If I Picked the Winners: Best Original Screenplay 2010

     Continuing my wrap up of the 2010 Oscar season, this week I rank this year's Best Original Screenplay category. An "original" screenplay has became a rare species in Hollywood these days. 2011 will reportedly be filled with more sequels, remakes, and spin-offs than any other year in cinema history. I believe the statistic I read somewhere stated that one in every four movies will be based on some previous cinematic material, although it may have been one in five. Either way, that's way to much rehashing than we need right now at cinemas. The things is, unfortunately, even when a film is not strictly a sequel, remake, or spin-off, it more times than not follows some predictable Hollywood formula that they must keep around in their back offices. True originality is probably an abstraction that doesn't really exist, but I think they can do a little better than what we are getting right now. Anyway, I'll stop the diatribe and get back on point. The Best Original Screenplay category is often an interesting one that can typically contain more films out of left field than your average category. Many times, a challenging film well regarded by critics and cinematistas, but far from the main stream manages to squeeze in a lone Oscar nomination in this category. In the past decade or so, this includes films such as "The Royal Tenenbaums", "Memento", "Dirty Pretty Things", "The Squid and the Whale", "Lars and the Real Girl", "In Bruges", and this year, "Another Year". Overall, this year's group isn't that bad, as there aren't that many alternatives that I personally would have substituted. The one major change that I would have preferred is the inclusion of the screenplay for "Black Swan". I would put ahead of a few of the nominees that actually made it, and it seemed like it had a decent shot at the nomination, but it didn't work out in the end, so I will just have to deal with the nominees given. On to the ranking.

5. David Seidler for "The King's Speech"

     Given the popularity of the film with the Academy, it was no surprise to see David Seidler's screenplay for "The King's Speech" take home Oscar gold. While the man seemed fairly charming, giving one of the better acceptance speeches of the night, I can not join the Academy band wagon and heap something with praise that I feel does not deserve it (no matter how nice Mr. Seidler is). In fact, it is the script for "The King's Speech" that is probably the film's biggest problem. This is not due to cringe worthy dialogue or inane plot developments, but simply a missed opportunity, a lack of real insight. Everything about "The King's Speech" is pleasant enough, and nuts and bolts story is solid and interesting, but apparently unlike most, I did not find the heart of the film because the relationship between therapist (Geoffrey Rush's Lionel Logue) and patient (Colin Firth's King George VI) is very shallow no matter how much the film tries to pretend it's not. There are moments here and there where the film attempts to dig deeper into the psyche of its characters (like when we George opens about his childhood), but it is all surface level stuff that is simply going through the motions the fulfill the required prerequisite. There are definitely worse scripts out there than Mr. Seidler's, so I don't want to go overboard in bringing down the man's work, but it is frustrating to something with promise squander it away. For many though, it must have been a home-run hit, but for me, I would have rather seen one of the other nominees victorious on Oscar night.

4. Keith Dorrington, Eric Johnson, Scott Silver, and Paul Tamasay for "The Fighter"

     "The Fighter", which had been in development a long time, had an army of writers take a crack at it, and unfortunately it shows at times. In all, there were four writers with their names attached to the screenplay: Eric Johnson, Paul Tamasay, Keith Dorrington, and Scott Silver. I'm not sure how the four men worked on it, if some of them collaborated or if one man wrote the original script and then the others were hired for redrafts or touch ups of scenes here and there, but it might help explain the sometimes awkward tonal shifts of the film. Most of the time the film is in melodramatic sports-movie mode with a little family drama thrown in for good measure, but then there are times of goofy humor that seemingly come out of nowhere. I'm all for adding humor when you can, even in dramatic films, but the way the film takes itself so seriously in some instances, and then gets cornbally at other times, just doesn't jive well together. The screenplay also takes a big heaping handful from the bowl of sports cliches. There have been a lot of boxing films about a down and out fighter who miraculously rises his way to the top to become champion of the world, and this film does not break the mold. It also relies heavily on arch-types and over-the-top simplistic blue-collar characters who are missing the inner depth below the surface. In some cases, the actors are able to bring out the hidden depth just by their persona (like in Christian Bale and Melissa Leo's case), but in other less capable hands (Amy Adams), the missing third dimension is noticeable. After spending so much time criticizing it, I don't want to come off as saying the  thing is all bad, because there are some definite strong points. In particular, some of the dialogue is sharp and engaging, and this important strength (along with good acting) makes up for some of the script's other sins. It's not a great screenplay, but it does have its moments, which gets it a #4 ranking in this countdown.

