King And Country: Richard II, or, How To Set The Tone

If you want it, here it is--come and get it.

Plays are verbal music, with the added bonus (or burden) of silence as a note all its own. Most plays begin by setting the tone for what will follow. But when a play begins with a speech from the one guy who is always the wrong note in the chorus, unless you know what everyone else is supposed to be singing, the wrongness of this guy isn’t clear from the start—because you hear it first, you judge everything that you hear, from then on, as either off-key or harmony, and only after a while does the realization creep up on you that the note you started with, the one you took as your starting point the way an orchestra takes concert pitch from the first violin, is wrong—all wrong.  

That’s the challenge of doing Dickie Double. Richard has the first lines in the play. So if you don’t set the tone—if you don’t let the audience know where Richard stands in relation to the rest of the play’s world—then they will spend the first half hour of the play getting their footing, instead of being grounded immediately. If watching a play is like climbing a set of stairs, where you always know where you stand and always trust where you’re going, then the opening of Richard II is like standing on a warped bottom step, subconsciously shifting your balance so that it feels level, and then, as you climb, being forced to adjust your balance until you realize that it’s not the staircase that’s out of whack, but just that first step. It’s incredibly disorienting. (It’s also a great example of how, when a writer cuts to the chase because he trusts that a contemporary audience knows what’s going on without being told, it works brilliantly. But only for that audience. Modern playwrights who lean on 21st Century topical references, take note.)  

This production solves that problem brilliantly.  The audience walks in on a set that shows a casket lying in the middle of an empty church. With the house lights only dimming to half, an old woman enters. In a gallery above, three sopranos begin to sing Latin funeral songs. The old woman drapes herself over the casket, and for the next six minutes, that’s all you get: the casket, the mourner, and the music. At the end of which, after other mourners (mostly male) have drifted in and offered silent support, David Tennant’s Richard bounces onstage, and speaks the first lines of the play. And the audience immediately— thanks to the jarring effect of having this bubble of silence and mourning pricked and needled by Richard’s flighty now-now-now’s—immediately knows that this guy is a total jerk, an opinion which is confirmed by the embarrassed way his Queen and her attendants hang back from him, like they’re saying “We don’t really know this fool, honest.”  

And we’re off and running with the best production of Dickie Double that I have ever seen. That opening colors everything so well that, when John of Gaunt dies, and Richard sails on and snaps up his lands and estates, it offends our decency, because we’ve seen what decency is. Director Gregory Doran does everything so right that he even gets away with dressing up Tennant to look like he’s Christ: long hair, bare feet, floor-length white one-piece robe. In the first half it’s affectation; in the second half it’s a one-to-one correspondence, with Richard’s farewell scene with his Queen played like a brief interruption on the way to Golgotha, and his reveal in prison complete with chains that pull his arms akimbo like he’s being crucified. 

There’s a lot of playfulness with the crown (a motif that will be repeated during the next three plays); there’s a briskness to the staging and the acting that totally trusts the audience as it reassures them; and there’s a lot of nice touches with Aumerle, who has in this version an arc which is not in the original—and a shared-kiss love relationship with Richard. The only real flaw in this precious ointment is Jane Lapotaire, who plays the Duchess of Gloucester, the old woman who opens the play draped over that casket. She has a great many lines during that opening scene, all of which are distinctly audible to the first two rows of the audience and reach the ears of the rest of us with all the clarity of a speakerphone conversation three blocks away. Even the oldsters with their assistive listening devices hear nothing louder than a distant mutter, and boy are they pissed. 

As for Tennant, his Richard is brilliant: he’s flighty, mercurial, self-obsessed, and annoying in the first half; and without changing a single one of his mannerisms or line deliveries, he is serious, focused, objective, and charming in the second half. The same qualities which make him the kind of king who needs replacing make him a great ex-king (which, given the religious angle in which this is presented, is like saying that sometimes it’s the worst priest who makes the best martyr). Richard goes from being vain and disgraceful to being the voice of decency, which is the hallmark of this script. Without changing anything in his main character, Shakespeare makes you see him one way when he’s in power and a completely different way when he isn’t. That’s genius, and this production rises to it.

