This past weekend, I saw both Selma and Whiplash, two films incredible in their own ways. True, both films have been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar and far too much has already been written about Selma’s snubs. But Selma’s unique take on Martin Luther King Jr. and Whiplash’s deconstruction of the young music protege story deserve far more love than love than what was heaped upon the dueling British biopics The Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game.
The Theory of Everything scored five Oscar nominations, the same as Whiplash, but is an indefinitely inferior movie. Director James Marsh and writer Anthony McCarten did not make a bad movie per se, but they sure didn’t make a great one about Stephen Hawking.
The film never tries to be more exciting than it could have been. It doesn’t explore Hawking’s magnificent view of science and the world we live in. Instead, it focuses on the sadly undramatic story of Hawking and Jane, his first wife. It was disappointing to sit in the theater and realize that Jane and Stephen are now friends, even after they both left the marriage. Stephen famously left Jane for his nurse, a story that is dramatic in itself. This should have provided the film a climatic, room-destroying scene - which all good Oscar bait deserves. Instead, it fell flat, with Jane accepting her position and tearing up.
Sure, Eddie Redmayne and Felicity Jones deserved their nominations, particularly Jones. She’s really effective as Jane and it’s a shame she doesn’t get a stronger role in the end. But a Best Picture nomination? Really? This is the kind of movie that seems solely to exist for Oscar nominations, mostly because Hawking’s story doesn’t need to be told. Yeah, sure it’s great that he overcame ALS to become today’s greatest scientific mind, but that doesn’t mean we need a two-hour movie that barely touches on his achievements.
The Imitation Game is a much better film, but still has the stench of Harvey Weinstein Oscar bait. Here is a story that did need to be told. The world does need to know about Alan Turing, since his story was kept secret for so long. Benedict Cumberbatch plays the role perfectly and would surely win the Oscar if Birdman’s Michael Keaton wasn’t in the way.
But is this really a movie that deserved a whopping eight Oscar nominations? Here’s a movie with terrible CG war scenes and an excruciatingly long post-script scene that is so obviously more about patting the filmmakers on the back than celebrating Turing’s achievements.
The one nomination that really annoys me is the Best Director nod for Morten Tyldum. Even if you don’t think Ava DuVernay did a great job on Selma, you have to admit that Tyldum’s slot belonged to Whiplash’s Damien Chazelle. Chazelle is as much a star of his film as Miles Teller and J.K. Simmons are, but Tyldum isn’t doing anything innovative in Imitation Game. It’s not like we haven’t seen biopics told in flashback before.
The fact that the Academy fell for the obvious Oscar bait that both of these movies is just more evidence that campaigning really, really works in Hollywood. True, awards aren’t really important when it comes to art, but these two movies are getting extra attention because of them. And there’s a good chance that neither of these movies win Best Picture or Best Actor. But the fact that they are even a part of the conversation for Best Picture is just - for lack of a better word - annoying.
You can check out the full list of Oscar nominations here.
image courtesy of INFphoto.com
There has been a critical error on your website.<\/p>
Learn more about debugging in WordPress.<\/a><\/p>","data":{"status":500},"additional_errors":[]}