It seemed appropriate, then, to include a film-related challenge and I remembered that the girl in the basement flat in Camps Bay, where we rented for a while, used to have an Oscars party every year. I also realised that I'd never seen all the films nominated for Best Picture in any one year. There were always some that didn't appeal to me and I'd give them a miss. As Peter and I wait until we go to South Africa in January before watching any new films, it meant that by my 60th birthday last December I hadn't seen any that had been nominated. Having the challenge of watching all nine was definitely appealing.
Fortunately films tend to be shown a bit later in the Cape than in London, so there was a good chance they'd still be available when we arrived. The order in which I watched them - Lion, LaLa Land, Manchester by the Sea, Moonlight, Hidden Figures, Fences, Arrival, Hacksaw Ridge, and Hell or High Water - was largely determined by how soon they were likely to disappear.
The first was Lion. The scenery was spectacular, especially the coasts and forests of Tasmania, although it did occasionally feel like a tourism promo. I thought it was well acted and the scenes of destitution in India, particularly of the children and their vulnerability to appalling abuse - and their resilience - were moving. Overall though I felt the story was too slow-paced and it was hard to sustain interest in the main character's emotional torment and how it might be resolved. Luckily I hadn't seen the trailer, otherwise there would have been even less suspense as it's quite a spoiler.
The next day we went to see LaLa Land. I'm not all that keen on filmed musicals and I particularly disliked the opening sequence of this one. Set on the LA highway, with hundreds of people stuck in a massive traffic jam suddenly breaking into song and dance - complete with a bicycle and a skate board - it set the tone of artificiality without charm. On the other hand I thought the use of colour was magnificent throughout the film, including the dresses, outdoor scenes, parties and gardens. The jewel-like intensity was effectively contrasted with the relatively subdued palette used for the scenes between the two main characters, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. His piano playing was really impressive and I thought her acting in the scene where she is auditioning for a part and has to cover a huge range of emotions convincingly, was superb.
I found the first half pretty boring and felt no involvement with the story, but then it came alive when Gosling joined the new style of jazz music, which was much more tuneful and energising. As his and Emma Stone's characters began to face their personal dilemmas and acquired more depth, their development became more engrossing and the music took a back seat. It struck me as a rather curious film of two halves - more than any other film I've seen.
The next film, Manchester by the Sea, could hardly have been more different. I'd assumed it was the English Manchester - my geography is wayward at best, and although I've been there a number of times some years ago, I'd forgotten it's inland. That had shaped my expectations of what the film might be about and I was bracing myself for rain and general greyness. Instead it was set partly in snowy Boston and mainly in the small coastal town of Manchester, an hour and a half's drive north. The coastal scenery was very attractive, albeit rather bleak at times. This and the elegiac music reflected the sadness and sense of loss and guilt that pervades the film. The acting by Casey Affleck and the 20 year old Lucas Hedges who played his 16 year old nephew was excellent, and I thought Affleck's Best Actor award was well deserved.
Having seen the trailer, I definitely wouldn't have watched Moonlight if it hadn't been part of the challenge. The trailer was really off putting and did the film no favours at all, showing an American black drug dealer with gold teeth and huge muscles, mumbling almost inaudibly and trying to come to terms with being gay. And it would have been such a shame not to have seen the film, as it was excellent. The acting was first-rate, with sensitive and finely nuanced performances. The only part where I struggled to understand what was being said was the section used in the trailer. There was no sentimentality, nor any unnecessary violence, and the themes of being gay and black, bullying and drug addiction were well handled and thought provoking.
Hidden Figures sounded interesting, portraying the true life story of three African American women with an exceptional talent for maths, who each played an important part at NASA in the first US manned orbit of the moon at a time when racism was rife and segregation still applied in Virginia. It could have been absorbing but for me it was marred by its sentimentality. It made one think that the contribution made by the women had been exaggerated in the film, which did them a disservice as they genuinely were remarkable. Many of the "facts" had indeed been falsified for dramatic effect - for example the lavatories in the main building were not segregated and there was no question of the black women having to trek a kilometre or so to the nearest one available to them. There seemed nothing Oscar-worthy about the film and it could have been so much better.
Fences was originally a play which took years to be filmed, apparently because the author would agree to this only if the director were black. Eventually Denzel Washington not only directed but produced and starred in it too. The subject matter was fairly bleak, depicting the life of a black refuse collector in Pittsburgh who can't come to terms with past disappointments and repeats the cycle with his own wife and children. It was well acted but I found it rather tedious.
