We first met Kate Winslet back in the 1990s when she made her first impact on the Academy in Sense and Sensibility before wowing in the lead role of Titanic. Throughout the 2000s she was awarded with three more nominations and finally won the Oscar that had eluded her with her sixth nomination.
Before we look at that film we'll look back at some of the actress' other nominations as she followed on from Sense and Sensibility and Titanic with a Supporting nod for her role as a young Judi Dench in Iris. Three years later she was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her role in Michel Gondry's quirky romantic drama Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Although that film was overlooked in the Best Picture category, Winslet's other starring role that year was in a movie in contention for the main prize. That film was Finding Neverland, Marc Forster's film about the creation of Peter Pan in which Winslet played Sylvia Llewelyn Davies mother of the boys who would become the muses of author J.M. Barrie. In the role of Barrie, Johnny Depp brought his trademark innocence but also portrayed the Scottish playwright as quite immature. The film begins with the opening of one of Barrie's plays which ultimately ends in disaster and forces him to create a new production. At this time he also meets the Llewelyn Davies family with middle son Peter being the boy who intrigues Barrie the most. From there on David Magee's screenplay looks at the time Barrie spent with the family as well as his construction of the oddest play ever to grace the stage. Magee mixes fantasy sequences with real life drama as Barrie tries to bring out the boys' imagination whilst at the same time dealing with problems in his own marriage. As with any good Oscar film, Finding Neverland also features a character with an incurable disease with Sylvia passing away in one of the film's final scenes. However one of the film's strengths is that it never deals with death in a mawkish way and instead Sylvia's death makes way for a new chapter in her son's lives.
I have an incredible soft spot for Finding Neverland and it's one of those films that just makes you feel warm inside. Whilst it wasn't Winslet's best film released that year, it's easy to see why the Academy lapped it up as much as they did. From Roberto Schaefer's brilliant cinematography to Jan A.P. Kaczmarek's Oscar-winning score everything about Finding Neverland was utterly joyous. Following on from his debut nomination the year before, Depp's second nod was arguably his most deserved as he played Barrie perfectly. Combining a childlike innocence with a knowing look, I felt that Depp led the film throughout and gave a thoroughly charming turn. As the young Peter, Freddie Highmore stayed on the right side of saccharine whilst Radha Mitchell gave a grounded portrayal of Barrie's naive wife. In supporting roles I found Julie Christie and Dustin Hoffman to add a bit of substance to the film with the latter popping us Barrie's financier. If there's one let down in the cast then it's Winslet herself who doesn't ever seem to have much to do. Her role is to almost act as the damsel in distress and the facilitator of Barrie's relationship with her sons. One of Finding Neverland's great assets is its fantasy sequences in which the boys and Barrie imagine various scenarios. My particular favourites would have to be the one in which Barrie turned his dog into a dancing bear and later when he let the boys believe they were on a pirate ship. Though Finding Neverland doesn't have any depth to speak of, I think it's an utterly beautiful piece of film-making with a story that's worth telling. With stories that speak to adults and children alike, I think that Finding Neverland is the perfect family film and was definitely worthy of its place in that year's Best Picture category.
Two years later, Winslet was nominated for another Best Actress Oscar this time for her role in suburban drama Little Children. She also appeared in an episode of Ricky Gervais' sitcom Extras in which she claimed that actors who play Nazis often go on to win Oscars. Someone somewhere was obviously watching this episode as, a couple of years later, Winslet was cast as former Auschwitz guard Hanna Schmitz in Stephen Daldry's The Reader. The film is mainly split into three parts as we follow the relationship between Hanna and the initially 15-year-old Michael Berg. The first act of the show sees the somewhat gawkish teenage Michael meeting Hanna for the first time as he experiences the onset of scarlet fever. Michael and the older Hanna spend a lot of time together with her demanding more of him and as a result alienating him from his friends. Eventually tiring of their liaisons, which involved sex and him reading to her, Michael ends things and subsequently goes to law school. Michael encounters Hanna once again when his law professor takes a group of students to learn from the war trials that are currently taking place in Berlin. It is here where Michael learns that Hanna was a guard in Auschwitz and also that she is illiterate hence her obsession with hearing others read. Winslet scored the Oscar-winning triumvirate, not only playing a Nazi but also one with a disability who physically ages on screen. This ageing process happens in the film's third act where the now married, and later divorced, Michael teaches Hanna to read using books from the library and a tape recorder. Michael, now played by Ralph Fiennes, encourages his former lover to finally own up to her mistakes and the two eventually meet up just before she's released. As The Reader never pretends to be a romantic film as such, Michael and Hanna aren't given their happy ending and instead he has to wrap the story up himself.
