Mukul Sheopory's Blog, page 2

My Oscar Pic(k)s: 6. Sicario

The Revenant>

Finally, we are at my final pick for this season!

Sicario:

Unlike some of my other picks, many of which were made by a few of my favorite directors or touched issues close to my heart, this movie was something I had not heard of before.  A friend was in town and he, like me, is a major movie buff.  He had heard good things about this and we decided to check it out.  And this turned out to be one of my favorite movies of the year!

It is a narco drama set in southwestern US and Mexico.  There are two main protagonists, Emily Blunt’s character – a local police officer who falls like Alice, deep into a rabbit hole of FBI workings; and Benicio del Toro- a mysterious “consultant” hired by the FBI.  And the story is really their two stories.  And it is told in two distinct parts.  The first half of the movie seems to be depicting Emily Blunt’s perspective.  Later, well into the second half, the point of view changes to that of Benicio del Toro.

There is yet another character in this movie – the terrain.

Roger Deakins, the brilliant cinematographer, uses these beautiful aerial shots to depict the worlds on the US and Mexican sides.  These rolling scenes of the urban and rural landscapes showcase the similarity, the proximity, and the stark differences between the two worlds.  That, to me, was the most breathtaking part of this movie.

Another aspect of the movie that was jaw dropping was one of the last sequences where everyone on the FBI squad gets into these tunnels at the Mexican border at night.  Everything changes to a first person narrative seen from within night vision glasses.  That took me into the action like nothing had done before.

And even within this sequence, there were two different perspectives – one of Emily Blunt (fumbling through the tunnel using a green and grainy night image enhancer), and that of the Benicio del Toro (a professional thermal imaging visual aid).  So that even within that part of the narrative we can see how each of these protagonists have a completely different view of the situation.

Nominations: Best Original Score, Best Cinematography, and Best Sound Editing.

Verdict:  I think it should pick up the Oscar for Best Original Score and Best Cinematography.

My Oscar Pic(k)s: 5. The Revenant

The Big Short>

The Revenant:

Before we get to the Revenant, I’d like to take a step back.

Actually, many steps back.  It was 2001 or 2002, while I was living back in Boston.  On a winter afternoon walking back from the Pru I popped into the video store located at the corner of Dartmouth and Newbury.  Browsing through the maze of shelves, a red and black VHS cover caught my eye .  The three actors on the cover looked very different from each other, but together they shared something in their gaze.  The description on the back sounded intriguing as well, so I rented it.  I watched it over the next day or two, and was completely blown away.

Amores Perros was a visceral ride that took three disparate storylines in Mexico City, and threaded them together in a unique way.  The three intertwining tales were of a good-for-nothing twenty-something who hussled his way to make a quick buck, a gorgeous supermodel whose billboards lorded over the crowded city, and a mysterious vagrant who survived by living off scraps that others discarded.  The title of the movie translated to “Love is a bitch” and it was via each of the characters’ relationships with dogs that their stories tied to each other.  To appreciate how beautifully the stories had been weaved together I had to watched the VHS a few more times.

And the soundtrack was raw and visceral at times, and sparse and introspective at others.  When I tossed the tape into the bucket on the video store door,  I could not believe that it was the first movie that Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu had made!  I became a believer.  And till this day Amores Perros remains one of my favorite movies.

Then over the next many years came movies like 21 Grams, Babel, and Biutiful in slow succession. Each one well made.  Each one stirring.  Each one cemented my faith in his craft.

Then last year came Birdman.  I wasn’t sure about it, but had gone to see it just because it was made by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu.  And what a treat it was for me!  It was unlike any of his other movies.  Unlike any movie made by anyone in fact.

So as soon as I saw the first trailer of ‘The Revenant’, I knew it was THE movie I wanted to catch on the big screen this season.

And as expected, it was spectacular!  From the opening scene to the closing credits, what amazed me the most was the amazing beauty of the American continent.  Alejandro Gonzalez and his star cinematographer Emmanuel ‘Chivo’ Lubezki had painstakingly recreated the life that the frontiersmen must have lived in the 1800s.