 

The Venice Beach Sonnets

The man with no beard –

on a different coast-

inventing one self.

Go.

                -- DSK prompt 3/13/16 

 

The man with no beard on a different coast

   Looks different and looks differently at life.

His future pregnant and his past a ghost,

   He strolls the beach like a content ex-wife.

He feels divorced from everything but all

   The possibilities that he holds dear—

The hazards that he coddles—till they stall

   From much too little faith and too much fear.

At the best, we are all what we don’t do—

   Defined not by our riches, but our debt—

With all our mysteries, both fake and true,

   Solved by the uncommitted we regret.

      Regret which, like a snug beard, must be shorn

      For the true face it safeguards to be born.

 

He wonders if he has to visualize

   The face he wants and wants the world to see,

Or if it’s something he can improvise

   If he relaxes and says “Let it be?”

Sometimes the way to guide is to let go;

   But that part in him which adores control

Hears Life say “Yes!” and can’t stop whining “No!”

   Till insolent defiance fills his soul.

To him, saying no means he’s independent,

   And doesn’t have to be part of the mess

Of affirmation, or a co-defendant

   Who’s prosecuted for the crime of Yes—

      And, while he takes a bow for being clever,

      Commits the greater crime of saying “Never.”

The lack of beard sets free the face, just like

   Facing what’s feared sets free the slave of habit,

Who loves his chains too much to ever strike

   Them from the ankles of his inner rabbit.

Freedom and change terrify to the bone

  When Life’s not where you go but where you stay,

For all free souls start out scared of their own

   Shadow—and all the chained ones end that way—

Made timid by the certainty of doom

   And alternately paralyzed and frantic—

Forgetting that the darkest shadows loom

   From something small that’s lit to look gigantic

      Enough to make the strong feel impotent—

      And can’t be threatening without consent.

 

The man with no beard thinks: “I have the power,

   And yet I hand it to what makes me weak.

When faced with opportunity, I cower;

   When graced with well-deserved success, I freak.

And when I talk about myself, the voice

   I use is one that says I’m satisfied

With sitting this one out—I have no choice—

   My past defeats make me disqualified.”

He ponders this, and realizes that

   Life is a game that’s played in counter-moves;

And when someone retreats or just stands pat,

   Nothing important changes or improves.

      When sitting on your hands becomes the law,

      The best that you can hope for is a draw.

It’s what you put your hand to that defines

   The game you play, and how much of your heart’s

In it that shows which way your soul inclines

   And how far it will lean when your turn starts.

The man without a beard looks at his hands.

   They’ve touched more pens than people now for years.

So prompt to answer to his mind’s demands;

   So slow to reach beyond his heart’s frontiers.

What he puts them to is so safe for him

   And second-hand, he always feels like he’s

Not living Life but just Life’s synonym,

   And not doing to do—doing to please

      Everyone but himself, so he can feel

      Valued, appreciated, loved—and real.

 
 

That’s how he’s wired now—to cannibalize

   The endless negativity that feeds

His fears, and channel it so it supplies

   All the positive energy he needs.

The wiring started when he was a kid.

   Now it’s a giant knot of patches where

One bad connection can short out the grid

   And all the oldest cables need repair.

It’s such a tangled mess of ancient junk

   But he’s grown used to how it never fails

To make fuel from his nasty inner gunk
   And turn his biggest anchors into sails.

      He’s really quite proud of it, in a way—

      It’s made him into who he is today.

 

But what about tomorrow?—which is just

   A single step away. What step gets taken?

Most of the time we just stand still and trust

   That while we sleep, our dreams will all awaken—

That they’ll bring us to life, instead of us

   Laboring to give birth to them, and guiding

Them as they grow from something dubious

   To something that’s substantial and abiding.

So what does one make love to, to bring dreams

   To life, except the passion of today,

And hope it lasts until that love redeems

   Itself in what regret cannot betray:

      A life built not on maybe or somehow,

      But whens that are all one step from a now.

