The Big Picture · Discussion · Interview
February 12, 2020/ 98 min/ Sean Fennessey · Amanda Dobbins
Sean and Amanda work through a listener mailbag on the wreckage of the 92nd Academy Awards: Neon vs. A24, whether Parasite's win could ever repeat, and the boring-front-runner slate of 2020. Then Sean talks to Celine Sciamma about Portrait of a Lady on Fire.
46 films across 2 segments.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
The Post-‘Parasite’ Oscars MailbagSean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins
The frame for the whole mailbag. Sean and Amanda argue it won in spite of the subtitle and foreign-language hurdles, not because of them, and doubt a sweep like it happens again, citing Adam Nayman's Ringer piece on how unusually accessible it is.
The Netflix film they keep circling back to: seen at home in conditions no one associates with Oscar movies, which they suspect hurt it. Tom Quinn's line about seeing it in a theater comes up as the counter-case for distributors like Neon.
The Green Book / Roma question: they doubt Parasite wins if Roma had won the year before, because the subtitled-foreign-film lane would already have been spent. Amanda thinks Netflix over-pitched it with shot-by-shot mailers.
Sean's example of the actual underdog of its year: the film that, for all intents and purposes, shouldn't have won.
One of the three films they name from the 2019 festival run alongside Parasite and Portrait; Brad Pitt's supporting win recurs in the acting-category talk.
Grounds the Greta Gerwig makeup-Oscar question: it made money and made her a brand, which they think pulls her toward writing-directing over acting.
Cited on both Netflix's aggressive campaign and Laura Dern's supporting win, which Amanda and Sean don't read as a vote for the film itself.
The Leo counterfactual: even without a Revenant win on the books, they think Joaquin Phoenix's reception was uniform enough that he still takes Best Actor.
Scott's question pairs it with Parasite as the surprising, validating kind of Best Picture win.
The other side of Scott's question, grouped with Green Book as the boring, uninspired winner.
Sean's pick for the most radical Best Picture ever: an X-rated film that kicked off New Hollywood, a world away from the prior year's Oliver!
Their landmark in the negative sense: the win over Saving Private Ryan that made the public aware of the campaign as a political event, via Harvey Weinstein.
Named as a landmark before they table the full Crash conversation for a later question.
First on the 2020 boring-front-runner short list: Spielberg adapting a monument of Hollywood history, which Amanda flags as the year's 1917 slot.
The reference point for the whole front-runner list: the big, technically ambitious, end-of-year Oscar movie.
Sorkin's real-life political drama with a big cast chewing his dialogue; they expect it on the fall festival circuit.
Tom Hanks and Paul Greengrass reuniting after Captain Phillips, a Christmas period piece. Sean draws the same 1917 comparison but says it sounds more like a good movie than an uninspired front-runner.
Wes Anderson's New Yorker riff; Sean's cautious about the premise but glad for any excuse to revisit Anderson.
Villeneuve's, which Sean concedes is unfair to lump in: big sci-fi rarely does well at the Oscars, with Avatar about the only counterexample.
Florian Zeller's stagey dementia drama from Sundance; Sean says if Anthony Hopkins isn't nominated he'll be shocked, and calls it the closest thing on the list to the question's uninspired-showcase description.
Sean's answer to which Tarantino most deserved Best Director: 1994, against Forrest Gump, even if it's his pinnacle alongside Inglourious Basterds.
Amanda's favorite Tarantino, but she can't argue against Kathryn Bigelow or James Cameron in the 2009 field.
Amanda rewatched it sick in bed and rates it 100 out of 100; anchors the look at the 2003 Best Director slate.
Leo's win, the pivot for Alex's counterfactual about an Oscar-less DiCaprio in 2019. Sean calls it his best, most lived-in performance.
The Scorsese/DiCaprio David Grann adaptation, then heading into production; Sean reads the period-injustice-thriller shape as very Oscar-y.
Frances McDormand as the case study for role-vs-performance and personality: people, Sean argues, just liked what she was about.
Renée Zellweger, revisited on whether voters were rewarding a performance or just wanting to give Judy Garland something.
Shia LaBeouf's, which Sean thinks was a snub: the first step on his long road to Oscar acceptance, now streaming on Amazon.
The other 2019 LaBeouf film; the warmth for it and his telecast appearance read as him willing to play the game.
Sean's stand-in for a Ringer-staff preferential-ballot winner, and the example of the sound-category split (it took editing, 1917 took mixing).
The Nolan question: Sean bets against it but vows to reset his feelings on Nolan this summer after talking Dunkirk with Tarantino.
The template for the Sean-and-Amanda one-off pod they're being asked to repeat; the bar for a movie ‘as ill as Spider-Verse.’
The Netflix Taylor Swift documentary Sean says he hated fully and would delete from the service, mostly to bait Amanda.
Celine Sciamma on ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’
Sciamma's first feature not centered on adolescence: an 18th-century lesbian love story she built around shot-reverse-shot, since the painter faces the model. Set during the Enlightenment partly to surface a suppressed generation of women painters. She wrote it scene-by-scene, starting from the final image, and lit the castle interiors entirely from outside: a rig of some 20 spotlights faking natural window light, plus rope lights for the candle scenes. Painter Hélène Delmaire, found on Instagram, made the canvases; each took ~80 hours.
The film after which she declared her first three a coming-of-age trilogy; structured like five 26-minute TV episodes, a rhythm she credits to loving TV series.
Her 35mm debut, written at 26, about the very beginning of adolescence.
The end-of-childhood entry, shot cheaply on an early Canon DSLR: part of building each film as a low-cost prototype.
The one film she'll admit quoting: a Bergman frame she calls a wink. Two women trapped in an island home; she feels Portrait shares its DNA.
One of the Hitchcockian textures Sean hears in the patient, face-withholding reveal of Adèle Haenel's character.
Named in the same breath as Rebecca for that suspenseful early-encounter mood.
Sean's touchstone for the window-framed, natural-looking light, which Sciamma reveals was 20 spotlights doing the job.
Sciamma compares the cult intensity around Portrait to what Todd Haynes told her about people's relationship to this film, both lesbian love stories that had been missing from screens.
The film she built her own cult around. She reads it as simple, a dream of the second half, and takes from it that ‘I love you’ is a sentence that always has a future, an idea she chased writing Portrait.
One of her examples of the greatest films in history being love stories, however uninteresting cinematically.
Same list: proof of the universal appetite for love stories she wanted to confront as a genre.
Rounds out her love-story trio, from a country she says barely even makes romantic comedies anymore.
Also mentioned raised along the way
Neon & A24 slate The LighthouseJojo RabbitA Hidden LifeBoys StateApollo 11HoneylandShirley
Best Picture landmarks & winners cited Oliver!The Deer HunterSaving Private RyanGladiatorA Beautiful MindChicagoThe Lord of the Rings: The Return of the KingMillion Dollar BabyWings
Tarantino's Best Director competition Forrest GumpBullets Over BroadwayQuiz ShowThree Colors: RedAvatarThe Hurt LockerPreciousUp in the AirCity of GodLost in TranslationMaster and Commander: The Far Side of the WorldMystic RiverJackie Brown
Scorsese's near-misses Raging BullGoodfellasGangs of New York
Other name-checks The Social NetworkMoneyballThe ClimbCaptain PhillipsPhantom ThreadMankThe HangoverFirst CowNot Fade AwayDunkirkWe Need to Talk About KevinThe BabadookSense and Sensibility
Dumpuary bad movies Birds of PreySonic the HedgehogFantasy IslandUnderwater
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV BoJack HorsemanFleabagDoogie Howser, M.D.The Sopranos