Mike Mills for Beginners
The quirky veneer would absolutely crumble if not for the
deeply universal, human truth lying underneath it. The scenes between Ewan McGregor and Christopher Plummer are some of the most wrenching and honest of the year.
Sean Durkin for Martha Marcy May Marlene
Operates as both a fascinating character study of an
emotionally scarred young woman and as the creepiest thriller of the year. The screenplay's two-ply structure (life in
the cult vs. life at the lake house) is handled superbly.
Steve McQueen and Abi Morgan for Shame
Structurally, it's not as tight as some of the other
nominees, but damn if McQueen doesn't make up for that with deeply interesting,
truthfully written scenes of human interaction.
Broken record, I know, but
Brandon and Marianne's date scene contains some of the
year's best writing.
Andrew Haigh for Weekend
The dialogue is rich with insight into the dynamic between
Russell and Glen that seems so real, yet has never been portrayed on screen
this way. An unfussy yet truthful
distillation of two very different ideas of male homosexuality.
Diablo Cody for Young Adult
Cody has had less of an uphill battle with me than she does
with the rest of the world. I maintain Juno
as an example of great writing (if a little slow going in the beginning) and
her work on United States of Tara was top drawer. Here, she creates a tapestry of unlikeable
characters and does so with her signature humor, ear for great dialogue with
just the right amount of humanity and honesty.
That she manages to do so almost every time out without creating work
that seems like carbon copies of one another makes me value her all the more.
Adapted Screenplay Nominees...
Hossein Amini
fo Drive (Based on James Sallis’s
novel of the same name by)
So deliciously visual and specific, yet still clearly
conceived of on the page. Refn’s
direction elevates much of the script, certainly, but Amini’s balance of
character deepening and economic storytelling go a long way.
Pedro Almodóvar
for The Skin I Live In (Based on the novel “Tarantula” by Thierry Jonquet)
Not so much for the
handling of the mystery, which is dolled out in somewhat odd pieces throughout
the narrative, but for how well the scene construction and characterization
transcends the stylish veneer to hit very rewarding emotional beats.
Aaron Sorkin
and Steve Zaillian for Moneyball
(Based on the book “Moneyball: The Art
of Winning an Unfair Game” by Michael Lewis)
Two of the industry’s highest regarded screenwriters somehow manage to
coalesce very different styles on a project plagued with development problems
in service of adapting a tricky, non-fiction story that doesn’t inherently lend
itself to the cinematic moments birthed in Moneyball.
Rory Stewart
Kinnear and Lynne Ramsay for We
Need to Talk About Kevin (Based Lionel Shriver’s
novel of the same name)
The script makes
for a unique, auterist approach to the text managing to be at once a clearly
distinguishable Lynne Ramsay film
(why doesn’t she work more often?) and a recognizable representation of the
novel. Adaptations need not always be
cut-and-paste renderings of their source (paging Taylor, Faxon and Rash…).
Apichatpong
Weerasethakul for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall
His Past Lives (Loosely Inspired
by “A Man Who Can Recall His Past
Lives” by Phra Sripariyattiweti)
Of these nominees, it is one that I saw least
recently, but it still burns bright in my memory. So uniquely constructed, yet imbued with so
much depth and sympathy for its characters.
A seemingly abrupt change in both setting and rhythm towards the late
middle strangely insulates the two halves of the narrative against one another
in a way that’s fascinating, if it doesn’t entirely work. A revisit is certainly warranted.
