Abrams, with his typical masterful technique, uses classic movie tropes to tell a thick, rich story about pain, lost and disconnection, and how love and forgiveness are the only way back home. Oh, and the fact that it’s set in Montgomery County, just outside of Dayton, OH is pretty awesome, too.
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Editor’s note: Andrew Keller is a friend of mine from the college days. He disagrees with my assessment of The King’s Speech and the Best Picture race. I love his take on the film, as well as how it contributes to the theme of maturing, so I asked him to write up a guest post. It’s my privilege to feature him today on my blog. Enjoy his take on the Oscars and The King’s Speech!
I have heard much discussion here and there on the Academy's controversial choice of The King's Speech for Best Picture. As I have only seen two of the films nominated, I can't give a viable opinion on which nominee was the best. However, consider this:
The Academy is not made up of some old white dudes with Ph.D.s who determine greatness by some archaic formula, nor is it made of your average everyday fans of movies. The Academy consists of industry professionals (actors, directors, technicians, designers, producers, etc.), and the awards are for achievement in creating good cinema. These individuals judge films as works of art, and not just a mode of communication or a means of entertainment. Since they all have specializations within the business, there is diversity in votes: the actors of the Academy will value good acting and good directing more than other aspects, the writers will value the screenplay and the message, the designers the design aesthetic, etc. From this diverse group of people, it becomes evident which films most appealed to the sensibilities of most areas, and we end up with a "Best" picture.
When viewed in this light, it is easy to see how The King's Speech was so successful; it was appealing to everyone in the industry. The design was accurate, precise, and yet still very telling, the writing was brilliant, the direction was spot-on, and (as I am an actor, and value great performance) Colin Firth was INCREDIBLE. I could fill several pages with what made his performance spectacular, but I'm sure JR wouldn't approve of me hijacking so much of his space. Just take my word for it. Add great performances by Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham-Carter, and you've got a winner, or at least a truly deserving nominee.
So that's why it won. Here's why it's great that it did:
As JR has mentioned, this year the nominees dealt very strongly with the idea of growing up. The King's Speech is no exception, but in a different way, and contains (in my opinion) a much more needed lesson for our society than any others. It's about learning to do what you must do, even if it makes you uncomfortable. The real triumph of the film is that the final speech is neither easy for the King nor particularly good - the point is that King George, despite the urge to avoid the situation, knuckled down and did what needed to be done by seeking help. The root of his stuttering problem is unimportant beyond using it to overcome the problem, so whose fault it is that he stutters is inconsequential. The fact remains that the problem exists, and the only one responsible for fixing it is His Majesty.
When I graduated college, I was under the impression that I was ready for the real world. The reality was that I wasn't, and not just because I was ill-prepared. I, like many others in my generation, found that finding a job in my chosen field was nearly impossible, especially the kind of job within my field that I wanted. And I, like many others in my generation, spent a couple years wallowing in self-pity while lamenting the futility of college and the malevolence of The System.
The truth was that, in order to succeed in my business, I had to get up, get a job that paid the bills that I didn't like, and spend my free time taking baby steps toward the goal.
more so, that it was the first of many speeches that were to actually happen. The man ponied up.
Film Review: Thor
Film Review: Sucker Punch
Film Reflections: Growing Old without Growing Up
GUEST POST: Andrew Keller In Defense of the King's Speech
Editor’s note: Andrew Keller is a friend of mine from the college days. He disagrees with my assessment of The King’s Speech and the Best Picture race. I love his take on the film, as well as how it contributes to the theme of maturing, so I asked him to write up a guest post. It’s my privilege to feature him today on my blog. Enjoy his take on the Oscars and The King’s Speech!
I have heard much discussion here and there on the Academy's controversial choice of The King's Speech for Best Picture. As I have only seen two of the films nominated, I can't give a viable opinion on which nominee was the best. However, consider this:
The Academy is not made up of some old white dudes with Ph.D.s who determine greatness by some archaic formula, nor is it made of your average everyday fans of movies. The Academy consists of industry professionals (actors, directors, technicians, designers, producers, etc.), and the awards are for achievement in creating good cinema. These individuals judge films as works of art, and not just a mode of communication or a means of entertainment. Since they all have specializations within the business, there is diversity in votes: the actors of the Academy will value good acting and good directing more than other aspects, the writers will value the screenplay and the message, the designers the design aesthetic, etc. From this diverse group of people, it becomes evident which films most appealed to the sensibilities of most areas, and we end up with a "Best" picture.
