One Category at a Time: Documentary

After last year's high watermark in the category, this year's contest for Best Documentary is a puzzlingly vague one to try and anticipate. Presumed frontrunner and critical darling Project Nim was surprisingly left out of the discussion (although James Marsh already has an Oscar, so I won't lose too much sleep over it). What we're left with is a quintet of films which have received little precursor attention apart from three collective guild citations.

Review - Hell and Back Again

You know how I always qualify my own Best Foreign Film and Best Documentary nominees with that tepid “subject-to-change” line? This is why.

Less than four days after finally settling on my award winners, not only am I going to have to retroactively adjust my nominees (and winner) for Best Documentary, but several other categories as well. Hell and Back Again, which the Academy's documentary branch recently spurred me to investigate when they nominated it for Best Documentary, is straight up one of the best films of the year.

The subject is Sgt Nathan Harris, a gung-ho Marine whose leg was crippled by a bullet nearing the end of his deployment in a Taliban stronghold in the summer of '09. Now back on American soil and limping to readjust to civilian life, we see the exposed imbalance of a fragile mind who finds himself for the first time in a fragile body. Director Danfung Dennis employs a smart chronological structure that toggles back and forth between the “Hell” of Afghanistan and the “Back Again” of America, although by the end of the film it's suspected that home may have become Nathan's true hell.

My Awards nominations: Director and Picture

I have a 4/5 overlap between Best Picture and Best Director this year, so I'm lumping them into one big post with the four also-rans that round out my Top Ten of 2011:

Best Picture AND Best Director:

Drive, directed by NICOLAS WINDING REFN:

An art house character study wrapped in a violent crime drama and advertised as a high-speed action movie, Drive offers us startling insight into the irrepressibility of one's true nature more than it offers us chases and fisticuffs. In more cinematic terms, one might describe it as Unforgiven set in modern Los Angeles, at least in how it pertains to the central character's noble attempt but tragic failure to smother his violent propensities. Refn directs his picture with intriguing flare, sometimes opting for odd aesthetic choices, but on the whole, it really works.

A Separation, directed by ASGHAR FARHADI:

An exceptional domestic drama about the failure of human relationships, and not just marital ones (as the title implies), one can't help but notice that the film's painful truths are universal ones, delving deep into human conscience and exposing the dangerous inconsistencies between our personal moral codes, and our responsibilities to model ethics for our children. Farhadi's aesthetic technique is economical but very polished. Every character is superbly played with authentic dimensionality. It's a testament to how well Farhadi wrote and directed his characters.

The Tree of Life, directed by TERRENCE MALICK:

Arguably the elusive master's most thought-provoking – and certainly his most artistically ambitious – effort to date; a flawed, painterly masterpiece that explores in broad, bold strokes mankind's search for God and the fluid relation between Nature and Grace. Malick blurs the venn diagram overlap between his looming themes with scenes that suggest the gracefulness of Nature and the naturalness of Grace. He creates a rich stream of consciousness, laced with internal monologue by our three principles that all seem to be asking “where are you?”.

We Need to Talk About Kevin,
directed by LYNNE RAMSAY:

Ramsay uses vivid cinematic techniques to immerse us in the guilt, anguish, and confusion of a woman whose son holds an inexplicable personal vendetta against her. She directs the hell out of this thing, and what she's ended up with is a disturbing work of art that gets under your skin and stays there against your will. Her evocation of Eva's frazzled memory is a stellar editing showcase. Lady MacBeth herself wouldn't have had such a hard time absolving herself of the guilt that stalks Eva's mind.

Best Picture:

Midnight in Paris

This beguiling psychological love affair that draws us to an epiphany about the root of nostalgia and our human dissatisfaction is Woody Allen's freshest, most imaginative premise since The Purple Rose of Cairo. Owen Wilson aptly plays an extension of the onscreen persona Allen spent years performing himself; the precocious, stammering sentimentalist prone to self-analyzing his own neuroses. The supporting cast that animates his possibly hallucinated alternate Paris is wonderful as well. The midnight sequences are beautifully shot with warm, textured lighting by Darius Khondji and Johanne Debas, before jolting us back into Gil's painful present with the hard, bright light of day.

Best Director: DANFUNG DENNIS

Danfung Dennis employs a smart chronological structure that toggles back and forth between the "Hell" of Afghanistan and the "Back Again" of America, although by the end of the film it's suspected that home may have become Nathan's true hell. He endeavours to dissect and present his subject's state of mind by drawing direct connections between his wartime experiences and his home-front struggles. In keeping with the spirit of true documentarianism, Dennis never indulges in talking head interviews of voice-over narration.

Just missed: 
The Adventures of Tintin
If your thirst for adventure is unquenchable, Steven Spielberg's rollicking popcorn pic should be enough to slake your thirst. Freed up by Weta's ground-breaking performance-capture system to play with the camera in ways he never has before, The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn is easily the funnest movie he's put out in nearly a decade; An Indiana Jones for the next generation.

Beginners
This gentle little drama about the generation-spanning challenge of finding happiness succeeds in great part due to its three central performances from Ewan MacGregor, Christopher Plummer, and Melanie Laurent. Mike Mills' script and direction are beautifully restrained, employing a melancholy sense of humour when needed to lighten his film's understated but deep-running sadness.

The Ides of March
The hypocritical game of politics is what's put front and centre for us to see; irredeemably cynical (maybe too much so) in its depiction of a profession in which one's career cannot survive without compromising, or even completely abandoning, one's principles. Whether you agree or not with this grim assessment, it makes for a terrific yarn.

Moneyball
This slow-burner of a sports movie (more of an anti-sports movie, actually) appreciates tremendously with time. It's more about ambition and paradigm shifting than it is about baseball, told not through the eyes of the athletes, but of the man putting the team together in hopes that his life and career will mean something. Splendidly written and performed.

My Awards nominations: Documentary

Inevitably, I never get out to as many documentaries a year as I would like. I usually only see five or six a year, so a nomination from me isn't always an indication of how good I think a doc is (last year's atypically rich crop being the exception). So if I catch other docs later on that I really dig, I'll retroactively amend this slate of nominees Best Documentary accordingly.

Buck (Cindy Meehl):

A nicely shot biography of an inherently likable character; the warm and humane Buck Brannaman, the expert horseman who inspired The Horse Whisperer. His way with the animals is fascinating to observe.

Hell and Back Again (Danfung Dennis):

Given it's thematic similarities to The Hurt Locker or Restrepo, it would be dangerously easy for viewers to dismiss this topic as old hat, but Hell and Back Again possesses an equally potent emotional gut punch, not to mention an artistic quality that previous Iraq war films have not.

If a Tree Falls (Marshall Curry):

A very interesting account of how peaceful environmental protest degenerated into destructive acts of so-called eco-terrorism. The film is carefully objective, simply presenting the situation and the players to the audience, allowing us to make our own judgements on the many debatable grey areas.

The Interrupters (Steve James):

A gripping but upsetting time-capsule version of Chicago at its most horrifying. We actually witness conflicts unfold in front of the camera. At the same time, his film is an inspiration, replenishing our hope with his tactful exposition of the interrupters' own redemptive backstories.

Project Nim (James Marsh):
The film avoids ever feeling too clinical or obsessed with the science of the situation. Rather, Marsh bubbles the emotions to the surface of this sobering tale; Not only Nim's emotions, but those of his human teachers and caregivers.

Just missed: Senna