Could the Academy really not find 10 films that were better than Le Mans ’66?

I have not got to the cinema as much this year as I have in previous years. So, I have not seen most of the nominees or potential nominees for this years Oscars, so will be staying out of arguments about whether Joker’s nominations are ‘a joke’, if Greta Gerwig was snubbed in the Best Director category or if the whole thing is just too pale, male and stale.

Nonetheless, I do want to gripe about one anomalous inclusion. Why on earth is Le Mans ‘66 (or if you are in the States Ford v Ferrari) in the running for Best Picture?

It is not that I think it’s a bad film. I actually rather liked it. Had I done a top ten films of 2019, it would have been one of them. However, that reflects the fact I have not seen many more than ten films. I am incredulous that the Academy, whose membership must between them have seen thousands of eligible films to pick it as one of its ten nominees for Best Picture.

The film tells the real-life story of how in a few months, the Ford motor company went from a standing start to having a racing team able to break Ferrari’s hegemony over the sport. And – to reiterate – it does this well. It has a strong cast headed by Matt Damon and Christian Bale, who director James Mangold gets good performances out of. He also delivers some genuinely exciting race sequences, aided by solid work from the films VFX and sound teams, who fully earn their nominations in technical categories.

And yet, it is hard to see, how it is a special enough film to truly merit Best Picture nomination. A wrongheaded narrative has developed in some corners of the internet that its financial and critical success represents a blow against formulaic blockbusters. Granted, there are no superheroes in it and its not part of a franchise. However, that just means it is a blockbuster made with a somewhat out of fashion formula. It is a by-the-book sports movie, saturated with the clichés of that genre and reliant on its stock characters. It does not subvert, reassemble or play with those elements, the way Knives Out does with the components of a murder mystery. It is hardly original and honestly feels like it could have been made in 1989 rather than 2019.

It would be cheap of me to belabour this point by noting that Le Mans ‘66 has essentially the same story as Cool Runnings. Nonetheless, it does undeniably feature a team from the New World making an unexpected entrance into a high-profile race, where under the guidance of a former top-flight racer forced to stop competing prematurely, they achieve a moral victory, which earns them the respect of snooty European rivals who initially scorned them.

Granted, inventiveness is not necessarily essential quality in films that deserve to be nominated. I would argue Spotlight earned its win in 2016, not by upending the conventions of films about reporters, but by producing a superlative example of one.

However, Le Mans ’66 is not in that category either. For all the things it gets right, there are a number of reasons it falls well short of master crafts status:

• Precisely because the story almost always does exactly what you expect it to, it is not as exciting as it could be. Which is a real drawback because being exciting is the real test of a racing film.
• The one real twist it does deliver, is taken from the actual events of the 1966 race at Le Mans, so if you know that history yo will not have had even that solitary surprise.
• The first half drags.
• Chunks of it are quite corny and sentimental. For example, Bale’s character’s interactions with his son.
• While the cast are good and well used, I’d defy anyone to say they are delivering anything approaching career-best performances
• Its attempt to sell us on the idea there is something almost spiritual about racing are thin and come across as silly rather than profound.
• Even if you buy that, then it creates a contradiction at the heart of the film. The Ford team is presented as a tool of the marketing department of a large and unappealing conglomerate, who sees them as a gimmick to sell cars. By contrast, Ferrari are shown as motoring purists, who treat racing as an art form. Therefore, if we accept the supposed philosophy of the film, shouldn’t we be rooting for Ferrari?
• It foreshadows the tragic elements of its story in the more ebullient sections. However, it doesn’t really integrate them into an arc, which is satisfying even in terms of character development or tone. All that seems to connect the death of Ken Miles (Christian Bale) with his moral victory at Le Mans is the fact that they both involve driving fast. As a result, it comes across not as the emotional culmination of the film, but as a discordantly dark note tacked onto the end of what is mostly a quite breezy film.

These limitations are hardly inherent to the sports or racing genre. Compare Le Man ’66 with Ron Howards’ Rush. It not only has more visually and sonically spectacular racing scenes, but spreads them more evenly throughout the film, creating a better pace. It also counterpoises moments of triumph and tragedy, so that they build on each other, and create an emotionally compelling journey for the characters, leading up to a more poignant ending. Naturally, in its wisdom, the Academy not only did not nominate Rush for best picture, they did not nominate it for anything at all.

That is just one reason that the recognition Le Mans ’66 has received today feels strange. Are the Academy really telling us it deserved that nomination more than the deliciously devious Knives Out, the heart-breaking Farewell, or the genuinely profound Two Popes? What special qualities are they claiming elevate it above 14 of 15 films nominated in the best documentary, animated feature and foreign language categories which will not get to compete for Best Picture? By nominating a film, which includes a scene where a motor exec directly advocates pandering to baby boomers, is the Academy attempting to satirise its own hidebound conception of what films might be deemed Best Picture?