There were so many shots that transported me to a different time and place.  Shots of frigid, yet gorgeous landscapes across which the characters made their bone chilling treks.  Moments in dark, blue nights when warm orange hues of campfires reached beyond the curtain.  Mornings in snow packed mountains where time seemed to pause, and the only sounds one heard were of snow melting into water.

I learnt later that in order to get the right feel, Alejandro and Chivo had decided to shoot completely in natural light.  They had lugged the entire production kit and kaboodle up to the northernmost parts of Canada, edging close to the Arctic region.  They had gone so far up north that they only had a few hours of daylight to shoot everyday.  And because of this they had run over the allocated time.  The season had changed before they could wrap up their shooting.  And then in order to complete the movie they had to take the entire production down to the southern tip of Argentina, where the weather and geography was akin to what they had up near the arctic.  Just for the effort they put into the film, and for the results they were able to conjure I think the movie deserves an Oscar for cinematography.

Yet this movie was unlike Alejandro Gonzalez’s previous movies – the storyline was very simple.  There were no multi-threaded narratives as in Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and Babel.  No delving into inner conflicts as it was in Biutiful and Birdman.  The Revenant was a very straightforward, linear tale.  I was expecting it to be a little more layered.

And the main character that Leonardo DiCaprio portrayed seemed very one dimensional.  He had grit, no doubt.  But there was nothing about him that did not meet the eye.  Even the relationship between  and his son’s character, upon which the entire conflict with Tom Hardy’s character had been based, seemed superficial.  Maybe not enough time was spent building that up.  Or maybe I just didn’t get it.  Either way, if there was a depth in their father-son bond, it had not been made apparent to this viewer.

I did like how Tom Hardy had portrayed his character.  One could see a new layer of him with every unfolding act.  There were times when one felt that they were close to getting why he was who he was.  There almost were moments of sympathy and respect when towards the end he refuses to plead to DiCaprio’s character.

All in all, it was the best cinematography I have seen in an Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu movie.  However, the story was simplistic.  But then again Chivo had once mused that the language of film was further from the language of theater and closer to the language of music.  So Inarritu may be evolving closer to that ideal after all.

 

Nominations: Best Director, Best Picture, Best Actor (DiCaprio), Best Supporting Actor (Tom Hardy), Best Cinematography, and a bunch of others for sound/production/special effects.

Verdict:

Either this or Sicario should win the award for Best Cinematography.  This could even win for Best Direction and/or Best Supporting Actor (for Tom Hardy).  Not sure if it deserves the award for Best Actor though (sorry DiCaprio)!

In terms of Best Movie I don’t think it is in the same league as some of the winners from the last few years (i.e. Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Birdman or Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity). But when we compare it to the other contenders in this year’s pool it does seem to have a strong chance.

Next Up:  My takes on Sicario.

 

Post Script: By the way, the video store did not survive the onslaught of Netflix.  Today I can see that there is a fancy Mexican eatery, standing there in its stead. “Mexican bites in a swanky, Gothic lounge” – reads its description.  When I told this to my wife she noted that it could have been describing Amores Perros itself

 

My Oscar Pic(k)s: 4. The Big Short

Mad Max – Fury Road>

The Big Short:

Having had 70% of my savings wiped out in the financial crisis of 2008, having lost my job as the consulting firm I worked for cut its costs, and later having worked with small business owners who suffered due to tightening credit as banks shored up TARP bail out money to improve their balance sheets and secure their bonuses; I was intimately aware with the tsunami that shook the global economy eight years ago.  Through the following years as I had tied my belt and picked myself up, I had tried to piece together the thread on how I had been caught so completely unaware when something of this magnitude was sneaking around the corner.

I had gradually learnt about how everyone from the executives on Wall Street, to the Congress, to the Fed had fed the fire with one basic assumption – that real estate prices could only go in one direction – Up!

I had learnt that over the years leading up to 2008 the Fed had continued lowering interest rates and getting plaudits for keeping the US economy forging upwards (the biography of Alan Greenspan that came out just before the crisis was actually entitled”Maestro”).  The banks on Wall Street had extended cheap credit to finance the unprecedented real estate boom.  And everyone in this machinery had gotten richer.

