Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Days 455-456: Growing Paynes

In the last decade, one Best Picture nominee I had the most praise for was Sideways, a beautifully melancholy comedy drama from the pen of Alexander Payne. Oscar seemingly fell in love with Payne after that because both of his next two films were nominated in the Best Picture category.

Seven years after Sideways, Payne's next project was The Descendants; an adaptation of Kaui Hart Hemmings' book of the same name. Just like he did with Sideways, Payne won the Oscar for adapted screenplay this time sharing the award with his co-writers Jim Rash and Nat Faxon. The film itself is based around the life of Hawaiian lawyer Matt King, whose wife Elizabeth has recently been hospitalised following a boating accident. As a result of this, Matt is forced to become a proper father to his mischievous ten-year-old daughter Scottie and her troubled teenager sister Alexandra. Whilst trying to deal with his personal issues Matt is also involved with the sale of an expensive plot of land that was owned by his ancestors. As the lawyer, it's his job to trawl through the legal paperwork and make the ultimate decision whether he and his cousins should sell and to who. Events get even more complicated when Alex reveals that Elizabeth was cheating on Matt with smarmy real estate agent Brian Speer to the extent that she was about to ask him for a divorce. The film then follows Matt's quest to track down Brian, bond with his daughters and decide what to do with the land. At the film's heart is a story about the bonds between family which is represented both through Matt's relationship with his daughters and his decision regarding his ancestral land. I think that Payne and his co-writers did a good job at looking at a man who had essentially been passive all of his life and turn him into someone who had to be active. In a way this is the sort of film I would have a liked A Serious Man to be as Matt King is similar to the protagonist from the Coen Brothers' film. But, thanks in part to Payne's script, you grow to like Matt and his daughters as the film goes on.

A big part of why the film works is due to George Clooney's performance as Matt, in which he changed his image from the debonair film star. Elsewhere in the blog we've seen Clooney play everything from smooth-talking astronaut to intelligent fixer but The Descendants sees him alter his style. Matt is instead quite ineffectual at points and Clooney brilliantly displays his character's hopelessness especially in regards to raising his daughters and Elizabeth's situation. Despite altering his style, Clooney's vocals are still as silky as ever and they are well utilised to deliver several of the film's key monologues. I did feel at times as if Payne, Rash and Faxon were cheating at times by heaping a dollop of exposition onto our plates, but Clooney's delivery is so flawless that it doesn't really matter. Lending able support is Shailene Woodley, who earned a Golden Globe nomination and became a breakout star through her role as the damaged Alex. Woodley and Clooney share a believable chemistry and the scenes between their characters are thoroughly touching. One of my only issues was the fact that Alex had to be accompanied by the frankly useless Sid, a surfer dude who in my opinion served very little purpose. Due to the fact that The Descendants is filmed in and around Hawaii, The Descendants also has some great locations to work from and cinematographer Phedon Papamichael utilises these throughout the film. Further contributing to this theme is the Hawaiian music-heavy soundtrack which I found utterly pleasurable. Whilst The Descendants contains very little in the way of twists and turns it's a lovely little character study on the meaning of family. It also includes one of George Clooney's best performances to date and if you're worried that we haven't had enough of him yet then you're in luck because the next post is dedicated just to him.

