so there's no sense in naming a least favourite. But in order to make my way to a most favourite, I suppose I have to eliminate something first. That honour goes to Shine, but as I said, it's not because I didn't like it. I just didn't like it as much as I liked the others. I saw both The English Patient and Secrets and Lies when they were first released, and I don't think early-20s me appreciated them then as much as pushing-40 me did the second time around. Nonetheless, they too will be set aside for the purposes of this verdict.

Now that I've unpatriotically excluded the Australian and British films, I'm left with two American films, either of which could easily stand as my favourite. As I entered into this year of review, I fully expected that Jerry Maguire would win out, based on my prior fondness for the polished, inspirational and fun movie. And while that fondness has not diminished, the quirkiness of Fargo just tickled my fancy a tad more this time around, along with its fantastic cast and captivating story. Hence, Fargo officially becomes my favourite Best Picture nominee from 1996.

Best Picture of 1996
Academy's choice: The English Patient	Matt's choice: Fargo

Your choice:

Chime in with your favourite in the poll above or the comments below. Next up, we again move to a year that has been chosen exclusively due to the convenience of a local screening. The TCM Classic Film Festival has just begun here in Los Angeles and there are numerous Best Picture nominees on offer. The current plan is to attend a screening of The Apartment this weekend at the world-famous Grauman's Chinese Theatre, with Shirley MacLaine in attendance, so 1960 will be our next year of review.

And the nominees for Best Picture of 1960 are:

• The Alamo
• The Apartment
• Elmer Gantry
• Sons and Lovers
• The Sundowners

Of course, this is all dependent on me getting in to the screening. Since I don't want to fork out the hundreds and hundreds of dollars for a festival pass, I'll be taking a chance on buying an individual ticket on the day of the screening. So don't be surprised if the next year of review ends up being something else entirely...

1996 - Secrets and Lies

After an early morning trip to the airport, Kat and Charlie are back home, with my in-laws in tow. As everyone attempts to recover from their jet lag - and at 13 months, Charlie doesn't know if it's day or night, the poor little guy - I managed to write up my thoughts on the last film of this year of review.

Our final contender for the 1996 Best Picture prize is...

Secrets and Lies
Director:
Mike Leigh
Screenplay:
Mike Leigh
Starring:
Timothy Spall, Brenda Blethyn, Phyllis Logan, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Claire Rushbrook
Academy Awards:
5 nominations
0 wins

After her adopted mother passes away, London optometrist Hortense Cumberbatch (Jean-Baptiste) - probably not related to Benedict - decides to track down her birth mother. As a black woman, she is understandably surprised to discover that her mother is Cynthia Purley (Blethyn), a white woman who, despite a good heart, has the smarts and social graces of a small puppy. Cynthia and Hortense slowly develop a camaraderie but Cynthia baulks at introducing Hortense to her other daughter, Roxanne (Rushbrook), an ungrateful council worker. Eventually, however, Cynthia invites Hortense to a family gathering, hosted by her somewhat estranged brother, portrait photographer Maurice (Spall), and his wife Monica (Logan). It is at this soiree that the dysfunctional family's secrets and lies are finally exposed.

At first, Secrets and Lies comes across a little like a soap opera, and given the title, that's perhaps appropriate. The secrets and lies in this family are indeed of soap opera quality: life-changing and nothing less. But once you accept each character's predicament, the shades of soap opera fade away and you're left with quite an emotional ride. Writer/director Mike Leigh allows his audience to really absorb these people's lives by keeping an easy pace and often utilising lengthy and static shots in which the action (or mere dialogue, as the case may be) plays out in all its voyeuristic glory. The outdoor barbecue scene is particularly fascinating. There's tension, sure, which has been set up by the prior circumstances, but for the most part, the scene is just a seeming melange of very real and mundane conversations. It's captivating fly-on-the-wall stuff.