If the point of increasing the number of Best Picture nominees from 5 to 10 was to give recognition to a broader range of films, then Le Mans ’66’sinclusion seems like a clear admission of failure. It undoubtedly took a huge amount of talent to make and its qualities far outweigh its vices. However, it is hard to see a case that it was nominated because it was exceptional, rather than because it makes the median Academy voter feel comfortable.

Two Popes are better than one?

* I don’t think this is a film where spoilers matter, but in case you disagree full spoilers ahead *

Habemus Papam*2

According to the fictional version of Pope Benedict XVI who appears in the Two Popes: “there is an old saying – ‘God always corrects one pope with another’.” This idea of Benedict and his successor as thesis and antithesis animates The Two Popes. However, not in the way you might expect.

When then Cardinal Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce) travels to Rome in 2012 to appeal directly to the Pope (Anthony Hopkins) for permission to retire as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he is surprised to discover the Supreme Pontiff is also considering stepping aside. Neither man is initially sympathetic to the other’s intentions and not only a battle of ideas, but a clash of temperaments ensues. The cerebral traditionalist Pope initially regards everything about the down-to-earth, reform-minded Cardinal as a challenge.

In many films, the two popes would function more as stand-ins for schools of thought than actual characters. However, The Two Popes prioritises, not only, understanding, its central characters as men, but also imagining how despite their differences, they could develop a friendship and reach a mutual understanding.

The film’s Benedict is initially in a sort of spiritual funk, sensing that he is not meant to be Pope anymore, but fearful about the direction the Church will take if he relinquishes his office. However, encountering Cardinal Bergoglio, and realising he can hear God speaking through someone he considers so heterodox, gives Benedict faith that there is a path forward for the Church without “God’s Rottweiler” at its helm.

At the same time, Benedict is able to challenge the Cardinal’s guilt over his ambiguous role during Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’. Using his relentlessly scholarly mind to deconstruct the illogicality of the future Pope Francis’ unwillingness to extend to himself the forgiveness, he preaches for others.

This very intense focus on just two characters, only works because both Hopkins and Pryce are superlative. Henceforth, I expect to have the same difficulty mentally disentangling the Pope Francis and Jonathan Pryce, that I do separating Mark Zuckerberg and Jesse Eisenberg.

While scriptwriter Anthony McCarten is clearly more sympathetic to Francis’ worldview than Benedict’s, the marriage of his writing and Hopkins’ performance creates a portrayal of Benedict which is no less empathetic than that of Francis.

And crucially given the subject matter and central characters, both the writing and acting of the Two Popes, finds a way of depicting personal faith which reflects that as inexpressible as it is, for Benedict and Francis there is no force more powerful.

Two notes

Before finishing this review, duty compels me to note two things. The first is my one substantive criticism of the film. I do wish relatively more had been made of Benedict’s pre-clerical past. At one point, he says to Cardinal Bergoglio: “we both know that part of what dictatorships do is take away this choice”. Despite this, and the fact that incidental characters twice refer to Benedict as a “Nazi”, his upbringing under the Third Reich, and whatever parallels it might have with Francis’ experiences under Argentina’s Juanta, go mostly unexplored.

Secondly I absolutely, most flag up how legitimately funny the Two Popes is, especially when it depicts the stand-offishly modest Bergoglio confounding the grandiose world of the Vatican. As that world is often personified by Benedict, that means large sections of the film function as an odd-couple comedy.

Understanding

However, this humour is always affectionate, as befits a generous film that promotes understanding rather than conflict. But that is not understanding as some intellectual exercise, rather it is as a lived experience involving other people, who are inevitably replete with nuances and frustrations.

It is also understanding with teeth. The philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah writes in his book Cosmopolitanism that: “People often recommend relativism because they think it will lead to tolerance. But if we cannot learn from one another what it is right to think and feel and do, then conversation between us will be pointless. Relativism of that sort isn’t a way to encourage conversation; it’s just a reason to fall silent.”

Both Benedict and Francis are men of faith who believe in moral truth. That is what gives the fictional conversations across an ideological divide in the Two Popes such weight and urgency: they are between people who think that words can alter beliefs and that the right beliefs can change everything.

However, McCarten’s script avoids positing anything as simple as one man successfully proselytising the other. Rather, like two marbles travelling in opposite directions, which collide; after their encounter both his popes are put on an altered course, neither of which matches the trajectory either was on before.

That kind of change in one’s understanding might seem weaker than brute persuasion. However, as the Two Popes shows, under the right circumstances, it can be powerful enough to vault someone from the throne of St Peter.