DARKEST HOUR: OSCAR WATCH I

Of course the major fuss about Darkest Hour is Gary Oldman's performance as Winston Churchill, which is the hot favourite for an Oscar in a couple of days. Darkest Hour is the latest in a series of films about the early days of the Second World War; given Britain's impending exit from the European Union, this retrospection (while the 100^th anniversary of the Great War was in progress) is telling. And you could easily look back to 2002's The Gathering Storm as a precursor to this cycle, and to Albert Finney's performance as the benchmark for future Churchills. Because Gathering Storm was made by HBO and BBC for television, Finney wasn't eligible for an Oscar (he did win a TV Bafta and an Emmy).

Oldman's Churchill contrasts with Brian Cox's in another Oscar-eligible film, Churchill. Where Cox lets his own rough edges give Churchill more bite (and makes his self-doubt, which is the movie's theme, that much more telling), the reason Oldman's performance is the odds-on Oscar winner is that it plays so much against his persona as an actor. It is not that his Churchill is a remarkable interpretation, but that it is a bravura force of acting to convince us that an actor who played Sid Vicious or Lee Harvey Oswald can convince against physical type.

And this Oldman does, which is why an Oscar would be deserved. Whether his Churchill is, well, Churchillian, is another matter. Not least the drift into a northern accent (listen to his final words in the film—like the narration of a Hovis advert). He works by accentuating some gestures, particularly of jaw, and by overall bearing, but he also is sometimes seeking to present a kinder, gentler Churchill. This of course is partly down to scripting, and the way the film-makers want to present a softer-centered Winston—this is the charming but self-obsessed Churchill with a touch of the Boris Johnson's about him, especially in his scenes with Kirsten Scott Thomas, although, since she is his wife, perhaps not so Boris. The film sticks to what have become generally accepted tropes of Churchill at war: the young secretary who 'tames' the curmudgeon (Lily James, looking beatific as Churchill recites his speeches accurately) and the requisite King's Speech meetings with King George, which end in friendship and respect. Ben Mendelsohn as George VI is one of a number of actors helped by their casting for their physical resemblance to their characters, and Mendelsohn does not fall back on the speech impediment as he conveys his own resolve to battle on (by staying in London, not evacuating). By contrast, Samuel West is instantly recognisable as Anthony Eden, not because he looks like Eden but because he has a superficial attractiveness and charm and, of course, a moustache.

Churchill's winning over the King (as opposed to George's great friendship with Halifax) is interesting in another sense, because the film creates a fictional trip for Churchill on the underground, one stop to Westminster, which the filmmakers turn into the longest one stop imaginable. The reason is to let the common people, including a West Indian man and a child, express their admiration, and convince Churchill not to sue for peace with Germany. We know he did not need that sort of convincing, and we know he never, ever, got into the underground, not ever, but it is as if Joe Wright has to convince a contemporary audience that Churchill was a real man of the people as much as a man of the King (it is just those Tory toffs who can't abide his pushiness, which the film implies he gets from his American mother, bless them).

But the film, like Brexit, is less about Europe than about the Tory party and their resistance to Churchill's leadership. The key figure here is Lord Halifax (Stephen Dillane) another case of remarkable physical resemblance and played very well as a cross between Jacob Rees-Mogg and John Redwood. There has been some criticism of the film for taking small liberties with the whole question of Chamberlain's successor, but in general it gets the basic tenor correct and cannot be faulted for sometimes dramatising it with face to face scenes that didn't actually happen. If anything, it slights the support for Churchill within the Tory party (see, for example, Lynne Olson's Troublesome Young Men, which sometimes gets a bit too American touristy, but tells the tale of the young Tory rebels who backed Churchill—and note too Halifax's own memoirs, which were notoriously less than forthright).

The key scenes involve Chamberlain poised to cue the Tory benches to support Churchill's speeches, or not. In the first instance, their silence is deafening, and immediately brings to mind the current Brexit situation, and the fact that it is another case of the Conservative party putting its own squabbles well ahead of the good of the country. Ronald Pickup makes the most of a dying Chamberlain, and in reality these are the film's best scenes, within Parliament, shot to reflect an almost timeless history as well as a smoke-filled room in which deals must be done. A darkest debate, if not hour, and brilliantly shot by Bruno Delbonnel.

It's certainly a more satisfying film than Churchill, and Cox's performance in that film, while perhaps getting Churchill with more overall accuracy, suffers from the strange characterisation he's forced to enact, in which Montgomery's weaknesses are transferred to him. Oldman's ability as an actor is something that has gone overlooked by many for many years, because he's lacked the flashy roles, though not the convincing character parts (often as villains) such as in The Contender or Leon. But his Churchill is very much of a piece with his Beethoven or his George Smiley, both parts where he gets an essence of characters he would not commonly be thought his to play. That alone makes Darkest Hour worth viewing.

LINCOLN, PART II: THE MOVIES AND THE FACTS

Historical accuracy was the big issue surrounding this year's Oscars; would that it dominated the national discourse on any more meaningful level. I've never really understood why the words 'based on a true story' carry such value for filmmakers, whether the audience really does feel more compelled by a story because it's true, or whether perhaps it makes it easier for them to suspend their disbelief. The problem with the debate over factuality is a two-edged sword: we need to indulge artistic license, but we also need to understand misrepresentation, when said distortion has a point. Otherwise we wind up like the Sports Illustrated writer Peter King, who told his audience he was glad his personal pick for best picture, Argo, had won the Oscar. He wrote the following: 'yes, it was partially historically inaccurate, all those Hollywood historical re-enactments are. But it was a rollicking good time with some education thrown in at the same time'. Awkwardly expressed as it is, the point might be said to encapsulate America now: yes it's inaccurate, but it's educational!

The main controversy, of course, concerned Zero Dark Thirty, in large part because it did indeed claim to be factual, based on classified documents provided by the CIA, the sort of things other people get sent to prison for doing. This was important because the film wound up being judged in large part on its moral position about torture, a position staked out without leaving much wiggle room because of its conclusion, against the run of fact as established by the CIA itself, that torture in this case accomplished its goal, namely killing Osama Bin Laden. It's possible the CIA lied about the efficacy of torture in this instance, but having admitted they do torture, why would they? And since the film is basically constructed as a saga of justice or revenge for 9/11 and (also inaccurately) 7/7, these points argue against its being taken as educational.