As the film divides itself into third acts, I will attempt to do the same with my review as I found The Reader to be three entirely different movies. At the start, The Reader feels like a film about forbidden romance as we follow Michael and Hanna's illicit trysts. For a film with so many sex scenes, I found The Reader to be incredibly passionless as there was never really any chemistry between Winslet and young actor David Kross. The second part of the film, involving the war trials, was more engaging and this to me was when Winslet's performance was at its strongest. The involvement of Bruno Ganz, as Michael's Holocaust surviving law professor, added to the quality of this segment as did David Hare's adapted screenplay. Moving on from the courtroom drama of the second act, the third part of The Reader almost felt like The Shawshank Redemption as Hanna finally overcame her illiteracy with Michael's outside help. After a strong second act, The Reader lost me once again as I felt that Daldry and Hare packed too much in to a short amount of screen time. Michael's marriage, the birth of his first child and his divorce were all skipped over at such a quick pace that nothing really had a chance to sink in. One of the brightest spots of these final scenes was Ralph Fiennes who was perfectly cast as the somewhat emotionless Michael. Fiennes and Winslet's only scene together was one of The Reader's strongest and I personally wished that they could've shared more screen time together. Alas this wasn't to be and after the end credits rolled I felt incredibly unaffected what I'd seen in the last two hours. It's very rare that a film leaves me so emotionless but, save Winslet's above average performance, there wasn't a lot to care about in the film. That's why I'm so surprised that it was nominated for Best Picture and I feel that Winslet's win came due to the fact that she was due a win. It's a shame that The Reader is the film that Winslet won her Oscar for as she's been so much stronger elsewhere and, due to the fact that the superior Revolutionary Road was released around the same time, Daldry's movie wasn't even the actress' best that year.
Next time we see the revival of a genre that has laid dormant since the early 1980s.
Showing posts with label Dustin Hoffman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dustin Hoffman. Show all posts
Friday, 20 March 2015
Tuesday, 11 March 2014
Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Days 268-270: Dustin does the Double
In the 1970s we saw Dustin Hoffman star in a diverse range of films and garner a couple of Best Actor nomination. But it was only during the ceremonies of the 1980s did he finally get rewarded for his fine body of work. In fact in two of the three films below he won Best Actor Oscars and, coincidentally, both films went on to win Best Picture awards.
Hoffman's success started early in the decade when appeared in Kramer Vs Kramer, the winner of Best Picture at the 1980 ceremony. The film saw him play harassed advertising executive Ted Kramer a man who spends a lot more time at work than he does at home. Ted's life changes dramatically one day when his wife Joanna walks out on him without giving him any notice at all. Ted is then forced to bring up the couple's son Billy single-handedly, a task that he finds more than a little difficult. Ted struggles to find the balance between handling a major account at his advertising firm and dealing with the kind of minute details that raising a seven year old brings. These problems are highlighted by the tantrums that Billy has as well as the accident that occurs when he falls off a climbing frame. But gradually the father/son bond grows and Billy becomes the most important thing in Ted's life. So events become even more complicated when, eighteen months later, Joanna returns claiming that she wants Billy to come and live with her. With the bond between Ted and Billy stronger than ever, Ted decides to fight her claim and the two enter a bitter court battle together. The case itself sees major dirt thrown on both sides and ultimately only one side comes out victorious. Just like the rest of the film, I found the ending to be sweet without being saccharine and more than anything it made a lot of sense.
In his script for Kramer Vs Kramer, Robert Benton creates characters who are supremely flawed but are ultimately capable of caring for one another. Ted Kramer is somewhat of a workaholic who we basically see become a proper father to his son over the course of the film. Though Ted makes mistakes, he appears to learn from them and the scene in which he rushes through traffic to get Billy to hospital is extremely moving. Similarly, Benton turns Joanna from the villain of the piece to somebody who we sympathise with due to her final decision in the film. Her actions may not always be right but, just like her ex-husband, she always does what she thinks is best. I have to say, I struggled to like Billy initially and felt that Benton had written him as just a precocious child but he also developed over the course of the film. His realisation that Joanna didn't leave because of him was well-handled and was another example of how true to life Benton had made his characters. In addition to providing some incredible characters, the film offers up some really thought-provoking situations about what it really means to be a parent as it dealt with the changing face of both fatherhood and motherhood. Benton also ended up directing the film after François Truffaut pulled out and it appears as if this was the right decision as he is able to see his words realised on screen. Truffaut's long time cinematographer Néstor Almendros adds some beauty to the piece and is great at capturing some of the silent moments between father and son. One of my favourite recurring motifs is the way that the pair's breakfasts together change over time and the routine they get into by the end of the film is somewhat magical.
I feel Hoffman's Oscar win was more than justified as he appears in nearly every scene of the film and is magnetic throughout. Here he is tasked with playing just a run-of-the-mill father and yet is able to make his character feel every inch a movie hero. Hoffman really communicates Ted's inner turmoil and the love he feels for Billy as the film goes on. Meryl Streep, here winning Best Supporting Actress, is great as Joanna and gives the film a real poignancy whenever she appears. Streep didn't overplay her role and instead brought a quiet fragility to the custody battle in which she and Hoffman both excel. Young Justin Henry was absolutely terrific as young Billy and was much more than just a token child. He made us believe that Billy had been forced to grow up quickly and the chemistry between he and Hoffman was just brilliant. At just over an hour and half, Kramer Vs Kramer never outstayed its welcome and was well-paced throughout. The result of this was a snappy film, with three incredible performances and an incredibly realistic script. Though you'll have to find out if I think it deserved to win Best Picture, I thought that Kramer Vs Kramer was a great film that explored the true meaning of the word family.