 

The man without a beard pictures the host

   Of women that his heart leans to, and each

One of them glides before him like a ghost,

   Into his arms and always out of reach,

Because not one of them is flesh and blood.

   They’re all ideas and visions, based on who

He thinks they are, or wants from them—no mud

   Beneath their feet; just clouds and sky deep-blue.

He wishes he loved someone who was real,

   And knows it’s him—not them—who is at fault.

Loving ghosts means he can pretend to feel

   And then perform a mental somersault

      To feel rejected by the ghostly pack

      And blame them all for not loving him back. 

 

“Something else to untangle,” he says to

   Himself as he walks barefoot on the beach,

Shoes in his hands, past a young woman who

   Lies naked on her stomach, like a peach

With tan lines. Juicy. Ripe. But still just fruit.

   The skin is pleasing and the flesh is sweet,

But he’s in search of something more than cute

   That would make him feel more than incomplete.

Not something perfect—life will always flaw it—

   Or something that keeps trying to resist him.

But would he even know it if he saw it

   And would he even feel it if it kissed him?

      No. For he knows that he’s built up a wall

      Between him and all feelings large and small.

 

And like all walls, what it protects becomes

  Too weak to ever meet the world head-on.

Security safeguards, but also numbs

   Till what was once outgoing is withdrawn.

That wall means safety; but what safety means

   Is what’s kept in as well as what’s kept out—

And then infecting what it quarantines

   With laziness, timidity and doubt.

The man without a beard knows this too well.

   His life is all retreats and few advances

And in the end he has to fight like hell

   To get his heart to take the smallest chances.
      It’s like a blessing born from a great sin:

      You have to break out to let love break in. 

The man without a beard would hide his light

   Behind a bushel like he hid his face

Behind white hair. And whether it was fright

   Or modesty, it put him in his place.

It kept him free of any obligations.

   It lost him the attention that a star gets.

It made him low, just like his expectations,

   And small—for tiny things make harder targets.

Which got him just where he wanted to be:
   Nowhere—which is the safest spot on earth.

The only place where you’re completely free

   To gloat over your total lack of worth.

      Nowhere: that soothing shelter that can hide you

      All while it daily lives and grows inside you.

 

Somewhere there is a risk that feels like home;

   Somewhere the courage in his heart to dare it—

A garden unprotected by a dome

   With someone grounded who will thirst to share it.

Next to that, his life now is bare and dry—

   A place not to reside, but travel through,

Where questions all get echoes in reply

   And every answer is a Waterloo.

Is that defeatism or recognition

   That truth is like a battle always lost?

What if he simply gives himself permission

   To heaven reap, and to hell with the cost?

      What can stop him from where he wants to go

      Except the voice inside him that says “No?”

 

He never says no to the troublesome

   And faithfully avoids the status quo.

So what does he say yes to? Which is from

   A play he wrote more than ten years ago.

Besides his writing (which is his best armor),

   What fills his plate with what he needs to live—

Handing his heart to some elusive charmer?

   Telling himself it’s cool to always give

And never get? Why do those questions make

   Him feel as if he’s emptier than space—

Like all his wagers have nothing at stake

   And his whole world is one big hiding place?
      Because, he thinks, behinds those questions lies

      A face he’s always trying to disguise.

 

The face the world sees is our public best:

   We wear it like a tyrant wears a crown.

And underneath its smile are all the rest:

   Face after face—faces, all the way down.

Which one is real and which one is a fake?

   They all are. And they’re fashioned to protect

One tender face which rarely comes awake

   Where we’ve invested all our self-respect.

The man with no beard on a different coast

   Looks different, and looks differently at life.

That hidden face now haunts him like a ghost;
   And though it may end up like an ex-wife,

      He’ll hunt it down, do what he can to free it,

      Then put his hand to what it sees, and be it.


