2023 Oscar Nominees (pt. II)

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Babylon

Greeting and salutations, dear readers, and thank you for joining me for one final Oscars discussion before the historic shit show airs this Sunday night. (I’d rather be watching The Last of Us, trust me.) As if last week’s disparate Oscar-nominated double features weren’t exhausting enough, for some reason I sat through another set of films nominated for Oscars this week—and I am all the more tired because of it. There must be a requirement listed in the Academy’s fine print for awards accreditation that states that only films that are emotionally-draining are up for consideration because even the one film that I liked last week took a toll on me. And such was the case this week, where I bravely partook in the viewing of two Oscar-nominated films of which I had zero interest in watching—but all of this, I do for you, dear reader. (And because of my soul-crushing fomo.) Let’s begin with the better but more devastating of the two: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. Only King GDT could get me to watch a sad movie, and this is the kind of sad movie that begins with gentle piano music that instantly-attempted to tug at my, specific heartstrings. Reader, when I tell you that I would pay for someone to make a non-sad edit of this film I am not exaggerating, but that’s the thing about sadness—you cannot predict the ways in which it may manifest. But the sadness of Pinocchio, in general, was enough to make me skip the original Disney film entirely, and enough to make me watch this version through my hands like a child watching a scary film. GDT’s Pinocchio, while visually stunning and narratively engrossing, was one of the saddest things I have seen in awhile—and I watch the news every night. As usual, I will begin with the parts of this film that I enjoyed, because I truly might forget otherwise. Guillermo del Toro is not just a master of storytelling and audio/visual magic, he is a master of conveying hard truths in an easier-to-swallow way. In nearly all of his films, war is an unavoidable and vital aspect to the stories. War is seen through a child’s eyes in Pan’s Labyrinth, The Devil’s Backbone, and Pacific Rim, so it only makes sense that Pinocchio would feature this perspective as well. In the original 1940 Pinocchio we learn nothing of Geppetto’s life pre-Pinocchio, but here we see the carpenter Geppetto and his young son happily living and working in WWII Italy. There’s even a reverse-Beauty and the Beast moment where Geppetto and his son stroll through town, and every member of the community only has nice things to say about these two. I won’t go into the tragedy of how Geppetto lost his son, nor will I go into detail about how Geppetto crafts Pinocchio to life in his drunken grief because if you know GDT and you know the darkness lying underneath each fairytale Disney purchases the rights to, you know just how fucked up this story can get. I will try to continue to focus on the good—how Ewan McGregor as Jiminy Cricket was somehow a sexy insect, how GDT made this story spooky and ghostly in the best Frankenstein-kind-of-way, how instantly-goofy and recognizable Christoph Waltz was as the evil carnie, and how unrecognizable Cate Blanchett was as Spazzatura the circus monkey when I certainly thought she did the voice of death but it was actually Tilda Swinton. I loved how overall, GDT told a story about exploitation, death, daddy issues, the insidious nature of fascism, the creeping devastation of war, and still made it about a puppet and his dad. And yes, of course, I knew this film would be dark. It was just darker than I ever could’ve imagined. And not dark in a frightening way, dark in an existential nightmare sort-of-way where if my sensitive, overthinking-ass had seen this as a child it may have just completely ended me. And it was just hard to watch Pinocchio suffer, it was hard to watch his friends suffer, and while I ultimately think it is good and necessary to normalize conversations surrounding human mortality I do not think I would’ve enjoyed this as a child! Like… conservatives are acting like drag queens are a threat to children when really? It’s this movie! This tragic fucking tale of love and loss and the cycle of life and oh yeah, I guess a puppet is there too. No, but, seriously. I expected GDT to kill it, and he absolutely did. This movie is beautiful. But GDT has an Oscar. Actually, he has two. And he’s due for more in the future. And that’s why I don’t think Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio should win Best Animated film, and why I think Turning Red absolutely should. I am a MASSIVE GDT fan, he’s one of my favorite directors, and he’s been featured on this blog not once, not twice, but now thrice, so you should listen to me when I say: he should not win this year. I won’t go into my adoration for Pixar’s second-only-directed-by-a-woman-film Turning Red because I wrote a whole blog post about it already, but this film is so incredibly special and really deserves to win. Perspectives that are never seen, voices that are never heard SHOULD get the spotlight for once, and Turning Red created a movie that I always yearned for as a pubescent child—one that bridges the gap between childhood content and adult content. I remember being an awkward twelve year old and feeling stuck between two worlds, and Turning Red encapsulates this feeling and creates a solution for it all in one. And I would genuinely like to hear from the children