In between his two Oscar-winning turns, Hoffman starred in another Best Picture nominee, but this time mainly played it for laughs. In Tootsie, Hoffman played Michael Dorsey an actor who was frequently out of work due to the fact that often argued with directors about what his characters should be doing. Forced to take a job as a waiter, Michael is waiting to raise enough money to put on his flat mate Jeff's play. Informed by his agent that nobody in New York will hire him, Michael goes to extraordinary lengths to continue his career. After providing moral support at a soap audition for his friend Sandy, Michael later takes the drastic step of dressing up as a woman and auditioning for the role himself. The plan works and soon 'Dorothy Michaels' is playing Emily Kimberly, the new administrator on Southwest General. With Jeff and his agent the only two people in on the act, Michael must keep his new identity from Sandy and at the same time begins a relationship with her. But Michael is soon drawn to his new co-star Julie, a single mother who is currently in a disastrous relationship with the soap's awful director. To make things more complicated Julie's widowed father starts to develop feelings for 'Dorothy' and declares his intentions to begin a relationship with her. As Dorothy begins to get more famous, Michael realises that he has to end the charade one way or another. The way he chooses is completely ridiculous and I have to say that I was laughing all the way through this final scene.
In Tootsie, Hoffman really shows his diversity and brings an excellent comic timing to the role. Though we've seen him in comedy films in the past, most notably The Graduate, this is the first time he's been able to show off his comic timing. The script is great at parodying the life of a penniless actor as well as spoofing the ridiculous world of the soap opera. But, unlike most comedies, it is playing for more than just laughs and actually has something serious to say about gender identity. Julie in particular is a character who tells 'Dorothy' that she finds it hard being a woman in the 1980s especially seeing as she's trying to hold down a job and be the sole carer to a young child. The fact that Michael is only able to find fame once he plays an older woman also speaks volumes and I found that Hoffman was utterly convincing whenever he had to play Dorothy. One thing I would have like to have seen was Michael's first transformation into Dorothy and similarly I would have like to have seen more from him when he finally revealed his true identity. Another element of the film that I wasn't a fan of was the film's theme tune 'It Might be You', a generic 1980s number that feels shoehorned in to the movie. But those are just minor niggles in a film that had a lot to offer namely its ensemble cast led by the fantastic Hoffman in another Oscar nominated turn. Jessica Lange, who won the only one of ten awards Tootsie was nominated for, was great as the softly-spoken Julie and added a slice of realism to the film. I have to say though I preferred fellow Supporting Actress nominee Teri Garr as the quirky and paranoid Sandy. Charles Durning as Julie's father, Bill Murray as Jeff and Tootsie's director Sydney Pollack as Michael's agent were all excellent and Murray in particular added a deadpan feel to his character. Whilst Tootsie wasn't the greatest film ever, it was a comedy that had heart and a message while in addition it showed the vast repertoire of styles that Hoffman provided.
Of all the performances we've seen from his so far, Hoffman employed the most amount of method acting to play Raymond Babbitt in Rain Man. Raymond is a high-functioning autistic who has lived in an institute since he was young after his parents were afraid that he'd hurt his younger brother. Due to this his brother Charlie never knew he existed until after the death of their father who left all of his money to Raymond. A product of the 1980s, Charlie is a used car salesman with a beautiful European girlfriend and a fast-talking mouth. Following the death of his mother, he and his father had an incredibly strained relationship and barely talked until his death. Furious that he's been swindled out of his inheritance, Charlie essentially kidnaps Raymond from his house and takes him back to L.A. in an attempt to get half of his money. To add insult to injury, Raymond doesn't even understand the concept of money so Charlie's even more mad that he's now in possession of three million dollars. As Raymond hates to fly, Charlie is forced to drive cross country and along the way starts to learn more about his brother. Initially Raymond's outbursts annoy Charlie but he soon learns to cope with them and is later astonished to discover that his brother was his imaginary friend 'Rain Man' that helped him cope during his childhood. The trip climaxes in a trip to Las Vegas in which Charlie uses Raymond's extraordinary abilities with numbers to swindle a casino out of thousands of dollars. Ultimately the film comes down to whether a bond can develop between family members or if Charlie's greed will mean he's willing to put a price on his new-found relationship with Raymond.
Having seen Rain Man before, I knew what to expect and perhaps the reason that I found a lot of it quite over-the-top. I found the screenplay to be incredibly deliberate and the character of Raymond in particular was fairly over-bearing at times. Though I'm sure writers Barry Morrow and Ronald Bass did their research before creating the character, Raymond's autism feels like a plot device at times rather than something that is particularly well-drawn. Thankfully, Hoffman brings the character to life and this is the first time that we've seen him play a particularly middle-aged character. In the six years between Tootsie and Rain Man he appears to have aged significantly and the disparity between his ageing features and Raymond's childlike nature make for a great balance. But for all the plaudits that Hoffman received for the film, including the Best Actor Oscar, I felt that Tom Cruise gave the better performance as Charlie. At the time Cruise was a big movie star with films like Top Gun and Cocktail putting him on the map. But it was in Rain Man that we first saw that he could really hold his own against an acting great like Hoffman. Cruise is forced to turn Charlie from an arrogant salesman into a loving brother and he portrays the transformation beautifully. The chemistry between Cruise and Hoffman builds throughout Rain Man and in my opinion is one of the reasons for its success. I found that both John Seale's cinematography and Hans Zimmer's score to be the film's other positive attributes with the former capturing the American highway during the brothers' journey. Though it may be forced at times, Rain Man is certainly a very good film that is made better by the performances of both Cruise and Hoffman. Oddly, after all of his success in the last two decades, Hoffman wouldn't appear in another Best Picture nominee again for another sixteen years. But I feel that the three films above all demonstrate his terrific range and show why he's regarded as one of the best actors of his generation.
Next time we head out to Cambodia and follow the journey of an American reporter.
