BEFORE: Both "Silence" and "Hacksaw Ridge" received Oscar nominations last year, so I'm still playing catch-up, really. Of the nine films nominated for Best Picture of 2016, after watching "Hell or High Water" and "Hacksaw Ridge" this month, I've managed to see 6 of them. I've got copies of 2 of the others ("Fences" and "Hidden Figures"), which just leaves "Moonlight". I could watch the Academy screener tomorrow, but that doesn't seem sporting, I'll wait and find a way to legitimately link to it.
But it's time once again for nominations, the noms for 2017 were released today, and once again, the Academy and I just don't see eye-to-eye. I've seen ZERO of the films nominated for Best Picture, Best Director and also the four top acting categories. None of the animated features, either, since I skipped "Coco" and the others are relatively obscure. Outside of "Blade Runner 2049", "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" and "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" getting technical nominations, and "Logan" getting a nomination for Adapted Screenplay, I just don't have a dog in this fight, not yet. I've got access to a pile of Academy screeners, but by the time I make room for them in my countdown, I think the awards will already have been handed out. Such is the way of my process.
This is also the discrepancy I expect after naming "Thor: Ragnarok" and "GOTG2" my favorite films of last year.
Liam Neeson carries over from "Silence" to provide the voice of the titular Monster tonight.
THE PLOT: A boy seeks the help of a tree monster to cope with his mother's terminal illness.
AFTER: I'm back on kids at English prep schools, just a few days after "Like Minds". As bad as the public school system is in the U.S., it seems (from movies, anyway) that a lot more sinister things happen at British prep schools, from bullying right up to murder. I'm betting it has a lot to do with the tradition of "buggering" (look it up, I won't get into it here) which people turned a blind eye to for many years. Talk about abuse of power, once the Hollywood perv scandals are dealt with, it's time to look into the "honored traditions" taking place at British prep schools.
But let's focus on what's depicted in this film about young Conor O'Malley. He is the victim of bullying, probably because he looks a bit odd - like a young Bill Hader in a boy's body. And kids will focus on any unusual features and bully anyone who seems different or odd to them. Plus Conor's mother is sick, so he's forced to spend time at his grandmother's house, and then his errant father returns from L.A. for a visit. So a lot of things are not going well, and he's having a recurring nightmare about his mother in a cemetery, where the chapel starts to collapse and the ground opens up, and he's holding on to his mother, who's dangling over the abyss.
Conor's got the imagination of an artist, though, so he envisions being visited by a giant tree monster, who offers to tell him stories in exchange for ultimately hearing his "truth". And while the first 2 stories are ambiguous fairy-tales, the third inspires him to stand up to his bullies and fight back. But is this the right message? Earlier this week the debate around "Hacksaw Ridge" concerned one man's right to champion non-violence, and the message here seems to be that violence is sometimes the correct response. But again, is that the right message for a kid going through a tough time?
I was bullied in grade school, because I was the chubby kid in class, so I know a bit about this. I didn't really see myself fighting back, so I learned to either outwit my tormentors, or buy them off with something they needed (answers to the next test, or in one case, I bought a kid's entire Star Wars comic-book collection). Conor here fights back physically and puts his bully in the hospital - and for some unclear reason, he does NOT get punished for that. That's 100% the wrong message to send out to today's kids. Even a kid who has a sick mother has to take responsibility for his actions, if he broke school rules or caused another kid to be injured.
Conor also spends time at his grandmother's house, where she's got a delicate grandfather clock and a number of other fragile collectables. After a dream sequence where he and the Monster are breaking windows and tearing down an imaginary house, we see that Conor has not only broken the clock, but trashed the entire room. And once AGAIN, receives no punishment for his actions. If I were his grandmother, I'd find a way to punish this kid for destroying a room full of valuables, not necessarily by hitting him, because that would be wrong, but punishment in some fashion is required - sick mother or no sick mother.
Because here's the thing about kids, which a lot of parents today seem to have forgotten - they're resilient creatures, and they don't need as much protection as you might think. You may want to protect them from every bad thing and emotion that they're likely to encounter, but then you'd be doing them a disservice - because when the bad feelings inevitably come, those over-protected kids won't be equipped to handle them, and they'll break down. Being bullied, as bad as it was, allowed me to build up some emotional scar tissue, so that if anyone insults me now, I can just brush it off. I don't collapse into a fetal position and rock back and forth. Negative emotions are like germs, kids need to be exposed to small doses so that they'll build up an immunity of sorts.
Too many participation trophies creates a false sense of self-worth, while dealing with loss builds character. Kids have to be allowed to fail, because we all learn more from our mistakes than we do from our successes. It's OK to get a bad grade or to learn that not every kid in class likes you, because those experiences all contain valuable lessons that will be carried forward into adulthood. And along with that comes the realization that parents are people, and therefore mortal. Whenever I see a movie where a parent says to a child, "I'll always look out for you," I think that nobody should make that claim, because they could be in an accident next week, and therefore they're lying to their kid.
In the end, I'm not sure if I'd be the best father ever or the worst, but I think it's probably one or the other.
Also starring Lewis MacDougall (last seen in "Pan"), Felicity Jones (last seen in "Inferno"), Sigourney Weaver (last seen in "The Year of Living Dangerously"), Toby Kebbell (last heard in "Warcraft"), James Melville, Geraldine Chaplin (last seen in "Nashville").
RATING: 4 out of 10 family photos
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