Some Oscar Aftermath
Reviews and Comments by Ken Burke
I invite you to join me on a regular basis to see how my responses to current cinematic offerings compare to the critical establishment, which I’ll refer to as either the CCAL (Collective Critics at Large) if they’re supportive or the OCCU (Often Cranky Critics Universe) when they go negative. However, due to COVID concerns I’m mostly addressing streaming options with limited visits to theaters, where I don’t think I’ve missed much anyway, but better options are on the horizon. (Note: Anything in bold blue below [some may look near purple] is a link to something more in the review.)
My reviews’ premise: “You can’t please everyone, so you got to please yourself.”
(from "Garden Party" by Rick Nelson and the Stone Canyon Band, 1972 album of the song’s name)
Now that the 2025 Oscars have been awarded for 2024 releases I’ll remind you I’ve amended my posting for those predictions by adding the winners and a few comments. I’ll just offer some final words here by noting that now I’ve seen The Brutalist, A Complete Unknown, and The Room Next Door (Pedro Almodóvar; brief review in that same Oscar predictions posting; I’ll at a later date, after I’ve finally seen a couple of other Oscar noms/winners, publish an amended Top 10 of 2024, with these 3 films definitely on it), I’m able to make a few other suggestions for change from my original thoughts, although I won’t edit the earlier posting, as that represents what I knew at the time. I’d still dump Anora—Best Picture winner, nevertheless—in favor of adding The Room Next Door for Oscar’s top honor list, but I’ll stick with Conclave as my favorite in that category. For Best Actor my preference would now be for Timothée Chalamet in A Complete Unknown, but just like my previous favorite, Ralph Fiennes in Conclave (on a side note there I’m glad Pope Francis seems to be improving so maybe we won’t have an actual Conclave soon after all), they’d still both lose to Adrien Brody for The Brutalist. I’m stunned Mikey Madison won Best Actress for Anora; however, Karla Sofía Gascón (Emilia Pérez) did herself in with those old insulting tweets and even Demi Moore’s (The Substance) win at the Screen Actors Guild awards wasn’t enough to top Ms. Madison. Otherwise, I’ll stay with my previous predictions and preferences, acknowledging my 77-year-old Honky tastes may be enough out of sync with the current crowd of Oscar voters, as explored by my local, semi-retired San Francisco Chronicle film critic, Mick LaSalle, who mulls over possibilities of how the demographics of these voters make it hard for those like me, who favor something like Conclave, can’t fathom how Anora could be the leading prize-getter (5 Oscars) while the marvelous Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, comes up empty. But I'll praise the Dylan film here anyway.
One thing I do understand, though, is due to streaming availabilities I was quite late to being able to factor The Brutalist and A Complete Unknown into my recent Oscar considerations, although they’ve both been around—and written about—long enough for me to not belabor them too much this week; therefore, I’ll treat them both, marvelous as they are, under my SHORT TAKES rubric, so let’s take it away with no further ado—except for the ado of acknowledgement that a sad aspect of the Oscar broadcast was the In Memoriam tribute to Gene Hackman who (along with his wife and their dog) died recently (from unknown causes at present), several days before the bodies were discovered. He was such a great presence on the big screen winning Oscars for Best Actor (The French Connection, William Friedkin, 1971), Best Supporting Actor (Unforgiven, Clint Eastwood, 1992), yet I also remember him fondly in, among many others, Bonnie and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967), The Conversation (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974), Young Frankenstein (Mel Brooks, 1974), Superman (Richard Donner, 1978), The Firm (Sydney Pollack, 1993), The Royal Tenenbaums (Wes Anderson, 2001). I'll borrow Woody Guthrie from A Complete Unknown, “So long, it’s been good to know yuh.”
SHORT TAKES
Here’s the trailer:
(Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge its size;
activate the same button or use “esc” keyboard key to return to normal.)
If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film or want to save some $ (as well as recognizing those readers like me who just aren’t that tech-savvy). To help any of you who want to learn more details yet avoid these all-important plot-reveals I’ll identify any give-away sentences/sentence-clusters with colors plus arrows:
⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.
If you want more details on this film’s plot/production processes, please refer to this site while I minimize my summarization of this MASSIVE film (although it does offer an intermission in its theater mode). As WW II ends, fictional Hungarian-Jewish architect László Tóth (Adrien Brody)—carrying the same name as the actual Hungarian-born Australian geologist wacko who, in 1972, vandalized Michelangelo’s Pietà sculpture in St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City (I’ve seen it since, marvelous restoration)—is freed from the Buchenwald concentration camp (his wife, Erzsébet [Felicity Jones], is also freed from another camp, but various difficulties continue to keep them apart), immigrates to the U.S. (although when his ship arrives at Ellis Island we see the State of Liberty upside down/sideways), goes to Philadelphia to be with cousin Attila (Alessandro Nivola), who’s changed his surname, claimed Catholicism, married an American, Audrey (Emma Laird), all in an attempt at assimilation. László’s hired to design avant-garde furniture for Attila’s small company, then they get a commission from wealthy Harry Lee Van Buren (Joe Alwyn) to turn his father’s study into a library while Dad’s out of town, but when Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce) comes home a day early he stops the project, Harry refuses to pay. Later, Harrison sees the beauty in László’s design (learns he was a noted architect in Budapest), hires him to build a memorial complex in honor of his mother.
