Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Days 389-390: A Double Soderbergh

It's very rare that a director gets two films entered into the Best Picture category in the same year, although we've seen it several times throughout the challenge. However, it's even rarer when that person competes against themselves in the Best Director category. This event did occur at the 2001 ceremony when Steven Soderbergh was nominated for directing Best Picture nominees Erin Brockovich and Traffic. Not only did he go on to win the award for directing, his films brought in five Oscars between the two of them.
Erin Brockovich only got one of these five wins however it was in a pretty prestigious category, that of Best Actress. The recipient of this award was Julia Roberts who, after years of being viewed primarily as a multi-million dollar movie star, redeemed herself in the eyes of the audience by playing the brassy single mother of the title. Erin Brockovich resembles several other movies that have won their leading actress the top prize, most notably Norma Rae. Just like Norma Rae, Erin Brockovich was a character who fought for what she believed in even if she was a small fish in a big pond. Initially barging her way into a job at a legal firm at which she had previously been a client, Erin soon takes interest in a family whose have had an offer made on their house by Pacific Gas and Electric. As Erin begins to investigate the case further, she learns that the company had been using chromium in the water in a plant just outside Hinkley, California. As a result, the surrounding residents had gradually begun to develop various illnesses, with a few suffering from cancer. Whilst Erin takes on this crusade her neighbour, and later lover, George takes on the kids but finds it hard playing mum. Eventually, Erin and lawyer Ed gain the attention of PG&E and the two sides fight to get their cases heard in court. Although Erin Brockovich is definitely a legal drama of sorts it's one that focuses on the effects the outcome of the case will have on the characters rather than the courtroom battles themselves.

Despite the themes of underdogs taking on the big corporations being a rather cliched topic; Erin Brockovich feels fresh for the most part even if it does give in to stereotypes from time to time. The one stereotype that I wasn't a fan of was the way that writer Susannah Grant demonstrated Erin's coarse nature by having her swear every five minutes. The promiscuous clothing that Roberts wore was similarly tactless although her ample cleavage did provide one of the film's most memorable scenes. However I felt where the film was successful was in making these characters feel real and how Grant was able to set up the story rather nimbly. Before the first half hour was out I felt I knew Ed, Erin and George all really well and that's a testament to both Grant and Soderbergh. Additionally I felt that the cast succeeded in fleshing out their characters with Roberts giving some extra weight to the character of Erin. She was able to portray her character's steely nature and combine it with a fear of being left to raise three children with no money. As harassed small-town lawyer Ed, I found Albert Finney to be equally strong and played the perfect foil to Roberts' Erin. Meanwhile I found Aaron Eckhart to make the most of his role as sensitive biker George who found playing second fiddle to Erin's law work just a bit too much to handle. After an intriguing first half as we, along with Erin, learn about the problems in Hinkley, the second half drags a little as we sit through one interview after another. The final scenes, where Erin reveals how much money the people of Hinkley are going to receive, is a little underwhelming but thankfully so much has been done to make us care about the characters that this is simply a minor quibble. Ultimately Erin Brockovich is a character drama first and foremost and thanks to the Oscar-winning Roberts, Soderbergh and Grant it succeeds at presenting a sympathetic protagonist who we root for throughout.
I've always found Soderbergh to be a rather eclectic director as two of his films are rarely the same unless of course they're sequels. So, in the same year that he made the rather mainstream underdog drama Erin Brockovich, he also directed the multi-layered drug epic Traffic. Based on the 1980s Channel 4 miniseries of the same name; Traffic saw Soderbergh tackle the war on drugs by telling three interconnected stories. The first and most powerful story followed police officer Javier Rodriguez, a mild-mannered enforcer who was hoping to clear up the drug problem in Tijuana. However, Rodriguez's recruitment by the seemingly good-natured General Salazar later proved to be an almost fatal mistake as he found himself caught between two rival gangs. Meanwhile, in America, Judge Robert Wakefield is tasked with heading up the president's Office of National Drug Policy. Inspired by Salazar's phony efforts to clean up Mexico, Wakefield hopes to employ similar methods in the USA. However, Wakefield's problems are closer to home when it appears that his straight A-student daughter Caroline is becoming more and more dependent on drugs. Caroline's problems get so bad that eventually Robert decides that he can't fight a war against his own family. The weakest story for me saw the arrest and trial of Carlos Ayala, a drug lord working for the cartel that Salazar was trying to bring down in America. The problem with this story was that it was told from the eyes of Carlos' trophy wife Helena, who struggled to cope after her husband's arrest. This story was also the one that ran out of steam quickest and proved that not everybody could be brought to justice.

