Most people think the holiday season ends after the new year, but in Hollywood it is just beginning because this is when awards season goes into full swing. For over two months, endless awards ceremonies are held by critics groups, guild members and audiences who all make their voices heard about what they believe were the best films and filmmakers of the previous year. All these preliminary ceremonies are the precursors to the film industry’s most coveted and prestigious prize, the Oscar.
While the industry is in the throes of these preliminaries, movie lovers and awards buffs are spending most of their time catching up on all these new awards contenders and comparing them with winners and nominees from years past.
There’s no better way to do this than by tuning in to Turner Classic Movies for the annual 31 days of Oscar program. From February 9th to March 10th, every film shown on TCM will be an Academy Award winner or nominee. This program will be a mix of movies from all periods and of all genres, all deemed worthy of special recognition by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
The February film lineup will include several films from the 2000s, some never before shown on TCM. While this may seem not very long ago, these films are now over two decades old and their remanence with movie lovers confirms their status as modern classics. Each of these films has a unique narrative of how they came to be Academy Award contenders.
Every great movie comes from a great screenplay. Original screenplays seem to tell stories only conceivable in the medium of film. The science fiction romance Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004) is a perfect example. In a futuristic New York City, Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) discovers that his beloved longtime girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) has chosen to have all her memories of their two-year relationship removed from her brain. Heartbroken by this decision, Joel chooses to do the same thing. As Joel’s fond memories of Clementine begin to disappear, he begins to regret his decision. While the screenplay by Charlie Kaufman was certainly an original idea, director Michel Gondry made choices that made this unusual story even more unusual. The chosen leads in the film were both cast against type, with Carrey mostly being known for broad comedy and Winslet for romantic period pieces. Gondry drew on his experience directing music videos by heavily using mise en scene, split screens and rapid editing. While the script and direction were meticulously planned, Gondry still encouraged improvisation from his actors. The end result was a truly unique film which has since become a cult classic. Winslet earned her fourth Oscar nomination for Best Actress and Charlie Kaufman won the award for Best Original Screenplay of 2004.
Charlie Kaufman had been nominated for an Oscar two years prior for his Adaptive Screenplay for the too appropriately titled Adaptation (2002). Kaufman’s screenplay is really about his own struggles to adapt the nonfiction book The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean. Nicholas Cage plays Kaufman, a self-loathing writer who can’t successfully turn Orlean’s book about the growing of the rare ghost orchid flower into a filmable text. Unfortunately, his fictitious twin brother Donald (also played by Cage) doesn’t seem to have any trouble finding success as a writer. Meryl Streep plays Orlean and Chris Cooper plays John Laroche, the orchid stealing protagonist of her book. All three lead actors agreed to take salary cuts to play in this unusual indie-style film and all three were rewarded with Oscar nominations, with Cooper winning for Best Supporting Actor. Kaufman chose to accept his nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay as both himself and as his fictionalized twin Donald. Director Spike Jones chose to bring along much of the same creative team from his previous film creation, the equally experimental Being John Malkovich (1999).
Sometimes an original screenplay can be written for a very classic film genre, as was the case for Robert Altman’s all-star mystery period piece Gosford Park (2001). At an English country estate in the 1930s, the McCordle family welcomes several family and friends for a shooting weekend. The wealthy aging patriarch of the family, Sir William McCordle (Michael Gambon) seems to have everyone’s attention, but for very wrong reasons. As was his way, director Altman wanted to take a traditional film genre and put a completely original and open-ended spin on it. In this case it was an Agatha Christie style who-done-it. Altman enlisted English stage writer Julian Fellowes to devise a screenplay. Altman also drew from classic European comedy films like The Rules of the Game (1939). The film was a critical darling and ultimately earned seven Oscar nominations, winning for Julian Fellowes’ screenplay which he then retooled into the enormously successful television series Downton Abbey.
Throughout film history there have been many great partnerships between directors and actresses: Dietrich and von Sternberg, Katharine Hepburn and Cukor, Davis and Wyler and so many more. These special bonds still happen today as demonstrated by the partnership between actress Julianne Moore and writer/director Todd Haynes. Over 30 years and in five critically acclaimed films, this partnership has created some unforgettable screen drama. Perhaps their most acclaimed partnership was their second film together, the romantic drama Far from Heaven (2002). Moore plays Cathy Whitaker, a happy housewife in 1950s suburban New England who discovers her husband Frank (Dennis Quaid) is having an affair with another man. This discovery causes Cathy to question her seemingly perfect life and to contemplate having an affair of her own with her Black gardener (Dennis Haysbert). Haynes created this film as an homage to the melodramas of the 1950s such as Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows (1955) and Magnificent Obsession (1954). The cinephile filmmaker chose to make the film as exaggerated as those films were, with enhanced colors in the costumes and production design, moody cinematography and a soaring musical score. Haynes wrote the role of Cathy specifically for Moore, confident that the actress could play the role in a straight manner that could ground his stylized film in reality. It worked. Both Julianne Moore and Todd Haynes received rave reviews for their work, and each received Oscar nominations, for Best Actress and Best Original Screenplay respectively. Moore and Haynes’ latest collaboration, the twisted dramedy May December (2023) is once again generating awards buzz for both artists.
Every awards season needs a few big surprise wins to keep things exciting and these often happen in the Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress categories. In the biopic Pollock (2000), Ed Harris plays the tormented American painter Jackson Pollock who goes from a struggling young artist during the early 1940s to a hugely successful one who succumbs to the bottle and an early death. Along his side through good times and bad is painter Lee Krasner (Marcia Gay Harden) who puts her own career aside to help Pollock achieve his dreams. This was a longtime pet project of Ed Harris who also directed the film. He received a nomination as Best Actor. Though few people were predicting her to win, Marcia Gay Harden took home the award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Krasner.
