One of the most popular acting schools in Hollywood is the Method. Popularized in the 1950s, the Method is a way of naturally embodying a role, becoming the person on screen rather than acting like a person. Marlon Brando is often associated with Method performance, and his work in On the Waterfront (1954) won him his first Oscar for Best Actor. But what was it about Brando’s performance that captivated audiences, critics and his fellow filmmakers? Why is his performance still recognized as great to this day? And what can be gleaned from the screen to demonstrate the Method in action?

While Brando was not a student of the prestigious Actors’ Studio, he is still an exemplar of the ideas behind the Method and how they changed film acting for years to come. What distinguished Marlon Brando as a screen actor in On the Waterfront is his training and preparation behind the scenes that led to a unique performance that only he could have given.

On the Waterfront tells the story of a community of dock workers under the thumb of a local crime lord, Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb). The workers play “deaf and dumb” when questioned about events related to Friendly’s more unsavory business. Brando plays Terry Malloy, a dock worker and associate of Friendly’s thanks to his brother’s work for the organization. Terry’s actions lead to the death of a character in the film’s opening, and he struggles emotionally with this throughout the film, especially when he begins spending time with the dead man’s sister.

It’s difficult to watch a performance to see exactly what effect the Method has had on an actor, as every actor’s goal is to fit naturally into the role they are portraying. What is different between the Method and more classical performance techniques is the source of the actor’s emotion, and how they embody the role. Classical performance is about becoming the character, using the experience of that character available within the source material; an “outside-in” approach that disregards the actor underneath in favor of what is required by the role. An actor playing Winston Churchill or Helen Keller would aim to recreate the actions, mannerisms, and tone of such an illustrious figure. The Method, popularized in the United States of America by Lee Strasberg, was more “inside-out”, using improvisation exercises and mental approaches inspired by psychotherapy. Affective memories might inspire an actor’s performance – when playing a scene in which a character is sad, the performer would actively conjure a sad memory that creates a feeling of sadness within the actor. It’s a more “real” way of reacting, by accessing actual emotional states that lead to the appearance of authentic feeling.

Marlon Brando’s style of Method did not come from Strasberg’s teachings, though. His success is attributed to Stella Adler who taught him to be relaxed and to separate himself from the character. “‘Drama depends on doing, not feeling,’ … [which] is to say that acting comes down to movement more than thought. … Thus her training included makeup, voice, mime, acrobatics, and the history of theater.” (Colombani, 10)

This led to a vast difference in performance for Brando across his filmography as he was able to transform into characters through physicality, tone, or makeup. James Naremore notes that his physicality as an actor is what made him stand out in 1950s Hollywood, calling his work a “deviation from the norms of classical rhetoric” with a slouch, mumble, and tendency towards gestures or actions that others might avoid like talking with a mouth full of food in One-Eyed Jacks (1961). (201) His style and training stands out in On the Waterfront, but exactly how is not obvious without that background knowledge.

Like with Vito Corleone in The Godfather, Brando brought his makeup training to the role in On the Waterfront. Terry has a distinct scar on his eyebrow, evidence of his former boxing career and a departure from Brando’s handsome, clean-cut look. Later in the film, Terry is brutally beaten by a group of gangsters. His face is covered in blood that Brando applied himself, and it makes the character distinct outside the age of Code-era Hollywood. The camera is put right in Terry’s face with him centered in the frame to give each of us the full extent of the violence, and Brando’s expression sells Terry’s pain with a mixture of anger, sadness, and desire to continue the fight. Terry’s bloodied walk from the pier is a powerful moment for his character – he staggers like a boxer resisting falling after a knockout blow, exhibiting Terry’s perseverance against the dark forces on the docks. The physical transformation from Brando to Terry to beaten Terry is made clear through the makeup, but it’s Brando’s action that is the real star of the show. 

The film presents a contrast within Terry that Brando plays to a tee. There’s the boxer – the tough, dumb guy at the mercy of those around him – and a sensitive young man who feels like a bum because his shot at success was taken from him. An early scene, in which Terry comes to see Johnny Friendly, demonstrates the former. He walks into Friendly’s bar, and Friendly greets him with some mimed boxing. Terry holds back because Friendly is his mob boss, but he gives a little bit of a pose to act as if he’s going along with it. He’s putting up a front and bringing his experience as a boxer into the stance he takes as Johnny approaches him. Friendly picks Terry up, and Terry walks off frame looking uncomfortable and shifting into a slouch, showing that Terry doesn’t like how their physical rapport recreates their power dynamic. There are layers to what Brando puts into Terry as he reacts to Johnny Friendly’s various actions, showing Terry’s background, feelings about the other characters, and how people act with multiple dimensions of thought. For Brando, acting is something we all do every day, and the question is how to express the different feelings someone has within a given situation because people are never just one thing.