Copyright 2016 Matthew J Wells

Jack's Daughter

 

                     for Steph Paynes

The hole he left behind is ten times greater

   Than what it looked like while he was still here.

It was a burrow then; now it’s a crater

   That’s deep enough to make hope disappear—

But never deep enough to dim the light

   That shined from his face when he saw, in you,

The spirit, the devotion, and the fight

   That he inked on your soul like a tattoo.

Sorrow, like love, is ours to give, not keep;

   And death not how we leave, but leave our mark.

The mark he left is why that hole’s so deep.

   The light he shed is why the hole’s so dark—

      Light that will never fail to warm and guide you

      Just like he’ll always be right there beside you.

 

Copyright 2016 Matthew J Wells

 

The Small Print On The Warranty

We think of our bodies as everything

   But what they are—a car we can’t trade in

When engine croaks that used to hum and sing

   And chassis buckles like it’s made of tin.

It’s a machine we use to get around,

   And it runs down because that’s what cars do.

You can replace a part that isn’t sound,

   But when the old transmission’s shot, you’re through.

That failure is built in, from the beginning;

   It’s part of each success we come across.

The point is to appreciate the winning

   While trusting that the finish line is loss.

      Our bodies break down. Why complain? It’s fate.

      We’re all born with an expiration date.

 

Copyright 2016 Matthew J Wells

 

This morning's post-well-THAT-was-a-fabulous-reading sonnet

                     Heraclitus  

There’s nothing like the drop after the high.

   The peak I stood on last night is now sand.

My feet sink into it up to the thigh

   And then I’m swimming in the Rio Grande

Of Time, that rolls me from Mount Yesterday

   Into Tomorrow, leaving not a sliver

To stand on—for the stage of last night’s play

   Is always washed away by morning’s river.

And even when I don’t feel like I’m moving

   And take a stand somewhere, or hold my ground,

It turns out that the point I’m really proving

   Is where I’ve been must yield to where I’m bound.

      I cling for life to yesterday. It shatters.

      The past is drowned. Only the current matters. 

 

Copyright 2016 Matthew J Wells

Oscar The Grouch

Oscar showing his true colors.

THE BIG (BLACK AND WHITE) PICTURE 

So here’s my two cents. 

I was talking to a theatre friend the other day about the Academy Awards and whiteness, and how it kind of makes this year’s Oscars like Moby-Dick, complete with harpoons in its flanks, and I said: “Y’know, if any of the movies up for Best Picture had been staged as plays in New York in the last twelve months, there would have been multi-cultural casting all over the place.” And my friend said “Except Manhattan Theatre Club,” and we both cackled with glee, because MTC is doing its White Male Season this year. But with that notorious exception, theatre in this city, for the most part, has it all over movies because the world which theatre is trying to reflect is New York City, and you can’t get more diverse. The world that movies is trying to reflect is the LA version of Davos. 

YOU: What’s Davos?

ME:  It’s where the World Economic Forum is held.

YOU:  Ah—rich white people.

ME: Rich anybody—because as long as you’re rich, you’re honorary white. All of them reaffirming the bubble they live in.

YOU:  New York is a bubble too.

ME:  Yeah, but its gum has more flavor. 

The point being, if it doesn’t say THIS GUY IS BLACK in the script, Hollywood doesn’t even think of casting a person of color in the part. Which is sadly one of the few times it ever actually honors the wishes of a writer. 

HOLLYWOOD PRODUCER:  You didn’t say he was black.

WRITER: If I said he was black, you would have asked me to make him white.

HOLLYWOOD PRODUCER:  And I cast a white guy anyway. See? It all works out! 