Hoffman's success started early in the decade when appeared in Kramer Vs Kramer, the winner of Best Picture at the 1980 ceremony. The film saw him play harassed advertising executive Ted Kramer a man who spends a lot more time at work than he does at home. Ted's life changes dramatically one day when his wife Joanna walks out on him without giving him any notice at all. Ted is then forced to bring up the couple's son Billy single-handedly, a task that he finds more than a little difficult. Ted struggles to find the balance between handling a major account at his advertising firm and dealing with the kind of minute details that raising a seven year old brings. These problems are highlighted by the tantrums that Billy has as well as the accident that occurs when he falls off a climbing frame. But gradually the father/son bond grows and Billy becomes the most important thing in Ted's life. So events become even more complicated when, eighteen months later, Joanna returns claiming that she wants Billy to come and live with her. With the bond between Ted and Billy stronger than ever, Ted decides to fight her claim and the two enter a bitter court battle together. The case itself sees major dirt thrown on both sides and ultimately only one side comes out victorious. Just like the rest of the film, I found the ending to be sweet without being saccharine and more than anything it made a lot of sense.
In his script for Kramer Vs Kramer, Robert Benton creates characters who are supremely flawed but are ultimately capable of caring for one another. Ted Kramer is somewhat of a workaholic who we basically see become a proper father to his son over the course of the film. Though Ted makes mistakes, he appears to learn from them and the scene in which he rushes through traffic to get Billy to hospital is extremely moving. Similarly, Benton turns Joanna from the villain of the piece to somebody who we sympathise with due to her final decision in the film. Her actions may not always be right but, just like her ex-husband, she always does what she thinks is best. I have to say, I struggled to like Billy initially and felt that Benton had written him as just a precocious child but he also developed over the course of the film. His realisation that Joanna didn't leave because of him was well-handled and was another example of how true to life Benton had made his characters. In addition to providing some incredible characters, the film offers up some really thought-provoking situations about what it really means to be a parent as it dealt with the changing face of both fatherhood and motherhood. Benton also ended up directing the film after François Truffaut pulled out and it appears as if this was the right decision as he is able to see his words realised on screen. Truffaut's long time cinematographer Néstor Almendros adds some beauty to the piece and is great at capturing some of the silent moments between father and son. One of my favourite recurring motifs is the way that the pair's breakfasts together change over time and the routine they get into by the end of the film is somewhat magical.
I feel Hoffman's Oscar win was more than justified as he appears in nearly every scene of the film and is magnetic throughout. Here he is tasked with playing just a run-of-the-mill father and yet is able to make his character feel every inch a movie hero. Hoffman really communicates Ted's inner turmoil and the love he feels for Billy as the film goes on. Meryl Streep, here winning Best Supporting Actress, is great as Joanna and gives the film a real poignancy whenever she appears. Streep didn't overplay her role and instead brought a quiet fragility to the custody battle in which she and Hoffman both excel. Young Justin Henry was absolutely terrific as young Billy and was much more than just a token child. He made us believe that Billy had been forced to grow up quickly and the chemistry between he and Hoffman was just brilliant. At just over an hour and half, Kramer Vs Kramer never outstayed its welcome and was well-paced throughout. The result of this was a snappy film, with three incredible performances and an incredibly realistic script. Though you'll have to find out if I think it deserved to win Best Picture, I thought that Kramer Vs Kramer was a great film that explored the true meaning of the word family.
In between his two Oscar-winning turns, Hoffman starred in another Best Picture nominee, but this time mainly played it for laughs. In Tootsie, Hoffman played Michael Dorsey an actor who was frequently out of work due to the fact that often argued with directors about what his characters should be doing. Forced to take a job as a waiter, Michael is waiting to raise enough money to put on his flat mate Jeff's play. Informed by his agent that nobody in New York will hire him, Michael goes to extraordinary lengths to continue his career. After providing moral support at a soap audition for his friend Sandy, Michael later takes the drastic step of dressing up as a woman and auditioning for the role himself. The plan works and soon 'Dorothy Michaels' is playing Emily Kimberly, the new administrator on Southwest General. With Jeff and his agent the only two people in on the act, Michael must keep his new identity from Sandy and at the same time begins a relationship with her. But Michael is soon drawn to his new co-star Julie, a single mother who is currently in a disastrous relationship with the soap's awful director. To make things more complicated Julie's widowed father starts to develop feelings for 'Dorothy' and declares his intentions to begin a relationship with her. As Dorothy begins to get more famous, Michael realises that he has to end the charade one way or another. The way he chooses is completely ridiculous and I have to say that I was laughing all the way through this final scene.
In Tootsie, Hoffman really shows his diversity and brings an excellent comic timing to the role. Though we've seen him in comedy films in the past, most notably The Graduate, this is the first time he's been able to show off his comic timing. The script is great at parodying the life of a penniless actor as well as spoofing the ridiculous world of the soap opera. But, unlike most comedies, it is playing for more than just laughs and actually has something serious to say about gender identity. Julie in particular is a character who tells 'Dorothy' that she finds it hard being a woman in the 1980s especially seeing as she's trying to hold down a job and be the sole carer to a young child. The fact that Michael is only able to find fame once he plays an older woman also speaks volumes and I found that Hoffman was utterly convincing whenever he had to play Dorothy. One thing I would have like to have seen was Michael's first transformation into Dorothy and similarly I would have like to have seen more from him when he finally revealed his true identity. Another element of the film that I wasn't a fan of was the film's theme tune 'It Might be You', a generic 1980s number that feels shoehorned in to the movie. But those are just minor niggles in a film that had a lot to offer namely its ensemble cast led by the fantastic Hoffman in another Oscar nominated turn. Jessica Lange, who won the only one of ten awards Tootsie was nominated for, was great as the softly-spoken Julie and added a slice of realism to the film. I have to say though I preferred fellow Supporting Actress nominee Teri Garr as the quirky and paranoid Sandy. Charles Durning as Julie's father, Bill Murray as Jeff and Tootsie's director Sydney Pollack as Michael's agent were all excellent and Murray in particular added a deadpan feel to his character. Whilst Tootsie wasn't the greatest film ever, it was a comedy that had heart and a message while in addition it showed the vast repertoire of styles that Hoffman provided.