Later on, Terry rescues Edie (Eva Marie Saint), the sister of the man whose death he feels responsible for, from a group of mobsters. He stands with his hands folded at his belt as he sees Edie off. A former dock worker recognizes the pair, and Terry gets physical with the man as he begins to talk about the dead man, a harsh switch from his non-threatening pose only moments before. Terry and Edie begin to chat about her brother and the convent she attends. Terry tells her not to be afraid of him, and one of the film’s most famous improvisations occurs when Terry retrieves Edie’s dropped glove. He picks up the glove, brushes dirt off of it, and places it on his hand while sitting on a swing set. It’s an image that demonstrates Terry’s innocence, his helpful, almost childlike nature that rests at his core. Terry is curious in their discourse, and Brando demonstrates this with his glances and inquisitive intonation. Terry has traded in the boxing gloves, a symbol of his tough front, for Edie’s glove, and the act of placing it on his own hand shows a desire for a more romantic self. It’s an embracing of the more traditionally “feminine” qualities of his character. It’s a brilliant moment that, when taken in concert with his mimed boxing and bloodied face, gives a full picture of the role of Terry. 

While many associate Marlon Brando with Strasberg’s approach of the internal brought to the forefront, his acting style is not so simply defined. His Method brings together many traditions that focus on losing yourself physically within a character’s mindset and expressing that internal self outward. Without Brando’s particular training and style of acting, Terry might have been played without so much nuance. It can be easy to fall into cliches with a dumb tough guy character, but Brando’s ability to show the nuances of Terry Malloy take him from a potential stereotype to a well-fleshed out character by way of performance. Even if it cannot be easily picked off the screen by a viewer, there is no doubt that Method acting comes through in the screen performances of Marlon Brando.

Bibliography
Colombani, Florence. Anatomy of an Actor: Marlon Brando. Translated by Lucy McNair and Brandon Hopkins, English translation, Phaidon Press Limited, 2013.Naremore, James. Acting in the Cinema. First edition, University of California Press, 1988.

An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It (2022)
Director: Lachlan Pendragon
Screenwriter: Lachlan Pendragon
Starring: Lachlan Pendragon, John Cavanagh, Michael Richard, Jamie Trotter

What a breath of fresh air this 11-minute short film is. What a joyful expression of artistry. An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It is 2023’s only stop motion nominee in the Animated Short category at the Oscars, and it tells of a disgruntled office employee suddenly realising that he’s a creation for a stop motion film. It’s form-shaping work, which you could say is appropriate for a stop motion production.

The opening shot of An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It is of a camera shooting the stop motion scenes, human hands playing at super speed in the background as we watch the stop motion in “cinema time”, real time, via the monitor. As the characters converse, go about their day, look out the window, we see hands just out of focus altering the characters for each frame. This is, of course, an interesting position to put us in, a fourth wall break in one of cinema’s most obviously constructed forms; why disguise the creation of the film itself in a medium that so purposefully appears constructed? It’s self-aware, it’s playful, and it illustrates actor, screenwriter, director, animator Lachlan Pendragon’s knowledge of his form and his subject.

The office scenes fronted by Pendragon himself as Neil, an employee on the brink of being fired due to bad performance, are slow, the dialogue almost monotone as if taken from the play book of fellow Oceanian Taika Waititi, the construct of a disgruntled employee searching for meaning in life being a self-aware take from Fight Club and The Matrix. The latter Matrix is perhaps the best bed fellow for this film, for after a short period in which Neil is confronted by dysfunctional green screen, then notices his seated co-worker doesn’t have a keyboard… or legs, we are thrust down the rabbit hole, Neil becoming a self-aware puppet, the animator’s hand like an evil force attempting to restrain his now sentient mind. It’s Neo unhooking from the Matrix, Alice falling down the rabbit hole, and in the case of this film it’s a stop motion creation falling down a hole in the set and into a pit of spare parts… each a replica part of his own face. It’s a fascinating idea illuminated by intelligence and a sense of humour, such a unique expression of creativity that it’s impossible not to sit wide-eyed and smiling.

Films like An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It are proof that ideas, that creativity, can still thrive even far away from the tried and tested formulas, the “ordinary” way of things. Creator Lachlan Pendragon is a 27-year-old film student from Brisbane, Australia. He had an exceptionally creative idea, he put it to screen, and he made it to the Oscars. What a story, and what a deserved achievement to cap it all off.

The movie industry can at times feel at odds with its own creators and exploitative of its own viewers, but films like this feel different. Cinema of the type that is An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It can restore balance, even restore faith. This great medium through which human history is told, politics and emotion unravelled and remoulded, can still cause the purest elation, celebrate big ideas from relatively unknown creators, change and evolve and push boundaries, just as it always has. Lachlan Pendragon’s film won’t make $2billion or earn a merchandising deal, but it will put a smile on your face, it will make you think about the form of cinema and the ways in which its constructs can be reshaped like little stop motion figures. For that reason, it’s enchanting, it’s wonderful, it’s unmissable.

Score: 24/24

You can watch An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It in full for free on Vimeo. More coverage of the Oscar-nominated short films can be found on our Short Film page.