When viewed in this light, it is easy to see how The King's Speech was so successful; it was appealing to everyone in the industry. The design was accurate, precise, and yet still very telling, the writing was brilliant, the direction was spot-on, and (as I am an actor, and value great performance) Colin Firth was INCREDIBLE. I could fill several pages with what made his performance spectacular, but I'm sure JR wouldn't approve of me hijacking so much of his space. Just take my word for it. Add great performances by Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham-Carter, and you've got a winner, or at least a truly deserving nominee.
So that's why it won. Here's why it's great that it did:
As JR has mentioned, this year the nominees dealt very strongly with the idea of growing up. The King's Speech is no exception, but in a different way, and contains (in my opinion) a much more needed lesson for our society than any others. It's about learning to do what you must do, even if it makes you uncomfortable. The real triumph of the film is that the final speech is neither easy for the King nor particularly good - the point is that King George, despite the urge to avoid the situation, knuckled down and did what needed to be done by seeking help. The root of his stuttering problem is unimportant beyond using it to overcome the problem, so whose fault it is that he stutters is inconsequential. The fact remains that the problem exists, and the only one responsible for fixing it is His Majesty.
When I graduated college, I was under the impression that I was ready for the real world. The reality was that I wasn't, and not just because I was ill-prepared. I, like many others in my generation, found that finding a job in my chosen field was nearly impossible, especially the kind of job within my field that I wanted. And I, like many others in my generation, spent a couple years wallowing in self-pity while lamenting the futility of college and the malevolence of The System.
The truth was that, in order to succeed in my business, I had to get up, get a job that paid the bills that I didn't like, and spend my free time taking baby steps toward the goal.
This is necessary to grow up - the knowledge that, in order to get what you want, you're going to have to do some stuff you would rather not do.
For King George, the thing he wanted was to provide hope and a future for his nation. To do this, he had to speak publicly. What made his speech at the end so spectacular was not that it was a good speech, but simply that the speech actually happened, andmore so, that it was the first of many speeches that were to actually happen. The man ponied up.
On the surface, the message of the film is that stutterers are intelligent people, who have important things to say. Deep down, though, the message is that we all have the potential for greatness. All we have to do is pony up.
The Best Picture: What Should've Won
The Social Network
If I’d reviewed this film when I first saw it, my quest to review all the 2010 Best Picture nominees would be a lot further along. Here we go anyway… Oh yes, and spoiler alerts.
The Social Network is David Fincher’s latest film (Se7en, Fight Club, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), and is penned by Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, Sports Night, The West Wing, Studio 60). It chronicles the creation of Facebook (if you don’t know what Facebook is, then you’re probably either reading a printout of this review or you are an alien preparing an invasion and I don’t want to give you any more advantages than you clearly already have). The entire story is an adaptation of Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires, which he wrote relying mainly on Eduardo Saverin (played in the film by Andrew Garfield), Mark Zuckerberg’s best friend at Harvard, who in the present is one of two groups suing Zuckerberg for stealing Facebook. As such, you’d expect the film to be more critical of Zuckerberg, but it’s not. Even still, much has been made about how fictitious the Zuckerberg in the film actually is. Jesse Eisenberg didn’t ever meet Mark Zuckerberg. From all accounts, the awkward, anti-social misanthrope we see in the film is light-years from the warm, funny (and maybe still slightly awkward) Zuckerberg who actually runs Facebook.
Sorkin tells the story in flashbacks cut between deposition hearings with Zuckerberg and either Saverin or the Winklevoss twins – two hulking Harvard rowers who were seniors when sophomore Zuckerberg started the Facebook. Both Saverin and the Winklevoss twins claim that at some point Zuckerberg stole Facebook from them, so we are taken back to Harvard of 2002-2003 to see for ourselves. The twins claim to have came up with the original idea to make Facebook available only to select colleges through a dating website called Harvard Connect they contacted Zuckerberg to build for them. Saverin was the original CFO (and sole financier) of Facebook, and was tricked (though, according to the flim, legally tricked) into signing away his shares by Zuckerberg and Sean Parker (the Napster founder who had wormed his way into the Facebook inner circle).
The story itself is pretty straight forward and fun to watch. Sorkin’s dialogue brings the characters to life. His script keeps the characters from becoming parodies of themselves while allowing us to experience the thrill of watching underdog-nobody-dork Zuckerberg triumph over the nefarious Winklevi who clearly have everything – money, smarts and good looks to spare. But you don’t completely hate the twins and you can’t completely love Zuckerberg. Saverin is the betrayed friend while Parker is the self-destructive cool-kid whose too immature for his own good.
