Yesterday a discussion arose about Eliza Hittman‘s Never Rarely Sometimes Always (Focus Features), and the New York Film Critics Circle having handed it awards for Best Actress (Sidney Flanigan) and Best Screenplay (Hittman).

I’m mentioning this because “friendo” offered an interesting thought: “It’s telling, to me, that no one in liberal media, including all the critics who championed Never Rarely, seemed to understand a fundamental aspect of the film, which is that the heroine is quite ambivalent about having an abortion.

“It’s not a ‘pro-life’ movie, but it does contain an element of that. But, of course, that dimension of it — the very thing that makes it complex — has to be denied by the very people who claim to love the film, because it doesn’t mesh with the the general pro-choice agenda.

“It’s not like I really like watching dead-serious art films about abortion. But I think once in a while they awaken your perceptions, and this one, with its bracing message that literally no one in the critical community got, did that for me more than 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.

“That element in Never Rarely…Sidney Flanigan‘s profound ambivalence about what she’s about to go through, her deep desire not to do it, because there is in fact a live human in there…this element is literally the only drama in the film. That’s what’s so hilarious about the woke film-critic-industrial-annoyance-complex not getting it.

“What do they think the movie is about? If their left-wing boilerplate interpretation were accurate, it might as well be a movie about two teenagers hopping a bus to go to New York City to pay $500 in unpaid parking tickets.”

HE to friendo: “I honestly never considered any kind of vague pro-life undercurrent. I thought Flanigan’s character was just about buried trauma, fear of the chilly unknown, anxiety, uncertainty, wounded feelings. Why ever would she want to keep the child? I mean, she’s hiding her pregnancy from her parents, and Lord knows an expectant mother needs a serious job or a trust fund plus a serious partner with which to have a child. She has nothing.”

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…of being an exceptionally gifted actor. Appealing, yes. Gifted, no. He knew how to react brilliantly — how to respond in his usual taciturn, straight-from-the-shoulder way to certain aggressive behaviors and situations, and at just the right speed and with just the right sense of timing. And he certainly knew how to seethe and sulk.

But in terms of owning a scene on his lonesome, relying solely on his own dialogue and delivery while others listen and watch, he rarely got there. But he did once.

The below scene from Red River is probably the best acting moment in his entire life. It’s about resolve, painful rejection, parental disdain, nihilism. If Wayne had turned up the anger just a hair, it wouldn’t have landed as well. It would have also missed if he’d turned it down a notch.

Name me any other scene in which Wayne hit the mark as movingly and efficiently as he does here. Those famous bookend scenes in The Searchers (i.e., the door opening and closing upon Wayne’s Ethan Edwards) don’t count because all he was doing was just standing there — the emotional expressiveness was entirely John Ford‘s.

Ford to Howard Hawks after seeing Red River: “I never knew the big sonuvabtich could act.”

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I didn’t want to submit to Darius and Abraham Marder‘s Sound of Metal (Amazon, now streaming) because I’d heard it was a chore to sit through. Plus I despise metal rock, and didn’t want to hang in that world at all. Plus I didn’t want to aurally experience any kind of simulated deafness or diminished hearing…later. But I knew I’d have to watch it sooner or later, and I was finally guilt-tripped into catching it last night. Alright, fine, fuck me, here we go.

Eureka! Sound of Metal is an absorbing and quite delicate film about using tragedy to transition from one world to another, and one that offers a doorway into a spirit world…not so much a world of deafness and signing but one that harbors a realm of cosmic serenity and stillness…a world that expresses the age-old axiom “never speak unless you can improve upon the silence.” Radiance is everywhere.

I’m more in love with writing than almost any other human activity, but I also adore the sound of gifted speaking voices (particularly those of great English-language actors) and singing and musical performance (especially Beethoven’s Ninth and Eric Clapton‘s “Unplugged” album), not to mention the sounds of nature and the city and everything else, etc. So I can’t completely submit to the majesty of cosmic silence, but I know that this is the realm of peace and solace…the one in which God resides.

