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| (Searchlight) |
Original Screenplay
Alejandro
G. Inarritu et al, Birdman
Richard
Linklater, Boyhood
E.
Max Frye & Dan Futterman, Foxcatcher
Wes
Anderson & Hugo Guinness, The Grand
Budapest Hotel
Dan
Gilroy, Nightcrawler
Let
me preface by saying that this is a terrific category. There’s not a doubt that
you’ll know, if a reader of this blog, that I like some of these choices more
than others – Boyhood over Birdman; Foxcatcher over Nightcrawler;
Grand Budapest for the win, pretty
please? – but each of the five scripts represented here are beloved, adored and
praised to the high heavens by thick blocs of some of the best minds around.
It’s a good group.
The
sheer conception of The Grand Budapest
Hotel, going for melancholic madcap as it blasts through tonal barriers and
structural standards to a degree far beyond anything Anderson has tried before,
is worthy of recognition. So too is the line-for-line specificity of Boyhood, with its characters’ speak
always, exceptionally particular to who, what, where, when and why. Foxcatcher, while certainly a director’s
movie first, mines a distressing depth of feeling through cryptic conversation
and an unbearably-slow build. Nightcrawler’s
satire target is never completely on-point, but Gilroy’s script gets points
simply for envisioning Louis Bloom: he’s a brilliant construct brought to
horrifying life by Jake Gyllenhaal, though infused with delightful peculiarities
and riveting opacity on the page beforehand.
The
likely winner here is Birdman, a
widely-collaborated-on script led by Alejandro G. Inarritu and the recipient of
the equivalent Golden Globe. It’s a close race – Grand Budapest has triumphed with both WGA and BAFTA, not to
mention a below-the-line win from NYFCC – but Birdman, as our Best Picture frontrunner, is our most probable
champ here. It was ineligible with WGA, and not a hit with BAFTA – it hasn’t
exactly lost anything prominent, in other words. And it’s wildly inventive.
There are thematic and comedic misses in Birdman,
as my review details, but it possesses an unprecedented level of ambition, and
for that it deserves credit. In a subsequent space, I’ll get into my analytical
and personal thoughts about Birdman’s
ascendance as Best Picture frontrunner; for now, I’ll just state that there are
more worthy efforts in this category, as well as some that didn’t make the cut.
The Dardennes pulled off a magic trick in realism with Two Days, One Night; Ruben Ostlund’s Force Majeure evoked unnerving familiarity; Ira Sachs’ world in Love Is Strange felt comfortably
lived-in by minute 90, a feat few if any films of the past year share; Leviathan managed to tell a story of
epic scale and importance while keeping things intimate and humane; and Selma, for all of the kerfuffle as to
who deserved credit, featured a blessedly-complex narrative about communal
unity and political organization.
Nonetheless,
Birdman is an appropriate choice, one
certainly within the confines of acceptability (really, all of these are). Last
year, American Hustle was a Best
Picture contender – the only one, in fact, competing in this category. Though
widely-assumed to win, the David O. Russell script fell like dominoes on the
precursor circuit to Spike Jonze’s passion project Her, culminating in an Oscar loss that didn’t end up as much of a
surprise. A similar thing could happen here, as Anderson – overdue, and writing
stuff a little more outside of Academy tastes – is having a moment of his own.
This would be the place to recognize him.
But
the Her example doesn’t quite hold
throughout Oscar history, and Birdman
is on a tear right now. Since this is an uncharacteristically competitive year,
it’s hard to know just how warm an embrace Birdman
will receive from the Academy. But we only have the guilds to go on, and on
that front, Birdman wiped the floor
clean. It’s the rational pick.