Living (2022)
Director: Oliver Hermanus
Screenwriters: Kazuo Ishiguro
Starring: Bill Nighy, Alex Sharp, Aimee Lou Wood, Tom Burke

Touching one of the most revered films by one of the most revered directors to ever call ‘Action’ on a film set is always a tricky business. And when it’s Akira Kurosawa you’re remaking – specifically his 1952 film Ikiru – you had better hope that your film is damn good. Living (2022) attempts to do such a thing, transplanting post-war Japan for post-war Britain. It sees Bill Nighy take on the lead role of Mr Williams, an elderly civil servant mindlessly going through the motions, who goes on a search for a new meaning to life when he is dealt a cruel blow in the doctor’s office.

There has not been much change from the original film, which was released 70 years ago. Indeed, many shots and sequences, (including a shot of Mr Williams’ vacant seat framed centrally with his subordinates either side of the picture, a wipe montage sequence of a group of petitioning ladies going from department to department to be seen to with no luck, and the famous shot of our lonely wanderer on a child’s swing) are all lifted directly from the original. This is simply a British re-telling of the film, not an attempt to do anything radically new with the subject matter. It is almost identical, save for a slight modification of a few sequences, a condensing in runtime by about half an hour, and some fun experiments with film form with regards to its quality and some periods of black and white photography. The choice to present Living in a smaller aspect ratio of 1.48:1 keeps it contained and subdued, perhaps also reflecting the time period in which this aspect ratio was far more common.

What could be an incredibly run-of-the-mill adaptation still holds great power for numerous reasons. That the core story is moving by default, is the first. Secondly, Bill Nighy (nominated in the Actor in a Leading Role category at the 95th Oscars) is utterly astonishing. Simply portrayed, yet heartbreaking and incredibly moving, he is a delight in every frame that passes by. He’s perfectly suited to the role, and excels beyond imagination. The supporting cast of Aimee Lou Wood (‘Sex Education’), Tom Burke (The Souvenir), Alex Sharp (The Trial of the Chicago 7), and others, are also on point, and lend great support to the central pillar. The score from Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, who also composed for British independent films Rocks and Censor, is fabulous, the world of post-war Britain well realised with what is plainly a smaller budget, and the direction from South African Oliver Hermanus (Moffie) is simple and refined.

What more could one ask for? Well… perhaps the exclusion of a section of dialogue on a train three quarters of the way through; one which is so excruciatingly painful and on-the-nose – a literal explanation of the message of the film incorporating gag-worthy speeches – that even a five year old would wish to throw up. Such a beautifully nuanced film is almost completely derailed by what seems to be a lack of common sense from BAFTA-nominated screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro. Cut that dialogue, have it be told through subtext, and we’re bordering on as near flawless as we can get.

One must wish that this single exchange was left on the cutting room floor, though this disappointing sequence ultimately doesn’t detract from the rest of what is a well-constructed and interesting adaptation. Living, the 2022 period drama based on a story from 7 decades ago, is certainly a film one could go on living for.

Score: 19/24

Living is on digital 3 March and Blu-ray & DVD 13 March 2023.

My Year of Dicks (2022)
Director: Sara Gunnarsdóttir
Screenwriter: Pamela Ribon
Starring: Brie Tilton, Jackson Kelly, Klarissa Hernandez, Chris Elsebroek, Sterling Temple Howard, Mical Trejo, Sean Stack, Chris Kelman, Laura House, Pamela Ribon

My Year of Dicks is probably the 95th Academy Awards’ best film title. And it’s a film that presents exactly what it promises: a year of dicks. The person whose year it is, is screenwriter Pamela Ribon, adapting her own memoir “Notes to Boys (And Other Things I Shouldn’t Share in Public)”. Pamela was a teenager in the early 90s, and her tale is told across five distinct chapters. In each chapter is an encounter with a dick. Across the length of this 25-minute short film, this very important coming-of-age period for a 15-year-old girl becomes one of the most enchanting stories of the year; Ribon finding that very particular part of growing up that we can all relate to. From idea to construction, from animation to sound to voice acting, My Year of Dicks is magic.

Ribon is credited as creator as well as writer on this Animated Short nominee, the very honest and particular presentation justifying such a personal approach. Live-action footage recorded on a home video camera in 1991 is interspersed with each animated chapter as if title cards intended to remind us of the real human beneath the elation, the heartbreak, the fear, embarrassment and the confusion experienced during this presentation of sexual awakening. In this sense, My Year of Dicks is very much authored, though its uniquely personal presentation only enhances the universality of the experiences shared. Through Pamela Ribon’s own willingness to search the embarrassment of missed opportunities or making mountains out of mole hills, and the honesty of pursuing a sexual awakening as some kind of end point for childhood, it’s easy to look inward. More powerfully, it becomes easier to accept those parts of yourself that (by the time you see this film,) you might have buried.

