OVP: Best Original Score (2020)
The Nominees Were...
Terence Blanchard, Da 5 Bloods
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, Mank
Emile Mosseri, Minari
James Newton Howard, News of the World
Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, & Jon Batiste, Soul
My Thoughts: While other branches of the Academy looked at 2020 and said "sure, let's give to some new blood," the Music Branch, true to form, did not. While we have a couple of new names in this bunch, by-and-large this is a group of men (no women to speak of nominated here) who have been to the Oscars before. The one new name totally on their own, though, is at least someone who totally deserved inclusion, and honestly was overdue for this nomination.
Few composers in the past few years have wowed in the same way that Emile Mosseri has. In 2019, he did the music for the criminally-underrated (seriously, watch this movie) The Last Black Man in San Francisco, which won my trophy for Best Score that year. In 2020, he got nominated for a very different, but equally superb piece of work in Minari. Minari is a movie that I wish I loved more (it has some exquisite touches, though I didn't love it in the way I hoped I would), but the score was the element that truly spoke to me. The trilling piano, the way the strings flow, and the way he uses choral voices (which is sometimes kryptonite for me, but he's done it perfectly in two films now), it's totally magic and gives the film a sort of nostalgic hue that works supremely well.
The other new name in this bunch was Jon Batiste, who was one-third of the gorgeous work done on Soul. Pixar's latest feels like it's not up-to-snuff. After a string of uninspired sequels, only Coco (for me) stands apart as a true masterpiece in the vein of their run from 1999-2010 (minus Cars). That said, Soul is the one I like the best of the recent batch, and part of that is driven by Batiste's (and Reznor/Ross's) score. There's something final in the movie, and the way the piano is clearly playing at the crossroads of the movie. The music tells a story of a man whose story we're going to see only part of...it would be super easy to make Soul be filled with a lot of finality rather than just oodles of promise, but that's not feeding the story and would take away from it. I loved the way that it's so much buildup, letting our hearts sort of fill in the missing pieces.
Reznor/Ross double-dipped in 2020, and even John Williams would struggle to have a pairing as strong as Soul and Mank. The movie's score is obviously cribbing (like much of the picture) from Citizen Kane, with the once muted trumpets now blaring full throttle (i.e. we're about to see the underbelly of the film that gets at Hollywood's underbelly), but there's originality here too. There's a lot of unrest in the score-it never lets you sit still, and from the opening sounds of "Welcome to Victorville" it's deliberate, a slow walk toward an end that could've been prevented, but history shows was inevitable.
It seems weird at this point that James Newton Howard doesn't have an Academy Award-it's clear the music branch, in a similar fashion to Diane Warren & Thomas Newman, is going to send his name to the Academy every year until they finally acquiesce. News of the World isn't his best work. There's a rambunctiousness to it, giving us an old Elmer Bernstein-style western hue in its best moments, but honestly it's pretty standard-fare. Unlike the last three I just name-checked, there's not a lot of unique touches to really differentiate this from some of Howard's other work-it just sort of plays in the background, never standing out but not failing in its mission either.
Da 5 Bloods was initially haled as a major Oscar contender, but ended up with only one nomination, for Best Score. Blanchard's sounds, especially for Spike Lee movies, have long gone under-appreciated, and we've tried to correct that with my OVP Ballots (he got in for Inside Man a decade before the Academy noticed him), but his Da 5 Bloods doesn't meld with the movie in the way something like Inside Man got its personality from his music. Oftentimes the music, which is so filled with winds that it feels more like it's kicking off the evening news more than a dark wartime drama, is too generic to be interesting and I don't think fit the picture (either traditionally or ironically).
Other Precursor Contenders: The Grammys eligibility window for the best film score nomination is not the same as Oscar's so oftentimes you'll see films from two different years getting citations, but that's not the case here. In fact, only one film was cited in either of the years that it was eligible, Soul (which to it credit, it won). The Golden Globes don't have a similar eligibility issue, and gave their trophy to Soul over Mank, News of the World, Tenet, and The Midnight Sky while BAFTA also went for Soul against the exact Oscar lineup save for Da 5 Bloods (they went instead for Promising Young Woman). In terms of sixth place, my gut says it was probably between two longtime favorite composers Alexandre Desplat (The Midnight Sky) and Thomas Newman (The Little Things), and to keep my sanity I'm going to assume it was the former because man is the latter a clunker.
Films I Would Have Nominated: Oscar went with my three medalists, and the three that stood out the most to me so I can't be too mad here. I would've found room for a different former Oscar winner if I was casting my ballot, though, as The Life Ahead's Gabriel Yared gives his film a gorgeous hum that I was very much feeling.
Oscar’s Choice: Soul dominated all season, winning virtually every precursor, and even with potential vote-splitting there was no stopping it. I wouldn't have been surprised if Reznor/Ross took up Slots #1 and 2.
My Choice: Far be it from me to disagree with the consensus-Soul is too good to deny. I will go with Minari in second just a hair's breadth over Mank (originality breaking the tie), with News of the World and then Da 5 Bloods following.
Those are my thoughts-how about yours? Is everyone just going to sign off on Soul, or does someone want to endorse a different nominee? Emile Mosseri needs to become some lucky director's favorite soon-whom will it be? And what's it going to take to finally get James Newton Howard a trophy? Share your thoughts below!
Past Best Score Contests: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019
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