Due to the single-shot style, the entire picture would fall apart if the actors weren't engaging, but thankfully, the ensemble here is genuinely superb, working very well off each other. At the centre is a beautifully subdued performance by Timothy Spall (pictured), who many will recognise as Peter Pettigrew, but I first noticed him in a sarcastically memorable guest role in BBC's sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf, clearly showing his comedic chops are on par with his dramatic ability. As a woman trying to get some answers, Marianne Jean-Baptiste is intelligent and vulnerable, earning herself a Best Supporting Actress nod in the process. And yes, that's Downton Abbey's Mrs. Hughes, Phyllis Logan, turning in a strong performance as Spall's uptight wife. Stealing the show, though, is Brenda Blethyn with a powerhouse portrayal that could so easily have fallen into caricature. Cynthia is larger than life, for sure, but Blethyn roots her in reality, wearing her emotions on her sleeve. Secrets and Lies also received nominations for Mike Leigh's direction and screenplay, but sadly, the film walked away without any Oscars at all.

1996 - The English Patient

After three weeks away in Australia, my darling wife and child return to LA on Monday. While that will do wonders for my emotional well-being, I suspect it will also mean an end to this notable streak in blog posts. I'll cram one more movie in before they return, but I may not get a chance to write about it immediately. We shall see...

The Academy's choice is up next in our look at the Best Picture nominees of 1996...

The English Patient
Director:
Anthony Minghella
Screenplay:
Anthony Minghella
(based on the novel by Michael Ondaatje)
Starring:
Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Willem Dafoe, Kristin Scott Thomas, Naveen Andrews, Colin Firth, Julian Wadham, Jürgen Prochnow, Kevin Whately
Academy Awards:
12 nominations
9 wins, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Supporting Actress (Binoche)

In the war-torn Italian countryside near the end of World War II, nurse Hana (Binoche) tends to a severe burn victim (Fiennes) with an English accent and a horrible case of amnesia. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn that our English patient is actually László de Almásy, a Hungarian cartographer who was helping to map the Sahara for the Royal Geographical Society in the months leading up to the war. The expedition is joined by English couple Geoffrey and Katharine Clifton (Firth and Scott Thomas), but during one of Geoffrey's many absences, Almásy and Katharine begin an affair, which to say the least, causes emotions to run high for everyone involved.

It's not difficult to understand why the Academy bestowed its top honour on The English Patient. It's exactly the sort of epic they love: romance, danger, sweeping landscapes. With a tight script, spectacular visuals and expressive performances, it truly is an example of filmmaking at its finest. That said, it may not be to everyone's taste. While it would be hard to ignore the extraordinary artistry that writer/director Anthony Minghella has crafted, I could certainly understand if it didn't strike a chord with all who see it. Maybe I'm even talking about myself here. I'd be hard pressed to pinpoint why exactly, but I can't shake the feeling that I didn't love this film as much as I should have, considering what a brilliant accomplishment it is. Perhaps it's just a matter of taste, but even that seems unfair somehow because I really don't have anything bad to say about the film. It's almost as if I'm trying to convince myself that I didn't like it, when the truth of it is that I actually found it incredibly entertaining on almost every level. Human brains are fickle indeed.

As potential validation of its brilliance, it swept the awards on Oscar night, winning nine in total. Not too surprising since its costume and set design featured both period and foreign elements, two predictors of Oscar success. And where Fargo's cinematography was assisted by blankets of white snow, The English Patient exploits its blankets of yellow sand to exquisite advantage.

The cast, too, are exceptional, many of them using this film as a stepping stone to even greater things. Ralph Fiennes is solid as the charming yet stubborn adventurer who, when suffering from third-degree burns, looks uncannily like another heavily made-up Fiennes character. I also immensely enjoyed Kristin Scott Thomas, who is very fluid and available as the emotionally torn lover. Earning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, Juliette Binoche has the purest heart in the film, although there was perhaps one too many sudden moments of bursting into tears. The always-watchable Colin Firth is as affable as ever (until his final moments, of course). And that's a pre-Lost Naveen Andrews (pictured) as the shirtless, luscious-haired bomb defuser.