And you won’t hear it out loud for publication, but you can bet that someone somewhere in LA is saying “Black movies don’t make money,” or “Black actors don’t deliver good opening weekends,” which is the capitalist form of racism, as if movies can take on the color of a lead actor, or an actor’s connection to his or her audience is based not on talent but on melanin. It’s the same dismissal you get when movies are defined as “women’s films,” or when producers believe that boys will spend money to see Scarlett Johansson kick ass but not kiss assholes; and if it didn’t piss me off so much, I would pity these poor dopes, because they cannot view the world except through categories. They do not see people; they see types of people, they see metrics and they make assumptions about income and likes or dislikes based on an arbitrary category—the most public of which is the audience age breakdown that always gets talked about with each new movie. “We’re targeting males from 18 to 30!” the studios cry, and I would just love it if some nothing-to-lose reporter would respond by asking: “So are those white males or what?” Which, when it comes to Hollywood, is a rhetorical question. 

And I’m sorry, but adding people of color to the Academy voting rolls or their board of advisors, or whatever the hell they have, is pointless. Making the referees black doesn’t change an all-white football team. You need to field a team with diversity. If the product the Academy is judging for an award isn’t diverse in the first place, then the judges are still going to have to pick an MVP from that all-white roster. It’s Hollywood that needs to change; not just the Academy.  

Will it change? Doubtful. The whole Hollywood system is supported and perpetuated by its ability to have its cake and eat it too when it comes to money versus art. When people blame Hollywood for being artistically irresponsible, you get: “But we’re a business, we’re marketing a product here, and that has nothing to do with art.” And then when you accuse them of being the worst kind of crass number-crunching plutocrats, you get: “But movies are the cultural mainstay of our society, they’re the highest art form in creation, and that has nothing to do with money. And can somebody look up plutocrats for me?”

 

The truth is that, in the eyes of Hollywood, art is valued at precisely 1/365th the value of money, because that’s the ratio of how many days a year box office totals come first and how many days a year the Oscars are given out.

(And that was actually about twenty cents; sorry.) 

So. On to the Awards.

 

THE WHO CARES AWARDS 

The trick to gaming the Oscars is trying to figure out how Old White Guys with gorgeous twenty-year-old female assistants will vote when presented with a list of films they slept through. Sometimes it’s easy; sometimes it’s hard. But it’s always a window into their brains. In the minor awards area, that window opens out onto a stage where Inside Out should win Best Animated Film and Amy should win Best Documentary; Foreign Language Film is either going to be Son of Saul or Mustang (probably Son of Saul because Holocaust); Original Score will go to either Morricone for Hateful 8 or John Williams for Star Wars: The Sequel Awakens; and Best Song will go to “Til It Happens To You” from a movie nobody saw because Lady Gaga.  

THE CYNIC IN ME: And by the way, Academy, you should be ashamed of yourself for nominating that feculent howler of a song from Spectre for ANYTHING. I mean, there’s clueless and then there’s fucking clueless, okay? 

The writing awards are a little trickier. I’d give Best Adapted Screenplay to The Big Short, because it was both a well-told story and an entertaining lecture. My other choice would be Room, for opening up the first-person narration of the novel without losing any of the charm and wonder of that point of view. Which one will the Academy pick?   

THE CYNIC IN ME: The Martian, because it had the snappiest dialogue, and the Old White Males probably think Matt Damon wrote it. 

Best Original Screenplay could legitimately go to any of the nominees except Bridge Of Spies and I would be happy. (Have I told you how much I hated Bridge of Spies? No?  Then you need to read this.) Inside Out was smart, Ex Machina was brilliant, Spotlight was solid, and—wait, there’s a movie about non-whites in this category? WTF! Wow. This could be where the Oscar actually attempt a little atonement. Bu-u-u-u-ut it won’t be, because none of the Old White Voters went to see it, thus fulfilling their prophecy that people don’t go to black films, and inadvertently clarifying their definition of “people.” Who will win? Smart and brilliant don’t stand a chance against solid in this world; Spotlight should get it.  

THE CYNIC IN ME: But solid doesn’t stand a chance against didactic, and that’s Bridge Of Spies to a T. Which is why I say Bridge of Spies. 

The shorts and the animated stuff: I usually see these at Landmark, but I didn’t this year, so I have no clue. And when I have no clue, I usually go by The Unwritten Rules Of Oscar. To wit: in anything live action, Holocaust trumps race; race trumps children; and children trump women. If there is a current medical issue, that pulls away in the stretch, as does any horse from the Middle East. As for the animated shorts, Pixar trumps everything, with the possible exception of Wallace and Gromit. Good luck. 

