{"id":2580,"date":"2021-04-18T21:03:51","date_gmt":"2021-04-18T21:03:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/?p=2580"},"modified":"2021-04-19T10:27:52","modified_gmt":"2021-04-19T10:27:52","slug":"oscars-2021-the-father-and-one-night-in-miami","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2021\/04\/18\/oscars-2021-the-father-and-one-night-in-miami\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscars 2021: The Father and One Night in Miami"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

WARNING: Spoilers herein. Read at your own risk.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d vaguely heard that Florian Zeller\u2019s adaptation of his own play (with a bit of help from Christopher Hampton) had arrived with rather poor reviews for all save Anthony Hopkins, but on closer reflection this does not seem at all to be the case. It\u2019s got marvellous reviews pretty much across the board and it\u2019s a wonderful showcase for Hopkins who manages to be charming, petty, exuberant, pathetic, manipulative and befuddled as Anthony, an elderly man whose daughter is concerned that he will shortly be unable to look after himself.<\/p>\n

The set up \u2013 and weirdly the physical geography of the flat \u2013 calls to mind Michael Haneke\u2019s devasting Amour<\/em> but Zeller is playing a different game. Haneke\u2019s approach was ruthlessly objective, never imposing anything on the material that wasn\u2019t there already. The only exception to this is a sequence towards the end where a bird flies through the flat, which feels less than wholly literal to me and gives the whole piece a tiny extra spark of poetry.<\/p>\n

Zeller\u2019s approach would have played brilliantly on the stage \u2013 how I wish I\u2019d seen this in the theatre \u2013 as after an initial scene between Anthony and his daughter (Olivia Colman, doing very fine work), Anthony is disturbed to find a stranger in his living room. He claims this is his flat, not Anthony\u2019s and when his daughter comes home, she\u2019s now played by Olivia Williams. From this point on, we are slave to Anthony\u2019s encroaching dementia as people, faces, roles, ownership, time, geography and even personhood are constantly called into question by these simple devices. This might be a one-trick film, but by god it\u2019s a wonderful trick and by god it works gangbusters.<\/p>\n

And, as the human cost of living in this confused state finally becomes too much to bear, it becomes a deeply moving \u201ctrick\u201d as well. What it never becomes, however, is cinematic. Zeller doesn\u2019t do much wrong with the camera and \u2013 as noted \u2013 the cast are exemplary. What\u2019s missing is any attempt to tell the story visually beyond what would have been observed by a theatre audience. There\u2019s one moment which muddies the geography of the space more than usual which does hint at this, but it\u2019s never developed.<\/p>\n

This is a wonderful record of a fascinating play rather than a piece of fully-realised cinema then, but that shouldn\u2019t take away just how fascinating a play it is, how beautifully acted it is by all concerned and how movingly it penetrates the quandaries faced by those with dementia and those who love them.<\/p>\n

One Night in Miami<\/strong><\/p>\n

Also adapted from a play, and not nominated for Best Picture (although in the running for various other awards), this feels much more like a play in conception: four famous men sit in a room and talk. But Regina King is very at home on movie sets and constantly finds ways to make this feel like a movie \u2013 and crucially finds ways to tell the story that aren\u2019t reliant on dialogue. The early section, prior to the four-way meeting, I imagine is new for the screen, and there did come a moment once all four were on screen that I detected what felt like slightly stagey rhythms as each man came in with his line precisely on the heels of the one before, but that moment passed and I was able to enjoy an equally absorbing play, this time playing out as cinema.<\/p>\n

The four men are all excellent: Oscar nominated Leslie Odom Jr bides his time as smooth-as-silk Sam Cooke but his journey is probably the most profound; Aldis Hodge is powerful and striking as NFL player Jim Brown; Eli Goree summons up all of Cassius Clay\u2019s bounce and swagger without making him a cartoon; and Kingsley Ben-Adir is a thoughtful, paternal, sometimes impatient Malcolm X. Although I something about Ben-Adir\u2019s look is distractingly English in my eyes.<\/p>\n

The conversation takes on many topics including colourism, parasitism, the Muslim faith and the need for solidarity. There isn\u2019t much of a plot, but nor does their need to be one. The conversation is enough, and King expertly judges when to let that breathe and when to do more with the camera, the blocking or the mise-en-scene<\/em>. It\u2019s almost impossible to believe that this is her debut feature as director, although she has been directing for television since 2013.<\/p>\n

Two slightly compromised films then, in terms of their form, but both of immensely high quality and featuring stand-out performances. I don\u2019t know who will win the acting awards on Sunday night, but I do know that whatever the outcome, there will be people rightfully feeling they was robbed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WARNING: Spoilers herein. Read at your own risk. I\u2019d vaguely heard that Florian Zeller\u2019s adaptation of his own play (with a bit of help from Christopher Hampton) had arrived with rather poor reviews for all save Anthony Hopkins, but on closer reflection this does not seem at all to be the case. It\u2019s got marvellous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[25,11],"tags":[13,526],"class_list":["post-2580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-the-cinema","category-culture","tag-oscars","tag-oscars-2021"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JY5l-FC","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2580"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2585,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2580\/revisions\/2585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}