Gotham Award Winners

BEST FEATURE (tie)
The Tree of Life and Beginners


A two-fer for the IFP Gotham Awards, the first organization to announce prizes for the 2011 film season as Terrence Malick's slice of American life circa 1950s\meditation of the origins of it all Tree of Life shares top honors with Mike Mills' quirky autobiographical dramedy.  Last years top honors went to Winter's Bone and the year before went to The Hurt Locker, both of which went on to become eventual Best Picture nominees.  The Gothams are a small organization set in New York and honor their favorite in American independent cinema.  Overall, the group may appear to have little impact over Oscars, and that's likely true, but being the first out of the gate, and more importantly, the first American critics society to announce end of year kudos publicly, it raises awareness on films that may have been slightly forgotten, or in need of a press hike-- both Tree of Life and Beginners came out into theaters back in the summer, and both need kind end of the year critics reaction to stay afloat.

BEST DOCUMENTARY: Better This World
BEST ENSEMBLE: Beginners
BREAKTHROUGH ACTOR: Felicity Jones, Like Crazy
BREAKTHROUGH FILMMAKER: Dee Rees, Pariah
AUDIENCE AWARD: Girlfriend
BEST FILM NOT PLAYING AT A THEATER NEAR YOU: Scenes of a Crime

Best choice is by far the Ensemble Prize for Beginners, which is an Oscar hopeful for Christopher Plummer's wonderful performance as a man coming out of the closet in his declining years.  The film also deserves credit for it's imaginative Original Screenplay and for Ewan McGregor's breath of fresh air role as Plummer's taciturn son.  Yet the film has such a warm and rich ensemble...hopefully this will keep this small film in the conversation as the crazy months begin.  Hehe!

Also slight good news for Jones, whose Like Crazy is likely not awards bait, and I write this despite my reservations for the film-- she's fine in the sappy role, and the last out of the gates film of 2011, Pariah, a coming of age tale about a young urban girl struggling with her sexuality, as both films gets a slight profile boost.

Gotham Award Nominees

And so it begins (insert evil laugh and twirling of the handle-bar mustache), the awards season that is.  The Gotham Awards, a New York based society that showcases the best in independent American filmmaking.  They are also the first one's out of the gate every time, and while eventual Academy overlap may bear little on the group as a whole, recent films like Winter's Bone and The Hurt Locker were awarded the top prize here on their way to the Kodak stage.  The nominees are:

BEST FEATURE

• Beginners
• The Descendants
• Meek's Cutoff
• Take Shelter
• The Tree of Life

BEST ENSEMBLE PERFORMANCE

• Beginners- Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer, Melanie Laurant, Goran Visnjic, Kal Lennox, Mary Page Keller, Keegan Boos
• The Descendants- George Clooney, Shailene Woodley, Beau Bridges, Robert Forster, Judy Greer, Matthew Lillard, Nick Krause, Amara Miller, Mary Birdsong, Rob Huebel
• Margin Call- Kevin Spacey, Paul Bettany, Jeremy Irons, Zachary Quinto, Penn Badgley, Simon Baker, Mary McDonnell, Demi Moore, Stanley Tucci, Aasif Mandvi
• Martha Marcy May Marlene- Elizabeth Olsen, Christopher Abbott, Brady Corbet, John Hawkes, Hugh Dancy, Maria Dizzia, Julia Garner, Louisa Krause, Sarah Paulson
• Take Shelter- Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, Tova Stewart, Shea Whigham, Katy Mixon, Kathy Baker, Ray McKinnon, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Robert Longstreet

BEST DOCUMENTARY

• Better This World
• Bill Cunningham New York (available on Netflix instant play)
• Hell & Back Again
• The Interrupters
• The Woodmans

BREAKTHROUGH DIRECTOR

• Mike Cahill, Another Earth
• Sean Durkin, Martha Marcy May Marlene
• Vera Farmiga, Higher Ground
• Evan Glodell, Bellflower
• Dee Rees, Pariah

BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMER

• Felicity Jones, Like Crazy
• Elizabeth Olsen, Martha Marcy May Marlene
• Harmony Santana, Gun Hill Road
• Shailene Woodley, The Descendants
• Jacob Wysocki, Terri

BEST FILM NOT PLAYING AT A THEATER NEAR YOU

• Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same
• Green
• The Redemption of General Butt Naked
• Scenes of a Crime
• Without

HONOREES (Previously announced):

• Charlize Theron (handily right in time for her mainstream Oscar bid, Young Adult)
• Gary Oldman (likewise, for Tinker, Tailer, Soldier, Spy)
• David Croenberg (what do you know, his A Dangerous Method opens next month)
• Tom Rothman (big studio hotshot- Meryl Streep famously thanked him for signing the checks in her hilarious Golden Globe acceptance speech for The Devil Wears Prada...aside)

I always find it a little strange when even organizations that go for the tiny, anti-establishment films, always tend to, in some way, pander to the exact opposite at the same time.  At the same time, where Drive in the Gotham selection?