This was the last of the films on the list that I was able to see in South Africa, as the others were no longer on the circuit. I wondered whether any of the remaining three might be available to watch on the plane home and was delighted to find they all were. As it was an overnight flight and I don't usually get much sleep then anyway, all I had to do was stay awake all night and I could complete another challenge! I decided to start with Arrival, as I'm not keen on sci-fi or fantasy, so having to watch it in less than ideal conditions wouldn't bother me. Also I could get it out of the way and then enjoy the other two, which looked more promising.
Ironically I found it so boring, I simply couldn't keep my eyes open. I ended up having to watch large chunks of it several times while I tried to work out where I'd dropped off - which did at least chime with the surreal aspect of the film and its emphasis on non-linear time. By contrast the critics rated it very highly. Catherine Shoard in the Guardian, for example, described it as "by far the most thoughtful release this year. It informs and explores ideas subconsciously common to us all about our interplay with language, and the past and the future.... Everyone, everything seems elevated by a movie about which there is something intangible, miraculous".
That's all very well, but it isn't easy to suspend disbelief when the main character is a young woman who is not only an expert linguist chosen to try to communicate with aliens that have landed simultaneously in 12 space ships across the world (including Montana), but who also happens to have the gift of being able to see the future. By the time we landed at Heathrow I was thoroughly fed up with her earnestness and courage, armed only with a clip board and a felt tip, in the face of aliens that looked like vaguely menacing hoover attachments.
Fortunately Hacksaw Ridge was a complete contrast. Although I had to watch it on DVD rather than on the big screen, our television is quite large (every time his son upgrades, Peter yearns to do the same) and I didn't feel the experience was impaired as a result. It's a scarcely believable but true story about a young American man - Desmond Doss - who is a Seventh Day Adventist and won't touch or carry a rifle, but who enlists to serve as a medic in the war after Pearl Harbour. When, during basic training, his commanding officers fail to break his resolve not to touch a weapon, he is really put through the mill and eventually court martialled for refusing to obey orders. In the end the court martial is abandoned and he goes on to serve as a combat medic with exceptional courage, especially at Hacksaw Ridge in the battle of Okinawa, where he saves the lives of 75 wounded men, despite being under intense fire and having been injured.
The extremely graphic battle scenes were very effective but I thought they went on too long and there were also some jarring sentimental incidents. That apart, it's a remarkable film and all the more so for being largely accurate. It includes interview recordings at the end with the real Desmond Doss, who died in 2006 aged 87, and with a few of the other key figures. It seems hard to believe that any of them could have survived such carnage - although Doss was classified as 90% disabled after the war.
Interestingly Mel Gibson, the director, decided not to include some events which really did happen, as he thought the audience wouldn't find them credible. In reality, for example, after Doss had been seriously injured by a grenade which he had kicked away from himself and the 3 other men in his foxhole, he was eventually rescued and was being carried on a stretcher under heavy fire when he noticed a severely wounded soldier lying on the ground. He rolled off the stretcher to attend to the soldier, and gave him his place - and was then shot by a Japanese sniper, shattering his left arm. He only survived by crawling 300 yards through intense gunfire, at last reaching an aid station and relative safety.
The last of the nine, Hell or High Water, I also had to watch on DVD as it was no longer on at any cinemas. Having Jeff Bridges as one of the key actors was a strong point in its favour, even if it did mean having to use the subtitles, and the striking New Mexico scenery (although the story is set in Texas) was an added attraction. It's a sort of cross between a Western and a bank heist film, with an emotional twist and an appealingly dry humour. The ending is ambiguous, with two of the surviving main characters agreeing to meet to "finish the conversation". I wondered whether this pointed towards a sequel but it seems more likely that it was simply a neat way of drawing it to a close. Although it's nowhere near the all-time great standard, I enjoyed it.
While we were in South Africa, as the day of the Oscars approached, Peter and I found ourselves rooting for different films. We agreed that LaLa Land (the apparent front-runner) shouldn't win but he favoured Manchester by the Sea, while I was a fan of Moonlight - the film I'd least wanted to watch. Honour was satisfied for both of us, as Moonlight won Best Film and Casey Affleck won Best Actor.
I'm very glad I included this as one of the 60 challenges, particularly as it meant I watched films I wouldn't otherwise have bothered with and - at least in the case of Moonlight - found them far more interesting that I'd expected. I plan to watch all nine nominated films next year too, as I've found it so worthwhile and enjoyable. If it means having to sit through a few I don't relish, I think it's worth it.
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