The 'Red Menace' invades awards season
Communism is spreading at the multiplex as the Cold War looms over the upcoming awards season.
The "Red Menace" of the Soviet Union and fear-mongering in post-World War II America play heavily into two movies angling for Oscar nominations.
In Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies (in theaters now), lawyer James B. Donovan (Tom Hanks) navigates the PR nightmare of defending a Soviet spy (Mark Rylance) on domestic soil in the late 1950s and negotiates the agent's trade for captured American pilot Francis Gary Powers (Austin Stowell).
The Soviet Union "had a nuclear arsenal to match our own," Spielberg says. "It was a war of words, but it was set against the context of the mushroom clouds. Both sides meant business, so it was a scary time."
With Trumbo (opens Nov. 6 in New York and Los Angeles before expanding nationwide), Jay Roach directs the biopic of Dalton Trumbo (Bryan Cranston), screenwriter of Roman Holiday and Spartacus who was hauled before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the late 1940s and ultimately banned by the industry for his communist leanings.
"Hollywood has only one story to tell about itself that is socially or politically important, and that is the blacklist," Trumbo screenwriter John McNamara says.
"It became a witch hunt," Roach adds. "Even if you knew a communist or had been to a meeting with them, you could somehow suddenly be deemed an enemy of the state."
Both films have a leg up on their competition because true stories always fare well at the Academy Awards, says Fandango.com Oscar expert Dave Karger. Plus, "the Cold War hits this rare sweet spot of feeling historical but also being recent enough that many people in the academy lived through it," Karger says. "Sadly, it feels relevant to today’s geopolitical scene and that helps their case."
The era has been represented at the Oscars frequently over the years, with multiple nominations going to films such as The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Dr. Strangelove (1964), WarGames (1983) and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011). The Right Stuff (1983) and JFK (1991) both garnered eight nods each — the former won four awards and the latter two. Good Night, and Good Luck (2005) was nominated for six Oscars and was, like Trumbo, a true-life drama dealing with anti-communist paranoia.
As for this year's slate, awards site GoldDerby.com has Spies as a top 10 contender for best picture, director (Spielberg), lead actor (Hanks), supporting actor (Rylance) and original screenplay, and Trumbo has candidates for best actor (Cranston) and adapted screenplay.
The 2001 John Nash biopic A Beautiful Mind had Cold War leanings and won best picture, but it bodes well for Spies and Trumbo that the top prize has gone to recent historical triumph-over-adversity films such as The King's Speech (2010), Argo (2012) and 12 Years a Slave (2013).
That theme is one of Roach's favorite aspects of Trumbo, the director says. "Instead of succumbing to the fear-mongering, a storyteller used his own talent and skill to write a lot of really good stories, some of which were about love of humanity vs. fear."