Traffic won four awards at the 2001 ceremony including Best Director for Steven Soderbergh, Best Screenplay for Stephen Gagan and Best Editing. Additionally, the wonderful Benicio Del Toro won Best Supporting Actor for his powerful portrayal of Javier Rodriguez; whose story arc is possibly Traffic's most compelling. Del Toro's gritty performance felt realistic in tone and his final facial expression when he saw the local kids playing baseball provided the perfect end to the story. I also enjoyed the performance Michael Douglas gave as the increasingly desperate Wakefield, a man who was forced to juggle working for the President with looking for his drug-addled daughter. Although I found Douglas' performance to be gripping, I found this story a little hard to take a times. I found Gagan struggled to write believable dialogue for Caroline her boyfriend Josh; whose conversations didn't feel like they were coming from the mouths of teenagers. In addition I felt that Caroline went from casual drug user to thieving prostitute rather quickly and I had to suspend my disbelief quite substantially in order to get on board with her downfall. Meanwhile, I felt that Catherine Zeta Jones was miscast as Helena and the scene in which she tried to do a drug deal was just laughable. However there were more hits than misses in a film which is a real testament to Soderbergh as he ties all three stories together perfectly. I personally loved the way in which all three stories are shot differently with a colour representing different areas. So for example the Mexico scenes were given a grainy feel, the Wakefield plot was given a blueish tinge and Carlos and Helena's world was richly produced. Although I could've done without some of the scenes involving Zeta-Jones' Helena, Traffic was definitely a film that grew on me thanks to Soderbergh's deft directorial flair. Whilst I do believe he's made better films, Traffic is definitely his most ambitious and therefore its right that it's the one he received his Oscar for.

Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day 286-287: Don't Stand So Close to Me

During my assessment of her work in the 1950s, I constantly wondered why Deborah Kerr never won an Oscar despite being nominated a mind-boggling six times. There's another lady who has now tied Kerr for being the actress with the most unsuccessful Oscar nominated performances. The actress in question is Glenn Close who in the 1980s lost out in the acting categories a total of five times whilst her most recent loss came a couple of years ago. We've already witnessed one of Close's Oscar-nominated roles, in The Big Chill where she played a well-meaning and friendly Doctor. However, in the tail-end of the decade, Close would demonstrate that she was much better at playing manipulative and at times downright scary female protagonists.

The great thing about Close's performance in Fatal Attraction is that her character initially seems fairly normal. Whilst it's clear that her character Alex Forrest is attracted to Michael Douglas' lawyer Dan Gallagher when they meet at a party there doesn't seem to be anything amiss about her. The audience remain similarly unsurprised when the couple begin an affair while Dan's wife and daughter are out in the country visiting family. The affair between Dan and Alex lasts for one whole weekend during which the latter starts to demonstrate signs that she may not be as normal as we first expected. However, as Alex realises Dan's intentions towards her were only fleeting, she stuns him by slitting her wrists when he attempts to leave. His compassion towards her is misread as something more and soon she's bombarding both his work and home phone with plenty of messages. Dan attempts to evade Alex by changing his phone number but once again she outsmarts him by turning up at his apartment as a potential buyer. Alex eventually admits to Dan that she's pregnant and he's the father but he claims that he wants nothing to do with her. From there Alex's behaviour becomes dangerous as she commits numerous crimes, including one incredibly iconic sequence involving an innocent pet and a pan of scorching water. Eventually Dan admits his affair to his wife and they agree to work together to bring down the psychopathic Alex.