But for now we skip two years into the future with Nebraska which, like Sideways, was another road trip film. Interestingly it was the first of Payne's films in which he wasn't actively involved with the screenwriting and instead the script came courtesy of Bob Nelson. Payne had been touted as the director of Nebraska for many years but it was only after completing The Descendants that he decided to work on the film. The key protagonist in the film is Woody Grant, an alcoholic man with two sons and an incredibly outspoken wife who believes he's come into a million dollars. In fact, Nelson establishes right from the start that Woody's money doesn't exist and in fact it's simply a scam set up by a magazine company. Nevertheless, Woody is determined to get to Lincoln, Nebraska to collect his winnings and his younger son David decides to accompany him. In my opinion, Nebraska is as much David's story as it is Woody's as his reason for the trip is to get away from his Montana hometown following his recent break-up. David is another classic Payne protagonist in that he is unlucky in love, has a lowly job as a hi-fi salesman and has a lot less success than his anchorman brother. Along the way David learns that Woody never really wanted children and that he really wasn't bothered about marrying his now wife Kate. The majority of the film's action is set around Hawthorne in Nebraska, Woody's hometown, where he experiences a family reunion of sorts. Despite David's protestations, everybody believes that Woody has won the money and soon people are bothering David asking for money that they loaned to Woody at one time or another. The culmination of the film's story is incredibly sweet-natured as Woody inevitably doesn't get the money he started out wanting but instead gets an even better gift.

I've written a lot about casting choices over the course of this blog and Nebraska line-up of actors certainly benefits the film in the long run. The studio allegedly wanted big names to play the roles of Woody and David, but Payne argued otherwise. Vintage character actor Bruce Dern was chosen to play Woody and earned himself a Best Actor nomination as a result. Dern perfectly portrays Woody as a man who is detached from society for the most part, but who is revealed to have been quite the womaniser in his day. Dern is completely believable as the former alcoholic and you can absolutely understand how he's alienated his family. I personally feel that Dern is at his best when conveying how much the prize-winning letter means to Woody as he frantically reads it throughout the film. Saturday Night Live regular Will Forte was similarly a lesser-known star but really turned in an excellent turn as the begrudgingly compliant David. Forte makes David a character who is easy to sympathise with even though you understand that he's sometimes his own worst enemy. Completing the trio of fine performances is the wonderful June Squibb, who like Dern was given an Oscar nomination for her role as the outrageous Kate. Squibb really portrays Kate as a force-of-nature and she easily makes you believe in her character's backstory. Nebraska is given even more charm by the fact that its shot in black-and-white which makes this traditional story seem even more old-fashioned. I personally felt that this technique really set the film apart from all of its contemporaries and it definitely felt apt for a film from Payne. Although it took a while to get going, Nebraska was funny and poignant look at father-son relationships and once again included a central male character who was detached from the rest of the world.

Next up we have the promised return of George Clooney in his roles as both performer and producer.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Days 226-227: Growing Quite Fonda Jane

Continuing our retrospective on stars who have more than one film nominated for Oscar in the 1970s, we come to one Jane Fonda. Jane, daughter of Henry Fonda, had come to prominence in the 1960s and at the 1972 Oscar Ceremony won her first Best Actress Oscar for playing a high-class call girl in the movie Klute. By the late 1970s, a period in which both these nominated films were released, Fonda was only making films relating to serious issues and here we saw her try to evade the Nazis and care for soldiers who'd be wounded in Vietnam. It was interesting for me to go back and watch these films as I'm only aware of Fonda through her exercise videos and her comeback in ropey movies such as Monster-in-Law and Georgia Rule. What I found was an actress who gave extremely big performances that weren't necessarily suitable for the roles she was playing.

First up we have Fonda portraying playwright Lillian Hellman, in a film based on a chapter in the author's book Pentimento, in which we see her tortured relationship with childhood friend and titular character Julia. The film sees Lillian and Julia take different paths in life with the latter journeying to Vienna to complete a medical degree while the former attempting to write a play at the same time as living with famed author Dashiell Hammett. After serving some time in Europe, Julia become involved in the battle against the Nazis and is injured in a blast at an apartment building. Lillian, having arrived in Paris, attempts to make contact with her friend but finds the task difficult. Eventually, Lillian hears from Julia, who wants to meet her in Berlin and asks for her help carrying an item across the border. The two eventually meet in a cafe, however their meeting is tense due to Lillian's nervousness surrounding the mission she's been given. Lillian later discovers Julia has had a daughter and sets out to find the child in order to give it a better home.