1996 - Fargo

Last night, I had the pleasure of attending a pub trivia night here in Los Angeles. Pub trivia is a staple of weeknight life in Australia and, in fact, I was even a pub trivia host for quite some time back home, but a mixture of a scarcity of time and a scarcity of venues hosting such events has meant I haven't been to one in rather a long time. I'd like to think my movie knowledge helped our team to second place, although I let my teammates down when I represented them in the speed round and failed under pressure to name a movie beginning with the letter N. The shame.

Now, let's take a look at another Best Picture contender from 1996...

Fargo
Director:
Joel Coen
Screenplay:
Ethan & Joel Coen
Starring:
Frances McDormand, William H. Macy, Steve Buscemi, Harve Presnell, Peter Stormare, John Carroll Lynch
Academy Awards:
7 nominations
2 wins, including Best Actress (McDormand) and Best Original Screenplay

Car salesman Jerry Lundegaard (Macy) hatches a plan to end his financial woes by having his wife kidnapped and pocketing the ransom money that his father-in-law, Wade (Presnell), will be forced to fork out. Jerry hires unlikely criminal duo Carl and Gaear (Buscemi and Stormare) to carry out the deed but things go awry when Gaear goes rogue and shoots a state trooper and two passersby on a barren country road outside of Brainerd, Minnesota. While Jerry and the kidnappers bicker over how to sort out the mess, Brainerd's police chief, Marge Gunderson (McDormand), takes charge of the investigation into the multiple homicides and her congenial persistence soon gives Jerry cause for major concern.

Fargo opens with a caption informing us that, while the names have been changed, everything that is about to occur actually happened. I don't know whether it was because of the film's current well-known status in pop culture or because of the Coen brothers' reputation for offbeat stories or maybe it was just because I'd seen it before, but I didn't trust that caption for a second. A true story? Really? Turns out my disbelief is only partially justified. The Coens did indeed grab their inspiration from a real-life wood chipper incident and used an amalgam of other criminal events, but the specifics of the plot and the idiosyncrasies of character are entirely fictional.

Reportedly, they inserted the opening caption in order to manipulate the audience into accepting the somewhat far-fetched elements of the story. For me, however, I'll willingly accept any plot detail, whether it's appropriated from reality or not, as long as it's within the film's verisimilitude. And Fargo's verisimilitude is never broken. Yes, these events are implausible and occasionally coincidental, but all are set up convincingly and are always engaging. In fact, the plot is excitingly intricate with many captivating and unpredictable twists and turns that I simply didn't even care about the authenticity of it all. It's just brilliant story-telling, plain and simple, irrespective of whether it really happened or not.

The film's style is unmistakably Coen brothers, a curious blend of whimsy and intrigue, culminating in that tense climactic (and now iconic) wood chipper scene. And in keeping with that kooky style, Fargo features a barrage of mildly vexing regional accents, most of them coupled with Minnesota nice, a sort of perpetual politeness that lends a pleasing air of incongruity to an otherwise seedy crime story. The experience is enhanced further by some decidedly beautiful cinematography by frequent Coen-collaborator Roger Deakins, who makes the snowy Minnesotan landscapes seem like another character all its own. The Academy shortlisted him for his work on this film, but sadly he has never won a golden statue, despite a total of 10 nominations over the years, five of them for Coen brothers films.

A magnificent cast is yet another element contributing to Fargo's quirky atmosphere. Steve Buscemi is perfectly cast as Carl, the inept yet indignant criminal who is regularly described as generally odd-looking.
Earning an Oscar for Best Actress, Frances McDormand delivers an appealing portrayal of a small-town police chief. Marge may seem simple and straightforward on the surface, but McDormand augments that unassuming nature with a deep sense of urgency and determination when required. My favourite, though, is William H. Macy (pictured) as the desperate and misguided car salesman turned wannabe mastermind criminal. Macy inhabits Jerry's nervous disposition to naturalistic perfection. His sketchy smiles attempt to cover up his internal struggle, but the cracks are showing and it is delightful to watch.