The moment you’ve all been waiting for! Appetites whetted by our insightful post about cinematography, you’ve returned for our dissection of possibly the most popular of all the Oscar categories: Art Direction!
This year the nominees are as follows:
Alice in Wonderland (Robert Stromberg & Karen O’Hara)
Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Part I (Stuart Craig & Stephenie McMillan)
Inception (Guy Hendrix Dyas, Larry Dias & Doug Mowat)
The King’s Speech (Eve Stewart & Judy Farr)
True Grit (Jess Gonchor & Nancy Haigh)
This is a tricky category. Do you want to reward movies who did a wonderful, and wonderfully subtle job of making their worlds look real? Or do you reward spectacle and particular effort? Well we’re wishy washy on that. Go with you heart, we tell ourselves (and our cats). Evaluations:
True Grit is a movie that takes place about 75% outdoors. While many of these outdoor shoots are of course art directed to within an inch of their lives, the directors and DPs have a lot more control when it comes to shooting in the open air. But there is a great little room created in the film, where Rooster makes his bed – it’s real and charming and, bizarrely, Chinese.
The King’s Speech is not a bad movie. But it is not a great movie. And there is nothing about it, aside from possibly costumes, that has any relationship to visual art. And even the costumes are simple; the King only wears a few clothes, all of which have been photographed to within an inch of their lives.
I will fight my gag reflex and talk about Harry Potter now. Forget that the cute kids first drafted into the franchise have aged into bad actors and a fashion plate; forget the awful dialogue, the interminable length of the dreary films, and the total lack of realistic behavior from the teen-aged protagonists. Let’s talk about the sets, which are very good. Dark when need be, whimsical when need be, and consistent across 7 lumbering atrocities, the sets are quite good.
Alice in Wonderland. What to say about the modern incarnation of Tim Burton? That he is trite? Trapped in a terminally cute faux-goth adolescent pose? That his movies are no longer any good at all? All of the above, if you’re grumpy old me. I watched this film recently, hated it, and took note of the sets in particular, which are almost uniformly computer generated and very fake-looking. The whole thing is queasy and stupid, with no zip, no humor, and no attempt to be faithful to Carroll. Get lost. (Except for you, Mia Wasikowska. We love you and can’t wait to see you in Jane Eyre!)
Now let’s talk turkey; let’s talk about the clear winner in this category, in our always humble opinion.
Let’s talk about Inception.
Was it all a dream?
Inception is a masterpiece. This is true in obvious ways; it’s a great action movie, the special effects are mind-blowing, and the story is immaculate. But it’s also a great entry in the canon of art films disguised as popular entertainment. This is a movie about filmmaking, about consciousness, about memory, and about the human condition. And it’s also got a James Bond section, a Last Tango in Paris section, a treatise on the nature of obsession… I could go on.
For the purposes of this article, it has some of the best art direction I’ve ever seen. Paris folding in on itself. The snow fortress. The Asian Mansion. The street riot. The vast and ruined dream city. On and on and on. This is the winner. Props!