As the movie poster hints, the movie’s central theme is the false intimacy Facebook promises. The film opens with Zuckerberg getting dumped by his girlfriend, Erica Albright, in a bar and going home in a drunken pity party. His drive to become cool led him to put the entire college social experience online in the form of Facebook. The irony is that as the popularity of Facebook grew, Zuckerberg became more and more of a celebrity, but didn’t connect with anyone on a meaninful level. In fact, he grew futher and further apart from his best – and only – friend, Eduardo Saverin. The film ends with Zuckerberg alone in the deposition room refreshing Erica’s Facebook page, waiting to see if she’ll accept his friend request. Mark might have over 1,000,000 friends, but he’s completely alone.
The real question is this, though: is the film a commentary on the false intimacy social networking offers us, or on the false reality film offers? Because the real Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t bear much resemblance to the film at all. The real Mark Zuckerberg has had the same girlfriend since he founded Facebook, and everyone who knows him describes him as a warm, friendly person. So while The Social Network is an interesting parable about the dangers of false intimacy, we would do well to remember that film is just as fickle a mistress.
Bottom Line: It’s a fun, smart film. It’s a great commentary on relationships and remembering what’s important!
Flims: The Fighter & The King's Speech
127 Hours
The Kids Are All Right
As with all my Film Reflections, watch out for spoilers.
Californian couple Nic and Jules have been together for twenty-something years. Nic is a doctor (the two met at college, when Jules came to the hospital where Nic was a resident), and Jules quit her job when the two had children. We learn early on that they had their two children, Joni (18) and Laser (15), with the help of a sperm donor since they are not biologically compatible. Now that the kids are older, Jules is starting a new business – landscaping.
The film follows the family through the so-normal-it’s-dull growing pains of a 21st century family. Joni is leaving for college at the end of the summer, and is trying to figure out how to be her own person. Laser is friends with a guy who is a bully and leads Laser to make increasingly bad decisions. Both kids know that their ‘father’ is actually a sperm donor, and since Joni is 18, she makes contact. The kids meet Paul, a late-30s, never-married organic restaurant owner, and are instantly taken with him. He begins spending more and more time with the family, which causes problems…
Nic and Jules have been growing apart. Nic is the quintessential micro-manager to Jules’ free spirit. Their lives and their marriage has become routine, so when Paul hires Jules to landscape the backyard of his newly purchased house, their inevitable affair is no surprise (again, so cliché it’s bland). The climax of the film showcases the inevitable implosion of the nuclear family, and ends on a positive note; even though the family is physically displaced by Joni’s departure for college, we get the sense that Nic and Jules and their kids are going to be all right.
Bland. Boring. The kids’ rebellion (the height of which is Joni riding a motorcycle with Paul, which Nic has expressly forbidden – gasp!) is boring. Nic and Jules’ marital problems are the stuff of stereotypes and sitcoms – two people who love each other have grown apart and are trying to figure out how to reconnect. Even Paul, the donor dad, is so banal as to be forgettable. He’s a basically nice guy who’s maybe still a little juvenile. Nothing about the story is especially compelling or memorable.
Oh, except for the fact that Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) are lesbians. (The whole film in fact, from the excellent acting to well-written script, seem to pursue the banal and stereotypical precisely for this reason.) Nic and Jules’ sexuality is nearly an afterthought in the film. No one – not the kids, not Paul (Mark Ruffalo), no one! – thinks that Nic and Jules shouldn’t be married or have kids. No one thinks that Joni and Laser are going to grow up sexually deviant (Joni seems almost totally uninterested in sex, and Laser is grossed out when he discovers that his moms think he might be gay).
In fact, the film’s strongest argument is its most subtle: a person’s sexuality doesn’t define her (or him). Lesbian couples have the same problems as anyone else. Kids raised by same-sex couples are pretty much normal kids. In short, the film is arguing that gay people really are people too.
What’s probably most sad to me is that this film even needed to be made. Especially Evangelical Christians are notorious for demonizing gay and lesbian persons. In “discussions” of same-sex marriage, we often claim that allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry will destroy the fabric of heterosexual marriages (this while we allow our divorce rates to climb over 50%). The Kids Are All Right argues that a person’s sexual orientation has nothing to do with whether a marriage will be healthy, or for that matter whether children will be healthy. While it should go without saying, the film argues that gay and lesbian persons are just as capable of love and commitment – and no more susceptible to temptation – than a ‘normal’ heterosexual person.
