OK, so all five of these men have their movies in the running for Best Picture. Who will win, and will there be a split between this category and Picture?
Terrence Malick is certainly a filmmaker's filmmaker. He burst onto the scene in the 1970s with two marvelously poetic films,
Badlands and
Days of Heaven, and then like cinema's J.D. Salinger he disappeared; no interviews, no pictures, hardly any rumors. He reemerged twenty years later, with
The Thin Red Line (which netted him his only other Best Director nomination), and followed that with
The New World seven years later. There were just six years between
The New World and
The Tree of Life, and now he seems suddenly prolific with one project in post production and two more rumored to begin soon.
The Tree of Life is apparently at least somewhat autobiographical, I think we can at least presume that some of the impressionistic memories presented of the young boy are akin to his own upbringing. But as the film's detractors will tell you, there's also close-ups of leaves and cutaways to sun spots and waterfalls and I swear I saw a dinosaur in there somewhere. What it all means I won't even speculate, I'll leave it to each viewer, but it's certainly bravura filmmaking, and his fellow directors honored him with this nomination. Can't imagine a scenario where his name is called (and the famously reclusive and media-shy Malick of course won't be there in the audience, win or lose).
Woody Allen is a bonafide cinematic institution. This marks his seventh nomination as Best Director:
Annie Hall, Interiors, Broadway Danny Rose, Hannah & Her Sisters, Crimes & Misdemeanors, and
Bullets Over Broadway, winning that first one. It is his twenty-third overall nomination - the others coming for his screenwriting (plus one as Best Actor, for
Annie Hall). He's no recluse, as native New Yorkers or Parisians see him all the time, often playing his clarinet in some small jazz club, but as far as most media and certainly all awards shows, he
is as reclusive as Mr. Malick. So Allen will not be sitting there in anticipation on Oscar night, either. It shouldn't matter too much, as there's probably little chance he'll win his second Best Director trophy this year, but it is remarkable how he keeps on keepin' on, reinvigorating himself creatively again and again, and the Academy certainly notes, respects, and delights in that.
Martin Scorsese is a bonafide institution in his own right. This is the seventh Best Director nomination for him, as well:
Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, GoodFellas, Gangs of New York, The Aviator, and
The Departed. You'll probably remember he won for that last one. Had he'd still been the best filmmaker around never to have won one, he might have a better chance with
Hugo. Since that Oscar injustice has already been righted, I doubt he's going to get his second this time out.
Hugo is certainly not the kind of material Scorsese is known for, though some of the themes running through it, namely the magic of cinema and the importance of film preservation, couldn't
be more Scorsesian. But there's another 1930s-set film this year that deals with the magic of the movies, and it's called
The Artist.
Alexander Payne isn't an institution yet, but he's on his way. His two nominations this year give him five, total, and he was previously nominated as Best Director for
Sideways, for which he won Best Adapted Screenplay. With
Election, About Schmidt, Sideways and now
The Descendants he has that perfect mix for the Academy of indie sensibility and credibility, the ability to cast the perfect actor for each role, and all with storytelling that is extremely appealing and accessible.
The Descendants is probably his most mainstream movie yet, in a lot of ways, and in a year where the frontrunner is anything but mainstream, he may just be able to woo enough votes away to salvage at least a split here with Best Director and Best Picture, if not a full out upset.
No, I don't really know how to pronounce Michel Hazanavicius' name, either. But I think we better start learning, because he's probably gonna be an Oscar winner real soon. Has a Frenchman ever won an Oscar for Best Director, you're wondering? No, not really. Roman Polanski won for
The Pianist, but while he is a French citizen he was of course born in Poland. There have been other French directors nominated over the decades: Jean Renoir, Claude Lelouch, François Truffaut, Louis Malle, and Edouard Molinaro (as well as another naturalized Frenchman in the Iranian-born Barbet Schroeder). But none of them ever won. Before
The Artist, Michel was best known for the wonderful comedy
OSS-117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, which was a massive hit in France and much of the world, save for America. That film also starred Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo, and it had amazingly realized detail of the aesthetic of spy movies of the early 1960s. In
The Artist, Hazanavicius took that same eye for detail and authenticity and applied it to Silent movies and a Hollywood long gone, if it ever even existed outside of myth and other films. There are moments in
The Artist just as delightfully funny as
OSS-117, but there's also deeper emotion and pathos and characters who, while archetypes, also seem quite human (even that cute dog). As convoluted and gimmicky and artificial as it may seem to those who haven't seen it, miraculously it's all handled just right, and I think this unique feat is going to earn Mr. Hazanavicius a Best Director trophy.
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