Argo, meanwhile, turned one aspect of the escape of Americans marooned in Tehran following the fall of the US Embassy into a CIA thriller. There was some criticism of the way the filmmakers downplayed the role of the Canadians in facilitating the escape—the issue of passports and air tickets was handed by the Canadians, not the CIA, with no dramatic hitches—and of course turned the exit from the airport into a chase scene, with Iranians apparently firing on a passenger aircraft (without the pilot being aware) but still giving the plane clearance to take off. The CIA's creation of a movie as cover for the exit makes for a more entertaining film than the 1981 TV movie Escape From Iran, written by my friend Josh Chetwynd's father Lionel, which basically lays out the way things happened on the ground, without the CIA, so you can understand Ben Affleck's need for some dramatic license. But Argo also gratuitously blames the British and New Zealanders for turning the escapees away, when in reality the Brits took them in and the Kiwis transferred them to the Canadians, where it was thought, as Americans, they would blend in better. Now there's an historical assumption that requires some consideration.

Lincoln never states 'based on a true story', but the screenplay was based, in part, on Doris Kearns Goodwin's excellent Team Of Rivals. This in itself is fascinating, because the story of the passage of the 13^th Amendment, the focus of the film, accounts for exactly four of the 900-odd pages in Goodwin's book. Thaddeus Stevens receives only four mentions in the entire book. Furthermore, the film is set after the period in which you might best consider Lincoln's cabinet a true 'team of rivals'. By 1864 he had already begun weeding dissent out of the cabinet, as the film points out with Hal Holbrook's Preston Blair, whose son Montgomery's resignation as Postmaster General Lincoln had demanded not long before. What the screenplay seems to have borrowed more is the general tenor of Lincoln's political nous, his demeanour, his stories and lines, and an even more general portrayal of those around him: Seward, Stanton, and Wells in particular.

Perhaps this was to create a sort of imprimatur for the film. But the reality is that few questioned the film's veracity, apart from things like the idea of a 19^th century president having pierced ears, like some 18^th century pirate (or 20^th century actor) or a bust of Woodrow Wilson decorating 1865 Washington. But one scene, the start of the House roll-call vote on the 13^th amendment, did create a small controversy. The roll call begins with Connecticut, and two representatives, given fictional names, vote 'no', sending up shockwaves round the House. And around Connecticut as well, after congressman Joe Courtney pointed out that Connecticut's four representatives all voted FOR the amendment. He didn't feel the need to point out to the filmmakers that since California was also a state, Connecticut would not have started any alphabetical listing anyway.

Courtney was accused of trying to influence votes to Argo, which made little sense, and screenwriter Tony Kushner explained he was simply using artistic license to build suspense. For a vote whose result the audience, at least those aware this was based on a true story, already knew. Kushner also wanted to show northerners opposed to the bill. And later, when a local historian pointed out that Connecticut was a state  divided almost evenly over the race issue, and relatively slow to ratify the amendment in the state legislature, the change was said to portray a broader kind of truth.

In fact the added dramatic effect is minimal.Indeed,one of Connecticut's four congressmen, English from New Haven, was a Democrat, so simply showing his yes vote might have provided as much, or even more, drama. The haphazard way the rest of the roll call is portrayed in the film, trying to stretch suspense down to the last vote, while focussing on those Congressmen we've already followed, means historical accuracy isn't crucial to the filmmakers. And it's hard to argue suspense is intensified by the filmmakers cutting to Mrs. Lincoln's cheat sheet tabulating the votes, which intensifies only our feeling they assume their audience are morons. But the change of Connecticut, like Argo's equally gratuitous throwaway diss of the Kiwis and Brits, appears in the end just meaningless indulgence.

Because the film adheres rather closely to real people, and even the way those people looked, it's odd they'd all of a sudden use fictional characters to express a position they could easily have found real people from the North to represent. For example, there were enough no votes from New York, which was, last time I looked, a 'Northern' state. And in fact, there was only one, from Maine, among the six New England states. So why not show New York? Well, the film-makers said they wanted to go in alphabetical order. So why not start, as noted, with the state which actually came first in alphabetical order? In fact, California's three congressmen all voted yes as well, so it would have been no worse than changing the Connecticut vote.

Could it be because California is Steven Spielberg's state, and California is the state in which Hollywood is located and the filmmakers didn't want to show their state in a bad light, even retrospectively? Why not use New York? Could it be because that is Tony Kushner's home state, and the state where the money behind the industry lies, and the filmmakers didn't want to show New York in a bad light, even retrospectively, and even if it were true? In fact, the movie at one point mentions Tammany Hall, but makes very little of the fact that Secretary of State William Seward was from New York, his career made by Thurlow Weed, the Republican boss of the state (as opposed to the Tammany-controlled city) and Weed was a source of laundered funds for campaigning in Connecticut, precisely because the state was so divided. If the film might be said to have a serious political flaw here, it may be that it plays the vote-bribing for fun, when in reality the politics of the time was immensely corrupt on a serious level, though in fairness James Spader's Bilbo does announce the prices at which congressmen are available. Not much has changed since then, because they still, as Lincoln remarks, sell themselves cheap.

Thaddeus Stevens' relationship with his housekeeper Lydia Smith (played by S. Epatha Merkerson) raises some questions of 'anachro-correctness' that I mentioned in part I of this essay. The reveal of their conjugal state may have surprised people; it's not an historical fact, but it was the subject of much gossip at the time. That Stevens did not leave her his house, but did leave enough money for her to buy it, and that his family would sell it to her, would argue for a special relationship, but we do tend to define such things in terms of 21^st century sexual politics. Some modern scholars believe Smith to have been a lesbian, on the grounds of her activities in women's groups in Washington—something Elizabeth Keckley, Mrs. Lincoln's seamstress and perhaps confidant, did with her. Smith also patterned herself on Mrs. Lincoln; by this logic my mother was a lesbian obsessed with Jackie Kennedy. It was argued to me that Ms. Smith and Keckley weren't 'sitting around waiting for Lincoln to do something'. Which also doesn't make them lesbians.

