The Denzel Washington Hype Is Even Realer Than You Think
The Denzel Washington Hype Is Even Realer Than You Think
A showy performance in 'Gladiator II' suggests a revival for the Oscar-worthy movie star turn. Plus: Smell-o-Vision's back!
We’re still in the thick of regional festival season, and I’m once again about to get on a plane — but for a family wedding in Wisconsin. (The Milwaukee Film Festival, I’ve learned, doesn’t happen until the spring, so I won’t even be sneaking in a screening while I’m up there.)
Today I’ll be talking about Conclave, September 5, The Brutalist and Heretic, among other films.
But let’s start with Gladiator II. After seeing it in a packed house of journalists, awards voters and influencers in New York on Monday, I’m still buzzing from the energy of being in that room, and ready to inaugurate the first contender in what I’m hoping will be a weekly series here: Who won the week. Just because it will be months before actual awards are handed out in this season does not mean there aren’t already winners.
That, plus thoughts on the week’s headlines both silly and sublime, ahead in this week’s dispatch. If you see me in the rental car line at the Milwaukee airport, please say hello, or you can always drop me a line at katey@theankler.com.
Who’s Winning the Week: Denzel Washington
Denzel Washington knows how to fill a room with his voice — even a room that’s five stories high. When the microphones failed during the post-screening Q&A for the New York premiere of Gladiator II, Washington stepped up to repeat moderator Josh Horowitz’s question, his voice booming clear as a bell in the enormous IMAX theater at Lincoln Square.
Washington would render a crowd starstruck under most circumstances, I think, but immediately after Gladiator II the effect was nearly transcendent. Ridley Scott’s epic sequel to his best picture winner is still technically under review embargo, so I’m not sure what I can write that’s more detailed than the over-the-top tweets that are out there already. But the enthusiasm around Washington’s performance is well-earned, and maybe even being underestimated by those who wonder how far someone can really get in the Oscar race with a splashy supporting performance in a blockbuster.
As a friend pointed out to me before Monday night’s screening, Russell Crowe’s best actor win for the original Gladiator now feels like a true anomaly; it’s even more remarkable that it happened the same year as Julia Roberts for Erin Brockovich, two movie star performances that revel in each star’s charisma and command of the screen. Movie stars still win Oscars all the time, of course, but the trend is much more toward transformation or more obviously “challenging” turns. Robert Downey, Jr. won for playing a sniveling villain, not for Iron Man; Leonardo DiCaprio won for surviving the wilderness in The Revenant and wasn’t even nominated for Titanic. You get the idea.
In Gladiator II, Washington is not exactly naturalistic — at the Q&A he said he asked the costume designer that his character — the political striver Macrinus — wear as many rings as possible, and he enters one climactic scene with a gold cloak streaming behind him. But the power of his performance comes from so many of the things Washington has done best as a movie star for nearly 40 years: his command of a room, his expert use of a pregnant pause. After watching Gladiator II, I felt certain there’s no better living movie star. And he’s not even the star of this movie!
The closest comparison I can think of in recent Oscar history is Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, another role that riffed on Pitt’s many decades of stardom while leaning into all of the things that had always made him great. Pitt, however, won his first Oscar for that film; Washington already has two, and it’s too early to tell how much of a push there will be for him to win a third — particularly when Gladiator II director Scott is still looking for his first. (Yes, really!)
But with The Piano Lesson also on the awards season trail, produced by Washington and involving nearly every member of his family, it’s starting to feel like an excellent time to contemplate Washington’s immense Hollywood legacy. Only four living people have three acting Oscars: Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson, Daniel Day-Lewis and Frances McDormand. Would you really argue that Washington doesn’t belong in that company?
The Audiences Are Speaking
Just a few days after Conclave director Edward Berger told me in Montclair about how much he learns from film festival audiences about his film, he got one major stamp of approval. The audience award for the Middleburg Film Festival has been given jointly to Conclave as well as September 5, both of which bowed at the Telluride Film Festival earlier this fall and are now making their way through awards season.
Though Conclave is set at the Vatican and September 5 unspools in the ABC Sports control room during the 1972 Munich Olympics, they share a similar ticking clock urgency, and showcase meaty performances from actors who are often only supporting players — John Lithgow and Stanley Tucci in Conclave, Peter Sarsgaard and John Magaro in September 5. In an awards season so far marked by big swings like Anora, Emilia Pérez and Nickel Boys, both Conclave and September 5 represent something a bit more classic and, as it turns out, crowd-pleasing.
With the Toronto audience award winner The Life of Chuck confirmed for a release next year, it’s possible the regional festival audience awards could find new importance this year. We’ll see what’s still to come from ongoing festivals like Montclair and Savannah, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see Conclave or September 5 receiving more audience honors from here.
Monuments Men
Following Megalopolis’ doomed effort to turn critics’ words back on them with its AI-mangled trailer, there’s something diabolically clever about A24’s first trailer for The Brutalist. “Monumental” is exactly the word you want to use to promote a historical epic about an architect, and when it’s been used by five different critics you may as well put it in the biggest font possible, even if it might make the critics in question wish they’d consulted a thesaurus. I am not quoted on the poster, but I am also guilty as charged:
They will get away with it, however, because both the trailer and poster for The Brutalist are gorgeous, finally offering the masses their first look at the film that’s been enrapturing festival audiences since Venice. Not in theaters until Dec. 20, The Brutalist is making a few film festival stops in the fall, but nothing close to the full court press of such contenders as Emilia Pérez or Anora. It will remain an object of intense film nerd intrigue until then, and even skeptics might see the trailer’s unique horizontal-scrolling credits, or hear Daniel Blumberg’s booming score, and find themselves drawn in, too.
The Return of Smell-O-Vision
At the risk of dedicating too much of this newsletter to praising A24’s marketing department, I must pause in awe of the very funny stunt of bringing a modern-day version of Smell-o-Vision to theaters showing Heretic. The film doesn’t open until Nov. 8, but at select early screenings on Oct. 30 — get your pre-Halloween fix! — audiences at some Alamo Drafthouse theaters will be treated to a technology that “employs cold-air diffusion to disperse scented molecules as fine, dry air without the use of heat, water or alcohol.”
They’ll make the theater smell like blueberry pie, which makes sense if you’ve seen the trailer, and other advanced screenings will offer scratch-and-sniff cards with god knows what other scents available. Featuring a delicious villain performance from Hugh Grant, who told me during our onstage conversation in Toronto that he’s “drawn to nastiness,” Heretic is not exactly a William Castle-style horror film ready for any gimmick you throw at it, but it’s certainly a good one to try it with.
But it really makes you wonder: What other fall movies could use a Smell-o-Vision boost? There’s a truckload of watermelons for sale in The Piano Lesson, and an extremely tempting-looking Dunkin’ sandwich in Challengers if they want to bring that one back to theaters. At multiple points in Gladiator II, someone remarks on how bad Paul Mescal’s character smells, but that, I admit, might be an aroma too far.