Of all the performances we've seen from his so far, Hoffman employed the most amount of method acting to play Raymond Babbitt in Rain Man. Raymond is a high-functioning autistic who has lived in an institute since he was young after his parents were afraid that he'd hurt his younger brother. Due to this his brother Charlie never knew he existed until after the death of their father who left all of his money to Raymond. A product of the 1980s, Charlie is a used car salesman with a beautiful European girlfriend and a fast-talking mouth. Following the death of his mother, he and his father had an incredibly strained relationship and barely talked until his death. Furious that he's been swindled out of his inheritance, Charlie essentially kidnaps Raymond from his house and takes him back to L.A. in an attempt to get half of his money. To add insult to injury, Raymond doesn't even understand the concept of money so Charlie's even more mad that he's now in possession of three million dollars. As Raymond hates to fly, Charlie is forced to drive cross country and along the way starts to learn more about his brother. Initially Raymond's outbursts annoy Charlie but he soon learns to cope with them and is later astonished to discover that his brother was his imaginary friend 'Rain Man' that helped him cope during his childhood. The trip climaxes in a trip to Las Vegas in which Charlie uses Raymond's extraordinary abilities with numbers to swindle a casino out of thousands of dollars. Ultimately the film comes down to whether a bond can develop between family members or if Charlie's greed will mean he's willing to put a price on his new-found relationship with Raymond.
Having seen Rain Man before, I knew what to expect and perhaps the reason that I found a lot of it quite over-the-top. I found the screenplay to be incredibly deliberate and the character of Raymond in particular was fairly over-bearing at times. Though I'm sure writers Barry Morrow and Ronald Bass did their research before creating the character, Raymond's autism feels like a plot device at times rather than something that is particularly well-drawn. Thankfully, Hoffman brings the character to life and this is the first time that we've seen him play a particularly middle-aged character. In the six years between Tootsie and Rain Man he appears to have aged significantly and the disparity between his ageing features and Raymond's childlike nature make for a great balance. But for all the plaudits that Hoffman received for the film, including the Best Actor Oscar, I felt that Tom Cruise gave the better performance as Charlie. At the time Cruise was a big movie star with films like Top Gun and Cocktail putting him on the map. But it was in Rain Man that we first saw that he could really hold his own against an acting great like Hoffman. Cruise is forced to turn Charlie from an arrogant salesman into a loving brother and he portrays the transformation beautifully. The chemistry between Cruise and Hoffman builds throughout Rain Man and in my opinion is one of the reasons for its success. I found that both John Seale's cinematography and Hans Zimmer's score to be the film's other positive attributes with the former capturing the American highway during the brothers' journey. Though it may be forced at times, Rain Man is certainly a very good film that is made better by the performances of both Cruise and Hoffman. Oddly, after all of his success in the last two decades, Hoffman wouldn't appear in another Best Picture nominee again for another sixteen years. But I feel that the three films above all demonstrate his terrific range and show why he's regarded as one of the best actors of his generation.
Next time we head out to Cambodia and follow the journey of an American reporter.
Thursday, 6 February 2014
Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Days 247-249: Don't Hassle the Hoffman
Dustin Hoffman was an actor we first came across during the 1960s section of this blog. Back then he had just made his first breakthrough, as Benjamin Braddock in The Graduate, and this role catapulted him into the big time. Throughout the 1970s, Hoffman starred in three Oscar-nominated films and was nominated for Best Actor in two of them.
The first of these films was in fact the first Best Picture winner of the decade, John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy. Though Hoffman was nominated for Best Actor, he lost to his co-star Jon Voight who gave a career-defining performance as hustler Joe Buck. The naive and emotionally-scarred Joe, starts the film as a Texan dishwasher who feels his only success is in pleasuring women. He decides to journey to New York in order to become a male prostitute but finds it tough to seek out clients and even finds himself paying out money to one of the women he has liaison with. He is later duped by Hoffman's conman 'Ratso' Rizzo who introduces him to what he believes to be a pimp, but is in fact an extreme Bible basher. Joe later seeks out Rizzo but the latter offers an olive branch when he invites Joe to live in the squat he calls home. The rest of the film sees the pair build up a friendship of sorts as they navigate their way through New York and attempt to survive on what they can find. Towards the end of the film, Rizzo's health begins to deteriorate just as Joe is beginning to build up somewhat of a client base. Instead of keeping an appointment with a wealthy woman, Joe decides to help his friend by buying them both bus tickets to Florida. The final scenes are rather emotional as the simple Joe, who has up to now worn nothing but a cowboy outfit, changes his look just as his friend loses his life.