Will win: Birdman
Could
win: The Grand Budapest Hotel
Should
win: The Grand Budapest Hotel
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| (Sony Classics) |
Adapted Screenplay
Jason
Hall, American Sniper
Graham
Moore, The Imitation Game
Paul
Thomas Anderson, Inherent Vice
Anthony
McCarten, The Theory of Everything
Damien
Chazelle, Whiplash
No
one is going to point to the scripts of any of these movies, except perhaps Inherent Vice (notably, the most
divisive of the bunch), as their most impressive trait. Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper may feature a
much-lauded Bradley Cooper performance and equally-acclaimed action sequences,
but its glossy script is razor-thin on characterization or coherence, and any
deliberate ambiguity comes through in the direction; page-to-screen translation
is jumbled and inefficient. The Imitation
Game has a shapely exterior, conveying intriguing perspective, specific
ideas and an overall intelligence – but when it comes to person-to-person
interactions, the film flails with wooden dialogue (“Better bloody work!”) and
simplistic expressions of motivation. The
Theory of Everything all but removes the more complicated and nuanced
aspects of its true-life story; a hard-hitting score and a pair of hard-hitting
performances is all it needs (and uses) for emotional investment. Whiplash is great, but I’d point to
every other element within the film – taut editing, (startlingly) assured
direction, blistering performances, a rousing sound mix – as exemplary before
its strong if unremarkable script. It’s flawed – everything beyond the
mentor/mentee dynamic is a little hit-and-miss – and is given necessary texture
by outside factors.
Another
thing, in aggressive contrast to the original category: none of these scripts
break any rules, go anywhere bold, or hit a range of emotions with punch.
They’re mostly old-fashioned, sweepingly broad, consistently uninterested in
language. If The Imitation Game is
the best of the (non-Inherent Vice)
nominees’ scripts represented here – and I think it is – then that, frankly, is
a seriously sad reflection on what was chosen here (and over, might I add,
Gillian Flynn’s zeitgeist-probing and fascinating-if-uneven Gone Girl script).
The
last time Paul Thomas Anderson should have been nominated was in 2012, for his
extraordinary work on The Master –
directing to writing, it was a tour-de-force, an auteur theorist’s wet dream. He
was last recognized in 2007, for his (other) masterpiece, There Will Be Blood. Unfortunately, he was chanceless against the
Coen Brothers, who had No Country for Old
Men in a Birdman-like position of
total Academy embrace. He lost to them in directing, writing, and finally for
Best Picture.
Unfortunately,
this category is a wasteland, and if he weren’t entering into it with a movie so
divisive and un-Academy (one which, for the record, I loved), Anderson might have
finally gotten that long-overdue Oscar. Given the competition, he deserves it
to a considerable degree. Inherent Vice
is a film of big ideas, sprawling ambition and rich language. It juggles dozens
of characters, each instantly-definable by the cadences in their speech and the
circumstances in which they are situated. Anderson weaves together an
emotional, nostalgia-ridden narrative by enthusiastically laying on the
slapstick – he treats ostensibly-opposed emotional realms as if they are one, passionately
and personally making a claim for a lost era and a faded way of life. Put
shortly: it’s the kind of intellectually-engaged, deeply-felt screenplay that
awards are made for.
But
Inherent Vice is not going to win: it’s
too weird, too off-the-radar. What will? Conventional wisdom dictated it was The Imitation Game’s to lose, but Harvey
Weinstein’s awards thoroughbred hasn’t done too well. It lost BAFTA screenplay
to The Theory of Everything (that was
its home turf), and in general, it has been a quieter player than expected. Considering
that Theory was ineligible and Whiplash competed in an alternate
category, its WGA win should be taken with a substantial grain of salt.
Weirdly,
I’ll be surprised if Damian Chazelle’s name is not called on Sunday night. Whiplash fits the bill – screenplay
categories are where the Academy likes to honor the wunderkind – and it seems
to be generating more passion among the Academy than anything else. I suppose Theory or Imitation could take it – they both have below-the-line prizes –
but here is the perfect opportunity for voters to recognize Chazelle’s
remarkable achievement. Considering what’s competing, it’s about as high a
value as this award could have.
Will win: Whiplash
Could
win: The Imitation Game
Should
win: Inherent Vice