I'm sort of combining two topics here, but I think it's worthwhile.
While the Oscars are an over-hyped night of self-congratulating celebrities all enjoying their own success, as someone who works in that industry, I still pay attention every single year. I try my best to see as many of the movies as I can, usually when they are playing during an afternoon I'm not busy.
The general consensus is that The Artist will win Best Picture this year and I did enjoy it very much. It was well-made and a nice homage to the silent film era. However, I wouldn't say it was the "best" picture by any stretch of the imagination.
Hugo and War Horse were both good movies too, though lesser then others made by the giants of Scorsese and Spielberg (That would be a helluva a law firm).
Moneyball and the Descendants were enjoyable almost exclusively for the leading men as both Pitt and Clooney were terrific even if the films themselves were a bit lightweight.
Which leads me to the other topic here: I saw Tree of Life in the theater and then again a few weeks ago and both times was left with the same feeling: frustrated, confused, overwhelmed, and thoroughly intoxicated by film-making.
For those who haven't seen it, the Tree of Life in a nutshell is a story about adulthood, about growing up in the 1950's, about choices we make and also, about how we are shaped by our family. Yet, none of this is actually the story. This is the rare film which doesn't have a "plot" so much as a "mood". Yes, there is a storyline and characters are introduced, go through conflicts and such, but that is so much less then the sum of the parts here. It can best be described as a tone poem.
Visually, this movie is unlike anything I've ever seen before. It brought together one of the most brilliant DP's working today, Emmanuel Lubezki who was the DP for Children of Men, among others, with one of my personal heroes, director Terrence Malick, a man who has only made 5 films in about 30 years but you can see the love and care in each frame.
This is one of the few films that I can honestly say continues to stay with you long after you've seen it. The haunting images astound you, the plot frustrates you, the message lingers just out of sight and yet, I knew this was an achievement in film-making nonetheless. In particular, a shot of children playing where we see only their shadows reflected on the pavement still burns bright in my mind's eye.
Come Sunday, I expect it to maybe win one Oscar, hopefully, for Lubezki who is seriously overdue, but I don't think Tree of Life will win anything else because it isn't a movie that people in a general sense will like. As I said, it doesn't hold a true story and seems just as likely to confuse as articulate anything. Yet, I can't help feel that this movie is the one that in 10, 20, 40 years will be looked at as pushing our collective understanding of cinema forward.
So, to give this thread some discussion:
What movies have seen you in your lifetime that stayed with you? What movies have you seen that changed the way you think about cinema itself? About what a movie can do for you?
And sure, I guess, who do you think will win Oscars, blah, blah, blah?
Take care all.