There’s an energy to My Year of Dicks that is somewhat punk, but it’s the kindness this film spreads that makes for such an engaging and ultimately emotive experience. Boys are gross, yes, but this isn’t about them, it’s about Pam. Pam (Brie Tilton in a fantastic, youthful voice performance) is desperate to transition from what she has always known, she’s besotted by different boys at different times, she’s somewhat self-destructive, she’s unaware of how she’s putting herself in danger. She’s young. And that’s what people do when they’re young. My Year of Dicks is well aware of this. As an adult, it’s easy to look back through the cracks in your fingers and think ‘that was real dumb’, or to cringe at how stupidly you fell for some douchebag for no reason, but as a teenager you can’t help feeling overwhelmed in both good and bad ways, you’re naturally inclined to pursue new experiences, you’ve evolved to have new desires during this period and to not quite know how to handle them. It’s adolescence. My Year of Dicks presents that as well as any great teen movie, and does so in the acknowledgement of how alien and lost it can feel to be such an age. It does so with a coolness that you can never quite establish as a teen, as if the author herself is now the person that little Pam always wanted to be. And better yet, it’s as if cooler, older Pam is reassuring her younger self that little Pam is pretty damn cool regardless.

This is a woman’s story. One that makes a start on filling the gaps left by generations of women storytellers who were ushered into the margins as men took centre stage. Gross-out teen comedies from eras past will no doubt always have a place, but films like My Year of Dicks absolutely should too. Presenting the other side of the objectification that cis heterosexual boys place on girls should be considered vital to our cultural understanding of ourselves, and seeing girls and women experiencing sex and love in an abundance of ways can only help to normalise those life experiences that remain stigmatised to so many.

My Year of Dicks leads with empathy and love first-and-foremost, earning powerful women-forward messaging by its very existence. The punk attitude that underpins everything, that tells us that there’s no limit to how grossly embarrassing these moments can get, that teaches us to love ourselves regardless, is in itself revolutionary. The animation, told in a variety of styles and animated by just a handful of people, is engaging, emotive, at times so creative and different that you can’t help but to smile, the supporting cast is brilliantly accurate to the age they’re playing, and the sound design and score are pitch perfect.

Short films don’t get any more personal than My Year of Dicks, a film so loving, touching, relevant to our times and to our pasts, that it should be added to school curriculums. We could all do with looking at ourselves a little more kindly, and hopefully My Year of Dicks encourages you to do that.

Score: 24/24

You can watch My Year of Dicks in full for free on Vimeo. More coverage of the Oscar-nominated short films can be found on our Short Film page.

True, since 1947, “World Cinema” has had its own category, Best International Feature, that has allowed for such films as Rashomon, Fanny and Alexander and The Lives of Others to have their time in the spotlight, but this arguably also ghettoises countless nationalities and cultures and their many and varied works of visual art.

14 films in languages other than English have been nominated for Best Picture, coming from counties as diverse as Sweden, Mexico, Italy, Japan and even the USA (from different cultural perspectives of course), but how do they compare? Most of these are great, but how many should have probably beaten the English-language winner in their respective years? We at The Film Magazine have done the hard work for you with this Oscars edition of Ranked: Every Non-English Language Best Picture Nominee Ranked.

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14. Life is Beautiful (1997)

Receiving similar criticism for trivialising the rise of fascism in the 1930s as Jojo Rabbit did almost 20 years later, Life is Beautiful begins as a joyous, saccharine story full of goofy hijinks then undergoes a jarring but appropriately dark transformation at the halfway point when the setting shifts to a concentration camp.

Writer-director-star Roberto Benigni’s recognition for his performance as an impish, dedicated father makes him one of only two performers to win the top acting prize not speaking English (another disappointing Academy trend). This is well-deserved as it is Benigni’s manic, mischievous and ceaselessly positive Guido that keeps the film’s heart beating and says so much behind his unwavering forced smile.

It’s debatable whether or not the comedy in juxtaposition with the events of the very bleak second half of the film really meshes, or whether Guido turning his family’s concentration camp internment into a game for the benefit of his son is entirely believable to the extent he gets away with it, but you can’t deny the film’s honest soul.

Shakespeare in Love won Best Picture this year, because the Academy likes a crowd-pleasing costume drama.

13. All Quiet on the Western Front (2022)

All Quiet on the Western Front Review

Germany’s first Best Picture nominee re-adapts a classic work of literature and re-examines a period of historical national trauma with a modern eye, executing its visceral spectacle with impressive technical gloss.

Edward Berger’s film never softens the blow of the immediate, brutal imagery of warfare. And, coupled with a pounding, oppressive industrial score from Volter Bertelmann, and a talented young cast led by Felix Kammerer who we follow from bright-eyed schoolboys to shells of men scrabbling for survival in the WWI trenches, you will be left reeling.

War films have always been popular with the Academy and inevitably you do find yourself comparing this to the original Hollywood adaptation that was awarded Best Picture. The new film doesn’t hit any harder than Lewis Milestone’s by showing more, and its new final act that neither sticks to the novel ending or history, really, in the end lacks some of the simple power that it should have.

Recommended for you: 2023 Oscars Best Picture Nominees Ranked

12. Letters from Iwo Jima (2006)

Not eligible for Best International Feature due to its American production, Clint Eastwood’s film portrays Japanese soldiers defending the island of Iwo Jima at the end of WWII, the flip side of which had already been depicted in Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers in the same year.

This is another mournful, desaturated analysis of war. Signs of Japan’s slow but inevitable defeat keep creeping in on the periphery before becoming inescapable. Ken Watanabe’s General Kuribayashi (a real historical figure whose writing inspired the film) is a traditionalist, an old-fashioned lead-from-the-front soldier born in the wrong century, and Watanabe’s performance is dignified and respectful.

