4 minute read
The Fix From Fix: Oscars
March 2021 The Oscars Fix From Fix
A reevaluation and review of previous best picture winners.
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— McCartney Fix, Co-News Editor
Dir. Michael Cimino
Photo sourced from Alternate Movie Posters A gorgeous alterante poster depicting the conflict between civilian life and wars lasting impact.
The Deer Hunter is flawless, not in the traditional sense of truly achieving perfection, but in the more intimate sense of its shortcomings aiding in its premises full realization. The film follows average, unremarkable people from a wholly uninteresting mill city, thrust into a situation of unimaginable scale and a conflict of unimaginable destruction, allowing the camera to observe how they cope, or perhaps fail to. The ensemble embodying these split psyches and broken people is what truly sells the film, even to an audience member uninterested in the time period, or unimpressed with the films screenplay. De Niros balancing act of sanity, Walkens descent into madness, and Streeps wheepy, strained portrayal of grief and the complexities of love are of particular note, though no performer on set misses as much as a beat. Chiminos direction matches the mastery of the performances step for step,fully immersing us in the war time sequences and allowing a cold, detached, lens through which the mens post-war demons are captured. Much has been made of how Chimino wrote these characters, and there turmoil, with special note often made of the Russian roulette scene, perhaps the greatest 4 minutes in the history of film. The cinematography provides us with the harrowing perspective as we see these men wear expressions of sheer terror, Walken trembling and stammering, as De Niro attempts to provide a stoic facade soon shattered by the weight on the shifting chamber, a pin drop can be heard over the rowdy crowd, each twitch of the trigger bringing ever closer the bullet to the barrel, in a glorious release of tension, a symphony of violence unfolds, concluding perhaps cinemas greatest four minutes. The film begins with a wedding and ends with a funeral, containing the whole spectrum of emotions in between. The Deer Hunter is more than a quintessential war film, it is a masterful examination of small town American life and those who lead it. Its representation of repressed emotions and subconscious PTSD is harrowing, allowing us a birds eye view to watch how each man keeps it together, or at least keeps up appearances. You can take the soldier out of the war, but never the war out of the soldier.
Dir. Woody Allen
Photo sourced from Pintrest An alternate poster for the 1978 The theatrical poster for the best picture winner. familial drama.
Woody Allen loves himself. He believes himself to be the funniest, most enlightened and witty man on the planet, and yet, he masks these clear delusions with a put upon shyness. In Annie Hall, he takes it upon himself to write a script in which he is a punitive loser, but just like everything involving Allen, this conceit is merely a facade. In the hands of a more humble director, it could act as an avenue for critical self examination, but Allen and his albatross of an ego refuse to allow this. Alvy Singer, portrayed by the “multi-talented” Allen, is a dweeb, at least that is what I assume we are supposed to think. Throughout the film, Allen is unable to fully submerge himself in that sort of pathetic character work. The script echoes that unwillingness. Singer still sleeps with beautiful women and casually flexes his intelligence on the viewer. It is a shame, because Annie Hall has its moments, Allens script is at times biting and concise. The direction lends itself to some truly beautiful shots, and the manic creative energy emitting from of the film leads to some innovative sequences. Diane Keaton delivers as iconic a performance as has ever existed, embodying the titular love interest, and imbuing her with a spry, slight spirit. When Allen is not too busy kissing mirrors, he is capable of crafting funny, self deprecating punch lines that aid in allotting impact to the films rarer, more earnest moments. The end montage is one of those scenes in which the prickly veil is momentarily lifted. In retrospect, it acts as a solid allegory for the film as a whole, a slideshow of beautifully human moments ruined by the inclusion of Woody Allen.
Dir. Robert Redford
Photo sourced from Pinterest
The legacy of Ordinary People is uniquely defined by what it is not. It is not flashy, and its direction is not showy nor its premise particularly grandiose. It is a subtle, lean evaluation of the repressed grief and put upon appearances of a seemingly idealistic upper middle class family. It is, however, harrowingly sad, and it never truly casts a protagonist and antagonist, only victims, whose traumas are brought about by the shared experience of losing a loved one. Mary Tyler Moore is marvelous in such uncharted territory, playing the matriarchal Beth Jarret. Her unwillingness to allow the facade of an idealistic suburban family to crack, even under the pressure of her eldest son’s passing, splinters Beths relationship with son Conrad and husband Calvin, played brilliantly by Timothy Hutton and Donald Sutherland. The script is so cutting in its simplicity and its direction so fluid in its actor centrality. These characters do not speak in aggrandizing monologues, nor are they framed in some artful manner, Redford allows the somber silence to sound off louder than any screaming match ever could. The audience gets the feeling that between these people, there once existed a warmly expressed love; yet as we stare at its hollow husk, we wonder if it was ever true or simply untested.
