No Joy in Snubsville: The Films Oscar Forgot

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Beau is Afraid
When I saw this movie last spring I instantly knew it would be on my list of the best films of the year. Director Ari Astor flashed big-time talent in his unforgettable 2017 debut Hereditary and followed that up with the so-so Midsomer, but this is his magnum opus. Joaquin Phoenix plays the title character, a single man living alone in a downtown Los Angeles hellscape that might exist only in his imagination, but whose terrifying contours will seem awfully real to anyone familiar with the city these days. The film begins with Beau summoned to visit his mother, and proceeds as a Homeresque odyssey through the fractured landscape of the title character’s psyche. Along the way, we’re treated to two wonderful movies-within-a-movie: First when an injured Beau is taken in by a freaky Norman Rockwell clan led by a perfectly cast Nathan Lane, followed by a breathtaking sequence in which Beau imagines himself as a rugged family man clad in Paul Bunyon threads living off the land, squiring three strapping boys and enjoying a long, wholesome and satisfying life — pretty much the polar opposite of his reality.

Eventually Beau finds his mother, played by the great Patti LuPone, and we finally get some answers about why he’s so broken. I won’t give it away, but whoo-boy is it deranged … one more bravura sequence that will twist your head into knots while your mouth hangs open and you hear yourself laughing at stuff no decent person should find funny. No one does psychological horror quite like Astor, and the cinematic mind games at work here are next-level disturbing. It’s like Charlie Kaufman fucked Franz Kafka while David Lynch was watching. Great films aren’t always perfect, and Beau if Afraid is a bit too long, mostly due to a final sequence that’s derivative and out of step with the rest of this startlingly original movie. But despite its 3-hour run time, I was dying to watch it again the second the credits started rolling. I can’t think of a film that’s tackled mother issues this spectacularly since Norman Bates was slashing and stammering his way into our hearts.

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Speaking of Joaquin Phoenix… When this project was announced I wondered how in the world this vegan child of hippies could play a man who famously never met a war he didn’t like. The short answer (sorry) is he’s better than you’d think, but it hardly matters, because director Ridley Scott isn’t really interested in making a serious film here — he just wants to check a box on his resume. Scott’s Napoleon boasts the effort of a grand spectacle, but it lacks the rigid thinking required to offer a new or thoughtful take on one of history’s most fascinating men. A serious film about Napoleon would have to be about 10 hours long. Instead, we get a rote procession of the major highlights: Egypt, Austerlitz, the coronation, Russia and Waterloo, peppered with a few sitcom-ready moments like having the emperor quip to a British envoy: “You think you’re so great just because you have boats!” Scott slows down only for the emperor’s relationship with Josephine, depicted here as a 21st century love story replete with mind games and power dynamics straight out of a Dr. Phil episode. To me it’s the least interesting facet of Napoleon’s life. We all experience our share of romantic turmoil, but how many guys conquer an entire continent? Scott and screenwriter David Scarpa aren’t nearly inquisitive enough about Napoleon’s famous military genius, and missing entirely are the sweeping legal and domestic innovations of his reign, many of which are still used today. Despite those flaws, Napoleon is not a complete disaster. It has a few effective scenes, and its 2 hours, 38 minutes move along at an agreeable pace. It’s just all so forgettable, much like those bloated costumed epics that lumbered across movie and TV screens in the 1950s and ’60s, making all sort of noise before fading into the ether like farts from a holiday dinner.

