It's a Shame!

Everybody knows that the Oscars are the most important cinema awards in the world.
This doesn't mean, of course, that they are the best. 
Actually, they are not. 
Still, for people involved in cinema, to win an Oscar means a lot, and very often it means to have a career, if not a life, changed.
Everybody knows as well, or at least my loyal readers, how much I love Michael Fassbender. Stupidly enough, especially after his nomination to the Golden Globes, I thought he would have had an Oscar nomination for his incredible performance in Shame by Steve McQueen. He didn't, and I think it is a real shame! 

Sadly enough, it wasn't my only deception: I think it is a pity not to have nominated Tilda Swinton for her amazing role in We need to talk about Kevin by Lynne Ramsay, or Albert Brooks for his great role in Drive by Nicholas Winding Refn (I mean, why Drive is not present at all???) and I am also shocked to hear that Once upon a time in Anatolia by Nuri Bilge Ceylan is not among the 5 nominations for the Best Foreign Film. 
Let's cheer up, though, because there are reasons to be happy: the success of The Artist by Michel Hazanavicius, a movie I really loved, the two nominations for the Iranian masterpiece A separation by Asghar Farhadi and the unexpected nomination for Margin Call by J. C. Chandor in the category of Best Original Screenplay.
The missed nomination to Fassbender, reminded me of something that happened back in 1988. That year, the Academy forgot to nominate an actor who deserved that award more than anybody else: Jeremy Irons, for his double role in Dead Ringers by David Cronenberg.
A couple of years afterwards, Irons was nominated and won the Oscar for Reversal of Fortune by Barbet Schroeder. During his acceptance speech, he pronounced the following statement: "Thank you also, and some of you may understand why, David Cronenberg!" The audience started clapping. That Oscar, as a matter of fact, was more for the Cronenberg movie than for the one he was receiving the award for.
I am pretty sure that one day, in years to come, Michael Fassbender will make the same kind of speech, and he will pronounce the famous statement: "Thank you, Steve McQueen!"
We will all understand why.

The New York Trilogy - Margin Call

As you already know, I have been to the opening night of the New Directors Festival at the Moma to attend the screening of Margin Call, a movie by young filmmaker J. C. Chandor.
I have to confess it straight away: the only reason why I wanted to see so badly this picture, it is because Jeremy Irons has a part in it. The financial world is not exactly my cup of tea, and movies like Wall Street simply make me feel sick, so - to tell you the truth - I wasn’t that ready to love a picture about the economic crisis. Sometimes, though, cinema is just like this: you go there prepared to see a movie you probably won’t like, and then you like it a lot. Margin Call narrates (very intensely) 24 hours in the life of a Wall Street financial company: the 24 hours preceding the economic meltdown of 2008. A group of people is involved in the events: a couple of young employees who discover that something is going wrong, and their different bosses. When the situation seems pretty desperate, in the middle of the night, takes place an unexpected Board of Directors with the President of the company in order to assume urgent and radical decisions. In the morning, the company will be saved, while the rest of the world will start its slow descent into poverty.  
The good thing about Margin Call is that the approach of Chandor is a humanistic one: he is interested in showing how this extreme situation is perceived and lived by the different people involved, if ethic is a word still having a meaning in this kind of world and how human beings are affected by jobs like this. 
And, apparently, there is something rotten in Wall Street.
In one of the greatest scenes of the movie, one of the bosses of the company is crying over the imminent death of his dog and three seconds afterwards he's making the most cynical speech to his employees about the reasons why some of them have just been fired and some others are still there. Power and money have consumed the soul of the oldest guys: this is a fight for survival and any blow under the belt is admitted. The youngest ones are looking at their bosses with a mix of admiration and disbelief: you can see that they wish to be like them, to earn as much money, to have that kind of power over other people and that they’re ready to pay any price in terms of human feelings to reach that position. This is particularly clear when the President arrives in their offices by private helicopter and with just few conversations and radical (almost inhuman) decisions solve the problem for them letting their investors losing all the money. The weakest ones are the ones who are fired, and who will not survive. And even when one of the bosses has a moment of indecision and unexpected qualms of guilt, it is simply too late for him to step back or to pretend he is not an active part of this scary machine.  
Chandor filmed this movie last summer in just few weeks and you can feel the urgency, the feverish atmosphere and the intensity of the experience. He also managed to gather a very good group of actors: besides Jeremy Irons (as the President of the company), the cast includes Kevin Spacey, Stanley Tucci, Demi Moore, Paul Bettany, Zachary Quinto and Simon Baker. When Jeremy Irons and Kevin Spacey are together on screen, despite the unsettling feeling the movie was giving me, I realized I was suddenly relaxing in my seat. Their performance was so overwhelming that I couldn’t be bothered by any financial or ethical problem. I was just enjoying to see them playing so well. There are things that, after all, even money can’t buy…

Byrne, baby, Byrne!