But it leads to the most serious concern raised about the film, and that is its portrayal of the role of black people in the efforts to abolish slavery, and the criticism that more is not made of their positive actions. This follows much modern historical research showing the efforts black people made to bring about their own freedom, and it was a major part of the re-evaluation exhibited in the Ken Burns's Civil War documentary—a strand of argument sometimes overlooked beneath the honeyed traditionalism of Shelby Foote. This was a follow up to the earlier, crucial change in the historical consensus, putting slavery back as the primary cause of the war—not 'states rights' or 'economic difference' or anything else. Slavery was the root of the divide between North and South and it became inarguable to think otherwise.

However, that does not mean the abolition of slavery was the reason Northerners fought in or supported the war. Indeed, Lincoln sold the war as a mission to keep the Union together until such time as he could issue the Emancipation Proclamation and then fight for the Thirteenth Amendment. This is explained pretty clearly in the film. And yes it is explained largely from the political point of view of the men involved because, firstly, the movie is called Lincoln, not Slavery, secondly, the reality is that these men were in the arena where the legal changes to governance were made, and thirdly, blacks were not a voting block that influenced these men. The movie is the story of persuading white men to vote to free the slaves, and the question of those slaves' ultimate equality is not at that point fully settled, a point the film makes bluntly, and which history has made with even more bluntness.I thought the similar criticism better-founded when it was made of Spielberg's Amistad, which swiftly became the story of John Quincy Adams, but that is not the case here.

Much was made of the failure of figures like Frederick Douglass to appear in the film, and indeed, in Goodwin's book there is a fine moment when Douglass finally gets in to the celebration party after Lincoln's second inaugural, and the President makes clear his importance. His stand in, perhaps, is Mrs Keckley, and perhaps Gloria Reuben's performance is the litmus test for feelings on this matter—is she a passive character, 'waiting' for Lincoln, or does she express herself actively, within the context and constraints of the times? Indeed, I wondered at her presence in the House gallery, not least because later in the film, when black people are welcomed into that gallery to watch the vote, it is hailed as 'the first time'. I'm not sure more would be gained by seeing her and Mrs Smith attending meetings. Look closely and you'll see blacks at Lincoln's inauguration, celebrating in the streets, and, most importantly, in the war. The presence of black soldiers fighting for their own freedom is constant throughout the film, and when the Confederate peace delegation arrives in Union territory, their escort is made up of black trooopers. This is a key emotional moment, and for me says more about the efforts of individuals than the presence of Douglass might have.

This is not a question of historical accuracy as much as historical interpretation; you can believe the story of the passage of the Amendment, the arguments within Congress, and its relation to the ending of the war cannot be told without more obvious reference to the efforts of black leaders, but it's hard to argue those stories aren't conveyed with reasonable accuracy without each story. It's like the question of using the word 'nigger', one which I'm sure we will get to when I write about Django Unchained—it would be nice if we could eliminate it from some aspects of modern usage, but it's hard to convey the hatefulness of the word, and the horror of the times, without showing the times as they were. Lincoln, apart from the strangeness of tampering with my own state's history, strikes a pretty decent historical balance overall. I compared Spielberg to John Ford in Part I of this essay—and here he seems to have tried to, as the book did, catch the legend by getting at the essence of the fact.

LINCOLN: PART I I.T.'S OSCAR WATCH CONTINUES WITH THE REVIEW

NOTE: This is the first of a two-part essay. The second part, dealing with issues of fact and depiction of history, will appear here soon.

When I saw the trailer for Lincoln, my immediate thought was that I was watching the animatronic President Lincoln I saw at Disneyland in Anaheim, and since Steven Spielberg is, as I have pointed out before, very much in the mold of the 1950s Disney movies he grew up watching, I was expecting a worthy, if not wooden, film, portraying a worthy if not wooden President. The fact is, although Lincoln is indeed worthy, it is very much not wooden. It does begin, however, as if determined to present that animatronic Lincoln, a robotic figure who sits and listens to a lecture from a black soldier, whose argument about equality is virtually the only time in the film a speech makes no effort to sound like the 19^th century. It thought of a similar argument over soldiers' pay in Glory, which made less effort to sound period, but managed to convey the point in more period fashion. Then two boys from Gettysburg start reciting the Address, which is finished by the black soldier. Although it's moving, it does not ring true, indeed it smacks of what I'd call 'anachro-correctness', the desire to give characters in the past the attitudes of the present. With Spielberg, this instinct has manifested itself in hammer-heavy codas to films like Saving Private Ryan, trying to drive the point home to the contemporary audience. Fortunately for the film, and the audience, this approach ceases with that scene, and there is no coda. The other important thing in this scene, however, is the way the two Gettysburg boys are presented as just that, boys. They are kids with their idol, and as such they are stand-ins for us, in the Speilberg universe.

Within the framework of that universe, however, Lincoln makes a strong effort at presenting a nuanced political argument about Lincoln's battle to pass the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, banning slavery. Although it's passed the Senate, it has failed once already in the House of Representatives, where he has only a small majority, and Constitutional Amendments require a two-thirds vote. Besides trying to end a war and put the nation back together, Lincoln is also trying to keep his family together; his wife Mary still mourns the loss of their middle son; she ignores the youngest, and dotes on their oldest, who now wants to quit Harvard and join the Army. Keeping families together has always been a centerpiece of Spielberg's films.

The intimate story parallels the first, with Lincoln in a dilemma of principle regarding the war, and another about how to raise his eldest son. The film does well dealing with the nuances of Lincoln's bigger battles: he does not want to wait for the bigger majority he would have when the new House, swept in with his re-election in 1864, comes to Washington. He worries that moves to peace would lessen the cause of anti-slavery, concessions could be made to the South to end the war and even reform the Union, and he knows a bill passed by this more balanced House would carry more weight with the public, as well as sending a message to the South about the impossibility of a negotiated settlement as opposed to a surrender. But Lincoln needs to placate both wings of his own Republican party, the radical abolitionists and those, particularly from Border states, looking for peace. Meanwhile, he needs Democratic votes as well. And he knows he has not won the hearts and minds of the voters on the issue of racial equality.