After a fairly slow build, about 45 minutes in all hell breaks loose in some flawlessly executed, unflinchingly brutal battles before each beleaguered soldier’s past experiences are fleshed out.

The Departed ended up winning this year, because the Academy realised in a panic that Scorsese didn’t have an Oscar yet.

The Martha Mitchell Effect (2022)
Directors: Diane Alvergue, Debra McClutchy

Have you ever heard of the Martha Mitchell Effect? You probably should have. It’s the term used when a person’s reality is professionally labelled as delusional and later revealed to be true. Martha Mitchell was the wife of John N. Mitchell, the United States Attorney General during the republican terms of Richard Nixon. John N. Mitchell served between 1969 and 1972, and sandwiched his tenure with the role of Nixon campaign manager for each of his presidential terms. He was arrested and imprisoned for his involvement in the Watergate scandal that forced Nixon into resignation and labelled the president a disgrace. Martha Mitchell was telling the press of the party’s wrongdoings before it ever got out. They – the republican party of the time, including her husband and the president of the United States – imprisoned Martha Mitchell, drugged her, and committed to a smear campaign aimed at silencing her. She was proven right. The republican party under Richard Nixon was corrupt. Martha Mitchell is, to this day, arguably the most well-known person to have been proven to have suffered gaslighting by her own nation’s government.

It’s a story that is more than fifty years old, but it feels painfully relevant to the corruption of our times and the dirty tricks played in big-league politics to this day. You can probably think of people who’ve been labelled as insane, over-zealous, or completely unreliable, seemingly out of nowhere after years of being indulged and even promoted. Martha Mitchell was this exact person. She was a lobbyist for the republican party, entrusted with earning the votes of women and for getting the right press onto Nixon’s side. She was a little eccentric, sure, but charismatic and self-assured in a way that translated to the housewives of the era and made her a fascinating celebrity for her time.

What she suffered was horrifying and tragic, but directors Diane Alvergue and Debra McClutchy don’t commit to the gruesome realities that she suffered personally. Instead, they do what all good documentarians must: they contextualise her horrors in the time, the politics, and the gendered oppression that made such abuse possible, and teach us a lesson on one of the contemporary era’s most public victims of a now well-known issue, gaslighting.

The Martha Mitchell Effect seems to be the result of hours and hours of work from teams of people. There are the big, typical documentary selections such as television interviews, behind-the-scenes footage from campaign videographers, and the like. But there is also footage of house parties, moments in the oval office, paparazzi-style recordings of Martha on the streets or just leaving her apartment block. Much of the film is told through this footage, the rest told through the voiceovers of well-known and heavily involved individuals. The way these more recently recorded voiceovers are introduced is nothing short of astonishing, particular party campaigners and members of the press found among the masses of people in the archival footage and presented to us as proof of each person’s credentials. It must have been a monumental task to find them.

As with any political documentary, criticism of the agenda of the filmmakers themselves can be levelled. In the case of The Martha Mitchell Effect, such criticism can be tied to how the film overlooks some of Mitchell’s more problematic political stances, glancing an eye at them to prove her association to the republican party of the time, but forgetting about their negative impact and spreading of hatred in favour of painting a more positive picture of this former public figure, that (in the opinions of the filmmakers) being a hero for our times.

At 40 minutes, it’s not like The Martha Mitchell Effect gets distracted in its efforts to reach the goal of re-evaluating one of the most influential women in mainstream American politics of the era. It does so with great effect, establishing her trauma and suffering as a vehicle through which to better evaluate gendered oppression, and presenting her track from party campaigner to part-party whistleblower as one of the great American stories of being faithful not to parties and people but to the nation itself. Martha Mitchell is, in The Martha Mitchell Effect, the ultimate American patriot.

Films like this will always be fascinating. Their focus on the elements of stories not often considered important enough for filmmakers from eras past make them invaluable additions to our society’s re-evaluation of itself, of our understanding of the machinations of our world. The Martha Mitchell Effect is not all-encompassing, but it reaches its goal and establishes its intentions with aplomb.

Score: 15/24

You can watch The Martha Mitchell Effect on Netflix. More coverage of the Oscar-nominated short films can be found on our Short Film page.

The Flying Sailor (2022)
Directors: Amanda Forbis, Wendy Tilby
Screenwriters: Amanda Forbis, Wendy Tilby

6 December 1917. Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Two ships collide in the harbour, causing the largest accidental explosion in history. A man, a sailor, is blown skyward from the deck of his British cargo steamer. He lands 4 kilometres away, stark naked but alive. This is his story.

2023 Oscars Animated Short nominee The Flying Sailor is one of the shortest films nominated across the 95th Academy Awards. At just 8 minutes, one of which is taken up by the credits, the abruptness of this project is akin to to the explosion itself. But this isn’t a blunt-force dramatisation of extreme impact and epic-scale suffering, it’s more philosophical than that. Exactly what happens during such an event – the pain, the trauma, the fear, but also an entire life being remembered – is evaluated and put to screen, childhood memories interspersed with the deep reds of bloody impact and the somewhat off-kilter comedy that comes from a naked animated man propelling through the air.