Or we can rename this tribute to the I <3 Fox Searchlight Awards, as The Tree of Life, The Descendants, Martha Marcy May Marlene and Another Earth all got shout-outs today.  The one surprise of the nominations is that 2011's queen of ubiquity, Jessica Chastain wasn't acknowledged in the breakthough category, though she was spotlighted as part of the ensemble of Take Shelter and was a member of two of the films nominated for Best Feature; perhaps they just didn't quite know which of her four-thousand performances to acknowledge.

Best acknowledgement: Beginners in the Ensemble field, the warm and gentle father\son tragicomedy was one of most generous films so far in terms of its actors.

Best film title: Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeking Same; I feel a strong need to watch this immediately!

Beginners

It's never too late to find yourself, or surprise yourself may be the ultimate message in Mike Mills' new film Beginners, an almost eternally adorable comedy-drama about a man and his recently out-of-the-closet father.  And what the film may lack in subtlety-- at times it certainly feels like it belongs in the ever-expanding box-set of quirky, film festival-endorsed family dramedies that make for big acquisition deals at Park City and Toronto-- it more than makes up for in generosity of spirit.  What may have begun as cinematic therapy (Mills based on the film on his real-life experiences with his father) has such a firm, but sensitive emotional pulse, that even when Mills embraces overly precious writer-director flourishes (which play as both self aware and self conscious), it never takes away from the heart of the his bewitching film, nor take away from the quiet gracefulness of its performers.  This flourishes include: an adorable Jack Russell terrier (who speaks no less; subtitles are given), a pixie-ish French girl (who doesn't speak; she has laryngitis), countless (and slightly redundant) visual gags, and the ever-enduring staple of independent film: the clever voice-over work, the film even turns into Exit Through the Gift Shop for a quick break from the proceedings..  However, to Beginners credit, none of these diversions take away from the heart and soul of the work, or distract in the way that is has is oh-so-many cleverer-than-thou indie quirk-fests.

What's mostly appreciated is the fine work of Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer as father and son.  McGregor plays Oliver, a tentative graphic artist overcoming the loss of his father to terminal cancer (not a spoiler), this just a few years after discovering that his father, Hal was gay...he came out of closet at the ripe age of 75, shortly after the death of his wife.  What is clearest of all is that both Oliver and Hal are newbies, both discovering and surprising themselves, shortly after coming out Hal takes up with a much younger lover named Andy (Goran Visnjic); shortly after his father's death Oliver takes up with a beguiling French actress (Melanie Laurent, Inglourious Basterds), and the back-and-forth narrative structure informs Oliver's present, but artfully presents a rich relationship between father and son, one that may have truly peaked after death itself.  With such ripe reflection, Mills displays something raw and personal, but also truly affecting.

What's quietly revelatory about the character of Hal, not just in how Plummer plays him, but in how he's presented is that here's a senior gay character in a movie that not only granted permission to exhibit some form of sexuality, but that none of it used for comic fodder.  There's a aching and liberated joy in Plummer's performance, perhaps akin to a kid in a candy store, that for the first time, this man is who he wanted to be in the first place.  In the history of cinema, gay characters have always either been comic relief or sources of tragedy (at it's most offensive, they've been nearly sociopathic), and while political correctness has changed a bit in the past decades, replacing the tragic with unearned nobility (the comic relief has always stayed in fashion), what's refreshing and altogether graceful about Beginners is that Hal is allowed to date a younger man, and it's treated as no big deal, and that while Hal may make various nods at caricature (as when watching The Life and Times of Harvey Milk with his senior gay pals, or reveling in gay pride memorabilia, or putting out a gay personal ad), he never becomes one.  Nor is he left off the hook for perhaps not being the greatest father to Oliver as a child.  The film leapfrogs from the past to present to near present, informing us and Oliver of all the baggage on the outset of his new relationship with the girl he obviously really likes.  The role likely would have been unbearable (no offense to the director, who it's clearly modeled on) if not for the charismatic sparkle of Ewan McGregor, who in one of his strongest performances to date, gives Oliver, a painfully shy reserved man, a deeply felt sense of longing and melancholy.  B+

Beginners

I feel completely disengaged from upcoming 2011 movies currently.  Of course, it's only a month in and nothing that memorable comes in the month of January, but even perusing the upcoming slate, nothing appears to be popping out as, "wow, I need to see this now!"  That mentality, I'm sure, or at least hopeful will past once the awards nausea wears off.  And this one, Beginners, from director Mike Mills might be a nice anecdote.  It won pleasing notices from the 2010 Toronto Film Festival, and has a gifted cast in Ewan McGregor, Christopher Plummer and Melanie Laurent.  Again, this could be potentially mawkish material, in a man discovering his elderly father is gay.

Always rooting for McGregor to succeed, and he had a wonderful, albeit low key 2010 with two memorable turns in very different films: The Ghost Writer and I Love You Phillip Morris.  Unfortunately, he never gained awards attraction of Polanski's playful thriller, despite winning Best Actor from the European Film Awards.