The rest of the categories all have Best Picture implications, because they are the early contests in which The Revenant and Mad Max: Fury Road are up against each other. They are: Cinematography, which should go to The Revenant; Costume Design, which should go to MM:FR; Film Editing (a toss-up; I’d give it to Mad Max); Makeup and Hairstyling (Mad Max 4ever); Production design (Mad Max 4sure); and the crucial Sound Editing and Sound Mixing, which are usually key indicators of Best Picture. Again, a toss-up.  As for visual effects, this may well go to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, not so much for breaking new ground but for replicating the old ground so exactly. If SW:TFA doesn’t get it, then I think the winner of this award will get Best Picture.

 

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

This should go to Mark Rylance, who’s the only good thing in Bridge Of Spies. (Okay; I’ll stop now.) 

THE CYNIC IN ME: No I won’t. 

Tom Hardy plays one note in Revenant, and he does it so well that you feel like every other character on-screen with him has to be blind and deaf not to see and hear that he’s a craven little shit. Christian Bale is also one note, but it’s a more complicated note: what every other character on-screen with him sees has nothing to do with his inner self, and he’s a good enough actor to let us see that and not them. Sylvester Stallone?  In a way, I’d love to see him get it because it’s just so typically Hollywood to give an award to the old white guy in the movie that stars the young black actor who should have been nominated but wasn’t. And then there’s Mark Ruffalo, who got the nomination because of his One Big Speech in Spotlight, but also because he’s just so Mark Ruffalo. If it’s not Rylance, then I think it’s going to be Ruffalo; and if he does win, then he’ll be winning as a representative of the entire cast, which means that Spotlight has a great chance to win Best Picture.  

Notably missing in this list: Benicio Del Toro in Sicario. (I really liked Sicario.)

 

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE 

This is an odd category this year, because it includes two women who should be up for Best Actress and aren’t: Alicia Vikander for The Danish Girl, and Rooney Mara for Carol. One of these two should win, and rightly so—neither of their movies would work without them. Mara totally looks like 1950’s Audrey Hepburn, which sells the period completely; plus she has the stillness to balance and anchor Cate Blanchett’s theatricality. And to my mind, Vikander is the Danish girl of her movie’s title. The heart of the movie lives in her, and her reaction to what and who her husband is. Either one would be a fabulous choice, and the only edge Vikander has is that she’s won earlier awards in the same category. As for the others, Jennifer Jason Leigh is a long shot for H8teful, Rachel McAdams is solid but not quite the female Ruffalo in Spotlight, and Kate Winslet is actually better in the five seconds she shows up in the Triple 9 trailer than she is in all of Steve Jobs. 

 

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE 

And the losers are: Cate Blanchett for Carol, who was a little too theatrical for my taste. (And besides, Sarah Paulson should have played Carol. She wouldn’t have been as glam, but I think Blanchett’s obvious flashiness was the main reason why the movie wasn’t as good as it thought it was. Paulson would have raised the movie to the next level. Given that she’s essentially the GBF in this film, what a missed opportunity.) Also a loser: Jennifer Lawrence, who had the misfortune to be great in an ambitious but so-so film; Charlotte Rampling, who was great in a small but slight film; and Saorsie Ronan, who was nowhere near as great as she’s been elsewhere in what is basically a Lifetime movie. 

That leaves Brie Larson, and the award is hers to lose. And rightly so. This movie punches your heart in so many different ways, and she's half the reason for that. The other half is Jacob Tremblay. The chemistry between the two of them is one of those HFS things that can move creative mountains. When Larson wins this award, it'll be his as much as hers. 

Notably missing from this list: Emily Blunt in Sicario. (I really really liked Sicario.)