It’s not exactly funny, The Flying Sailor, but it is certainly tongue-in-cheek with regard to certain elements. The human body shouldn’t be a laughing matter, but the manner in which this particular creation with caricatured proportions rotates through the air, penis on show, against the backdrop of billowing smoke and flying objects (including a comically placed fish), cigarette in mouth, is amusing. It’s fitting, too, for a story as almost unbelievable as this one – who’d have thought a man could survive such an event? That he’d be so cruelly stripped naked during his long-distance propulsion?

Equally as memorable, but certainly more poignant, are the sequences in which the flying man sees his life flash before his eyes. Played to a timeless and beautiful piano-led orchestral score from David Christensen, these moments are given the shimmer of old 8mm video tape projected onto a wall, memories of ships and waves and women and fights (some of which are shown in live-action) propelling the poor sailor towards an otherworldly experience. This experience, in which he flies directly towards the sun, takes a different form of animation, a minimalist one, with the flying man reduced to a pink ball as if returning to the source of his own creation in a manner not too dissimilar to Terrence Malick’s existential universe sequence in The Tree of Life, the dust of the universe flinging him back as if re-establishing life itself, the score raging like a classic Disney animation, the man bluntly re-entering consciousness as a new being touched by whatever force it is that binds us all.

It’s all so beautifully done. The score is decisive, impactful, pointed. The animation is a 2D and 3D amalgamation that creates an off-kilter look, helping to smuggle the deeper meanings of the piece into your mind through its comedic sensibilities. What it has to say is more impactful than you might expect, especially for a film without dialogue and no particular reliance upon ordinary presentations of success and failure.

The Flying Sailor is one of those animated shorts that you can engage with for just a short while, giggle at and think about, then forget about later. But if you do stop to think a little more about this little story, you’ll come to recognise the intricacy of what filmmakers Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby have constructed, and see the epic scale of the monumental story beneath its short run-time and basic structure.

Score: 16/24

You can watch The Flying Sailor in full on YouTube courtesy of The New Yorker.

More Oscar-nominated short film coverage can be found on our Short Films page.

Before the Australian-born director achieved his swell success as an auteur, he starred alongside Judy Davis in Winter of Our Dreams (1981), a low-budget Australian drama. With his paycheck, he set up a production enterprise, The Bond Theatre Company, with Nellee Hooper and Gabrielle Mason. After a few years of success in theatre, Luhrmann went on to create some of cinema’s most extravagant films which have won countless BAFTAs and Academy Awards. 

At the apex of Luhrmann’s filmography is a sense of all-encompassing immersion. In many of his films, it does not feel like a ‘movie’, it feels like an experience.

In this edition of Ranked, we at The Film Magazine are comparing and contrasting the six feature directorial efforts of this great and influential filmmaker to judge which films are the most impactful, important, artistically expressive, culturally observant and critically beloved, for this: the Baz Luhrmann Films Ranked.

Follow @thefilmagazine on Twitter.

6. The Great Gatsby (2013)

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby” (1925) is a grandiose tale of love, passion, and lingering devotion. It’s also about classism, gender, and race. Above all, it is considered to be a brutal and pessimistic take on the American Dream. Many adaptions have been made over time in every sector, but none have achieved the same romantic yet sardonic tone that Luhrmann achieved with his take on the classic book. 

The film is dripping in a whimsical light, with every scene seeming to sparkle with luxury, highlighting the social divide seen throughout its original source. Quite a lot of the narrative falls upon the mysterious Jay Gatsby (Leonardo DiCaprio), a wealthy tycoon whose lavish soirees are at the focal point of Luhrmann’s attention. Gatsby’s manor is adorned with diamonds, coupe champagne glasses, and an ambitious score that contrasts against the roaring 1920s aesthetic. As it will be revealed, Luhrmann revels in the modernisation of bygone eras, remixing vintage with a latter-day style. The film dresses the party scenes (as well as a multitude of other sequences) with incredibly high-definition camerawork, presenting the most stunning wide shots before swiftly transforming the frame with vibrant energy, making use of the ‘dolly’ angle’s flexibility.

However, there are a few setbacks that fail to make The Great Gatsby Luhrmann’s greatest cinematic achievement. The film has an awful lot of style, but its substance lacks in comparison to Luhrmann’s other work. The narrative is rife with theology, on top of its already heavy love story – it’s rather a lot to digest. When combining the magnitude of the imagery with the extensive plot, it can be hard to fully embrace every single detail. It tests the patience of fans of the original novel while not being inviting enough for more casual audiences, proving that a heap of flair isn’t all that is needed when adapting an important piece of work.

5. Australia (2008)

Baz Luhrmann’s Australia made a near clean sweep at awards seasons, with many praising the stunning outback landscapes captured on film, bringing a sense of filmic euphoria to the eyes. Lying underneath the glimmer of striking scenery are some truly great performances by Aussie royalty, Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman, who hit every mark with such grace and passion. Yet when it comes to Australia’s narrative, something dark lurks, haunting the screen with a harsh truth. 