Earning the honour of being the only X-Rated film ever to win the Best Picture award, Midnight Cowboy is a work of pure genius. The film is hard to watch at times but it is always brilliantly executed and contains some wonderful pieces of visual flair. John Schlesinger seems keen not to make Midnight Cowboy just a standard film and so the editing is great throughout as he inserts flashbacks and fantasy sequences into the narrative. The flashback scenes are particularly harrowing as we witness Joe and his girlfriend being raped and her later being carted off to an institution. I do feel that Midnight Cowboy was the film that ushered in a change to the Best Picture category, especially considering the previous year's winner was Oliver! Another of Midnight Cowboy's distinguishing features is its use of music with both John Barry's score and Harry Nilsson's 'Everybody's Talking' both sticking in the mind long after the film has finished. But to me the film belonged to two men - Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman, whose partnership makes Midnight Cowboy the masterpiece that it is. Voight brings an innocence to Joe Buck that is incredibly endearing but also makes it clear that this is a man who has gone through an enormous amount of suffering in his life. Voight's wide-eyed innocence is perfectly counter-balanced by Hoffman's quick-talking as the charismatic 'Ratso' Rizzo. Hoffman is absolutely outstanding at making us sympathise with a man who could easily have come off as incredibly unlikeable in the hands of a lesser actor. Voight and Hoffman really make you care about Joe and Rizzo and I was really emotional when the final credits rolled.
Whilst Hoffman may have been overshadowed by Voight in Midnight Cowboy, the next Oscar-nominated film he appeared in was almost a showcase for his supreme talent. The film was Lenny, in which Hoffman starred as controversial stand-up comedian Lenny Bruce. The narrative structure of the movie sees the film begin with one of Bruce's later stand-up routines, as we see he has become a burned-out performer, before flashing back to where it all began. The film spends a lot of time concentrating on the relationship between Lenny and his stripper wife Honey, who hadn't been together long before tying the knot. However, it's a destructive relationship which falls apart due to his philandering and her problems with addiction. But their relationship does provide a child, who Lenny is forced to care for and so considers becoming a more family-friendly comic. Ultimately he finds that this is something he's unable to do as he delights in his controversial routine which is laden with profanities throughout. It is Lenny's mouth that later gets him in trouble when he is arrested for use of foul language and decides to defend himself. The final act of the film basically depicts Lenny's fall from grace and his ultimate untimely death from an overdose.
Lenny is an incredibly different film from a lot of what I have watched so far, in that it feels incredibly intimate and at the same time tells an incredibly broad story. As it's shot in black-and-white Lenny looks different from any other film released that year while in addition it employs several unique narrative devices. In addition to the non-linear nature of the plot, a lot of the film is made up of interviews with the characters who are giving their accounts of Lenny's life following his death. This way of telling the story allows screenwriter Julian Barry to let all of the characters get their perspectives across. Obviously the only character who isn't featured in these interviews is Lenny himself however the character looms large over every single scene. The dark nature of the film is intensified through the brilliant direction of Bob Fosse, whose attempts at editing the film are covered in a later entry to this blog. I feel that a lot of the stand-up scenes in Lenny are incredibly similar to the scenes in the club in Cabaret. The only difference is Lenny is performing a comedy routine rather than as a big musical number. Just like with Ratso, Lenny is another character that is hard to like but somehow Dustin Hoffman gives you reason to care about him. Hoffman is incredible during the stand-up scenes and proves what a magnetic screen presence he is when it is just him and a microphone on stage. Similarly great is Valerie Perrine, as Bruce's wife Honey, who gives a sympathetic performance as the stripper with an addictive personality. While Lenny is quite a self-indulgent film at times, there's no denying its a gripping biopic with a tour-de-force central performance. To me it signified that Hoffman was an actor who could turn his hand to anything and was one who wasn't afraid to shy away from more offbeat projects.
However, the final film in this triple bill is definitely the most traditional of the three. All the President's Men is an incredibly wordy biopic of how two Washington Post reporters ended up exposing serious corruption in Richard Nixon's government. Based on the book written by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the film stars Robert Redford and Hoffman as the two reluctant partners on a case that appears initially low-key. The beginning point of the film sees new recruit Woodward being tasked with reporting on a courtroom story about five men who broke into the Watergate Offices. But soon this small story grows legs when Woodward discovers connections with the CIA and he feels that there is more to the tale than meets the eye. Though Woodward is portrayed as quite an intelligent young man, he still has a lot to learn about story layout and so is paired with the more experience Bernstein. Whereas Woodward is fairly level-headed, Bernstein is a lot more off-the-wall and this clash in personalities occasionally causes arguments. But eventually the men gain mutual respect for one another as they uncover some shocking secrets while at the same time struggling with the fact that most of their reports are based on unknown sources. Although some of the senior workers at the paper are not fans of the pair's procedures, they have the blessing of executive editor Ben Bradlee, who vows to stick with them even when the paper finds itself criticised. Though their story led to the resignation of Nixon, the film really doesn't hammer this point home and instead shows us a collection of headlines as its closing scene.