 

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE  

And the losers are:  Bryan Cranston for Trumbo (It’s an honor to be nominated, Brian); Matt Damon for The Martian (Remember the five minutes when The Martian was going to win everything? Good times.); Michael Fassbender for Steve Jobs (has anybody spouting Aaron Sorkin dialogue ever won an acting Oscar?); Eddie Redmayne for The Danish Girl (you won it last year, pommy boy; and besides, it’s Alicia Vikander’s movie); and Michael B Jordan for not even getting nominated for Creed while Stallone was.

That leaves Leonardo DiCaprio for The Revenant, the odds-on favorite to win the male version of the Uglified Babe Oscar that went to Nicole Kidman for The Hours and Charlize Theron for Monster. Because really, all he does in this movie is grunt and look like shit. Which you and I do before we shower every morning, so where’s our fucking Oscar? 

Personally, I think the Oscar should go to one guy who deserves to be on this list and isn’t: Tom Hardy, for Legend. Even though it wasn’t the greatest movie in the world, and  I was one of maybe 50 people in the country who saw it, the work he did to make each of the Cray twins unique was phenomenal. It’s on par with what Jeremy Irons did in Dead Ringers, and you all know how great that was. 

YOU: I don’t.

ME: Then you need to WATCH IT RIGHT NOW. Plus it’s a Cronenberg movie.

YOU: Hot damn. Wait—it’s not crappy later Cronenberg, is it?

ME: Nope. 1988—between Dead Zone and Naked Lunch.

YOU: Yowza! 

 

DIRECTING  

All five nominees here are also up for Best Picture, and only one nominee has won before, so does the Academy go for the double-play or do they mix and match? Will they give Alejandro Innaritu his second Director Oscar in a row? Will they give it to George Miller for basically being the Bernie Sanders of directors (age and politics both)? Or do they reward the Funny Or Die cleverness of Big Short, the solid workmanship of Spotlight, or the subtle handheld brilliance of Room? All I can say is, I really want to see George Miller win this. In fact, I would rather see him win this instead of Best Picture, because he shares one thing in common with Innaritu—the movies they made would look and feel completely different if anybody else had been at the helm. The only other film I think you can say that about is Big Short; it has a very specific stamp on it, and it’s not Adam McKay’s usual stamp. Room and Spotlight are stampless—the direction serves the story, which makes it invisible, even when it’s unique. So which way do you lean? Direction that’s invisible, or direction that looks like DIRECTION?  

THE CYNIC IN ME: We’re talking Hollywood. Guess. 

Flashy it is then. My heart says Miller will get it. But my head says Innaritu. But my inner Old White Guy says Tom McCarthy for Spotlight.

 

BEST PICTURE  

The great thing about great movies is that you can re-watch them over and over and still get something out of them. The sad thing about the Oscars is that they almost always go to a movie that you only watch once.  

ME:  Seriously: who’s seen The King’s Speech or Slumdog Millionaire recently? Anyone? I didn’t think so.

YOU:  But then: Lawrence of Arabia. Casablanca.  So it cuts both ways.

ME: Maybe so, but the watch-it-only-once side is the thicker cut. 

In the Re-Watch Me Race, Mad Max: Fury Road is the frontrunner. I could see that again right now, which I certainly can’t say about  Bridge of Spies even if you put a Kalashnikov to my head. (Okay; I could re-watch all the Mark Rylance scenes, but that’s it.) And Brooklyn was sweet but a little too Masterpiece Theatre safe, and The Martian was fun but it’s one of those films that seems bigger than it really is when you see it in a theatre—watch it on TV and it’s not going to have the same (cough) Gravity (cough). Spotlight and The Big Short are flip sides of the same ripped-from-the-headlines coin, one earnest and one snarky—and yeah, I could re-watch them if they showed up on HBO, one because it’s comforting, one because it’s confrontational—so they each have possibilities.  But really—is there anyone with a certificate of mental health who wants to sit through The Revenant again?  

YOU: Not me, and I’m half-crazy.

ME: And I’m the other half. I liked this movie a lot better when it was Jeremiah Johnson. 