I found this part of the story engrossing, perhaps because I know the background; it was accused by many of being 'boring' and slowing down the film. But if it isn't totally successful, it's more because it can't decide whether it's trying to be The West Wing or Advise And Consent, and so winds up being neither. But what it actually does is use the space between those modes, and use its parallel stories, to tell the story of Lincoln's whole career through the microcosm of this one political battle. Thus it can't be West Wing because there is no back-chat to speak of; there is only one story, Lincoln's, and the literal pursuit of wavering votes, by bribery or whatever means, is played more for comedy than anything else. Tommy Lee Jones, as the abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens, who was the most powerful man in the House, is less a foil for Lincoln than a counter-balance; a true-believer who needs to learn Lincoln's style of accommodation. The actual political in-fighting is portrayed more through the chaos of the House chamber, and that much is done well, but the real meat of the story is when it comes down to Lincoln with his adversaries, where his full arsenal of persuasion and intimidation is brought into play. In fact the most powerful moment in the film may be when Lincoln slams his fists on a table and elucidates his power. But this placing of Lincoln in the centre of everything (except Stevens' own dilemma) means that, apart from highlights of debates, the real political infighting must be in the background.

At home, we often see Lincoln in shadows, as a silhouette, a gossamer figure behind curtains. The most truly Spielberg moment comes when Lincoln finds his youngest son Tad asleep in front of the fire, tin soldiers spread across a War Department map. It's shot from the child's eye, gazing way up at Lincoln, before Lincoln drops down to Tad's level on the floor. It again places the audience into the position of the child. This is the constant strain in Spielberg's work, between the childlike audience point of view, and the serious, usually masculine work at hand in the films. It's why the soldiers together on the march bits of Private Ryan didn't work at all; it's hard for him to do male bonding on an equal basis, whereas he can show the excitement and indeed horror of battle deftly. And that's why Lincoln's political machinations don't measure up to, for example, Advise and Consent, because we're not watching equals at play.

I've written before that the film-maker Spielberg most resembles is Robert Stevenson, best-remembered today for Jane Eyre and a series of Disney comedies in the Sixties, but who hit his Disney peak with Old Yeller and Johnny Tremaine in 1957 (for purposes of this film it might be interesting to revisit Stevenson's Thirties version of King Solomon's Mines, with Paul Robeson in a key role excised from later versions). Disney's 50s, with films like the above and TV series like Davy Crockett or Swamp Fox, were all about 'printing the legend' and telling history as adventure, from a child's point of view, but with an adult story line. It's also crucial that Lincoln's most direct approach to the issue of slavery itself comes with Tad looking at photographs of slaves, which leads him to ask the black people he knows about it, and thus give the audience reassurance that slavery was indeed wrong, and horrible.This elementary 'Disney' approach means Spielberg can play on Lincoln's legend while deconstructing, as it were, the man himself. With Lincoln, I think Spielberg is appropriating John Ford, and not just because Daniel Day-Lewis' performance is far closer to Henry Fonda's in Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln than, say, to Raymond Massey's (who also played John Brown—an interesting daily double of lead roles). And it's the performance by Lewis that defines the film, and it is a remarkable one.

Lewis inhabits the character physically, his gait and posture telling us all we need to know about the strain he is under. Although his voice at times seems to hint at Walter Brennan in the Thirties, it strikes the key of authenticity not only in time but in terms of the man himself. It lacks bombast, but is full of conviction, it is the voice of persuasion, of self-deprecation; this is the Lincoln as he was portrayed in Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team Of Rivals (of which more in part II) who so inspired Barack Obama. And it can never resist humour, especially when used tactically. Few of the rest of the cast are given huge moments, apart from Jones and Sally Field as Mrs Lincoln. Field's too old, just as Lewis is too young, for their roles, and it creates some awkward moments; you get the sense that Fields imbues the character with a bit too much of her own patented hysteria, but she is strikingly effective. David Strathairn seems also to inhabit Secretary of State Seward, relegated to a literally supporting role. There are excellent cameos by Waylon Goggins, as a bribed Democrat, and Jackie Earle Haley as Confederate Vice President Stephens, but in general the cast puts on their whiskers or ties up their bustles and is convincing.

Jones' role is the most problematic. It is significant that he is presented in two 'reveals', introduced by the device of seeing the Congressmen reporting to him, and then, at the end, having his 'housekeeper' revealed to be in bed with him, as a spouse. He gets the biggest decision moment, when he has to speak about equality, and his equivocation is a thing of brilliance—the one moment when the film achieves its synthesis of West Wing and Advise and Consent. Beyond that, however, his iron control over his half of the House is expressed mostly in elaborate putdowns. The House vote itself is presented with score-keeping as clunky as anything I've seen since the makers of Red Dragon decided Hannibal Lecter would need to translate 'ris de veau' in his cookbook for the benefit of the audience, and the misrepresentation in the opening of the roll call is something I will discuss in part II of this essay.

I mentioned at the start that I feared an animatronic Lincoln, and I feared a Spielberg coda that would drive home his point. As the movie reaches the end, we come close. Lee's surrender at Appomattox presents us with our second animatronic moment: when Jarred Harris' rather too clean Grant doffs his hat, and Lee creakingly replies in kind. But it passes quickly. We see Robert Lincoln in uniform as part of Grant's staff—he looks remarkably like his little brother's soldier suit, and I wondered if, in the middle of the horror, Spielberg was still making a point, as with Tad and his war games in front of the fire, about war being a child's thing. And then, when Lincoln is shot, Spielberg chooses to give us the news while Tad is at another theatre. This is true, but I'm sure part of the reason was to wrong-foot the audience, who were probably expecting John Wilkes Booth and 'sic semper tyrannus'.

