sosolidshoe said:
Sorry chief but, to me, the story of a man compelled against his will to take a leadership position out of a sense of duty, and overcoming great personal issues to do so, is a more human and emotive story than a few arsehole businessmen and college students having a wank over a pile of money and congratulating themselves on how amazing they are, which is what TSN amounted to.
Why is it that any film which does well in Oscar nominations, but isn't a rank outsider in terms of genre, or full of unknown actors, is treated as if that fact alone has an impact on how good it is? Load of hipster bollocks, if you ask me
RE: "Oscar Bait" - if you haven't yet watched this, watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbhrz1-4hN4
As regards the specific films in question... Naturally, it can't be seriously argued that the story in TKS - monarchs, royal sucession, World War II, overcoming disability, etc - is on it's face more interesting, human and even "important" than TSN's story of a handful of Harvard brats suing eachother over who invented what part of a website. But, to borrow a quote from Roger Ebert:
Movies are not about what they are about but HOW they are about it. It's "in the telling," in other words.
Speaking only for myself, I thought TKS was a perfectly adequate movie; but also a decidedly unambitious and "boilerplate" one. No, not everything needs to reinvent the wheel - but by the same token not every wheel that comes off the assembly line is getting displayed in the Smithsonian. From the moment I first became aware of the film (and I mean prior to seeing even a trailer) I already knew more-or-less the exact movie to expect: Firth all clipped and mannered, Rush "zany" with private pain, constant hammering on British! Class! Differences!, the obligatory "ho-ho! That's so funny now!" jabs at hilariously-incorrect old-time medical advice, comic-relief "funny therapy" sequence (
"LOLZ! He is cursing awkwardly!") the mandatory family structure (stern disapproving dad, cool-yet-callous brother, quietly-strong wife, unknowingly-insightful moppet children, etc) the poor-guy-oversteps/rich-guy-overreacts "breakup" scene,
"b-b-but y-your majesty... he is... A POOR!" "Silence! He is my bestest buddy, class differences be damned!", the autumnal/washed-out contrasting color palette cinematography; right down to the impressively pretzel the narrative twists itself into in order to add dramatic-heft by making it seem as though "The Speech" is
Bertie Versus Hitler: SHOWDOWN!!!" There's not really a single moment in it that breaks out of Historical Biopic 101. Again, IMHO.
On the flipside, TSN uses a slew of unexpected and/or unconventional narrative and visual techniques in order to tell it's story. The multi-layered lawsuit-upon-lawsuit flashback-structure most obviously; but also the editing, composition of scenes and even use of color. Most "techie" stories use heavy-lighting and "digital-looking" colors; this one goes for deep shadows and rich, aged tones to convey the "bigness" of what's actually going on - it's a movie about making a website that "looks" like a movie about building a Mafia Empire. Or the sequence with the boat race, using the "miniaturization-focus" camera trick to emphasize the idea of the "Old Money World" of the Winklevoss Twins being reduced in the face of the enroaching "New Money World" represented by Zuckerberg etc. There's more narrative/visual invention in the way Fincher executes the "simple" first-act scene of Jesse Eisenberg copy-pasting JPGs into Facesmash than there is in almost any of the other nominated films this year. For me, that's the difference.