I feel one of the best things a biographical film can do is make you wonder what's going to happen next, when you already know the answer. That's what I felt throughout All the President's Men and I feel a lot of that can be attributed to William Goldman's Oscar-winning script. The film itself was a pet project of Redford who bought the rights to Woodward and Bernstein's book and had Goldman write a draft of the script. Though the script when through several drafts, the final product was incredibly outstanding and I feel that its dialogue-heavy nature influenced a lot of young screenwriters at the time. Indeed both this film and Network, which was released in the same year, had lots of scenes with men sitting around in rooms talking but somehow made them incredibly thrilling to watch. Though certainly the most dynamic member of the cast, Hoffman delivered his most toned down performance of this triple-bill. Hoffman's Bernstein is portrayed as being intrepid, if a little over-eager, and somebody who was always on the lookout for the next story. He is perfectly counter-balanced by the much cooler Redford and I feel the two make a great double act. At the time of the film's release, Redford was the biggest draw at the Box Office but here shared top billing with co-star Hoffman. However, neither was even nominated for Best Actor and the only acting award the film received was for Jason Robards for his compelling supporting turn as Ben Bradlee. Though All the President's Men isn't as dark as either Lenny or Midnight Cowboy, it was gripping throughout and was bolstered by two incredibly frantic performances. In addition I think its script has influenced a lot of the film and television that I love today and for that it deserves a large amount of praise.
Next time we take a trip back in time and head to Russia.
The first of these films was in fact the first Best Picture winner of the decade, John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy. Though Hoffman was nominated for Best Actor, he lost to his co-star Jon Voight who gave a career-defining performance as hustler Joe Buck. The naive and emotionally-scarred Joe, starts the film as a Texan dishwasher who feels his only success is in pleasuring women. He decides to journey to New York in order to become a male prostitute but finds it tough to seek out clients and even finds himself paying out money to one of the women he has liaison with. He is later duped by Hoffman's conman 'Ratso' Rizzo who introduces him to what he believes to be a pimp, but is in fact an extreme Bible basher. Joe later seeks out Rizzo but the latter offers an olive branch when he invites Joe to live in the squat he calls home. The rest of the film sees the pair build up a friendship of sorts as they navigate their way through New York and attempt to survive on what they can find. Towards the end of the film, Rizzo's health begins to deteriorate just as Joe is beginning to build up somewhat of a client base. Instead of keeping an appointment with a wealthy woman, Joe decides to help his friend by buying them both bus tickets to Florida. The final scenes are rather emotional as the simple Joe, who has up to now worn nothing but a cowboy outfit, changes his look just as his friend loses his life.
Earning the honour of being the only X-Rated film ever to win the Best Picture award, Midnight Cowboy is a work of pure genius. The film is hard to watch at times but it is always brilliantly executed and contains some wonderful pieces of visual flair. John Schlesinger seems keen not to make Midnight Cowboy just a standard film and so the editing is great throughout as he inserts flashbacks and fantasy sequences into the narrative. The flashback scenes are particularly harrowing as we witness Joe and his girlfriend being raped and her later being carted off to an institution. I do feel that Midnight Cowboy was the film that ushered in a change to the Best Picture category, especially considering the previous year's winner was Oliver! Another of Midnight Cowboy's distinguishing features is its use of music with both John Barry's score and Harry Nilsson's 'Everybody's Talking' both sticking in the mind long after the film has finished. But to me the film belonged to two men - Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman, whose partnership makes Midnight Cowboy the masterpiece that it is. Voight brings an innocence to Joe Buck that is incredibly endearing but also makes it clear that this is a man who has gone through an enormous amount of suffering in his life. Voight's wide-eyed innocence is perfectly counter-balanced by Hoffman's quick-talking as the charismatic 'Ratso' Rizzo. Hoffman is absolutely outstanding at making us sympathise with a man who could easily have come off as incredibly unlikeable in the hands of a lesser actor. Voight and Hoffman really make you care about Joe and Rizzo and I was really emotional when the final credits rolled.
Whilst Hoffman may have been overshadowed by Voight in Midnight Cowboy, the next Oscar-nominated film he appeared in was almost a showcase for his supreme talent. The film was Lenny, in which Hoffman starred as controversial stand-up comedian Lenny Bruce. The narrative structure of the movie sees the film begin with one of Bruce's later stand-up routines, as we see he has become a burned-out performer, before flashing back to where it all began. The film spends a lot of time concentrating on the relationship between Lenny and his stripper wife Honey, who hadn't been together long before tying the knot. However, it's a destructive relationship which falls apart due to his philandering and her problems with addiction. But their relationship does provide a child, who Lenny is forced to care for and so considers becoming a more family-friendly comic. Ultimately he finds that this is something he's unable to do as he delights in his controversial routine which is laden with profanities throughout. It is Lenny's mouth that later gets him in trouble when he is arrested for use of foul language and decides to defend himself. The final act of the film basically depicts Lenny's fall from grace and his ultimate untimely death from an overdose.
Lenny is an incredibly different film from a lot of what I have watched so far, in that it feels incredibly intimate and at the same time tells an incredibly broad story. As it's shot in black-and-white Lenny looks different from any other film released that year while in addition it employs several unique narrative devices. In addition to the non-linear nature of the plot, a lot of the film is made up of interviews with the characters who are giving their accounts of Lenny's life following his death. This way of telling the story allows screenwriter Julian Barry to let all of the characters get their perspectives across. Obviously the only character who isn't featured in these interviews is Lenny himself however the character looms large over every single scene. The dark nature of the film is intensified through the brilliant direction of Bob Fosse, whose attempts at editing the film are covered in a later entry to this blog. I feel that a lot of the stand-up scenes in Lenny are incredibly similar to the scenes in the club in Cabaret. The only difference is Lenny is performing a comedy routine rather than as a big musical number. Just like with Ratso, Lenny is another character that is hard to like but somehow Dustin Hoffman gives you reason to care about him. Hoffman is incredible during the stand-up scenes and proves what a magnetic screen presence he is when it is just him and a microphone on stage. Similarly great is Valerie Perrine, as Bruce's wife Honey, who gives a sympathetic performance as the stripper with an addictive personality. While Lenny is quite a self-indulgent film at times, there's no denying its a gripping biopic with a tour-de-force central performance. To me it signified that Hoffman was an actor who could turn his hand to anything and was one who wasn't afraid to shy away from more offbeat projects.