When no loans were left to make in the credit worthy tranches, Wall Street had moved down to the sub-prime cadre.  Congress had mysteriously slacked regulatory requirements to an extent where people didn’t even need to show proof of their salaries when applying for a loan.  Real estate agents had made a fortune by making loans to people who could not afford them.  Ratings agencies had turned a blind eye and rubber stamped crappy loans as ‘AAA’ grade.

And eventually when no loans were left to make even in the sub-prime tranches, financial instruments were crafted to allow betting on bets.  The same crappy loans were repackaged over and over again until skyscrapers of cards dotted the US (and global economies).

And then the unthinkable had occurred – Real estate prices had started to fall.  And we know the rest.

The Movie:

I knew that Michael Lewis had written an account of a few people who had seen the signs of this craziness and had made a fortune by betting against it.  I had been meaning to read it.  But I was not sure how someone could take that story and adapt it into a screenplay for the silver screen that won’t make the audience sleepy.  So when I learnt that Adam McKay had been given the baton to make this feature, I was super interested.  He was the guy behind comedies like Anchorman and Talladega Nights.  Not sure if I’d have selected him for making a serious movie like this.

And boy, how wrong was I.  He not only made the movie easy to understand for non-financial folks, but he did so with panache.  My favorite parts of the movie were these cut-aways that he deployed.  Short scenes that went tangentially off the main narrative, and used the most unlikely of celebrities to explain complicated financial concepts.

For example there was Anthony Bourdain explaining how crappy sub-prime mortgages were packaged up into new instruments called CDOs.  It was kinda like him putting yesterday’s stinky fish into today’s stew and calling it “Chef’s Special”…

Another example was Selena Gomez and behavioral economist Richard Thaler explaining ‘Synthetic CDOs’ while sitting in a casino.  They equating these instruments to people standing next to them making bets on the bet that the two of them continuing their winning streak on the casino table.  And the onlookers next to them making bets on those bets, and then those next to them making bets on those bets.  And how when Selena and Thaler eventually lost a hand, the entire lot of gamblers in that casino came crashing down; the final bet thousands of time larger than the bet that was made on the table itself.

There was another cutaway where a supermodel sat in a bubble bath and explained mortgage bonds.  I didn’t really get that one though.  I guess mortgage bonds are way too onerous even for a cutaway (or maybe I was just too distracted :-D).

Overall I thought that these cutaways were brilliant ploys to educate everyone on ploys that were devised by Wall Street to obfuscate their workings.

The quality of the acting was not bad, but nothing to write home about.  Five years down the line, I will remember the cutaways, but not the thespian talents of Steve Carell or Christian Bale in this movie.

By the way there was one thing that did not sit well with me – the movie’s attempt to portray these protagonists as heroes.  Were they really that different from the bankers and realtors involved in the crash?  Or were they just smarter than them and making their millions/Billions in a different manner?

Overall the movie exposed many of the ugly cracks in our financial system.  It ended with an few sobering notes that we should think about – (1) there may be another crisis brewing, (2) the banks that were too big to fail in 2008 are now even bigger, and (3) not a single person in the entire private-public machinery that caused this crisis was penalized.

Nominations: Best Director, Best Picture, Best supporting actor (Christian Bale), Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Editing.

Verdict:  It should win the award for best Adapted Screenplay.  I think it was a very important movie that everyone has a duty to watch, but in terms of cinematic value not sure if it deserves an Oscar.  The direction was innovative but not sure it was award worthy.

Postscript:  In addition to this there are a couple of other movies that complete the picture of the 2008 financial crisis.  I highly recommend watching these as well:

(1) ‘Margin Call’ – shows the perspective of a bank that had bet the house on the real estate build up.  And what they did over the course of the next 24 hours after realizing that most of the loans sitting on their balance-sheets were crap.

(2) Too Big To Fail – shows the perspective of Hank Paulson, the Treasury Secretary during that time.  It shows how he had to negotiate with multiple stakeholders globally, and slowly guide the massive ship that is the US economy in a way that prevented it from becoming a Great Depression.  It is an eye opener into all the moving parts that constitute the global financial system, and how working with execs of major financial institutions can be like playing nanny to a group of spoilt and entitled children.

Next Up:  My takes on The Revenant.