Biopics Are Bad, Unless They Aren't
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Out of the 10 actors nominated in the Best Actor/Actress categories at the upcoming Academy Awards, six are playing real-life people (also there’s a Macbeth).
This isn’t shocking or anything—I’m not breaking new ground when I say that the Oscars love to reward mediocre impressions of dead people—but, god, it’s depressing. The recent result I’ll always look back on with rage in my eyes is that of Eddie Redmayne in The Theory of Everything besting Michael Keaton in Birdman, but it’s a year-in, year-out phenomenon. (Which is lame as hell, and also one of the reasons why I believe that the viewership for the awards steadily drops every year.)
Answer this question. Which have you thought of more since 2017: Daniel Kaluuya in Get Out or Gary Oldman in Darkest Hour? Not only did the much-ballyhooed and makeup-dominated Oldman/Winston Churchill take the crown over Kaluuya, but the mediocre game of dress-up also beat out Timothée Chalamet in Call Me By Your Name and Daniel Day-Lewis in Phantom Thread.
It’s almost a guarantee at this point. Put on a ridiculous outfit, gain some weight and try on prosthetics, and you’re a shoo-in to at least get nominated. The two runaway favorites this year, Will Smith and Nicole Kidman, are both protagonists of middling to pretty good biopics. It’ll never stop. As more actors win for these performances, more actors will try to ugly themselves up to try to win their own awards. It’s The Myth of Sisyphus, except Sisyphus is Jared Leto and vaguely sounds like Waluigi.
One of the biopics that ridiculously triumphed over much better movies was that of The King’s Speech in 2010, a fine-at-best historical epic, which was fine. I really can’t establish enough how just fine it was. It was fine.
Perhaps the best movie from that year—another biopic—was The Social Network.
So, I’m not here to say that basing stories on true events is a cardinal sin; I’m here to say that we deserve better ones. Movies that have thought put into them and a reason to exist. The Social Network is taken from our world, but it’s also just an entertaining movie. It’s a David Fincher thriller mixed with a courtroom drama with a dynamite cast.
2021’s Spencer is getting dinged for being too polarizing. It’s literally a biopic that isn’t biopic-y enough for the voting body. It’s too weird and genre-pushing. That’s what we should want. Something new. I’m perfectly fine with a movie when it has a story to tell, not when it’s a bunch of actors constantly attempting to one-up each other in order to yell enough to be featured in a montage.
The award isn’t for Most Actor. It’s for Best Actor. Go to hell, Eddie Redmayne.
Umm, the Oscar nominations were kind of good? I’m as surprised as you are.
As the years come and go and my back hurts more and more, I’ve found that you have to take little victories when it comes to the Academy Awards. Sure, there were snubs that I would’ve liked to have seen make it (Bradley Cooper for Best Supporting Actor or Denis Villeneuve for Best Director) and more outlandishly wishful snubs (Renate Reinsve for Best Actress or Céline Sciamma for Best Director), but this was as good as it gets for the big show.
Aaron Sorkin, Jared Leto and Lady Gaga were replaced by Joachim Trier, Jesse Plemons and Penélope Cruz, and Drive My Car and Jessie Buckley snuck their way into Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress respectively. I’m lukewarm on Belfast, but I’d prefer that over some of the other potential noms, and it’s a pleasant enough movie that is probably catnip for Academy voters.
There are always shockers, but, all in all, this is as good as one can expect the Oscars to do. I’m still a bit worried about the notion that Don’t Look Up is going to win the big one, but that’s a future me problem.
For now, we’ll take the Licorice Pizza love and the Drive My Car run and the West Side Story adoration and Kristen Stewart’s (well-deserved) nomination. I mean, Dune was nominated for Best Picture. Dune!
In case you were wondering, this is how my predictions ended up. Not a bad showing…
I’ll keep this short. The Paddington films are ridiculously fun. They’re bite-sized Wes Anderson films featuring a talking bear and antagonists played by Nicole Kidman and Hugh Grant. All of the actors get it, and they know what type of movie they’re in. The Paddington villain has quickly become the most important role in Hollywood. It’s the new Batman. Give us Florence Pugh or Olivia Colman or Daniel Kaluuya in this coveted spot. Cast Anya Taylor-Joy or Bradley Cooper or Colin Farrell. Use your imagination. That’s what Paddington would want.