Interestingly the story of Julia is one that has been criticised as pure fiction and many have claimed that Hellman never had a childhood friend nor did she have to endure the tricky ride from Paris to Berlin that she did here. I found the majority of the film to be fairly melodramatic and lacking in any really compelling form of storytelling. I thought that Fonda's performance as Lillian was completely over-the-top and I didn't really find her that believable, or indeed likeable. I found that the scene on the train took far too long and I was really bored by the time that Lillian had to execute the mission she has been given. When she was on screen, I felt that Vanessa Redgrave's Julia was the complete antithesis of Fonda's character in that she was calm and reasonable. In fact I would've liked to have seen a lot more from Julia, though in fact Redgrave only appears in a handful of scenes which is a shame. I'm surprised then to learn that Redgrave won the Best Supporting Actress award for her role in Julia, as she didn't make much of an impression on me at all. Similarly Jason Robards, as Hammett, won the Best Supporting Actor award with his role being confined to a couple of scenes in which he attempted to calm down the hysterical Lillian. What I did enjoy was the style of the whole piece, it was well-shot and Georges Delerue's score was fairly memorable. The problem was that the lead character was neither that compelling nor particularly likeable and part of me would attribute that to the fact that director Fred Zinneman felt utter hatred towards Hellman by the end of their working relationship together. One fun Oscar-related fact is that Julia saw the film debut of a woman by the name of Meryl Streep, who we'll be talking a lot more about from here on in.

One year later, Fonda starred in Coming Home a film in which she played Sally Hyde, loyal wife to Marine Captain Bob. As Bob journeys to Vietnam, Sally changes aspects about her life - she buys a new car, stops straightening her hair and gets a new apartment near the beach. Sally also starts working as a volunteer at the VA Hospital where she meets an old school acquaintance in Luke Martin, who lost the use of his legs in Vietnam. Luke has since become a depressive who lashes out at everyone around him, but Sally's presence in his life sees him being lifted from his depression. As their relationship grows, Sally and Luke find themselves attracted to one another but Sally is forced to meet up with Bob in Hong Kong. However, on her return, she finds out that Luke has been released from hospital and now has his own apartment. But the death of one of the hospital's patients has a profound effect on Luke who decides to start protesting the war. Sally tries to stand by him, but Bob's return from the war sees her torn between the men in her life.

I have to say I really enjoyed Coming Home however, once again, I felt that Jane Fonda overplayed her role as Sally, for which she won the Best Actress Oscar at that year's ceremony. In fact, her performance was really the only negative in a film that had a lot to say about the Vietnam War and why people were protesting it. While Hal Ashby's political views were somewhat overtly portrayed, I never found the film to be particularly preachy and the fact that the film's hero was incredibly flawed was a good move. Best Actor winner Jon Voight was absolutely excellent in his role as the depressive Luke with the actor successfully portraying Luke's transition from angry cripple to inspiring public speaker. The supporting performances were equally as good with Bruce Dern giving a great turn as Bob, the archetypal military man and the complete opposite of Luke. I also enjoyed Penelope Milford as Sally's friend Vi, who was portrayed as a freeing influence on Sally but at the same time had moments of drama due to her brother's death. One of the reviews I read of Coming Home said that the soundtrack was overly explicit, but I personally felt every track added to the mood of the film. From 'Hey Jude' and 'Ruby Tuesday'  to 'Born to Be Wild' and the excellent 'Just Like a Woman' this was a bumper collection of 1960s rock classics and I enjoyed every one of them. On the whole Hal Ashby's film had a lot of great moments, performances and songs but again was let down by an OTT performance from Fonda.

After watching these two films, I have to say I'm not overly taken by Fonda's style, but at the same time I feel it's quite harsh to judge an actress by two films alone. Fonda will pop up again in the 1980s and I'm willing to give her acting another chance but these two films led be to believe that her acting style was often melodramatic and didn't really lend itself to the tone of the film in which she appeared.

Up next we journey abroad to watch an alternative style of film to the mainstream American movies we've been watching up to this point.