After watching Fatal Attraction my first thought was the shock that a psychological thriller like this was ever nominated for Best Picture. While Fatal Attraction isn't a bad film by any stretch of the imagination it's not a movie that I would associate with the Oscars. Indeed, if Fatal Attraction was released in 2014 it would be instantly seen as a slightly creepy erotic film and may garner a cult audience but nothing more. What I personally enjoyed about Adrian Lyne's film is how the shocking moments are interspersed with plenty of mundane scenes involving Dan and his family. I believe that a thriller only works if the thrills are well built up and Fatal Attraction was a film that certainly was aware of how to do this. I do feel that I possibly would've enjoyed the film more had I not known the basic outline of the plot before sitting down to watch it. That being said I was still incredibly shocked by the final scenes which saw Alex's revenge thwarted by the Gallaghers. One of the reason the film works so well is the performance from Close who is believable as the unhinged Alex who would go to any lengths to ensnare the man she feels she should be with. Close excels both in the early scenes as the flirty, confident businesswoman and later as the psychopathic ex-lover with revenge firmly in her sights. Michael Douglas was the go-to sleazeball of the 1980s and here he takes to his role as the philandering family man with ease. My main issue with the film was the fact that the career woman Alex would be completely willing to sacrifice everything just because of her obsession with one man. This did spoil my enjoyment of the film slightly but then I don't think Fatal Attraction is a film that is based firmly in reality. Overall I found Fatal Attraction to be a gripping thriller with a satisfying ending that proved that Close was the perfect choice to play a manipulative character in the 1980s.

I'm sure that's partly why that, a year later, Close was called upon to play the Marquise de Merteuil in Dangerous Liaisons. The film, an adaptation of Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, portrays Merteuil as a strong woman who attempts to play games with men to avenge the way her sex is treated. Her latest scheme involves getting one over on a former lover by attempting to break in his new fiancée, the virginal Cécile de Volanges, and therefore making a mockery of him in society. To do so she enlists the help of the similarly despicable Vicomte de Valmont who refuses to take part in her plot to deflower Cécile. His primary reason for this refusal is that he's already attempting to seduce another virtuous soul in Madame de Tourvel, a married woman who is currently staying with aunt. Merteuil believes that Valmont doesn't have a chance with Tourvel and makes a wager to this affect making herself the prize. From there the games really start to begin as Valmont manipulates his way around society, professing his love for Tourvel and staging charitable deeds in the hope that she'll see him as a decent man. Eventually, after making a discovery, Valmont agrees to seduce Cécile, an act that proves a lot easier than he first suspected. With a lot of double crossing and sexual encounters along the way, the ending of Dangerous Liaisons is fairly touching. I have to say that I wasn't expecting the sort of conclusion that the film offered and for that reason alone it really surprised me.

Having watched a lot of costume dramas throughout the decades, I can't say without a doubt that Dangerous Liaisons heralded in a new era for the genre. While the Oscar-winning production design and costumes remained fairly traditional the tone of the film was anything just. The tone can be attributed to Christopher Hampton, whose adapted screenplay was incredibly well-placed and was a worthy winner of an Oscar itself. Hampton's mischievous script was full of sexually charged conversations and manipulative characters who generally would have been secondary characters in other costume dramas. Neither Merteuil nor Valmont are particularly likeable characters but it's their hedonistic lifestyle and manipulation of others that makes them so intriguing. Hampton makes sure that neither are considered caricatures and includes scenes in which both explain their motivations for behaving as they do. The supporting characters add different elements to the plot whether it be the piety displayed by Tourvel or the wide-eyed innocence of the ditzy Cécile. Of her two roles in this post, Close is definitely more comfortable playing Merteuil primarily as her vengeance is portrayed as a way of getting back at all the men that have wronged her. Close is great both in her character's scenes with Valmont and those in which she is forced to act as an upstanding pillar of society. Close also shares a brilliant chemistry with John Malkovich who delivers a scenery-chewing performance as the dastardly Valmont. Malkovich controls every scene he's in and I believe its an absolute travesty that he wasn't nominated for his role in the film. Instead, the other nomination went to Michelle Pfieffer who was great at playing the pure Tourvel and in particular portraying her eventual love for Valmont. While I personally enjoyed Uma Thurman's turn as Cécile I felt that Keanu Reeves was miscast as her lover and music teacher Danceny. In fact, as Danency plays a vital part in the closing stages of the film, I would've thought that somebody with a bit mroe experience would've been cast. But that's a minor quibble of a lavishly exotic film that played with the boundaries of the costume drama genre and had fun doing it. Once again it demonstrated that Close was great at playing strong, slightly unhinged female characters.

Ironically, Close's most recent nomination saw her play a woman who was much more at home in her regular guise as a man. I really do hope that Close one day gets her day in the sun and wins an Oscar because, judging from what I've seen in the 1980s alone, she more than deserves it.

Next time a focus on another actress who, unlike Close, successfully won the Best Actress Oscar during the 1980s.