But to me it was crucial the play Tad Lincoln saw that night was Aladdin...and Spielberg ends us with a child's moment, a fairy story, interrupted by a nightmare of losing a parent. It is a purely Spielberg reaction—and, in a movie that doesn't really 'print the legend', brings it back to that 1950s moment. As an historical epic I like it better than Private Ryan or Schindler's List. This year's Oscar nominees were better, as a group, than last year's, but I still struggle to find one that jumps out as 'best' or 'great'. It may be simply the academy is tired of the elegaic, the John Williams' score's borrowing from Copland and Ken Burns's documentary. It might be that Lincoln didn't win best film because it was up against films approaching, to some extent, our present condition—and although I kept seeing hints of the Tea Party, and hints about our continuing racial divide, I think it lived up to its forecast of worthiness, and kept away from controversy. Which might have made it more relevant, but would have made it less Spielberg.

AVENGERS ASSEMBLE: THE STATE OF THE OSCARS

Avengers Assemble was nominated for only one Oscar, for its visual effects, which would not be unjust for it to win, though frankly most of CGI stuff isn't particularly new or exciting. But if you're a comics fan, you'll recognise something of the detailed drawings Jim Steranko did for the Nick Fury, Agent of Shield comic way back when, full of geometric detail and improbable scale. And, after you think about it, you may realise that although this is by no means a 'great' movie, it is a pretty good bit of writing and directing, and that the so-called adult audience's tastes for what is superior work in films is informed pretty much by the same aesthetic impulse that turns the Stan Lee-Jack Kirby-Steve Ditko world of our Sixties adolescence into mainstream adult entertainment, which then turns middlebrow worthy drama, middle of the road grand scale musicals, or tales of offbeat people having troubled paths to boy gets girl into Oscar contenders. Which is pretty much the same situation as films were in when Marvel became popular in the first place! 

What proves this point, and what is amazing, is exactly how closely the filmmakers have stayed to the original 60s comics characters and storylines. In Avengers Joss Wheddon, of course, was the director and screenwriter (the story credit shared with Zak Penn), and the way he's managed to bring a galactic war involving Norse gods down to a human level is impressive, but it's much the same way Lee and Kirby did nearly 50 years ago. It's something he's meshed with his direction—the screenplay's arc is the moving of the individuals into a group, and the direction basically teases this idea throughout. Wheddon uses his actors well: at one end Mark Ruffalo (worthy of a supporting actor nomination as Bruce Banner/Hulk) dark and depressive and at the other Robert Downey, playing flippant as he seems to do effortlessly well. In between them are the beef- and cheesecake, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth and Scarlet Johannson, the most interesting of the lot, who's given the chance to deepen her character alongside Jeremy Renner. Renner's Hawkeye is potentially the most interesting of the lot, not really in the beefcake bunch, but he never says or denotes enough to turn himself into something more interesting. Perhaps he needed the Hawkeye headgear after all.

The set-up of this movie, which was begun in the individual characters' films the stars made, was presumably something that Penn brought to the table, and you have to admire the marketing nous of Marvel to have conceived of tying those films together in the first place. Samuel Jackson's Nick Fury is the linchpin of all that. Jackson gets a good part, though the fascinating and epically named Colby Smulders, who does smulder away as she says things like 'Yes, sir', works hard to upstage him. The show is nearly stolen completely by Clark Gregg, as Agent Coulston (why do I keep thinking of Charles Colson?), who's playing his usual kind of role but gets it invested with a certain amount of dignity because Wheddon realises he is the stand-in for the audience of geeky kids of all ages.

Tim Hiddleston's Loki is what we expect British actors to bring to villainy in big budget action flicks, while Gwyneth Paltrow appears to be finding her level in Hollywood, here, as Pepper Potts, in a brief role as arm candy to Downey. But the audience, as more or less adult as it must be, doesn't care about any of that. They're waiting for the moment when Capt America tells Bruce Banner, just turned into the Hulk, 'Hulk, smash', and the Big Green Machine smiles. Gamma radiation has never promised so much. The aesthetes out there will scoff, but Avengers Assemble offers more coherence, slightly more depth of relationships, and more humour than most of the Oscar nominees out there. Plus the near destruction of earth. But that says more about them, and Oscar's tastes, and the state of moviemaking today, than it does about what is basically an enjoyable $200 million comic book, the kind I used to pay 12 cents for, feeling then they were worth every penny.

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK: I.T.'S OSCAR WATCH CONTINUES

I actually reviewed Silver Linings Playbook back in November for the 'three points' section of our Americarnage podcast (that's Americarnage.co.uk, or via Itunes), but because I was also talking about Elliott Carter's death, the discussion was edited out. Since then, the film won the BAFTA for best adapted screenplay, which surprised me because in Britain the 'Playbook' part of the title of the film was virtually disappeared, and the football elements usually put British audiences, and critics, off. But when I sat down to write about the film, I found myself thinking first about the appeal David O Russell, and the odd fact that in the past 18 years, he done only six feature films.

Spanking The Monkey could almost be the quintessential independent first picture; I remember it blowing me away at the London Film Festival, primarily because of the way it managed to approach a taboo subject, and some sensitive relations, with both sensitivity and humour. And I was so impressed with Alberta Watson's performance, and have since watched her nail many parts, but not the big-ticket one that she deserved.

Spanking The Monkey foreshadowed the Russell who specialises in off-beat relationships, which is what Silver Linings is all about, though its characters aren't as willfully offbeat as those in other comedies he wrote and directed, like Flirting With Disaster (of which more shortly) or I Heart Huckabees. On the serious side, Russell also made Three Kings, still the best movie anyone's done about the American 'conquest' of the Middle East, even though it was made before the last two invasions, and Kathryn Bigelow's essays into them. Three Kings was, like Silver Linings, adapted from other sources, while The Fighter, which got Russell his first Oscar nomination for best director, was his only film where he doesn't have a writing credit. It also got Melissa Leo, an underappreciated New York actress right out of the Alberta Watson template, another much-deserved Oscar (though more deserved for Frozen River!)

A cynic might think Silver Linings is a combination of the two: the offbeat comedy which Russell creates himself, and a sporting subplot and metaphor to make it more interesting on the mainstream level. But I found that, despite enjoying the film for the most part, my cynicism hit a mother lode of Silver Linings.

