Looking ahead at Oscar season (and groupthink); Mulholland Drive

If you are followers of the Oscars, which many of you are, I would think, you know that the upcoming days are going to be saturated with coverage.

The Venice Film Festival begins today and lasts for just over a week. Telluride begins on Friday and will be over before Venice. Toronto begins near the end of next week and goes until mid September. Many people will be telling you that we will know almost everything at the end of that time, but that isn't true. We will know what Oscarwatchers like. We will know how Oscarwatchers unable to attend these festivals perceive what other Oscarwatchers who were actually there like.

And we will have early groupthink.

I revile that word, partly because every year since I left Los Angeles I have had to fight the urge to engage in early groupthink because I have no access to the films being watched at these festivals, not until I receive screeners or they arrive in theaters, and believe I have little to offer other than conjecture.

Also, the Oscars are in 6 MONTHS. Half a year. Heck...it's still technically SUMMER. Let's not forget that.

I'm grateful that I have my Best Films Rewatch to distract me. Oh...and I'm leaving for Orlando later today and will not be watching any movies or writing until I get back.

I think that this Best Films Rewatch is actually going to inform how I write and consider the Oscars this season. Revisiting how I fell in and out and in love again with the Academy Awards has been rather cathartic. Perhaps I should I have included "Moonstruck" on the list since that was the film that truly started it all, but at this point, I think this list is locked (oh...I added "Dallas Buyers Club," so now it's locked). Maybe there will be time in the next 6 months to look at that. Perhaps when I am in danger of falling out of Oscars love again - something that is very likely to happen in the coming months.

The last few years my enjoyment of writing about films has greatly escalated. With films like "Moonlight" and "La La Land" as well as last year's "Call Me By Your Name" that isn't surprising. But when it comes to the Academy itself I've been off. 2014, the year I correctly predicted 22 awards is a thing of the past. Missing the last 3 Best Picture winners...that lingers.

Predicting Best Picture is not what I do here. I examine with landscape of cinema through the lens of the Oscars and the filter of my life. But when you call your site Awards Wiz, you better have an idea of what you're talking about. I think that rewatching both "La La Land" and "Call Me By Your Name" as we head into Phase 1 of the Oscar race will be telling.

I have been considering the remaining films on the list and although I have been thinking of these last films as my modern Oscar era, they span almost two decades! There are years completely absent of films, which makes sense - "Hugo" was my favorite film in 2011, "Inherent Vice" in 2014. Although I enjoyed both, neither would come close to being one of my favorites of all time, which says more about those particular years in film then it does in my opinion of the specific films.

Looking at the films nominated for Best Picture in 2001/2002, I am reminded that 2001 was an average year as well. "In the Bedroom," "A Beautiful Mind," "Godsford Park"...all fine. "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" probably deserved to win and "Moulin Rouge" would have certainly won my personal "Popular Film" category. But the film that truly stands out that year for not only me but most critics is David Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" nominated for 1 Oscar (directing for Lynch) but considered now to be one of the greatest films of all time, of the 21st century to date, and obviously 2001.

Although I've watched the film many times, there are only 3 instances to talk about. The first being its initial release.

I was in New York City, and it was only a few months after 9/11. Many of my friends who had moved to the city around the same time as me were on their way out, but I was sticking around. I saw "Mulholland Drive" alone on an afternoon a week or so after its release. I remember that the theater was mostly empty and when I emerged I was in such a state that I couldn't find my bearings for several minutes to even begin to find the subway home.

I loved the film, specifically Naomi Watts's performance in it. Come Oscar nomination morning I experienced no shock when the film was not nominated for Best Picture, but disappointment in Watts being snubbed.

I rewatched the film over and over in years to come, sometimes alone, often with friends, and I was always wasted. I would sit down with Lynch's 10 clues, but by the end of the viewings I was more confused than ever. "It's a dream," I would proclaim to friends. "It's a mobias strip!" I honestly thought I could explain Lynch's intentions better than anyone else out there, but in reality I had no clue what I thought.

Almost 3 years ago, the film was released on Criterion Blu-Ray, and I was terrified to watch it substance free. What if all those years I was wrong about the movie? What if my tastes had changed and my defenses toward the film's minority detractors were all for naught?

I watched it in 2015 intently, and overly critical. As the credits rolled I was in a state of numbness and left completely unable to express any thoughts whatsoever.

So, you can imagine I would be thrilled to watch again, right?

For this Best Films Rewatch I decided that I would try to watch it from a completely nonjudgemental place, no notes, nothing. The one thing I did seem to bring to the table was a fear that the film would come across dated. The opening shots of the many couples dancing in a time not of 2001 helped squash that. Billy Ray Cyrus's hair, not so much. Although watching him get beaten up wasn't so bad.

As the credits rolled this go around, I was absolutely sure that the film is a masterpiece. I wish I could say that I didn't take notes, but I did. There were certain lines that stuck out to me that I felt the need to write down-- as if the characters, inhabiting two dreams, the latter one a stronger nightmare were trying hard to burst through to give us and themselves a sense of reality, to tell us who they were and what was going on.

And now I’m in this dream place....

It’s weird to be calling myself .

What’s going on Cynthia?

It’s all a tape.

It is an illusion.

I always assumed that one part of the film was the truth and the other was the dream, but that is not at all how it played this go around. It's as if the characters are folding in and out of the two stories trying to get out.

There are specific moments and scenes that are brilliant. The early scene in the diner with the two men...terrifying! The audition scene is amazing...although in a different manner in the midst of #metoo, and the scene at Club Silencio is so powerful it brought me to tears.

I'm glad David Lynch was nominated for Best Director, but the fact that he didn't win is, in my mind, one of the most glaring missteps by the Academy to date.

Which brings us back to 2018. Don't underestimate the Academy to make huge blunders based on their own groupthink. I've said for years that the Academy isn't an entity that thinks the same way, but in a way they do. Partly due to the preferential balloting of Best Picture. But their groupthink is not the same as ours.