3. Christopher Nolan for "Inception"

     Christopher Nolan has written or co-written some great scripts over his relatively short career. "Memento", "The Prestige", "The Dark Knight", all very intricate well-written screenplays. Unfortunately, I can count the "Inception" screenplay as one of them. It is not that I didn't like the film, as you may know if you read my Top 10 of 2010 (it was my seventh favorite film of the year), but I most enjoyed it for the amazing visual delight that it is. Now don't get me wrong, the story is not crap, in fact, the concept behind "Inception" is very intriguing, but that's just it. It is almost all concept. From beginning to end we hear endless chatter about the inner-workings of the "dream world", like an instruction booklet for a video game. Exposition, good cinema does not make (to put it in Yoda terms). Maybe Christopher Nolan was so worried the audience would not understand what was happening on the screen that he felt he had to hold there hand the whole way through, but I actually felt all the exposition made the film more complicated than necessary, because frankly, it really isn't that confusing. We all have dreams and we know how they work. Now it's true that no one really experiences a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream, but isn't as complex as it sounds either. Of course, maybe it wasn't the exposition itself that was the problem, but the dialogue used to do the explaining. For instance, "The Matrix" uses extensive exposition without ever coming across as a college lecture, so it stands to reason that "Inception" should have been able to do the same as well. I don't know the correct answer, but their is just something about the script that makes it weaker than it need be. As I stated earlier though, the idea behind "Inception" is amazingly cool, and the settings and set pieces are all brilliant. These aspects are just as much a part of the screenplay as the explanatory dialogue, so the screenplay does deserve its fair amount of kudos as well. It may not be perfect, and it may not be as good as some of his previous work, but Christopher Nolan's script for "Inception" is still a worthy one, deserving of the nomination it received.

2. Stuart Blumberg and Lisa Cholodenko for "The Kids Are All Right"

     I was quite surprised at how much I thoroughly enjoyed Lisa Cholodenko and Stuart Blumberg's screenplay for "The Kids Are All Right". Now I have no doubt that the idea for the screenplay basically came from a desire to say, "Hey, let's make a movie about how kids raised by lesbians are just as good as kids raised by traditional heterosexual parents". This sort of message oriented film (and by that I mean a film with any reductive political point, not just this particular one) is something I usually despise (which was why I held off on seeing the film for so long), but this is why it is all in the execution. It doesn't matter what the motivating factor was behind the writers desires to make the movie, because when they actually got to it, the result was a intelligent, humorous script that (for the most part) payed respect to all of its characters and treated them as fully functioning human beings, not play things to be manipulated at their will. The film's strongest asset is it's sense of humor, as there may not have been a funnier movie all year (although it wasn't exactly a banner year for comedies). My favorite scenes are the ones in which the kids first start to interact with their biological father. It's an incredibly awkward situation (i.e. comedic gold), as no one no quite what to do. Should the kids pry deeply into their sperm-donor dad's past, or would it be better not to even know? And for Ruffalo's character, how should he act? As a father figure? That would come off as more than a tad disingenuous seeing as how he is just meeting them for the first time? On the other hand he doesn't want to come off as cold and aloof like he doesn't give a damn, even though that has been the case up until now. It's situations like these, and the way the writers chose to handle them, that make the "The Kids Are All Right" screenplay the great script that it is, and is why I have it at the runner-up spot in my ranking of the category.

1. Mike Leigh for "Another Year"

     Had I picked the winners (which is the concept of these articles), "Another Year" would have taken this award hands-down, without a second thought. Mike Leigh's script is a brilliant, brutally truthful character study of the life of aging middle-age Londoners. It is almost scary that a human being can pick up the little nuances of every day middle-class conversations between friends who leave tensions unspoken, as well as Mr. Leigh does in this film. Just for the creation of the character Mary (played with astounding realism by Lesley Manville), a desperately lonely woman looking for the approval and affection from almost any and everyone, Leigh would deserve the Oscar, but his insight goes beyond just this one character. For instance, one of my favorite parts of the film are the greeting scenes in the doorway of Tom and Gerri's house. Whenever you first greet someone that isn't a regular resident of the household, no matter how close you to them, there is always this weird little game of social tango you must play in order to break the ice. I don't know why it is someone can't just come in and pick up the relationship where it left off, but for some reason with time our mind seems to compartmentalize, requiring us to go through the necessary preliminaries before we can truly engage in friendship once more. It's something that was always in the back of my head but had never really thought out before, until I saw "Another Year", because Leigh is able to capture these moments in stunning emotional high definition. I also quite enjoyed the structure of the story. By setting it in one year, with four acts for each season (Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter), Leigh steers clear of the ultra-realist camp that has recently been the trendy thing to do for "relationship" films. Instead, Leigh embraces the cinematic quality of the medium, which allows for maximum emotional amplification, without sacrificing any honesty or sincerity. It is a great achievement, and is why, by far and away, "Another Year" would be my pick for Best Original Screenplay (even if you included non-nominated films).

     That's it for this week. Leave any of your thoughts on the race below. Next week I will wrap up my coverage of this year's Oscars by looking at the Best Actress race (unfortunately it looks like I won't be able to see "Buitiful" for some time, so I will have to get to the Best Actor race at a later date).