I completely agree that Riz Ahmed‘s performance as Ruben Stone, a metal drummer whose hearing suddenly collapses at the beginning of a tour, deserves a Best Actor nomination. He’s only been a quality-associated actor for six years or so (Nightcrawler, Rogue One, The Night Of) but Ruben is by far the best role he’s ever lucked into, and as you might expect his best moments in the film are non-verbal. Just about all of them, I would say.

I also agree that Paul Raci, the 60ish guy who ploys Ruben’s straight-shooting guide and teacher at a rural deaf camp, deserves a Best Supporting Actor nom. Raci, whose parents were deaf and who knows the realm inside and out, is perfect in the part. Like Harold Russell was perfect in The Best Years of Our Lives, I mean. Raci is actually a blend of Russell and Lives costar Hoagy Carmichael.

Also excellent are Olivia Cooke as Lou, Ruben’s singing-bandmate girlfriend who insists that he enroll in deaf-camp training, and Mathieu Amalric as her wealthy French dad.

The sound design team — supervising sound editor Nicolas Becker, production sound mixer Phillip Bladh, whoever else — definitely deserve Oscar noms, and…oh, hell, the Oscars themselves.

Ruben adapts well to silence and signing, but he still longs for sound and speech. A sizable portion of Act Two is about him selling his mobile home, drums and sound gear so he can afford cochlear implants. But once the implants are embedded and activated, the sound that he hears is like that of an empty tin can attached to a taut metal wire. He pays $30K for this? I can’t believe in this day and age that expensive artificial devices sound this bad.

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12:25 pm: Kelly Reichardt‘s First Cow, a commendable if vaguely irritating period drama set in 1820s Oregon, has won the NYFCC’s Best Film award. If this isn’t the most “what planet are these guys living on?” NYFCC award yet, I’d like to know what is.

For decades an occasionally offbeat NYFCC trophy signified something highly valued — a fully considered saluting of a worthy achievement by serious pros. But the woke-era NYFCC brand is something else. It used to be that the Los Angeles Film Critics Association was the loopiest award-giving group for their absurd mid-voting brunch breaks — the NYFCC has now overtaken them.

HE would have voted for Mangrove (despite Amazon’s decision to focus on Emmy awards), Nomadland, The Trial of the Chicago 7, The Father, Mank…each delivers a stronger, more levitational viewing experience than First Cow.

Excerpt #1 from HE’s First Cow review: “Do you see what I mean about watching a Reichardt film? She can’t even indicate whether or not Cookie and King Lu are gently sexual with each other or just palsy-walsy. (Skeletons holding hands doesn’t count — the dying King Lu may have simply reached for Cookie’s hand out of a primal fear of death.) She can’t devise a conversation between them in which the pair, feeling antsy about the thievery, go to Toby Jones and suggest that he might want to fund them in a start-up bakery business. She can’t show the guy with a rifle actually shooting Cookie or, more to the point, King Lu. Because if King Lu takes a bullet it would therefore make sense when he lies down next to Cookie and dies.”

Excerpt #2: “And yet the things that happen in a Reichardt film never feel movie-fake. Her stories might feel a tad confusing or under-explained, but I’ve never had believability issues. She has a certain low-key way of shooting her material, and always takes her time and yaddah yaddah. But as I watched First Cow (I actually watched it in three stages) I felt my soul draining out of me like sand. First Cow never comes to you — you have to come to it, and with the patience of Job.”