The film delves into political dynamics, with Luhrmann dipping into themes such as colonisation, war and sacrifice. Whilst Luhrmann’s work thrives in its garishness and enchanting aesthetics, Australia proves that his work is far from shallow. The film reveals harsh truths that are not easy to come to terms with. And rightly so. Luhrmann unveils the abhorrently cruel reality that Aboriginals were forced to live within, with much of the film focusing on Nullah (Brandon Walters), a young boy with an Aboriginal mother and a white father. During the film’s time and setting, part-white Aboriginal youth were captured by the authorities to spiritually rid their ethnic heritage. The disgusting practice was only abolished in the early 1970s.

The 2hr 45min runtime may test the patience of some, but Australia is a confronting watch that digs right into its emotional tone to provoke, alert, and ultimately fascinate. 

Recommended for you: 10 Films from the Past 10 Years To Teach You About White Privilege

When the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature was introduced in 2002, it didn’t take long for the Oscars to recognize the painstaking, innovative craftsmanship of stop-motion animators with 16 nominations and 1 win. The stories these films have have told range from the silly and whimsical to the thought-provoking and moving, each release competing year-on-year with the best of Pixar, Disney, and DreamWorks. Nominations are led by established stop motion studios, Aardman Animations and Laika, as well as respected auteurs like Tim Burton and Wes Anderson. But in 2023, Guillermo del Toro, an Oscar winner and newcomer to the genre, and independent filmmaker Dean Fleischer Camp have been honoured with nominations in the category for the first time.

In this edition of Ranked from The Film Magazine, we’ll explore all 17 stop motion films that have been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. These movies cover a range of themes and genre hybrids ,from quirky comedies or heart-wrenching dramas to horror, sci-fi, and adventure. We’ll consider how the filmmakers use the creative animation style and technique to develop three-dimensional characters and impactful narratives (or fail to do so). These are the Stop Motion Animated Feature Oscar Nominees Ranked.

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17. A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (2019)

A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon Review

Shaun the Sheep’s second feature film from Aardman is as amusing and charming as ever, but with a stale story and predictable gag-based humour, it’s not exactly Oscar-worthy.

Our brave, fluffy hero (Justin Fletcher) and his rambunctious flock encounter an adorable alien, Lu-la (Amalia Vitale), whose spaceship has gotten lost in our galaxy and crashed near Mossy Bottom Farm. Shaun and his gang must help Lu-la return home before she falls into the clutches of the menacing Ministry for Alien Detection. This entertaining but unoriginal plot borrows much of its narrative motivation from similar alien encounter films like Steven Spielberg’s E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, only with less maturity, creativity, and heart.

Farmageddon features Aardman’s trademark plasticine design with a cast of cartoonish and emotionally expressive characters. Through largely silent gags reminiscent of beloved television and film franchise Mr. Bean, Shaun and Lu-la get into trouble as they hijack large farm equipment and ransack a supermarket. It’s all very cute, but lacks the narrative thrust, emotional depth, and character development of the other nominees. This story may have been better left to Shaun’s usual home on the small screen.

16. Missing Link (2019)

From acclaimed stop-motion studio Laika, this adventure film is more cheery and colourful than the studio’s usual output but falls flat with unrelatable characters and boring dialogue.

Sir Lionel Frost (Hugh Jackman), an explorer and firm believer in mythical creatures, discovers a Sasquatch that he dubs ‘Mr. Link’ (Zack Galifianakis). In exchange for physical proof of the creature’s existence, he agrees to help Mr. Link reunite with his cousins, the Yetis. With the help of Frost’s former lover, Adelina (Zoë Saldaña), the mismatched pair face many dangers as they venture from the United States to the Himalayas. Missing Link won the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature Film, but it lost the Oscar to Toy Story 4 and, according to Anthony D’Alessandro at Deadline Hollywood, it also lost $100million at the box office.

Combining traditional real-world stop motion with CGI animation, the film delivers truly jaw-dropping visuals, especially in its treatment of notoriously difficult materials like water and hair. As a result, however, it’s missing the crafty, imperfect quality that signals the innovative, time-consuming nature of the medium. Furthermore, the story is more light-hearted than the studio’s previous releases, thus carrying less weight than the others as the characters frequently meander around aimless dialogue that distracts from the main plot trajectory.

Recommended for you: Laika Animation: Meditations on Alienation and Death… for Kids!

15. The Boxtrolls (2014)

Another swing and a miss from Laika, The Boxtrolls might give you nightmares with its unsettling design, grim themes, and unlikable characters.

In the fictional city of Cheesebridge, a community of trolls donning cardboard boxes and living under the streets is accused of stealing a baby boy in the night. Authoritarian pest exterminator, Archibald Snatcher (Ben Kingsley), is tasked with finding the child and eliminating the Boxtrolls. All grown up, the boy, Eggs (Isaac Hempstead Wright), and the mayor’s haughty daughter, Winnie (Elle Fanning), must prove the trolls’ innocence and save their lives.

