It’s Oscar night! Can you feel the alchemical buzz in the air, the warm fuzzy glow America basks in when Hollywood’s stars come out to shine?
I suppose that’s enough sarcasm for one piece. The well-known dropoff in interest in the Academy Awards is a function of a multiple convergent phenomena: the atomization of American consumer-entertainment habits, the increasingly undisguised dull-witted omphaloskeptic leftist narcissism of Hollywood’s elites, the Marvelization of big-budget filmmaking, and the ravages of Covid-19 on the theater industry. (And that’s just for starters!)
But ratings might be up a bit this year, and not just because more people seemed to be returning to movie theaters beginning midway through 2022, as the nation shook off the Covid jitters. It’s because we have a reasonably interesting slate of candidates this year. I can’t and won’t review the Best Picture nominees here; Michael Brendan Dougherty wrote a far more incisive review of The Banshees Of Inisherin than any I could offer; Armond White’s savaging of Avatar: The Way Of Water would make anything I added feel like beating a dead Na’vi. I did see All Quiet On The Western Front, and strongly disliked it. (Watch Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old instead and muse upon how he gave up Tolkien schlock for a second life as an innovative documentarian.) All I needed to see of Elvis was YouTube clips of Tom Hanks brutally miscast as Col. Tom Parker in Baz Luhrmann’s typically garish and belabored style to say “Nope.” (Also not a very good film, but a fascinating misfire at least.)
Everything Everywhere All At Once — the multi-dimensional science fiction time-travel saga about a multigenerational Asian family, and yes the film is as “high concept” as that description reads — is tipped by most observers to sweep the major categories tonight: It’s expected to walk home with Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor, and possibly Best Actress. I have mixed feelings about this: The film is mediocre in my opinion — a great idea let down by the hollow script and the undisciplined direction, its Oscar prospects clearly carried aloft on a wave of good feelings about “representation” — but I wouldn’t mind seeing Ke Huy Quan (forever “Data” and “Short Round” to all us Eighties kids) walk away with a statue for a genuinely rousing acting turn that came out of nowhere.
The best picture of 2022, however, is unlikely to win. Because while Top Gun: Maverick has been nominated for the award, it feels more like an Avatar-like sop to popular sensibilities in a year where the Marvel Cinematic Universe soiled its drawers. It is no such thing. Maverick is one of the more unique beasts seen in Hollywood in recent years: an authentic action blockbuster that conceals shocking thematic depths within its nominally crowd-pleasing skin.
It seems silly to worry about handing out spoilers to a film that has been out for well over half a year, but I will say this. There are two ways to view Top Gun: Maverick: (1) a thrillingly well-executed, crowd-pleasing film with utterly insane aerial stuntwork and photography where the squad takes out the bad guys and everything works out fine for Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell and Team America; (2) a hauntingly moving tale of a man who has died with unfinished moral business, working his way through purgatory and finding the path for his soul to enter heaven. I am not joking about this.
Read Sonny Bunch’s theory, expounded above. He is correct. There are far too many little cues written into the script for this to be anything but an intended possible interpretation (not one that is commanded, but intentionally ambiguous). It is, needless to say, the interpretation that makes every other little detail of the script — and particularly the improbable ones — make much more sense, and hit that much harder. It does not have to be your interpretation of the film, but it is mine and it makes Maverick the best picture of the year.
Rewatching Maverick now, and knowing what we do in retrospect about how it gave the entire theatrical experience life when it was in danger of dying — Cruise fought to keep it off streaming services and theater-exclusive using star leverage that he alone wields — only adds a layer of poignancy to the film. This is Tom Cruise’s meta-story as well: the “Eighties veteran who’s a little bit crazy, still the best, has seen it all, and is fighting against algorithmic redundancy” is mirrored perfectly by Cruise’s own journey as a star in Hollywood.
For once it’s a tale that resonates because in this film you actually see him fighting for something valuable: not even the plot of the film per se, but for the grandeur of the blockbusters of his young adulthood, the entertainment that reached and pleased millions, just as Maverick did. Cruise is a difficult character to warm entirely to — everyone knows about Scientology, and I for one have never forgotten his adventures atop Oprah’s couch — but his manifest love of the classic Hollywood blockbusters that made people feel good is impossible not to respect.
I hear MSNBC is in an uproar this morning because Top Gun is apparently insidious propaganda for the U.S. Military machine. We know. We’ve known since 1986. Good.