It's the kind of film where everyone is a bit off, which is supposed to make them funny to comfortable audiences. But where it doesn't work is that Bradley Cooper, who has anger issues (inherited, obviously, from his father Robert DeNiro, who's been banned from Eagles' games for fighting) never really seems angry enough. He's acting hard, but he keeps this reserve of rational intelligence, or likeability, behind his eyes. We can believe the violence in DeNiro beneath the hamming because he's DeNiro, but with Cooper, we think there's something more going on. If you might see a lot of DeNiro's performance in Meet The Fockers here, it isn't surprised, since Russell supposedly did script-doctoring on that film, and as we'll see, there is a lot of revisiting going on in this film.

What's new and different is Jennifer Lawrence, although again, as a widow and a 'recovering sex addict' her character Tiffany is given faults too good to be true, from the film-maker's point of view. But Lawrence does an amazing job of projecting her ultimate vulnerability—I rather doubt she gets the Oscar this year, but I wouldn't complain if she did, since she so richly deserved one for Winter's Bone. She gets the best lines, of course, and her letter to Pat is corny but may be the best moment of the film (apart from any moments with Jacki Weaver, as Cooper's mother and DeNiro's wife, enduring them). In fact the contrasting marriages; Pat's best friend is married to Tiffany's sister; she dominates him, and they live an upwardly-mobile life that's killing him to maintain. It's a contrast to Pat's parents (Tiffany's parents barely register) and everyone else in the lower-middle class neighbourhood they live in, but it's a sharper contrast to our kooky couple...at least until the end.

But what really doesn't work is the integration of the football, which is sloppy—I complained on Americarnage about DeNiro making the show's big bet on a game whose point spread would not have been fixed at the time, and you could notice the anachronistic Eagles' jerseys in the crowd-- but what was in there for a gratuitious laugh was the whole Indian Eagles fans and the fight—since one of them is Pat's therapist, you'd think his fighting at the stadium would make more of a point toward the story, but it basically just in there for a cheap ethnic laugh. Too bad they weren't playing the Redskins.

And what is especially cynical of me is thinking that the whole 'Dancing With The Stars' subplot is redolent of Slumdog Millionaire. Yes, you say, but this is what America does, pattern their lives and live their hopes to the incessant beat of so-called 'reality' television, but to me this is simply something up to date and popular on which Russell could hitch the basic scenario of Flirting With Disaster: the love triangle between the kooky guy (Ben Stiller, on whom Cooper is an improvement), the wife who doesn't care (Patricia Arquette) and the kooky woman to whom the kooky guy is attracted (Tea Leoni). There it was a quest for his parents, here it is a quest to get his job and wife back, even though the latter doesn't want him.

You can see where the novel might have appealed to Russell, and beneath the triangle he recognised were the extra plotlines, the rehab requirements, the dancing competition, and most of all the football. But really they don't go much of anywhere, especially the football, which is laden with potential metaphors for this story which went untapped. Similarly, the dancing, in the end, becomes its own payoff and telegraphs its own ending.

As I said, Silver Linings Playbook is entertaining enough; it simply does carry the weight of its own storyline to any sort of 'best picture' degree. Which is why I find it surprising he's been nominated for best director because his direction is completely in service to the screenplay, and the set-pieces are very mundane. I think that's deliberate, because as I say, I think Russell's most interested in his triangle, and everything else is just a series of devices to get him to the payoff. Besides, Flirting With Disaster II isn't a very catchy title.

ARGO: I.T.'S OSCAR WATCH

With its copping of best picture and best director masks at the Baftas, on top of the DGA award, Argo has become the front-runner for the Oscar, which is interesting given its opposition. Argo is a very likeable film, well-made, with real suspense in its last act, and an atmosphere of menace in Iran and Washington both, contrasted with an atmosphere of anarchic freedom and humour in Hollywood.

Which is why, call me cynical, I'd popped Argo as an Oscar favourite as soon as I saw it, for two connected reasons which both have to do with Hollywood's perception of itself. The first is obvious—as much as the movie shows the CIA saving the day, it is the Hollywood producer (in fact the film's only totally fictional western character) and make-up guy who actually come up with the goods, and in the process provide us with self-satirizing boffo yucks. The second is related: the Tehran rescue contrasts with the failed attempt at rescuing the hostages in the US embassy—the signal moment of Jimmy Carter's administration. Carter gets little credit for the Argo rescue (neither do the Canadians—more on that later) but the upshot of his failure was turn to the country over to Hollywood, in the person of Ronald Reagan, who was selling America fantasies they wanted to believe, as opposed to Carter's visions of grim reality. That we now know Reagan's people made an October Surprise deal with the Iranians, not to make any hostage-releasing deal until after the 1980 elections merely reinforces the point. Reagan's election saw the US enter a post-reality based world, in which it is still entrapped, and Argo may best be viewed, depending on your political perspective, as a reminder of what the real world was like, or, more likely, a reminder that the people who brought you the world of fantasy are the only ones to trust.

Or you might perceive Argo as a 'feel-good' version of Zero Dark Thirty, in which the CIA are heroes and the interrogations are mostly John Goodman's John Chambers torturing Ben Affleck's Tony Mendez with Hollywood insider info. Or you might see it as a positive nod to a can-do America that, despite its thriller-matic finish, is actually accomplished more easily than, say, Lincoln's emancipation of black slaves was via American democratic process.

The movie itself skips between genres cleverly—and is most effective for its reconstruction of the period—not just sets and costumes but also the dirty grainy look of the film itself, which is pure 70s, and encourages the audience old enough to remember films you didn't download to transport itself back to the days of those sorts of political thrillers. In fact, there are shots of Mendez in the CIA HQ which straightforwardly evoke All The President's Men, in case you're old enough and missed the point. Ben Affleck doesn't ignore facts—the CIA's role in installing the Shah as dictator is set out right at the top—but the trope is an old one of maverick within a flawed system who eventually gets that system to do the right thing. In this contxt, Affleck the director is very good with actors in ensemble roles, much like Clint Eastwood. Affleck's ensemble contains many faces in familiar roles, faces who espcially shone in such parts on quality TV: Titus Welliver, Zeljko Ivanek , Clea DuVall (Carnivale), Tate Donovan, and Kyle Chandler (as Hamilton Jordan). Less like Clint is also good at minimising his own part, which is good because Ben Affleck the actor still has limitations when it comes to carrying a film—I think he works best as a straight man. I still believe George Reeves was Affleck's best role, and that may be at least partly because he sensed a kindred talent.