⇒By 1953 Erzsébet and their niece Zsófia (Raffey Cassidy) join László; work goes on despite insults from Harry until an accident causes the project to be halted until 1958 when Harrison resumes it; however, when he and László go to Carrara, Italy for marble Harrison rapes drunken László one night, leading Erzsébet to confront Harrison in his home. In 1980 Erzsébet has died, aging László’s honored at the Venice Biennale of Architecture, praised by Zsófia who quotes László: “It is the destination, not the journey.”⇐ As you might know, Brody won the Best Actor Oscar (giving a LONG acceptance-speech to match the film), plus Oscars for Best Cinematography, Original Score, with further accolades from the CCAC as Rotten Tomatoes positive reviews are 93%, Metacritic average score is a huge (for them) 90%. You might find it in its remaining 680 domestic (U.S.-Canada) theaters (made $15.8 million so far, $41.5 million globally), but it’s also on streaming; you can buy it for $19.99 from Amazon Prime Video or Apple TV+. I’ll exit in my usual manner with a Musical Metaphor, in this case Simon & Garfunkel’s “So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright” (1970 Bridge Over Troubled Water album) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUPG_PzN YXg because it’s the only song I know about an architect; this video’s illustrated with the works of Wright (although he was no Brutalist as Tóth is shown to be [that other Tóth was cruelly brutal, and crazy, though, with his damn hammer]). If you’d like to get further into this film, I’ll recommend a great analysis (also discusses Brutalist architecture) by Lucas Blue (20:17 [ad interrupts at 11:15]).
Here’s the trailer:
(No Spoiler Alert here because it’s all at least inspired by fact.) I can’t claim to be objective about this film because I first became enchanted with Bob Dylan when I heard “Subterranean Homesick Blues” on the radio in 1965 when I was a high-school junior, then became completely blown away later that same year with “Like a Rolling Stone,” leading to me buying all his albums to that point in early 1967 in college from a friend who’d put them on audio tape. Over the years I’ve seen him perform several times (I could even understand his singing at a few of them), the most recent back in October 2016 the night after he’d received the Nobel Prize in Literature (which he said nothing about, but he did play “Like a Rolling Stone,” which apparently he hadn’t done in concert for years). So, I was fully-primed to see what Timothée Chalamet could do with his attempt at recreating Dylan’s early rise to stardom 1961-’65. Admittedly, this is a biopic, not a documentary, so you can expect some revisions of history to fit dramatic-narrative needs (this site [12:13] explores 10 things the film got right or wrong, while this one's really extensive), so if you want to know Dylan’s actual history there are many books and documentaries (such as No Direction Home [Martin Scorsese, 2005]) you can turn to, but for a fast, lengthy summary of his 9 decades (he’s currently 83) you can find plenty at this site. You might also enjoy reading director Mangold's take on his grand biopic.
As for the current film, it generally follows Dylan's actual timeline of hitchhiking to NYC in 1961, takes a bus to a NJ hospital to meet his idol, Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy)—Pete Seeger’s (Edward Norton) there too (sings them his "Song to Woody" to their appreciation)—starts building a reputation in Greenwich Village folk clubs, gets encouragement from Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro), signs on with Columbia Records, releases several albums over the next few years moving from mostly covers on Bob Dylan (1962) to original material after that, begins a relationship with Sylvie Russo (Elle Fanning)—a fictionalized version of Suze Rotolo—which falls apart after she returns from 12 weeks in Europe to find he’s grown closer (and intimate) with Baez even though their public duets might turn sour due to his moods as his fame grows; however, he feels confined with his folky popularity, decides to electrify which leads to audience rejection (along with Seeger’s thought of using an axe to cut the sound system) at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival (where he’s encouraged by Johnny Cash [Boyd Holbrook]), although we know even-greater stardom looms in decades to come.
I can’t say enough in praise of how well Chalamet’s able to channel not only Dylan’s music (learned to play guitar and harmonica, sing like Dylan in a few years’ preparation for the role; all of Dylan’s music in the film is sung/played live by Chalamet, the same for Norton, Barbaro, and Holbrook), but also his quirky personality, based on what I know of Bob from the various sources I’ve alluded to. Despite Brody’s brilliance in The Brutalist, I’d still have given the Oscar to Chalamet. Of course, there’s a wealth of Dylan material in this film, mostly just parts of the many songs—if you want full versions, the end credits feature “Like a Rolling Stone,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” and “Mr. Tambourine Man”—while early on we get Guthrie’s recording of "So Long, It's Been Good to Know Yuh" (on his 1940 Dust Bowl Ballads album) which might signify Woody’s increasing loss of himself to Huntington’s disease, then Bob’s last visit before he hits the road on his motorcycle to end the narrative. You might still find this in a domestic theater (865 of them) where it’s brought in $73.8 million ($120 million worldwide) so far, but you can also rent it on streaming from Amazon Prime Video or Apple TV+ for $24.95, as I and the CCAC encourage you to do, with the RT positives at 82%, the MC average score at 70%. For my Musical Metaphor I’ve just got to use “Like a Rolling Stone” (from 1965’s Highway 61 Revisited) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syNLBJ_Lq 9E given how significant it’s been over the course of Dylan’s life (along with mine), but if you want the original recorded versions of the many songs used in the film you would need to consult the 1962 and 1965 albums I’ve noted above along with The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (1963), The Times They Are A-Changin’ (1964), Another Side of Bob Dylan (1964), and Bringing It All Back Home (1965).
Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:
Some relevant Oscar items for your possible invested consideration: (1) Oscar broadcast had 19.7 viewers; (2) Summary of the Oscars ceremony and a complete list of nominees and winners.
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