LeapBackBlog 2012 Film Awards – Part 1: Technical Achievements

Film in 2012 may not have been quite as strong overall as 2011, but right at the top there were a lot of good and very entertaining films. 2012 also featured many wonderful performances, particularly among men (many great performances that would have made my lists in past years were sadly left off). The LeapBackBlog Film Awards are comprised of what I think were the best and most interesting films, the strongest performances (taking into consideration who the actor is and what else they have done), the narrative style that drew me in (best directing), and exquisite craftsmanship (best technical achievements). But really, these are lists of my favorites from the year.

Part 2: Supporting Performances

Part 3: Directors

Part 4: Leading Performances

Part 5: Films

Hugh Bateup & Uli Hanisch – Production Design – Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas is insanely ambitious. Most production designers have a difficult enough task creating one narrative world – Hugh Bateup (working with the Wachowskis) and Uli Hanisch (working with Tom Tykwer) each created three (to make up the film’s six different stories). The worlds range from the mid nineteenth century South Pacific to modern day London to far into the future in Seoul to the post-apocalyptic (almost like the rebirth of society) tribesman on the Hawaiian Islands. And yet, even with such a grand undertaking of scale and scope, plus two different crews filming different stories, the film still has a unified feel and look, and a lot of that goes to the absolutely amazing work of Bateup and Hanisch.

Roger Deakins – Cinematography – Skyfall

2012 saw a lot of very good cinematography work, but Roger Deakins’s photography in Skyfall is simply the best of the year. Working with director Sam Mendes (their third collaboration), Deakins delivers aesthetically stunning work – from the gloomy fog covered moors to the crisp sheen of red lights against the night in Macau, or the almost sci-fi feel of Bond’s fight with an assassin in Shanghai. Visually, the film is never content to just be a straight forward action film, or just another entry in the Bond franchise. It completely blew me away.

Alexandre Desplat – Score – Moonrise Kingdom

I often joke about composer Alexandre Desplat being the hardest working man in Hollywood – well, in 2012 he scored eight films, including Zero Dark Thirty, Argo, Rust and Bone, and Moonrise Kingdom. Working with director Wes Anderson, Desplat has created a fun, playful, and charming score for Sam and Suzy’s adventure (in their second collaboration). Like the best pieces of film music, it matches the tone for the film and sets the mood for the audience. Desplat is one of the great composers working in cinema today (or at the very least the most prolific). His work is always brilliant.

Greig Fraser – Cinematography – Killing Them Softly

Director of photography Greig Fraser had three films hit theatres in 2012 – Snow White and the Huntsman, Zero Dark Thirty, and Killing Them Softly. Now while Zero Dark Thirty will likely get more accolades and coverage, it is Killing Them Softy that is far more aesthetically interesting and artistically ambitious. Working with director Andrew Dominik, Fraser’s photography gives the film a sort of a post-apocalyptic feel, with lots of stormy skies, broken down landscapes, and  exaggeration of violence (along with morally corrupt characters populating the narrative). Dominik and Fraser use extreme slow motion to drag out the violence or drug use, making it feel more impactful and poetic (reminding me of the moving stills in Lars von Trier’s Melancholia). It is brilliant and absorbing work.

Jonny Greenwood – Score – The Master

After their fantastic collaboration on There Will Be Blood (creating 2007’s best score along with Dario Marianelli’s score for Atonement), composer Jonny Greenwood and director Paul Thomas Anderson worked together again on The Master. Greenwood’s score both fits the period in places and provides an uneasy and wondrous experience for the viewer, emotionally and psychologically matching the character of Freddie Quell perfectly. The music is unlike anything else in cinematic scores right now, pushing the boundaries artistically.

Sarah Greenwood – Production Design – Anna Karenina

Joe Wright threw everyone involved in the production of Anna Karenina a curveball when for budgetary reasons he decided to shoot most of the film inside a theatre. Production designer Sarah Greenwood rose to the challenge creating the year’s best design work (in her fifth feature collaboration with Wright). Every set is perfectly fitted to match the tone and style of the scene and characters, be it the high society parties (which are marvelously decorated) or the slum back ally-like stage rafters. Visually, the film is unparalleled, and that is thanks to cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, director Joe Wright, and especially production designer Sarah Greenwood.

Claudio Miranda – Cinematography – Life of Pi

Life of Pi is an absolutely beautiful film to watch. The visuals capture the imagination and dazzle with a stunning array of colors and pristine composition. More so than any other of this year’s top films, Life of Pi is very much an emotional and visual experience, and Claudio Miranda’s work is magnificent, to say the least. In my opinion, he is one of the ten best directors of photography working in Hollywood today (along with Wally Pfister and Roger Deakins, both making this Awards list as well). It is impossible to watch this film and not be completely enamored with the photography and use of color.

