Movies fuel our fantasies of romance, wealth, heroism and often, simply of vicarious travel. This year's Oscar-nominated films take viewers around the world, from Iceland to Japan, Morocco to Boston, along the legendary Route 66 across the United States and to the Highlands of Scotland.
Most of the characters aren't jet-setters: They're riding on buses or in the backs of cars. Cate Blanchett and Brad Pitt starred in the globe-hopping Babel as a tourist couple on a bus tour through rural Morocco. In Dreamgirls, nominated for eight Oscars (though not best picture), the future singing stars travel through the back roads of the United States on the black “chitlin' circuit.” In Little Miss Sunshine, it's a canary-yellow Volkswagen bus that takes the dysfunctional Hoover family along the highway from Albuquerque to California. Even the royals in The Queen and the gangsters in Martin Scorsese's The Departed are passengers, rather than drivers, of their own journeys.
Perhaps no film this year will have the effect on tourism of A Room with a View (1985) in promoting Florence, or of Amelie (2001) for adding romance to Montmartre, but here's a guide to some of the more intriguing locations, and some of the places that stood-in for them, from this year's Oscar nominated films.
Little Miss Sunshine The journey of a dysfunctional family from Albuquerque, N.M., to Redondo Beach, Calif., in a broken-down VW bus to enter their seven-year-old daughter in a beauty contest follows a familiar American path. It's the same trip taken in The Grapes of Wrath, for instance, and on part of that same road, Route 66, which ran from Chicago to Los Angles.
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Although some scenes were shot on the real route — in Flagstaff, Ariz., for example — most of Little Miss Sunshine was shot in the Los Angeles area.
The banality was deliberate. As co-director Jonathan Dayton told the Rotten Tomatoes website: “What I think is really interesting about a lot of photography now is that the whole notion of Route 66 and the open road has changed and we wanted to show the roads as they feel now, that you can drive 500 miles and it looks exactly the same.”
If you want a sense of that old Route 66 experience, look to the animated movie, Cars (nominated for best animated picture and best song). The Disney-Pixar film, which was originally titled Route 66, is rich in nostalgia and lore about the legendary Mother Road. Babel
Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's film follows three stories from different corners of the world — Morocco, Mexico and Japan — in a fable about the interconnectedness of people and the universal problems of miscommunication.
Babel starts with an American couple (Blanchett and Pitt) riding on a bus through the Moroccan desert when the wife receives a gunshot wound to her shoulder. A Mexican nanny who cares for the couple's children is lost in the desert near Tecate after her nephew tries to out-run border guards. A deaf Japanese teenager argues bitterly with her father in a stark, often futuristic-looking Tokyo. And eventually, we find out how they are linked.
For real travellers, many journeys to Morocco start in another city famous in film history: Casablanca (though the 1942 movie starring Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart was actually shot on a soundstage in Burbank, Calif.). The city of Casablanca only appears briefly at the end of Babel, in a nighttime aerial shot, as Blanchett's character is being airlifted to a hospital.
From that city, visitors can travel by train or bus to Marrakech, where many adventure tours and treks start. A trip that approximates the journey in the film is the four-hour, 200-kilometre bus ride along narrow roads through several mountain passes from Marrakech southward through the Atlas Mountains to the town of Ouarzazate (pronounced war-za-zat), known as Morocco's “Door of the Desert.” The nearby town of Taguenzalt is the actual village used in Babel.
Ouarzazate is a major film centre, especially for movies about the ancient world or almost anything with a desert setting. A few of them include Cleopatra, Lawrence of Arabia, Kundun, Gladiator, Star Wars, The Mummy, Alexander, Sahara and The Hills Have Eyes 2. There are three film studios, all of which offer tours to the public. Many excursions to the Sahara and into the Draa River valley begin here. As well as riding the bus, it's possible to travel by truck or even extended camel journeys.
Scenes showing the home of the Mexican nanny, Amelia, depicted the lantern-lined streets of Los Lobos. But they were actually shot in the town of El Carrizo, with other scenes in Tijuana.
One of the memorable Japanese scenes in Babel takes place when the deaf teenager goes to what may be the world's busiest intersection, the Shibuya Crossing, overlooked by giant television screens atop skyscrapers. A centre for fashion and youth culture near the Shibuya train station, the intersection was also featured in the 2003 movie Lost in Translation.
The Departed
Martin Scorsese's drama about a cop infiltrating the mob (Leonardo DiCaprio) and a gangster infiltrating the police (Matt Damon) was mostly shot in parts of Boston less familiar to tourists — in South Boston, Chinatown, Charlestown, the waterfront, Quincy and Chelsea. One scene was also filmed on the Boston Common (the early rugby game between police and fireman cadets), along a strip known as the Boston Movie Mile.
Five locations from the film have been added to the Boston Movie Tours itinerary, which starts in April. The tours, either by bus or on foot, include scenes from such movies as Good Will Hunting, Fever Pitch, Legally Blonde, Mystic River and such TV series as Ally McBeal and Boston Legal. You can actually see a Boston Movies Tour brochure in a The Departed scene where Vera Farmiga's character first moves into Matt Damon's apartment. (It's on a counter to Farmiga's right when Damon is on the phone.) This year's tour will take visitors to the apartment used by Jack Nicholson's character, the building where Martin Sheen's character is thrown off the roof, and where the final shoot-out occurs, as well as to Boston Common and a drive through South Boston.
Dreamgirls
Though it wasn't nominated for best picture, Dreamgirls leads this year's Oscar pack with eight nominations. Based on the early ‘80s Broadway hit, this is a thinly disguised story of the rise of Berry Gordy's Motown Records and artists such as Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles and The Supremes.
You can't take a Dreamgirls bus tour, but you can visit the home of the original Motown studio, known as Hitsville U.S.A, now the Motown Historical Museum at 2648 W. Grand Blvd.
Founded in 1985 by Gordy's sister, Esther Gordy Edwards, the museum tour includes a film clip about Gordy's early life; artifacts including The Temptations red shiny suits and Michael Jackson's glove; and the original garage-turned-recording studio, Studio A, where, from 1959 to 1972, hundreds of classic records were recorded.
The Queen
Stephen Frears' movie about Queen Elizabeth II and her reaction to the death of Princess Diana 10 years ago offers an intimate portrait of a public woman with a very private life.
As well as an Oscar-favourite performance by Helen Mirren, The Queen features gorgeous scenes of the Scottish Highlands, where the Royal Family hides out from the press and public. Standing in for Balmoral Castle in the movie were Scotland's Blairquhan Castle and Culzean Castle, both of which offer accommodation to the public as well as visits to the gardens. And instead of hunting a stag, such as the one killed in the movie, you can adopt one at Culzean as part of the estate's conservation efforts.
The grounds, gardens and exhibitions of Balmoral, meanwhile, are open daily from April 1 until July 30. It is also possible to book cottages on the estate by the week.
As for the 775-room Buckingham Palace, where the Queen has her official London residence, the public is also allowed to visit (but not stay). State Rooms are open during parts of August and September. The rooms feature paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens, Vermeer and Poussin, examples of Sèvres and fine English and French furniture.
Letters from Iwo Jima
Director Clint Eastwood's film about Japanese soldiers defending the island of Iwo Jima from an overwhelming American invasion force was mostly shot in Iceland. The cave scenes were shot near Bakersfield, Calif., and other footage done at the Warner Bros. studios in nearby Burbank. The final shot of Mount Suribachi was one of the few scenes shot on the actual island. The only way to travel to the actual island is through a guided tour offered by Virginia-based Military Historical Tours.
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