There were, however, moments that left me feeling uneasy, that I was being manipulated, particularly in the rousing end sequence at Tehran airport. It struck me as odd that the children would have put together the right photo at just the wrong time; that the guards would chase a Swiss Air commercial flight down the runaway, firing at it; that the pilot would not notice any of that, and that the tower would not simply stop the plane's takeoff, if they thought spies were escaping. As it happens, none of those things are true: the departure from the airport went off without a hitch (for reasons described below). But you couldn't have the suspense without tampering with the facts. I was even more sceptical of the guard making a phone call to the film's production office in LA, for two reasons: one being long-distance calling and time zones, and the other being why would a Canadian film crew not have a Canadian office number, and why would a phone number in the Babylon of America not arouse suspicion?

There has been a lot of discussion in this year's Oscar run-up about historical fact—what with Zero Dark Thirty trying to have it both ways about torture, and Lincoln being accused of being Caucacentric, and also gilding the lily of remembrance by anointing its hero prematurely, or Django inventing sunglasses and a pre-Civil War Ku Klux Klan. Much of the criticism is unjustified, in the sense that film scripts will inevitable consolidate multiple characters and re-order events to serve their own purpose. Thus, the fact that most of the hostages stayed not with the Canadian ambassador Ken Taylor (played very well by the Candian actor Victor Garber) but with one of his assistants, John Shearwood, is hardly crucial; it makes dramatic sense to keep them all together. The scene in which the Brits and Kiwis turn the refugees away is also apparently false: the Brits took them in and Kiwis transferred them to the Canadians, where it was thought they would fit in more naturally and be safer. The jibe,if gratuitous, does serve to emphasize the plight of the Americans, and obviously the Bafta voters didn't hold it against Argo.

But it should be pointed out that the Canadians did far more than simply sit back and wait for the CIA cavalry to arrive (shades of Independence Day!). In fact, Ambassador Taylor manipulated his staff's travel to help create the necessary visas, and it was the Canadians who got the airplane tickets—thus the whole cancellation and restoration by the CIA sub-plot is fiction.

I was also put off a bit by the separated husband/lonely father sub-plot for Tony Mendez; Affleck plays it with suitable moroseness, but as it turns out, it too is a fictional construct. The reason for it is obvious and familiar—Mendez not only has to redeem himself at the CIA but he has to conquer personal adversity along the way; this is the arc that dominates Hollywood—though they just couldn't figure out a way to have Abe Lincoln reunited with Mary Todd at movie's end.

Complaining that Alan Arkin's Lester Siegel didn't really exist would be silly—they need him to carry those sections, and his double-act with Goodman is one of the high points of the film. In reality, another special-effects genius, Robert Siddel, who did ET, was announced as the co-producer with Chambers when the ads went into the trades. Interesting, the original screenplay was based on Roger Zelazny's Lord Of Light, one of the key sf novels of the Sixties, and the film was intended for use in an sf theme park that never happened. Michael Parks has a cameo as comics genius Jack Kirby, who actually did draw the storyboards for the fake film, which also had Ray Harryhausen and Buckminster Fuller attached to it (!). Which ought to be enough to get Lord Of Light made, after all these years. I'm sure they could get Lester Siegel to produce. He could make the 'argo fuck yourself' joke another twenty times, and get a laugh every time.

THE GOLDEN GLOBES, IN GLOBS

The important thing to remember about the Golden Globe awards is that they serve their purpose, but that purpose (or purposes) have nothing much to do with predicting Oscars or judging quality. The awards are voted on by about 90 members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, and their biggest purpose is to do what that organisation set them up to do: ingratiate themselves with the Hollywood studios, get better access to them, and to their stars. Their members, of whom I've known a couple, are not usually film critics but primarily writers chasing celebrity interviews and entertainment previews, indeed some are general reporters. Their jobs depend largely on studio public relations access, and if you look closely at the banquet, you'll see the members are scattered among the tables, giving each a built in chance for a couple of exclusives on the night. Something the movie-makers like, because being of small number, and desperate, the Globes voters are eminently, shall we say, vulnerable to inducement. And the awards serve a useful purpose to Hollywood: both as a way to hype up films pre-Oscar, and also to generate some ticket sales for films that won't triumph at Oscar time. This is made easier because the Globes give separate awards for 'drama' and 'musical or comedy,' twice the winners mean fewer losers! Given given the extra shot at the odds, the Globes more often than not fail to predict the Academy Awards' best picture. And television loves the Globes too, for the rub they get with the movie people—you could argue that the worldwide market for television programmes and their stars makes this even more essential than the film awards. Then there's that European obsession with golden-this and golden-that awards; I once served on a jury for a Sports TV award called the 'Golden Shot'. If Oscar had lived in Cannes, rather than its twinned city Beverly Hills, he'd be called The Golden Oscars.

Keeping all this in mind, it was funny to read some of the British critics opining that Argo's award for best drama came because the picture shows 'Tinseltown coming to the rescue of the real world', as if the Globe voters were actually part of Tinseltown. I suppose you could argue that, in a Stockholm Syndrome sense, they are. As a piece of historical drama, Argo may well be more accurate than Zero Dark Thirty, or indeed Lincoln (neither of which I have seen as I write this) and it is both suspenseful and entertaining, as well as catching its period very well. But you can pretty much write it off for an Oscar. Director Ben Affleck wasn't even nominated for an Oscar, and neither was Tom Hooper, who directed Les Miserables, which won the best musical award.