That leaves Room, which is the one movie in this list which was so powerful and wrenching that it’s not that I don’t want to see it again, but that I don’t think I can, because it’s either going to put me through the same wringer all over again, which would be devastating; or it won’t, which would be even more devastating. To my mind, that’s the kind of movie that deserves awards: the kind you’re wary of seeing twice because you’re afraid it might wreck you all over again and even more afraid that it won’t. 

Will it win? Probably not. Judging the movies against each other on their own Oscar-Worthy merits thins the field in a different way. The Big Short is too snarky, Room is too disturbing without being appropriately uplifting and comforting (in other words, it tells a disturbing story without undercutting it with a unrealistically comforting message, which is Death To Oscar), and Mad Max: Fury Road is a stealth-female-lead action-adventure movie that tells the same story twice—once from right to left, once from left to right.  

Now by rights The Revenant should be in this group as well, because it’s basically a revenge western, and when not even The Searchers gets nominated for an Oscar, you’re talking genre suicide.

 

THE CYNIC IN ME: Trivia question: what is the only award that The Searchers won when it came out? A Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer: Patrick Wayne. Ah-hahahahahaha!)

 

But—and it’s a big old but—the way The Revenant was filmed, with its long single-shot takes and natural lighting cinematography, are like a neon sign saying THIS MEANS THE MOVIE IS AN ARTISTIC STATEMENT. Because if you take those two things away, all you have left is an Anthony Mann western with a shitty script. I mean, look at the title. When the title is a word that the old men in the Academy have to ask their twenty-something female assistants to look up in the dictionary, that spells ART. 

So The Revenant gets into the Oscar-Worthy group because it plays into  the Academy’s self-importance when they say The Movies are all about Art and not money. And the other movies in the group? They are all, at bottom, inoffensive.  Bridge of Spies isn’t even dramatic; Tom Hanks is always right, and everybody else is a shallow moron except for the Russian spy he defends, who is the only real human being in the whole movie, thanks to Mark Rylance’s performance. Brooklyn is a feel-good movie about the European immigrant experience, which is the only immigration experience that speaks to Old Man Hollywood; he gets to watch this and say “We did all right by those Irish and Italians, didn’t we?” The Martian, which (not counting all those Native Americans in The Revenant) actually has more diversity in its cast than all the other nominated movies combined, is MacGyver In Space, which is an inherently fabulous pitch, a delightfully entertaining movie experience,  and an ultimately weightless affair. Which leaves us with Spotlight, whose implied message of good-old-American can-do truth-revealing reporters-against-a-conspiracy-of-silence gumption is just the kind of message Old Man Hollywood loves. If it was just set in LA, it would be a shoo-in. (Rumor has it that, during an early script conference, some studio DB actually suggested that the story be set in LA because “movies about Boston never make money.”) 

YOU: Really?

ME: No, I just made that up.

YOU: Doesn’t sound made up.

ME: I know; sad, isn’t it? 

So. As much as I’d love to see Mad Max: Fury Road win, if only because it would the second-ever movie with a colon in its title to get Best Picture, it’s either going to be The Revenant or Spotlight. Revenant is the front-runner based on earlier awards, but I think the Old White Males who run the show behind the show want to feel good about themselves this year, and what better way to do that than to vote against child abuse by giving the Oscar to Spotlight?  

THE CYNIC IN ME: Hey—that’s my line! 

 

Love Is

        for Dawn & Dave

 

Love is the song that can’t fit all the words

   Into the tune and still say what you feel,

So half of what you sing is for the birds;

   And, if you’re lucky, half of it is real.

Love is the gala that will bring you fame;

   You charm, take charge, go nuts, beg, steal and borrow.

And when it’s done, you check to see who came,

   And start it all over again tomorrow.

Love is the gift that takes after it gives.

   When it’s true love, you never want it back.

It writes a song where something precious lives.

   It plans your fête; and shows you that you lack

      Nothing in you to be the equal of

      The song a bell sings when it’s made of love. 

 

Copyright 2016 Matthew J Wells