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Saltburn
Writer/director Emerald Fennell’s film is part thriller and part comedy of manners, a delicious throwback to the sharp social commentary of Jean Renoir’s 1939 classic Rules of the Game, one of the greatest films of all time. Saltburn may not be in that class, but it’s head and shoulders above most contemporary films of this stripe. Barry Keoghan, the talented Irish actor who was so memorable in Dunkirk and Banshees of Inisherin, gets a leading role here as Oliver, an unhappy Oxford student ostracized for his common upbringing who latches on to the dashing Felix, a strapping, life-of-the-party rich boy who somewhat suspiciously invites Oscar to spend the summer at his family’s titular estate. The film’s main action takes place here, as Oscar matches wits with the hideous pack of social vultures that make up Saltburn’s residents, including Rosamund Pike and Richard E. Grant as a pair of classic British snobs capable of committing the worst kind of villainy over tea and crumpets. Vacationing at this place is like eating at an absurdly expensive restaurant with lousy food. Perhaps the freshest part of the film is how it mixes this old-world nastiness with the toxic trappings of 21st century youth — cell phone culture, designer drugs, meaningless hookups, et al. There’s a murder mystery at play too, befitting a film set at a palatial English estate. Saltburn builds suspense expertly as the film nears its climax, and the final twist is a nice one: It leaves the acidic taste in your mouth that you’d expect from spending so much time with people like this. I won’t give it away, but Fennell’s view of humanity is pretty dark and unsympathetic. I loved it.

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May December
Todd Haynes serves up pulp as a main course. The director’s ridiculously entertaining film takes its inspiration from the true story of Mary Kay Letourneau, the teacher who went to prison in the 1990s for having sex with a teenage student. Letourneau bore two of the boy’s children and they were eventually married for 14 years, but Haynes’ film doesn’t really focus on the muddied morality of that crime. His Letourneau stand-in (played by Julianne Moore) is not a teacher at all but a pet store manager named Gracie, and the film’s protagonist is actually an actress named Elizabeth (Natalie Portman), who’s hired to portray Gracie in an upcoming film about the case. Elizabeth insists on moving in with Gracie to study her in preparation for the role, and it’s not long before she begins overstepping boundaries and insinuating herself into the family’s life in increasingly inappropriate ways, including the inevitable flirtation with Gracie’s now grown-ass husband. Haynes is clearly inviting us to judge Elizabeth, but his boldest gambit is making us judge Gracie too, who’s presented as a deeply unlikeable character. She manipulates and emasculates her husband and emotionally abuses her daughter without ever losing her Stepford Wives smile, and her willful naivete about her public perception comes off as pure narcissism. May December is deviously clever in how it entraps us. Viewers are embedded with the family along with Berry, while Haynes keeps showing us little pieces of offensive behavior, daring us to both judge Gracie and condemn Elizabeth for sticking her nose into someone else’s business, while forcing us to do the same. It’s like living next door to the biggest gossip on the block: Your morals are offended by the prying, but you’re secretly grateful for the dish. Haynes wants to indict Berry, but also Gracie/Letourneau, the audience of his own film and not least of all our whole tabloid culture. We’re all a bunch of prurient carnivores, he seems to be saying, but it’s such great fun who wants to stop?

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A Haunting in Venice
Literally no one expected Kenneth Branagh’s third outing as Hercule Poirot to score a best picture nomination — his previous two weren’t nominated either — but I’m taking this opportunity to recognize it anyway. Its breezy charms and pure devotion to craft made for perfect summertime viewing, and the world needs as many quality whodunits as possible. Branagh’s Poirot films are sometimes compared with Rian Johnson’s Knives Out franchise, starring Daniel Craig as modern-day detective Benoit Blanc. There’s a bit of generational divide here, with Johnson’s work appealing to millennials while Branagh’s films are aimed squarely at the 50-and-over crowd. I like Craig as Blanc, but I prefer Branagh’s films for their literary style and lack of shoehorned political themes. A Haunting in Venice is a chamber piece: The murder takes place in a spooky Venetian palace on a rainy night, and the storm ensures that all the principals must stay put, giving our hero a chance to solve the mystery. I honestly don’t remember who got killed, who did it or why, but I do remember having a grand time watching Poirot piece it together. Just listening to Branagh work that mellifluous Belgian accent for two hours is almost worth the price of a ticket. I’m not sure A Haunting in Venice was one of the 10 best films of the year, but I do heartily recommend seeing it.

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