about Pinocchio, because so far, I’ve only heard from adults—and the adults love it. But I remember being deeply affected by certain sad movies as a child and I don’t think I would’ve liked this at all if I saw this as a kid, which is maybe a shame, but also I hadn’t yet developed my keen taste in film and my disdain for fascism. While I was fine with being traumatized by Pinocchio, I was unwillingly scarred by the next film that I sat through, and that was Damien Chazelle’s Babylon. What if I told you, dear reader, that the man who made La La Land (a famous Oscar loser) decided to make a film about 1920s Hollywood, and chose to not make it seem like the 1920s at all? What if I told you that this same man put together an impressive but random cast, and then pushed that cast to the absolute limits of their acting abilities only for this movie to be the worst thing I have seen in a very very very long long long time? THEN what if I told you that this gratingly anachronistic, atrociously written, confidently inaccurate, brazenly OVER THREE HOURS LONG film was nominated for best production design, best music, and best costume design? …Would your head explode like mine just did? You may be thinking, “Now, Lili, there is simply no way that Babylon can be this bad when Margot Robbie signed her good name and Brad Pitt signed his bad name to this film. Not when two weeks ago you sung the praises of a bromantic comedy titled Sorority Boys?” Reader, not only am I not exaggerating how bad Babylon is, but I am not being nearly cruel enough. For the amount of cocky, half-witted attempts at humor, heart, and substance that Babylon threw at us, I have not been brutal enough. Last week I expressed how, since I was not the intended audience for Top Gun: Maverick there was no point in me roasting it, but this time is different. I’m a fan of cinema and its rich history, I’m a fan of old Hollywood, and I am a fan of Margot Robbie—therefore I was exactly the audience for Babylon. And to say that it let me down sounds too complimentary. It was immediately too much. Too much yelling, too much brass section, too much nudity, too much use of the word “pussy” in 1926, and far, far, far too much of Brad Pitt doing the exact same schtick he’s been doing since Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I appreciated the scenes where they explored the numerous challenges of filmmaking in the 1920s, I enjoyed seeing Jean Smart as a shady celeb gossip columnist tell Brad Pitt that he’s washed up, and I thought it was funny that Samara Weaving and Margot Robbie had a (long) scene together (when they look like they could be sisters) and that is really where my positive thoughts about this movie begin and end. Margot Robbie, who is costumed as a slutty Taylor Swift here, put her entire body and soul into this performance and I would love to know if she’s grieving what this movie could’ve been—just like I am. The film drags as it attempts to tell the stories of four people: sexy Diego Calva (an immigrant trying to make it in Hollywood behind the scenes), Brad Pitt (an aging, out-of-touch burden of a screen performer… sounds quite familiar), Margot Robbie (an ingenue addicted to cocaine and the spotlight), and Jovan Adepo (a jazz trumpeter who constantly experiences racism, even as his star grows)—which is all the more ironic, when you google this film and see that this actor is not top-billed like he should be. In attempting to tell all of these stories—and a few more that I don’t have time to mention—at once, no story is really told at all, and each iteration of the rise and fall of a star becomes more hollow and empty as it progresses. And as much as I love hearing Margot Robbie say pussy one million vajillion times, and as much as I enjoyed hearing her tell people to eat her ass, I just… I just don’t think people talked like that in 1926? I mean, hey, I get it Damien Chazelle, researching and writing is hard. But the result of this under-researched and over-budgeted film is a disjointed, overzealous, non-entertaining mess that ultimately just pissed me off. The ham-fisted metaphors and un-subtle references to old Hollywood films made me cringe over and over and over again. And this film exists in the same awards cycle and Oscars line up as Spielberg’s The Fablemans—a film that everyone assumed would be a douchey “love letter to Hollywood” when, in actuality, that would be THIS horrendous excuse for a movie. Hey, I’ll give you a shitty metaphor, Damien, since you like the idea of them so much—your movie was such bullshit, watching it felt like I sat down to eat at a very expensive restaurant only to be served sugary, gummy candy for dinner when all I was craving was something substantive and satisfying. If you still think I’m being too hard on Babylon, I’ll remind you that this cocky movie isn’t even nominated for Best Picture, but it is instead nominated for the specific thing that it fucked up so gloriously—costume design. And not a single character in this film, male or female, had the right hair or costume on. If you liked this chaotic movie, great, I won’t fight you on your weird opinion. But don’t lie to me and tell me that this movie had the BEST costuming when at best, it made Brad Pitt look like the greasy strangler. Let me know if I must sit through any other films nominated for Oscars, because while I may still sit down and watch Angela Bassett do the thing, I can’t imagine putting myself through this kind of experience again. Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you at the Oscars!