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Friday, October 10, 2014

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director 1991

The Contenders:
John Singleton: Boyz n the Hood
Barry Levinson: Bugsy
Oliver Stone: JFK
Jonathan Demme: The Silence of the Lambs (winner)
Ridley Scott: Thelma and Louise

What’s Missing

The Academy didn’t do too badly with the nominations for director for 1991. I’d happily nominate three of these films, and could be argued into a fourth. The majority of the other movies I like from 1991 aren’t the type that normally find themselves recipients of Oscar nominations. I think I can argue Terry Gilliam’s work in The Fisher King. The strength of films like Albert Brooks’s Defending Your Life and Mick Jackson’s L.A. Story are the screenplays and the performances. This is also true with Kenneth Brannagh’s Dead Again. Gus Van Sant might deserve a nod for making Keanu Reeves mildly watchable in My Own Private Idaho, but then we’d have to give credit to James Cameron for not killing Edward Furlong on the set of Terminator 2: Judgment Day. On the foreign front, Zhang Yimou (Raise the Red Lantern), Jean-Pierre Jeunet (Delicatessen), and Krzysztof Kieslowski (The Double Life of Veronique) could all be argued as deserving of a spot.

Weeding through the Nominees

5: I didn’t have a serious problem with Bugsy as a film, but I can’t for the life of me figure out exactly what Barry Levinson did to deserve a nomination for Best Director. In fact, I think he may have actually damaged the film in significant ways. There’s a great deal of potential in this story, but it bogs down terribly in the second half and draws out for far too long to stay as interesting as the first half. All of the elements are there, but Bugsy overstays its welcome. Blame the editor if you like, but it’s still Levinson’s name on the film. Given the chance, I’d swap him out for Jeunet or Kieslowski.

4: The most interesting thing about Thelma and Louise is that Ridley Scott made a straight-up action film with a female main cast and (depending on how you look at it) launched the career of Brad Pitt. Other than that, what exactly did he do? I like Thelma and Louise a lot and would rank it pretty high on my list of films from this year. I just can’t specifically pinpoint exactly what makes Ridley Scott worth a nomination. Anyone got anything here? It feels like he got the nomination because the film was good and a surprise hit and not because he did such a great job of it.

3: JFK is another ultra-long film, but in this case, I give Oliver Stone a great deal of credit for holding the whole thing together. There are a lot of people and a lot of egos on this set, and even getting the film made is something of an accomplishment. The summing up sequence at the end is hugely risky and yet works nearly perfectly. I like this film quite a bit and rank it high on the filmography of Stone. Unfortunately for him, there were two better director performances in 1991, despite the fact that this was one of his strongest efforts behind the camera.

2: This is going to be a strong statement, but it’s one that I stand behind completely: John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood is one of the five best directorial debuts in history. This is such a strong film, a story so beautifully told. It’s also incredibly mature from the director’s seat. It still surprises me that this was his first film; in fact, it feels like his filmography is kind of backwards. Nobody talks about the M. Night Shyamalan-iness of his career. He showed such promise, and in a lot of other years, Boyz n the Hood would’ve won.

My Choice

1: But there was no stopping the juggernaut that was The Silence of the Lambs. In the case of Best Director, this is not a juggernaut that I would want to stop. This movie is almost perfectly directed. It’s tight and brutal, never shows its hand early, never hints at what’s to come, but always makes perfect sense at any moment internally. Jonathan Demme’s work on this film is the sort of thing that can be, has, and will be studied far into the future. This is how you do a thriller that manages to cross over from just the thriller crowd into the mainstream. This is how you make a film that works its way into public consciousness and that stays there forever.

Final Analysis

10 comments:

  1. I pretty much agree across the board with your order and the rationale behind it.

    Whatever did happen to Singleton anyway? Off the top of my head I can only remember a college movie titled Higher Learning after that. (And to be honest, I mostly remember that because it had Kristy Swanson and Jennifer Connelly in it.)

    Looking up his filmography I've been reminded of the Shaft remake (bad), 2 Fast 2 Furious (bad), and Four Brothers (pretty good, actually). Of course, Demme hasn't exactly set the world on fire since the 90s himself.

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    1. In Demme's defense, he's never strayed too far from his musical roots. He's also retreated into some smaller films (Rachel Getting Married, for instance), and the remake of The Manchurian Candidate is decent, if not world-beating.

      Singleton, though...What happened to him?

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  2. Good summary. In Ridley Scott's defence, I would give him plenty of points just for sticking with that ending!

    Otherwise, I'm a big fan of Cameron's T2, but that genre rarely gets Oscar respect. The only other director I would mention as deserving some consideration is Scorsese, for the vastly underrated (in my opinion) Cape Fear remake. The scene in the empty theatre between Juliette Lewis and Robert De Niro, on its own, should have earned Scorsese the nomination!

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    1. The Cape Fear remake is a case where I know of it and it's on my list, but I haven't seen it yet. I'll get there--it's on the list, after all.

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  3. John Singleton's career is really interesting. I'd argue that Rosewood and Baby Boy are up there with Boyz, but they're the exceptions for the most part. Poetic Justice is just awful, and it's hard to believe he directed such generic looking action films. I think the right film hit the top, though I agree with some of your other options. I also really like JFK, and I might even put it about Boyz in the second spot.

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    1. I thought pretty hard about where to place JFK. Oliver Stone tends to be too preachy for me, but JFK is one of those films that feels a lot shorter than its length. He keeps the whole thing under control for the full running time, which is a huge achievement.

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  4. Seems we all pretty much agree about this year. Thelma & Louise, JFK, and Boyz n the Hood are all good movies, but Silence of the lambs is great!

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    1. That puts it pretty nicely. Silence of the Lambs is one of those rare films that transcends its genre both on the screen and in the mind of the audience.

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  5. I fully agree with your strong statement about Boyz n the Hood. That's one of my all-time favorite films, and certainly one of the most striking debuts I've ever seen. My vote would've gone to Singleton in this category, but it is a damn tough call.

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    1. I'm okay with that pick. Singleton almost made it below the fold on this, and there are a lot of years where, had it been in contention, it would be my hands-down winner.

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