Wally Pfister – Cinematography – The Dark Knight Rises

The most impressive aspect of Wally Pfister’s cinematography in The Dark Knight Rises is that everything lighting-wise the viewer sees in the final film is done in camera – which means that Pfister and director Christopher Nolan did not color correct in post-production (a very common practice these days, even among the best D.P.s). Pfister’s work with IMAX cameras is also very impressive, as the film has a massive sense of scale – it truly is a phenomenal experience to see in IMAX. Pfister is directing his first film in 2014 with Transcendence, but hopefully his collaboration with Nolan will continue as well – they are one of the best teams working today (if not the best period).

Ed Verreaux – Production Design – Looper

Working with director Rian Johnson, Ed Verreaux creates a wonderful look for Looper. The film mixes genres, feeling like a sci-fi film, a crime drama, and a western in different parts. Verreaux’s production design gives the film a taste of each of these genres. The city is a mix of futuristic technology and sort of a collapsed society feel (most of the vehicles are junk-cars from today adapted to run on a new fuel source). The design work is also very artistically interesting, with aesthetically pleasing patterns and lights. Verreaux’s work may be overlooked given the great action, psychic abilities, and a time-travel plot, but it really grounds everything in a world that feels real and thus is a crucial part of what makes the overall film brilliant.

Hans Zimmer – Score – The Dark Knight Rises

Hans Zimmer’s collaborations with Christopher Nolan have yielded fantastic scores (notably for Inception), including the first two films in The Dark Knight Trilogy. With The Dark Knight Rises, Zimmer gives the film such a brutal and hard hitting accompaniment perfectly matching the film’s main villain Bane. For Selina Kyle his score is sleek, slinky, and refined, but with a touch of immediacy – again matching the character wonderfully. The music grips the audience from the start and matches the tone throughout. Like the film itself, the score is big and masterful.

Cloud Atlas (2012) – Review

Review: Cloud Atlas is an extraordinarily ambitious piece, woven together with absolute brilliance. The film features six stories about human relationships throughout the history of man, dealing with love, friendship, freedom, and bravery among other things – each connected in some way to the last.

Cloud Atlas is structured as a series of six shorts that are all intercut to tell a story about human resilience (the triumph of will and pursuit of truth and love). In each short there seems to be a love story, a friendship and a journey that leads to the flourishing of freedom (freedom from bondage, freedom to love, freedom from persecution, freedom from wrongful imprisonment, freedom from tyranny, freedom to find truth, freedom from past mistakes, and just plain freedom – the right to be free). Each short is also linked by the work of a character in an earlier story (a book, political teachings, letters, and journal). The lead character in each future reads about or sees the story of the character in the short before theirs, which seems to have an impact on them. There is also a piece of music that seems to exist outside of time that links all the stories (much like the comet birthmark), seeming to indicate these characters are also connected on a spiritual level as well (like destiny continually bringing them together across time inhabiting different bodies – which makes sense out of having the same group of actors play different roles in each time period).

While the stories are all fluid, and the overall piece has a sound structure, the high level concepts in the film, like destiny and ‘everything is connected’, feel a bit messier. The comet birthmark for one – does this suggest that the spirit or soul of the person is transferred across time, reincarnated over and over and drawn again and again to other versions of the people they loved and truly befriended in past lifetimes? There are so many references in the film; it would take multiple viewings to catch them all. Is there a puzzle that can be solved or mystery unraveled by acquiring and linking all these connections? Or, are all the connections just an artifice, merely present as a McGuffin – or a through line for the narratives? It certainly does encourage further thought, which can be taken as a good thing.

Cinematically, the film is a massive undertaking (the biggest German production of all-time), with the six stories split between two crews. Director Tom Tykwer wrote and directed Letters from Zedelghem, Half-Lives: The First Luisa Rey Mystery and The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish, while the Wachowskis (Andy and Lana) wrote and directed The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing, An Orison of Sonmi-451 and Sloosha’s Crossin’ an Ev’rythin’ After. And yet, the most impressive aspect of the film is how well it flows and how well all the elements of the different stories go together, both building on each other and existing as separate narratives. From and writing and editing standpoint, it is one of the most astonishing films in recent memory.