Besides Argo, it was a good night for the CIA, who also took the best actress awards in both drama and TV, though they weren't nominated for the Zero Dark Thirty script. Jessica Chastain's role, which is supposedly a composite character, seems oddly similar to Clare Danes' Carrie, serving primarily to nag her organisation into following up on her work. I've written about Homeland elsewhere on this blog, but it does occur to me that in its insistence on Carrie's neurotic behaviour, the show has it both ways, presenting a strong female character who's driven crazy trying to succeed. It may be that the point is it's a man's world, and its corruptions would drive anyone insane, but that interpretation is also tempered by her love for Brody, which renders her all marshmallowy in the end. It is also reflected in other women characters: Aileen Morgan, (Marin Ireland) the American woman working for Al-Queda, who kills herself rather than spend her life as a tortured prisoner in a mainland Guantanemo, or the Vice President's wife, who knows how the game is played, as an adjunct of the males. The most telling character, however, is the British journalism student cum Al Queda operative Roya Hammad (played by Zuleikha Robinson) who, after she is captured, has to listen to Carrie telling her all the great things she has to look forward to in life without Al Queda—and then spits out her defiance and her disgust at Carrie's lack of understanding what her 'enemy' is all about. It was as powerful as Morgan's suicide—and presumably wouldn't be needed in Zero Dark Thirty.

Among the actors it was a good day for the British Lewis brothers. Daniel Day-Lewis won for Lincoln, and Damien Lewis for playing Brody in Homeland. I can't comment yet on ' Lincoln, but I wonder if comparing Day-Lewis' career to Spencer Tracy's might be apt (for example, Northwest Passage vs Last Of The Mohicans). Damien Lewis seems to specialise in playing American characters who are trying to draw on inner reserves in the face of being asked to do things they might have found impossible not long before. In Homeland, particularly in the second series, his visible breakdown was almost a parallel to Danes' in the first series; theirs may be the relationship most ripe for psychoanalysis since McMurtry met the Chief.

In the wake of this non-consequence it probably wasn't surprising that the scene get stolen by a couple of sidebars, which made the biggest and the funniest splashes in the chativerse. The biggest, of course, was Jodie Foster's acceptance speech on being given the Cecil B DeMille award. CB, were he alive today, would be rolling over in his grave. Foster's rambling 'j'accuse' appeared to be blaming the press in general for making her not come out when she was out, or maybe the opposite, and perhaps using the stage to complain about the attention she's received. Not for nothing did her dress appear to be made of chain mail. It's hard to escape the idea that Jodie might have been saying she'd like back the lifetime for which she was being given her award. In fifteen years, I fully expect Claire Danes to be making the same speech.

The more amusing moment for the Globes actually came the next day, in a New York Times blog written by Alessandra Stanley, whose take on the awards was headlined 'A Salute To Girl Power' and boasted the following lede:

At a time when President Obama is under attack for appointing so many white men — and so few women — to senior positions in the White House, Hollywood seemed intent Sunday on correcting the imbalance at the Golden Globes. 

Apart from the wave of nausea, if I understand this correctly, 'Hollywood', in the person of 90 foreign journalists who work there, tried to correct an 'imbalance' in the American government by hiring Tina Fey and Amy Poehler to host their show. Leave aside the idea that the President was somehow obligated to replace Hilary Clinton was another woman, or that he actually tried to and had the idea shot down from all sides; this vacuity is remarkable on a couple of lesser levels. First off, the idea that hiring Tina Fey, who after all was the best Republican candidate in the 2008 elections and is one of the funnist people out there, needs to be explained as some sort of market correction is insane. It should be taken for granted and pass without notice that Tina Fey should be hosting. But even more stunning is the assumption that her hosting the inanity of a second-tier self-congratulatory award show somehow would rebalance the perceived faults of the United States government. 'Oh, no woman is secretary of state, but that's OK because TWO women hosted the Golden Globes!'. The logical next step would be to demand that Obama nominate either Jessica Chastain or Claire Danes to become head of the CIA!

SLUMDOG OR HANGDOG? I.T. finally takes on the Oscar winner

If Slumdog Millionaire had been a Hollywood film, rather than a British one, would it have been greeted by shocked disgust by British critics? Having finally seen it, I don't begrudge it its Oscar--it falls into the proud tradition of Forrest Gump. In fact, Dev Patel's hangdog face would be perfect if Bollywood ever decide to do a musical version of Gump; he could play in the IPL cricket, serve against Pakistan, whatever. But I wish it had been considered in the foreign film category, because its closest equivalent is Life Is Beautiful. Both are films whose basic horrors are true, but whose approach to them is to use them as devices in order to make a larger, and less horrific point. In the case of Slumdog, this use is far more obvious, because it is so contrived--stemming from the quiz-show questions to cover a potted cross-section of the dark side of life in India.

Slumdog is a watchable feel-good film, and indeed was sold as such (see above), albeit one whose twists are both cliched and telegraphed, full of 'Ray Charles could see THAT coming' moments. It's told in flashback from what appears to be the Indian version of Midnight Express, as if Jamal had wandered into an Alan Parker movie. Jamal's brother has chosen old-time Hollywood, as he features in the Indian version of Angels With Dirty Faces (and with a nod to more recent American gangsterism, Madhur Mittal looks almost like an American black).

Of course, I am willing to cut them a little slack in terms of relating to Bollywood conventions, and a little good natured hommage is always appropriate in a film you're enjoying (though oddly enough never in a film you don't) but it is hard to enjoy such contrivance and cliche. Even English cliche, in the enormous caca pooh-pooh joke young Jamal endures, methaphorically. The contrivance comes via The Millionaire programme, adding organically to the drama only once, in the late interchange between Patel and Anil Kapoor, about the Jack Hobbs answer. Otherwise, it's a nice gimmick to drive a plot told in flashback alongside one in real time, but contrivance? Falling off a train and rolling up literally to the Taj Mahal? Jamal comes back more often than Monty Python's limbless knight

This is India presented in terms of the things most westerners know about it already, which is to say, cliches: from call centers to slums. And its overall message, that watching TV shows like Milllionaire will somehow transform India into a country where the Hindu mobs cheer Jamal on rather than burn his slum and kill his mother seems somehow facile, as if Thomas Friedman's idea that all the world is fat like his America, had somehow come true. Oscar loves this kind of thing.

And now that Jamal is a milionaire, I expect a Rocky III type sequel: he got what he wanted but he lost what he had! Jamal has to fend off thousands of friends, ersatz relatives, and strangers with their hands out; bandits aiming at robbing the Muslim millionaire; he decides to own a cricket team in the IPL; Latika decides she wants a Bollywood career--pure Oscar gold!