Though the story sounds straightforward, the characters’ goals and motivations are frequently muddled and the details of the fictional setting are confusing. Snatcher is a ‘Red Hat’ who wants to become a ‘White Hat,’ representing power and prestige in the town, and though it’s clear that Snatcher lacks those qualities, it’s unclear exactly what being a ‘Red Hat’ means. The villain is also unnecessarily dark and grotesque as he forces the Boxtrolls to work in a prison camp and has a disgusting allergic reaction to cheese. What the film lacks in narrative, however, it makes up for in its scale, technique, and whimsical steampunk production design, complete with a fire-breathing, walking machine that terrorizes the town.

The Quiet Girl / An Cailín Ciúin (2022)
Director: Colm Bairéad
Screenwriter: Colm Bairéad
Starring: Catherine Clinch, Carrie Crowley, Andrew Bennett, Kate Nic Chonaonaigh, Michael Patric, Joan Sheehy

Unassuming as it is, after a string of worldwide accolades including 18 nominations at the Irish Film & Television Awards, The Quiet Girl (An Cailín Ciúin) became the first Irish Oscar nominee for Best International Feature Film. This is a remarkable, intimate, domestic portrait very firmly rooted in its time and place, and pleasingly only seems to be gaining more traction in far-flung territories as time passes.

Set in the 1980s in rural Ireland, Colm Bairéad’s film adapting Claire Keegan’s short story “Foster” follows introverted nine-year-old “wanderer” Cáit (Catherine Clinch in an astonishing debut). Cáit is usually an afterthought in her large family, and with her mother heavily pregnant and her father unable to provide for all the children, she is sent to live on her aunt’s idyllic farm in the country, seemingly just to be out of sight and out of mind for the summer. While there, Cáit discovers what true familial affection and fulfilment in life can really be.

The first and last thing we hear in the film is birdsong and the wind through the trees. These sounds; signs of a more peaceful existence and a tactile connection with nature are heightened throughout The Quiet Girl, becoming more dominant on the soundtrack as Cáit becomes more comfortable with her new surroundings. Our young protagonist then emerges from lying in long grass in solitude, and is forced back to observing the noisy and hectic world of her tough family life and school days passing her by.

In a world where languages with thousands of years of history can die out without widespread everyday use (less than 40% of Ireland’s population reportedly could speak Irish in 2016), prominent works of art built around them are nothing less than essential. One wonders if conversations with financiers ever happened suggesting the film be made in English for the sake of more mainstream accessibility in the US, but nothing could make this story feel more authentic than having it be predominantly told in Ireland’s ancient mother tongue.

Have Cáit’s mother (Kate Nic Chonaonaigh) and father (Michael Patric) always been unfit, unloving parents towards her or can they just not handle the pressure of keeping a big family fed and clothed at this time in their lives? They are living hand-to-mouth and don’t appear content in their relationship. Eibhlín (Carrie Crowley) and Seán (Andrew Bennett) can give Cáit all the care and attention she needs (“All you needed was some minding”), but they are also far more comfortably off than Cáit’s parents, would happily support their relatives in any way they would were they not so proud, and have boundless love to spare since the tragic loss of their own son.

This may be a small-scaled and simple story, but that’s misleading in regards to the film’s humanist, spiritual power and its emotional intelligence. Not everyone is cut out to be a good mother or father: some are born to it but have their chance at being a parent cruelly snatched away, and some adults cause a great deal of hurt and upset to children without giving enough thought to what they do and don’t say. In a memorable example of this, a nosy neighbour (Joan Sheehy) walks Cáit home from a wake and just through her incessant gossiping insensitively spills open traumatic family secrets, upsetting the peaceful equilibrium of Cáit’s new home life in the process. 

Every frame from cinematographer Kate McCullough is a light-dappled painting and there are some beautiful, unassuming moments of wisdom in the naturalistic dialogue, but the biggest emotional punches often come in near-silence. A frosty relationship taking a turn for the better through a wordless biscuit transaction; the camera close in on Catherine Clinch’s face as she registers true happiness for the first time; the satisfaction and security in daily routines and rituals; having her hair gently brushed or being bathed and feeling the warmth of unconditional love.

Appropriately given the film’s English title, dialogue is sparing, yet one small and unshowy dialogue scene or display of quiet affection between Cáit and her uncle Seán packs such a powerful punch it stands in for any amount of forced third-act jeopardy a storyteller might contrive. Composer Stephen Rennicks, regular collaborator with Lenny Abrahamson on films like Room, also provides one of the most simply emotive string-heavy scores of recent times ensuring that if the performances and imagery haven’t quite reduced you to bittersweet tears yet, a few delicate notes of his music is all-but guaranteed to bring on the waterworks. 

Every family in the world faces unique trials, and naturally quiet people in particular can suffer the most for not being able to speak up about what they are not receiving and are sorely in need of. This isn’t a fairy tale but a snapshot of real life,  and as such not everything will be neatly resolved by the end. As Uncle Seán so memorably puts it, “Many’s the person missed the opportunity to say nothing and lost much because of it,” and those are words to truly live by. The Quiet Girl has so much going on behind its eyes, and like the best poetry evokes universal expressions of love with a fragile tenderness and great beauty. 

Score: 23/24