12:03 pm: Sidney Flanigan, who movingly portrayed a traumatized rural teen trying to obtain an abortion in Never Rarely Sometimes Always, has been handed the NYFCC Best Actress award. In a certain fashion Flanigan played the under-written “Autmun” to the hilt, and I’m not dismissing the solemnity or scope of her performance — it’s one of the saddest female turns ever, certainly over the last 20 years. But this strikes me as yet another manifestation of NYFCC eccentricity. I would have approved of Nomadland‘s Frances McDormand taking the prize. Or (my personal choice) French Exit‘s Michelle Pfeiffer. Or Promising Young Woman‘s Carey Mulligan. Or Pieces of a Woman‘s Vanessa Kirby. Or The Life Ahead‘s Sophia Loren as a career achievement tribute. Any of these.

11:32 am: Earlier this morning the NYFCC handed their Best Foreign Language Feature award to Kleber Mendonça Filho‘s Bacurau, an allegorical modern-day Brazilian western (Sam Peckinpah meets El Topo‘s Alejandro Jodorowsky). I hated Bacarau when I saw it at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. Andrei Konchalovsky‘s brilliant Dear Comrades! should have won.

11:15 am: Eliza Hittman, director-writer of Never Rarely Sometimes Always, has won the NYFCC’s Best Screenplay award. Critics have been creaming over this melancholy abortion-driven drama all year long, but I happen to feel it’s underwritten as far as Sidney Flanigan‘s Autumn character is concerned. She’s so traumatized and self-suppressed that she can’t let go (except during that deeply touching scene in which she’s questioned by the abortion clinic lady). I’ve always felt that this was dramatically insufficient. I respectfully disagree with Hittman’s “less is more” aesthetic. Plus Never Rarely Sometimes Always, a good film within its own perimeter, doesn’t hold a candle to Cristian Mungiu‘s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.

11:03 am: Nomadland‘s Chloe Zhao has won the NYFCC Best Director award. Expected, no dispute, completely deserved.

10:47 am: Sorry for overlooking the NYFCC giving their Best Supporting Actress trophy to Maria Bakalova, for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm. She was engaging in that Borat sequel and yes, she helped to punk Rudy Giuliani but c’mon…this is pure eccentricity, pure organizational egotism on the part of the NYFCC. The Father‘s Olivia Colman or Mank‘s Amanda Seyfried should have won. Or Yuh-jung Youn in Minari for her colorful grandma. Or even Glenn Close‘s “Mamaw” in Hillbilly Elegy.

10:40 am: Delroy Lindo was won the NYFCC Best Actor award for his anxious, anxiety-torn performance as a Trump-supporting Vietnam veteran in Spike Lee‘s Da 5 Bloods. Lindo acted that part all to hell and he has a strong narrative on his side, but I would’ve voted for The Father‘s Anthony Hopkins. You know who was really good and hasn’t gotten much awards attention? Ben Affleck in The Way Back — a solid performance about a guy struggling with alcoholism and his own glorious past.

10:05 am: The New York Film Critics Circle has given its 2020 Best Supporting Actor award to the late Chadwick Boseman for his performance in Spike Lee‘s Da 5 Bloods. Boseman played a ghost and a memory whose name in life was “Stormin'” Norman Earl Holloway. You can call this a combination career tribute and shared grief award. The award essentially says “our hearts were broken when we lost this good and glowing actor to cancer last August, and this is our way of saying we love him and wish he was still among us.”

I understand the sentiment and share the sadness, but I also think it’s fair to ask if Boseman would’ve won for his performance had he lived. When the late Peter Finch won the 1976 Best Actor Oscar for his Howard Beale performance in Network, there were no post-win surprises or tut-tuts — Finch had hit a grand slam and everyone knew it. Ditto Heath Ledger when he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his Joker performance in The Dark Knight. Plus the NYFCC is a highly eccentric awards-bestowing group. They’ve shown that to be the case many times over.

If it had been my call I would have suggested handing Boseman a sorrowful special career-tribute award, and then given the Best Supporting Actor trophy to, say, Bill Murray (On The Rocks) or one of the One Night in Miami guys (Leslie Odom or Aldis Hodge), or Trial of the Chicago 7‘s Mark Rylance or Sacha Baron Cohen. Or Nomadland‘s David Straitharn.