New York City, Titus Theater, Moma, Wednesday 23 March 2011, 7 pm. 
Opening night of the New Directors Festival.  
I am there with my friend Rob to see a movie called Margin Call by J. C. Chandor. The reason is simple: Jeremy Irons plays a part in it. The film is very good (I’ll talk about it later in this blog) and after the projection there is a Q&A with the director and one of the actors (no, unfortunately not Irons). Since Rob and I were seated in the first raw, I didn’t have the chance to look at the audience, but when we leave our seats and we are moving towards the exit, I catch a glimpse of somebody... and I almost faint.
Irish actor Gabriel Byrne is standing there, few meters ahead of me, apparently being part of the same world I live in.
This is not the first time in my life I am SO lucky. In 2000, in this same city, I went to see him playing in O’Neill's A moon for the misbegotten. I even talked to him after his performance (and he was very charming), but seeing him again now, it is even more amazing. I consider In Treatment - the HBO TV Series about a shrink and his patients (already arrived at its third seasons) - a real masterpiece and his performance as Doctor Paul Weston simply astonishing (yes, I already wrote a post about it in this blog, so it’s nothing new!). I admire him and love him more than ever. At the moment, in my personal list of “Actors I would like to chat (and possibly marry) with” Byrne is at place n° 1 together with Irish/German actor Michael Fassbender. 

Gabriel Byrne as Doctor Paul Weston (In Treatment)

All this to let you imagine my state of confusion and agitation… I hear two women behind me talking to each other: “Hey, look, there is Gabriel Byrne in front of us”, “Oh my God, what should we do?”, “Well, go and get him!” I immediately think: excellent idea! Let’s go and get him, girls, but none of us has the guts to do so. The problem is, Mr. Byrne is not by himself. There is a stunningly gorgeous woman close to him. His girlfriend, I presume. They walk into the lobby of the theatre where there is a small bar and they meet with two friends.
They start talking, undisturbed. Am I the only one who wants to speak to this man? You gotta be kidding me. Rob explains me that New Yorkers are renowned for their snobbish attitude towards famous people. Evidently enough, I’m not a real New Yorker, and I want immediately ask this man when we will be able to see the season 4 of In Treatment. It’s a question of life or death, do you understand? But, still, I don’t move. I can’t. He is there: elegant, charming, relaxed, smiling, living his life, marvellous. I just stare at him, at the opposite corner of the lobby. I am so persistent that at a certain point Mr. Byrne looks towards me. I can read his thought: who is this crazy woman looking at me so insistently? And it is in this very moment that I think about the last scene of Baisers Volés (Stolen Kisses) by François Truffaut. Antoine Doinel and his girlfriend Christine Darbon are seated on a bench of a public park and this weird man walks towards them. He has been following Christine for the whole movie. But this is the first time that we hear him speaking. He puts himself in front of her, completely ignoring Antoine (he never looks at him) and he makes his love declaration. Yes! This is what I want to do. Walking towards Gabriel Byrne and his girlfriend and, looking Gabriel straight in the eyes, to announce him: “I know life well. I know that everyone betrays everyone else. But it will be different with you and me. We will never be apart. Not even for a single hour. You will be my sole preoccupation. I understand this is all too sudden for you to say yes right away and that you need time to sever the temporary ties that bind you to temporary people. But… I AM DEFINITIVE!”. 

Of course, all this happened just inside my head.  
Outside, I simply watched Gabriel Byrne and his girlfriend going arm in arm to a Moma private event I wasn’t invited to.  
When I got out of the theatre, it was snowing.
Worst of all, few days afterwards, HBO announced the end of the series In Treatment.
Real life sucks, don’t you think?