However, the final film in this triple bill is definitely the most traditional of the three. All the President's Men is an incredibly wordy biopic of how two Washington Post reporters ended up exposing serious corruption in Richard Nixon's government. Based on the book written by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the film stars Robert Redford and Hoffman as the two reluctant partners on a case that appears initially low-key. The beginning point of the film sees new recruit Woodward being tasked with reporting on a courtroom story about five men who broke into the Watergate Offices. But soon this small story grows legs when Woodward discovers connections with the CIA and he feels that there is more to the tale than meets the eye. Though Woodward is portrayed as quite an intelligent young man, he still has a lot to learn about story layout and so is paired with the more experience Bernstein. Whereas Woodward is fairly level-headed, Bernstein is a lot more off-the-wall and this clash in personalities occasionally causes arguments. But eventually the men gain mutual respect for one another as they uncover some shocking secrets while at the same time struggling with the fact that most of their reports are based on unknown sources. Although some of the senior workers at the paper are not fans of the pair's procedures, they have the blessing of executive editor Ben Bradlee, who vows to stick with them even when the paper finds itself criticised. Though their story led to the resignation of Nixon, the film really doesn't hammer this point home and instead shows us a collection of headlines as its closing scene.
I feel one of the best things a biographical film can do is make you wonder what's going to happen next, when you already know the answer. That's what I felt throughout All the President's Men and I feel a lot of that can be attributed to William Goldman's Oscar-winning script. The film itself was a pet project of Redford who bought the rights to Woodward and Bernstein's book and had Goldman write a draft of the script. Though the script when through several drafts, the final product was incredibly outstanding and I feel that its dialogue-heavy nature influenced a lot of young screenwriters at the time. Indeed both this film and Network, which was released in the same year, had lots of scenes with men sitting around in rooms talking but somehow made them incredibly thrilling to watch. Though certainly the most dynamic member of the cast, Hoffman delivered his most toned down performance of this triple-bill. Hoffman's Bernstein is portrayed as being intrepid, if a little over-eager, and somebody who was always on the lookout for the next story. He is perfectly counter-balanced by the much cooler Redford and I feel the two make a great double act. At the time of the film's release, Redford was the biggest draw at the Box Office but here shared top billing with co-star Hoffman. However, neither was even nominated for Best Actor and the only acting award the film received was for Jason Robards for his compelling supporting turn as Ben Bradlee. Though All the President's Men isn't as dark as either Lenny or Midnight Cowboy, it was gripping throughout and was bolstered by two incredibly frantic performances. In addition I think its script has influenced a lot of the film and television that I love today and for that it deserves a large amount of praise.
Next time we take a trip back in time and head to Russia.
Monday, 8 July 2013
Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 205: Top of the Class
As I've noted throughout my journey round the 1960s Oscar nominees, it seems that this decade was a time of great change within the industry. Though the same colourful epics were being made, there appeared to be a move to more character-based stories which employed innovative camera techniques. I would say that a film that definitely fell into the latter category was The Graduate, which was nominated for the Best Picture prize at the 1968 ceremony. The film has a very basic story as it follows Benjamin Braddock's return to his LA home following his graduation from a college on the East Coast. It sees him attempting to decide what to do with the rest of his life while beginning an affair with the much older, married Mrs Robinson, a friend of his parents. As the affair continues, Ben realises that he and the unhappy Mrs Robinson have very little in common and she's later appalled when he's forced into a date with her daughter Elaine. Benjamin initially attempts to sabotage the date, but later bonds with Elaine and falls in love with her. When Mrs Robinson finds out about their growing relationship, she threatens to tell Elaine everything but Benjamin gets there first. The rest of the film sees Benjamin trying to win Elaine back against the wishes of both her parents and the new man in her life.
From the opening sequence, in which the camera tracks Benjamin as he journeys through the airport, I fell in love with The Graduate. It's a film that it's incredibly hard not to like as it combines a simple story with a number of complex characters and plenty of visual flair. There are so many scenes that I love so I won't name them all, but one that sticks in my mind is Ben jumping into his parents' pool wearing a diving helmet. This scene is so great as we watch everything from Ben's point of view, so the sound is muted and all we see are the expressions on the other characters' faces. Obviously the final ten minutes is particularly iconic and has often been copied but never bettered. The film more than benefits from the score by Simon and Garfunkel with both 'The Sound of Silence' and 'Mrs Robinson' going onto become massive hits for the group. The Graduate was the first film to put Dustin Hoffman on the map and even though he was playing a much younger character, he was 30 at the time, he was still utterly believable. Hoffman perfectly exemplifies Benjamin's nervous energy and you never really tire of watching him even though he's in every single scene. Meanwhile Anne Bancroft was perfectly cast as the cold, calculating Mrs Robinson who was only interested in bedding a younger man to break up her monotonous life. I also though Katharine Ross put in a great turn as Elaine, who was a lot more open and was everything her mother wasn't. Buck Henry and Calder Willingham's script was just superb as it jumped from comedy to tragedy with great ease. Unfortunately The Graduate was nominated for the Oscar in a fairly strong year so didn't win the top prize, however Mike Nichols did take home the Best Director trophy which in my eyes makes it the second best film of that year.
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