Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Days 425-426: Days of Future Past World Tour

As we've seen throughout the course of this journey very few foreign films are actually nominated for the main Best Picture prize. In fact to this day only nine films not made in the English language have been in contention for Best Picture and none of these have been successful. That's partly why foreign films have their own category at the Oscars which often features better films than those in the Best Picture race. In this post I return to the late 1960s and early 1970s to look at two films from the small group of nine to have found themselves among the five Best Picture nominees.

The first of the two films in this post feels extremely relevant and if I didn't know it already I would've been surprised that it was forty-five years old. Costa-Gavras' Z is an incredibly intense film about the assassination of a communist speaker by the hands of the far right government. Cinematographer Raul Coultard employs an incredibly realistic tone to his camera work meaning that at times you feel like you're watching a documentary. The bulk of the film focuses on Jean-Louis Trintigant's investigating magistrate who attempts to get to the bottom of conflicting statements given by both the assailants and the witnesses. Along the way he discovers false statements, witness intimidation and persecution of anyone who tries to argue with the right-wing establishment. Having previously watched Costa-Gavras' only other Best Picture nominated film Missing I know that his style is very much that of a fly-on-the-wall film-maker. Additionally both films were about political injustice and as a result I found myself getting more and more invested in Z as it went on. Particularly powerful was the final scene in which it was revealed that the majority of the generals who were charged with conspiracy ultimately went free whilst most of the witnesses were killed. Z won that year's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar with Françoise Bonnot also being rewarded for his excellent editing of the movie. Another notable element of Z was the fantastic score by Mikis Theodorakis which was at times incredibly jarring but added to the overall feel of the film. Z is an example of a movie that I feel deserved to win Best Picture and I think if it had been released in the English language then it would have done just that. Ultimately I think Z is an outstanding piece of cinema and was more than deserving of winning the Best Picture prize as well as the title of Best Foreign Language film.

The other film in this post, Jan Troell's The Emigrants, also featured in both categories but oddly in different years. This occurred due to the fact that, at the 1972 ceremony, it had only been screened in its native Sweden rather for the larger Academy audience. After attaining a proper screening the following year it was nominated for Best Picture as well as a further three Oscars. The film looks at a group of people, all from the same small province in Sweden, who decide to emigrate to America. This group includes proud farmer Karl-Oscar, his idealistic brother Robert, his wife Kristina, their children and an oddball preacher. My main issue with The Emigrants was the fact that the group didn't get on the boat to America until 90 minutes into this three hour epic. I feel that Troell could've easily have skimmed 45 minutes of the running time had everything happened a little quicker. That being said the second half of the film more than made up for the first with Troell drawing the audience in to the claustrophobic settings of the boat journey from Sweden to the USA. It was in this second half that I became engrossed in the characters' fates partly due to the fact that the performances were fantastic. Liv Ullman, who was nominated for Best Actress, was brilliant as the young mother who was worried that she'd never set foot in America meanwhile Max Van Sydow gave a powerful turn as her strong-willed husband.  The film built up to a great ending which also set up for a sequel, The New Land, which was nominated for Best Foreign Language Feature the same year that The Emigrants featured in the Best Picture category. It's fair to say that The Emigrants is definitely a film of two halves and I definitely struggled to make it through the first part of the feature. Despite the pay-off being rewarding I think the subject of foreign travellers coming to the USA has been dealt with better elsewhere most notably by 1960s nominee America, America. Ultimately The Emigrants was a realistic film with some fine performances but one that suffered from some bad pacing and an inflated running time.

And with that we're back to the present day as I sprint to the finish line next with the final fifty or so Best Picture nominees.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Days 288-289: A Bunch of Sissy's

From Glenn Close we turn our attention to another great actress in Sissy Spacek. Far from playing the Feme Fatale which has been Close's go to guise, Spacek's acting style was is much more natural and allows the audience to identify with her character. It was this down-to-Earth attitude that earned her six best Actress nominations one of which she turned into a win.

Spacek's winning performance came as country singer Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter. I thought her innocent wide-eyed look was perfect as she had to portray Lynn as a young woman of thirteen up to her glory days as a country star. In fact I thought that Spacek almost pulled off being a teenager in the opening scenes and was fantastic in portraying the transformation of Lynn over the years. The first part of the film sees Loretta being courted by eventual husband Mooney who soon breaks a promise he made to her father and moves her away from her native Kentucky. As she has a brilliant voice, Mooney encourages her to perform and she soon receives an offer to cut a demo for her first single. Realising that they have to capitalise on this initial breakthrough, Mooney and Loretta go on a tour of DJs and promoters in the south in order to get her voice heard. Loretta's innocence makes her seem instantly likeable and she's genuinely shocked when she discovers her song 'Honky Tonk Girl' has made into the charts. This in turn lands her a spot on the Grand Ole Opry and she soon attracts the attention of her idol Patsy Cline. As Loretta's success grows, Mooney becomes jealous of his wife becoming the more dominant one in their marriage. With Loretta beginning to overwork herself she soon becomes stressed and unable to remember the words to her lyrics. Although she suffers a breakdown, the film ends on a high as we witness her comeback and the performance of the film's titular track 'Coal Miner's Daughter'.

