Formal Film Study: Academy Award-nominated films of Alexander Payne

Synopses of the films: http://fandan.co/1coHo5Z (Nebraska)

http://fandan.co/1gcO7PR (The Descendants)

http://fandan.co/1lmy8PX (Sideways)

For my first formal film study, I decided to look into Alexander Payne's Academy Award-nominated films. I first became interested in watching his films because my parents love Hawaii and constantly play The Descendants' soundtrack around our house, so it only seemed right to try to share in this family activity. Alexander Payne has recently gained press for his latest Oscar-nominated film, Nebraska, but earned a lot of fame for winning Best Adapted Screenplay for both The Descendants and Sideways. Therefore, I decided to look at these three films. What I found was that in all three films, there seemed to be an overarching criticism about American culture (as all three films take place in regions across America) and purposeful cinematography. 

While American-made movies are typically inclined to portray America in a positive light, Payne seems to critique this notion. We see this across all the films with very brash, borderline-obnoxious characters to juxtapose the main character and a slow pace to the films. I saw this audacious characterization in mainly the women of each film. In Nebraska, the assertive and loud, older mother (played by June Squibb) of the protagonist. She's often found cussing out other characters in the film and pushing for her opinion to be heard ("Did you know, he was always trying to get into my bloomers?"). Similarly in The Descendants, Alex, daughter of the main character, (played by Shailene Woodley) is found to be belligerent and often to yell out obscenities to her father or her sister ("So what? What if I got drunk the one day you came around? So f***ing what?"). And in Sideways, we see Sandra Oh play a seductive but mainly confident woman ready to find a partner ("I know; I need to be spanked"). I think this type of characterization is very different than found in typical American movies. Often, international critics comment on the overly sexualized role of women in American film, that American women are shown to always show skin or to be beneath men. So I found it very interesting that Payne portrayed these strong women to emasculate the main character (which across all three films is a weaker male protagonist). I found this part of his execution as director to be very auteur and different than most films, leading me to believe that he was critiquing American society.

  

    June Squibb as the outspoken Kate Grant in Nebraska

In addition to his portrayal of women, Payne also opposes the typical box office success of fast paced action thrillers, focusing more on the slower paced livelihoods of certain sects of America. In each film, Payne explores the bias surrounding each are of America and defeats it (ie. Hawaii is a wonderful paradise, California/the West is a place to party and escape to, and Nebraska/Midwest is a boring wasteland). We see in each film that all the characters face hardship in varying degrees but all are met with the same anxiety and fear seen in any other place around the world. So not only is Payne defying the stereotype of women in film but he is also taking a stand against what is typically defined as a success. It seems to me that Payne defined his success in terms of directing what he finds important rather than earning high marks in the box office. 

Beyond his criticism of America, I saw that Payne was very purposeful with his cinematography, but this cinematography was never the same in every film. In Sideways, the earliest of the Oscar-nominated films I studied, he was a bit more experimental in his framing of shots. I recognized this quickly at the beginning of the film when the main character and his friend were out wine tasting. Prior to watching Sideways, I watched Nebraska. In Nebraska, I never saw multiple shots being put together like in Sideways. I think this shows the growth and development of Payne as a director. Chronologically, The Descendants came after Sideways and I was struck at the difference between the two in cinematography. The cinematography featured in Sideways struck me because of its more diffused effect with blurry lines and also its focus on people rather than the setting around them, whereas in The Descendants, the cinematography was much crisper with lasting landscape shots on the land around them. We see even more development with Payne's latest Oscar-nominated film, Nebraska. Similar to The Descendants, Payne focuses on lasting landscape shots with crisp definition, but the technology changes drastically between the films. The Descendants had saturated color in every shot, encapsulating the colors of Hawaii, while Nebraska was in black and white, possibly trying to capture the stark attitude typically associated with the Midwest. So as cinematography goes, Alexander Payne is constantly experimenting and changing. He keeps some aspects constant, but I think he's looking for new ways to change and really make an impact with his choice in cinematography. 

Multiple shots within one screen
(Sideway) 

Landscape shot from
The Descendants

Landscape shot from Nebraska

A smaller aspect I noticed in his films were his use of sound to transition smoothly from one scene to another. Whether it was used in terms of music or voice overs, there was always sound when there was a lack of words. I think Payne did this to make sure that the audience was still paying attention during the movie. With the slow pacing, I can see how some audiences may be turned off with the films, so I think this was Payne's way of holding the attention span of his audiences. And he does this magnificently.

In all, I can definitely see that his films were nominated for good reason. Payne transcends what international audiences typify American films as and puts his own experimental spin on cinematography. He's a thoughtful director and an important one at that. Payne criticizes the American film industry in a very subtle way, but always makes sure to leave audiences laughing with his outspoken and interesting characters. Outside of my cinematic opinion of the films, I found that in my personal opinion, I liked The Descendants the most out of all the films I watched, followed by Nebraska and then Sideways. My opinion doesn't align with the success each film found in the box office though. The Descendants earned $82.6 M, Nebraska earned $17.1 M, and Sideways earned $71.4 M. I think my opinion was swayed mostly due to my high interest in the very different types of cinematography between The Descendants and Nebraska. The diffused and bleary shots of Sideways didn't really resonate with me as a watcher, nor did the storyline. But overall, I think that any Alexander Payne movie would be an amazing experience for any watcher. As stated before, he's clearly very thoughtful about what type of criticism on America he wants to portray to audiences and succeeds in achieving his goal.