While it should go without saying that gay persons are people too, fully human and no more defined by their sexual orientation than a heterosexual person, it doesn’t go without saying because we Christians need to hear and learn that so badly. Our marriages have problems because we’re people, not because someone’s gay. Our kids struggle because growing up is tough, not because of ‘the Gays’. The Kids Are All Right is trying to say, Hey everybody, can we all calm down a little bit and start talking about what we have in common instead of what makes us different?
The debate over same-sex marriage in this country is far from over. We would all do well to listen to this bland, boring film and reevaluate our own rhetoric. If we can’t engage those who disagree with us as whole persons, equal conversation partners, then our discussion cannot move forward.
Californian couple Nic and Jules have been together for twenty-something years. Nic is a doctor (the two met at college, when Jules came to the hospital where Nic was a resident), and Jules quit her job when the two had children. We learn early on that they had their two children, Joni (18) and Laser (15), with the help of a sperm donor since they are not biologically compatible. Now that the kids are older, Jules is starting a new business – landscaping.
The film follows the family through the so-normal-it’s-dull growing pains of a 21st century family. Joni is leaving for college at the end of the summer, and is trying to figure out how to be her own person. Laser is friends with a guy who is a bully and leads Laser to make increasingly bad decisions. Both kids know that their ‘father’ is actually a sperm donor, and since Joni is 18, she makes contact. The kids meet Paul, a late-30s, never-married organic restaurant owner, and are instantly taken with him. He begins spending more and more time with the family, which causes problems…
Nic and Jules have been growing apart. Nic is the quintessential micro-manager to Jules’ free spirit. Their lives and their marriage has become routine, so when Paul hires Jules to landscape the backyard of his newly purchased house, their inevitable affair is no surprise (again, so cliché it’s bland). The climax of the film showcases the inevitable implosion of the nuclear family, and ends on a positive note; even though the family is physically displaced by Joni’s departure for college, we get the sense that Nic and Jules and their kids are going to be all right.
Bland. Boring. The kids’ rebellion (the height of which is Joni riding a motorcycle with Paul, which Nic has expressly forbidden – gasp!) is boring. Nic and Jules’ marital problems are the stuff of stereotypes and sitcoms – two people who love each other have grown apart and are trying to figure out how to reconnect. Even Paul, the donor dad, is so banal as to be forgettable. He’s a basically nice guy who’s maybe still a little juvenile. Nothing about the story is especially compelling or memorable.
Oh, except for the fact that Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) are lesbians. (The whole film in fact, from the excellent acting to well-written script, seem to pursue the banal and stereotypical precisely for this reason.) Nic and Jules’ sexuality is nearly an afterthought in the film. No one – not the kids, not Paul (Mark Ruffalo), no one! – thinks that Nic and Jules shouldn’t be married or have kids. No one thinks that Joni and Laser are going to grow up sexually deviant (Joni seems almost totally uninterested in sex, and Laser is grossed out when he discovers that his moms think he might be gay).
In fact, the film’s strongest argument is its most subtle: a person’s sexuality doesn’t define her (or him). Lesbian couples have the same problems as anyone else. Kids raised by same-sex couples are pretty much normal kids. In short, the film is arguing that gay people really are people too.
What’s probably most sad to me is that this film even needed to be made. Especially Evangelical Christians are notorious for demonizing gay and lesbian persons. In “discussions” of same-sex marriage, we often claim that allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry will destroy the fabric of heterosexual marriages (this while we allow our divorce rates to climb over 50%). The Kids Are All Right argues that a person’s sexual orientation has nothing to do with whether a marriage will be healthy, or for that matter whether children will be healthy. While it should go without saying, the film argues that gay and lesbian persons are just as capable of love and commitment – and no more susceptible to temptation – than a ‘normal’ heterosexual person.
While it should go without saying that gay persons are people too, fully human and no more defined by their sexual orientation than a heterosexual person, it doesn’t go without saying because we Christians need to hear and learn that so badly. Our marriages have problems because we’re people, not because someone’s gay. Our kids struggle because growing up is tough, not because of ‘the Gays’. The Kids Are All Right is trying to say, Hey everybody, can we all calm down a little bit and start talking about what we have in common instead of what makes us different?
The debate over same-sex marriage in this country is far from over. We would all do well to listen to this bland, boring film and reevaluate our own rhetoric. If we can’t engage those who disagree with us as whole persons, equal conversation partners, then our discussion cannot move forward.
Bottom Line: The film isn’t that interesting as a story; its power comes from the conversations it generates in the wake of its viewing.
Have you seen the film? What do you think of its stance on same-sex marriage and/or parenting?