Having watched a lot of biopics about musicians in the past I did approach Coal Miner's Daughter with some level of trepidation. Luckily, I needn't of worried as Michael Apted's film was an incredibly well-paced piece that covered all of the key points of Lynn's life without every overstaying its welcome. Tom Rickman's adaptation of Lynn's autobiography made me understand the motivations of both her and Mooney as her success in the music business changed her to an extent. What I liked about both of the Lynns is how they didn't feel like stereotypes and instead felt like real people throughout the course of the film. Whilst Mooney does react jealousy to Loretta's new stardom he never gets aggressive and is later supportive of her during her breakdown. Similarly you can understand Loretta's need to make herself more glamorous as her star ascends despite the fact that she really doesn't need as much make-up as she thinks she does. The musical numbers are all joyous, though I suppose you have to at least enjoy country music a little bit to appreciate them. Sissy Spacek more than deserved her Oscar as she portrayed all of the stages of Lynn's persona from innocent teenager to glamorous superstar to an overworked singer heading for a nervous breakdown. Spacek excelled at portraying Lynn's innocent charm and she really made the character come alive both through her acting and her singing. I'm shocked that Tommy Lee Jones didn't receive at least a nomination for his role as the supportive yet jealous Mooney. I personally believe that his performance is as integral as Spacek's and I really found his performance brought out the human side in the sometimes aggressive Mooney. Coal Miner's Daughter was really a step above the normal biopic and showcased just how great Spacek can be when given the right part.

The fact that they are both based on true stories is possibly the only similarity between Coal Miner's Daughter and Spacek's other Best Picture nominee Missing. Missing doesn't have the gloss of a Best Picture film but instead employs the documentary style favoured by its director Costa-Gavras. Set in Chile during the rule of Pinochet, Spacek plays Beth Horman the wife of a radical journalist who goes missing after their house was ransacked. Charlie's disappearance prompts his father to arrive in Chile and seek help from the American consulate in finding his son. Ed had never approved of his son's life choices and wondered why he'd never settled down and got a proper job. Whereas Charlie was a fairly liberal young man, his father is incredibly conservative and is a practising Christian Scientist meaning he's very much a man of faith. Ed and Beth clash over the latter's lack of co-operation with the men who are attempting to help find Charlie. Beth's distrust of the men is later explained through a series of flashbacks showing what sort of a man Captain Ray Tower actually is. As they spend more time together, Ed and Beth continue to bond as he realises the horrors of the country his son briefly called home. With the American government appearing more suspicious then they first seemed, Ed begins to give up hope of ever seeing his son again. Though the ending is predictable, especially if you were aware of the original story, it doesn't make it any less shocking.

Missing was a film that focused on a recent crisis and gave it a human face. Costa-Gavras portrayed the Chile of the time where bodies were simply strewn across the streets for all to see and where the sound of gunshots was a regular occurrence. Ricardo Aronovich's superb cinematography captured all this brutal detail perfectly and he particularly excelled when shooting the scenes in Chile's national stadium. The human face of the film was Ed who was experiencing the horrific nature of the country first hand and we as the audience were meant to relate to him. The fact that Ed was played by Jack Lemmon meant that he came across as likeable despite his initial prejudices and beliefs. Lemmon's performance was just brilliant as he made the audience identify with a man who was just trying to find his son. Though Beth wasn't as innocent as Loretta Lynn, Spacek still played an extremely down-to-Earth character. Spacek played Beth as somebody who was horrified by what was going on around but had got used to it over time. Spacek also really came alive when portraying Beth's defiance in the face of the American authorities. Another memorable aspect of the film was Vangelis' electric score which contributed to both the jarring nature of the Chilean conflict and the emotional aspects of the Ed/Beth relationship. Even though I found it tough to get through at times, Missing was nonetheless an accomplished film which told the story of a conflict through the eyes of those who didn't quite want to believe it. It is definitely a piece of historical film-making and one that is still as relevant today as it was thirty years ago.

Next time we have the film which became the last live action musical to be nominated for Best Picture for twenty-two years!