Tykwer and the Wachowskis get the audience to care about the characters in every story. There is not one story or set of characters that dominate the audiences’ attention (which is vital to the film’s success – especially since it is 172 minutes long – one short cannot take persistence leaving the others to be a lull in the overall narrative, and conversely one cannot be particularly less engaging as this would disjoint the flow as well). The film, along with great characters, is filled with gripping tension, exciting action and compelling drama, but also infused with enough comedy and fun moments to give the audience a break and let them breath. All the stories are cut so that their own three-act structures fall around the same time in the film, giving the whole piece an overall momentum and tone that is in sync.

However, the film has some issues as well. Chiefly, its thematic messages (everything is connected and freedom) are a bit heavy handed. The viewer is practically beaten over the head, repeatedly, with the themes. Some of the connections are (somewhat) subtle (like Timothy Cavendish reading Javier Gomez’s book on the train or Vyvyan Ayrs dreaming about the eatery where Sonmi-451 works), but most are essentially grandstanded and shoved in the viewer’s face constantly (seemingly assuming that there is no other way that the viewer could make the connections – like the comet birthmark being explicitly focused on). This does detract from the film quite a bit, taking away from the wonder of the story. Force-feeding the film’s ideology blatantly to your audience is not really the best way to go about it.

Also, the film goes to great lengths to present clearly established good guys and bad guys. There are almost no complex characters struggling with both dark and light elements (Zachry being maybe the only one who the audience truly questions, with Timothy possibly being a bit dubious at the beginning). Overall, the characters are well-drawn and dramatically interesting (making for good protagonists and antagonists), but when it comes to their morals they are all fairly cookie cutter. The audience never doubts the intensions of any characters, nor are they ever skeptical about a character. The character roles are just too cut and dry (this one is unilaterally good and this one bad).

Another issue arises as a result of the actors playing multiple roles across the six stories. The make-up is sometimes unintentionally comical or at least noticeably odd looking. This takes the audience out of the moment (which is something, as a filmmaker, that you never want). But really, this is more of a minor issue that does not take away from the film that much as a whole.

Issues aside, Cloud Atlas is a magnificent, entertaining and engaging film, and one that is essential in today’s film landscape (where blockbusters are mostly sequels and generic broad studio fair). This is a film that dares to be challenging and adventurous. I wish there were more blockbusters like it.

Technical, aesthetic & acting achievements: Both Tom Tykwer and the Wachowskis have made great films in the past (Run Lola Run and The Matrix respectively), but those films were over a decade ago with unsatisfying work since. Cloud Atlas sees their collective return to prominence as talented and important filmmakers (and is my favorite of their films to date). Suddenly, I am looking forward to their next films (the Wachowskis are in preproduction on Jupiter Ascending).

The work of the crew on the film is wonderful. The score composed by Reinhold Heil, Johnny Klimek and Tykwer has a beauty to it. Their Cloud Atlas Sextet feels both timeless and musically important, functioning as the emotional nexus of the film. Their score has dramatic weight and magnitude to it as well, accompanying the scale and scope of the film presenting a wondrous tone (I like this piece). Visually the film is splendid – capturing the feel, delicacy and awe of each story. Cinematographer Frank Griebe and production designer Uli Hanisch worked with Tykwer and cinematographer John Toll and production designer Hugh Bateup worked with the Wachowskis. Even with two separate filming crews, there is a shared aesthetic to the film (it is actually tough to tell which crew shot which section) – one that features a very clean and glossy look, but with a hint of grit and grim behind the scenes. The photography is stunning, allowing the colors of the film to pop; while the design of most of the sets seems to be a mixture of a nice façade that when looked upon closer shows levels of decrepitude. There seems to be a constant clashing of clean and glossy elements with dirty and worn out ones (both visually and narratively).

The company of actors must have had a lot of fun on the film, many getting to play six characters. The performances are mostly good, but there are also a few instances in which it is clear that certain actors are better suited to particular roles than others. Tom Hanks, James D’Arcy, David Gyasi, and Hugo Weaving are all very good, but Jim Broadbent, Doona Bae and Ben Whishaw steal different moments of the film (and Halle Berry is not terrible, which is really all you can ask for). Hugh Grant is also his charming self (and has a fantastic, completely different appearance).

Summary & score: Cloud Atlas warrants multiple viewings (and at least one of those should be in the cinema to take full advantage of its grand and radiant scale and scope). The question is – will it get better with each viewing or grow tiresome (I really do not know), its initial splendor revealed to be a dilapidated mess (much like the Neo-Seoul eatery once the customers have gone home)? But, after one viewing, it is remarkable. 9/10