Martin Scorsese on the set of Hugo.
Jaap Buitendijk / Paramount Pictures
The Oscars
Five directors looking for Oscar gold
Rick Groen
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Published
Oddities and overlaps in the nominated films – and the career output – of the five short-listed directors
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Woody Allen for Midnight in Paris
Age: At 76, the eldest of the senior-citizen brigade.
Career Output: Hugely prolific, a directing machine, averaging almost a film a year since his feature debut in 1966.
Passport and Travel Plan: An American, and avowed New Yorker, sets his film mainly in Paris in the twenties.
Word Count: Extremely high; his scripts are missives from the chattering classes.
Visual Quality: Low. Never Woody's strength – this movie could safely be viewed on a cellphone.
How Film Fits into his Canon: Completely typical of late Woody; nothing new here.
Theme: Pays tribute to French artistry in the age of modernism.
Ending: Happy – guy gets better girl.
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Michel Hazanavicius for The Artist
Age: The baby, at 44.
Career Output: Only four films to date.
Passport and Travel Plan: A Frenchman, and native Parisian, sets his film exclusively in Hollywood in the twenties.
Word Count: Virtually none – this is the silent gold standard.
Visual Quality: High. Must be seen in a theatre on a big screen for full appreciation.
How Film Fits into his Canon: Completely atypical; he once specialized in spy parodies.
Theme: Pays tribute to American artistry in the silent-film era.
Ending: Happy – guy gets better gig.
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Martin Scorsese for Hugo
Age: 69, yet still young enough to breathe cinematic life into a children’s book.
Career Output: Steady, with over two dozen features behind him, but not in Woody’s prolific league.
Passport and Travel Plan: An American, and another avowed New Yorker, sets his film in Paris in the thirties.
Word Count: Moderate, with stylish breaks from the dialogue to put his 3-D camera to imaginative use.
Visual Quality: Very high. Big screen only, glasses essential.
How Film Fits into his Canon: Completely atypical from the director of Taxi Driver, Goodfellas and Raging Bull.
Theme: Pays tribute to the French artistry of movie pioneer Georges Méliès.
Ending: Happy – orphan boy gets schooled by the father of cinema.
— LUKE MACGREGOR / Reuters
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— HO
Terrence Malick for The Tree of Life
Age: At 68, the youngest of the senior citizens.
Career Output: The antithesis of prolific, the anti-Woody, with only five features since 1973, each one treated as the Second Coming.
Passport and Travel Plan: An American, and Harvard grad, sets his film from the birth of the universe through to the Rapture with a stopover in 1950s Texas.
Word Count: Low, if only because the unfolding cosmos was a noisy but not chatty event.
Visual Quality: High. Big screen only, like all of Malick’s films.
How Film Fits into his Canon: Typical in epic ambition, atypical in cosmological sweep.
Theme: Pays tribute to the Big Bang and its continuing fallout.
Ending: Happy-ish – guys and gals, living and dead, get up for a beachfront Rapture.
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Alexander Payne for The Descendants
Age: A relatively callow 51.
Career Output: Relatively small, with only five features since ’96, but not Malickean sparse.
Passport and Travel Plan: An American, and Omaha native, sets his film in Hawaii in that rarest of Oscar-nominated periods – the present day.
Word Count: Quite high, save for the character of the comatose wife.
Visual Quality: Moderate to low, although Hawaiian scenery is pretty – big screen not essential, tablets will do.
How Film Fits into his Canon: Completely typical, albeit the most sentimental yet.
Theme: Pays tribute to a mixed-up descendant of American pioneers.
Ending: Happy – father gets schooled by his daughters.
— Merie Wallace
