Third place:
Ryan Coogler, Creed [79 points / 14 votes]
Second place:
Todd Haynes, Carol [144 points / 22 votes]
And the Muriel Award goes to…
George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road [276 points / 38 votes]
“A few weeks ago, I was talking with someone about the Oscar nominees, and I said that I was rooting for Mad Max: Fury Road to win Best Picture. I got a curious look in response. ‘Really? But that’s just an action movie!’ Setting aside the inherent genre snobbery behind that statement (dismissing this as just an action movie is like saying the Beatles were "just a rock band"), it’s pretty clear to anyone who actually watches Mad Max: Fury Road that there’s a whole lot more going on under the hood than is apparent at first glance.
“The element that has received the most attention is, of course, the way the film places its female characters front and center. Sure, Max Rockatansky is the title character, but the real hero of the movie is Furiosa (played with impressive fierceness by Charlize Theron). It’s Furiosa’s actions and choices that drive the story – her decision to escape the oppressive patriarchy and to rescue the kept women/glorified broodmares of bad mad Immortan Joe, her quest for the Green Place with its army of staunch female warriors, and finally her race back to the Citadel to liberate its oppressed subjects. Time and again, women are shown to be the true heroes of Fury Road’s dystopian future, and the male characters only shown to be capable of similar heroism once they accept the females as equals and sisters-in-arms.
“On the other side of the coin is the patriarchy itself. Immortan Joe is a character in the classic tradition of real-world dictators and war lords who rule by fear, subjugation, and by cultivating a cult of personality. The most obvious example of this is his army of ‘War Boys,’ comprised of downtrodden teenagers-turned-zealots who find empowerment in the promise of dying gloriously for their beloved leader (the film never actually tells us how many virgins await the War Boys in the afterlife). When Immortan Joe’s army takes to the road, they’re a frightening spectacle of unchecked testosterone run amok, accompanied by the Doof, a preening figure who rides on a towering vehicle piled high with amps while playing cock rock on an electric guitar that shoots flames suggestively out of the neck. Subtle it ain’t. Indelible it most certainly is.
“Now, you may have noticed that even though I’m writing up our Best Direction winner, I have yet to mention director George Miller. But then, everything that's great about Fury Road comes back to Miller and his vision. This is one of the most formidable acts of cinematic world-building I’ve seen in years – out of the 2015 releases, I’d say only How to Be a God even comes close – which to me is a credit to how deeply Miller has thought out the film down to its darkest and most remote corners. A lot of that is no doubt due to how long the film was in development. I remember more than a decade ago when the idea was first floated online by Miller that Mel Gibson might be too old to play the title role again, and that he might be replaced by (sniff) Heath Ledger. And yet, despite being in the works for so long, the film feels very much of the moment, both in terms of its themes and in its boundary-pushing filmmaking.
“So okay then, it’s not just an action movie after all. In fact, Fury Road represents perhaps the most incendiary attempt in years by a Hollywood movie to push cinematic vocabulary in new and exciting directions. That said, it really is a bloody great action movie. The stunts! The effects! The vehicular mayhem! VROOM! SMASH! BOOM! It’s so effective on a pure reptile-brain level, that I was tempted to punch the air and yell out ‘yesssssss!!’ at least half a dozen times the first time I saw it. And you know what? There’s honor in that too. A big, splashy Hollywood movie that gets my inner thirteen-year-old excited while providing plenty of fodder for my adult brain? That’s practically a miracle. From the bottom of my (shiny and chrome) heart - thanks for the awesome ride, George Miller.” ~ Paul Clark
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