Sharing my love of all things Oscar. I see all the movies with nominations so you don't have to - and I do my best to research and help pick the winners. Subscribe, share your comments, and feel free to share with others. Follow me on Twitter @JodiBee.
Supporting Actor - Michael Shannon Nocturnal Animals is a haunting film in which we see a devastating crime committed, and the aftermath of associated characters dealing with the fallout of the crime. Jake Gyllenhall plays a father and husband whose wife and daughter are abducted on a remote road almost right out of his car. The crime's lead investigator is Sheriff Bobby Andes, played brilliantly by Michael Shannon, as he discovers the identity of the kidnappers (and perpetrators of other crimes which I'll let you discover in the film) and the consequences of taking the law into one's own hands. Meanwhile, Amy Adams plays Gyllenhall's former wife who is asked to read a book that he has written years after the crime which gives her new insight into her ex-husband. She is also dealing with an unfaithful husband in her reinvented life of the wealthy elite. If the plot sounds a little bit confusing, well, that's because it is. There are so many mix-ups of the timeline that it can be a little bit hard to decipher when Gyllenhall's character was with whom, and in what order the story transpires. There are also three different portions of the lives we are following, and unless I missed it, there is no year attached to any of it and all of the characters look exactly the same across what is meant to be a 20 year span. Having said that, once I got over needing to resolve my confusion, each story is actually quite engaging and the performances are excellent. I think if it hadn't been so convoluted in timeline, I would have loved the film. I heard an interview regarding what happens at the end of the film, and I still don't know why the conclusion happened the way it did, so if you watch the film, or you've seen it, I'd love a comment illuminating me on what transpired.
Original Screenplay - Dan Gilroy Nightcrawler is the story of an ambitious and moderately sociopathic free lance videographer who does anything and everything to get video footage of disasters to sell the pieces to news organizations. The film takes place at the moment in history when the news was evolving from reporting with the highest standards of ethics to the model where "if it bleeds, it leads." It's a haunting movie where we watch a person whose only driver is getting footage make choices that are totally devoid of any sense of morality with absolutely no remorse. This film takes place before social media, before TMZ, and before showing the most gruesome footage became commonplace. It documents the beginning steps into the current form of news as entertainment.
The performances in this film are superb, with particular note to Jake Gyllenhaal and Renee Russo. The screenplay is powerful and the execution was beyond what can be described. I suspect that Nightcrawler was likely a contender for multiple nominations, and simply came up short in the key categories (Actor, Supporting Actress, Director). The really haunting part of the film for me was my own reaction to it. While I simply couldn't help judging harshly what was happening on the screen, upon reflection one has to ask what makes the film so compelling. When we truly examine our own obsession with the story, we simply must admit that it's hard to look away from the train wreck happening before our eyes, and when we think about it through that lens, we come to realize that we are doing the very thing for which we are judging the characters in the film, even if not to the same disastrous degree. If we can understand our own inability to look away, we begin to identify how news devolved into its current form. The one is truly worth the time, and very deserving of the nomination.
Posts
