2021 Golden Globes, Rosamund Pike (I Care a Lot), The Mensch Comedy (Palm Springs)

2021 Golden Globe Awards Winners:

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama: Chadwick Boseman (Ma Rainey's Black Bottom)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama: Andra Day (The United States vs. Billie Holiday)

Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series or a Motion Picture Made for Television: Mark Ruffalo (I Know This Much Is True)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television: Anya Taylor-Joy (The Queen's Gambit)

Best Motion Picture and Director: Nomadland (Chloé Zhao)

Best Screenplay - Motion Picture: The Trial of the Chicago 7 (Aaron Sorkin)

Best Motion Picture - Animated: Soul

Best Motion Picture - Foreign Language: Minari

Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Comedy: Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat Sequel)

Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Comedy: Rosamund Pike (I Care a Lot)

Rosamund Pike is astonishingly good in "I Care a Lot", tearing into her role with the same icy menace that made her Oscar-nominated performance in Gone Girl so indelible and like the script she’s working from, there’s such restraint with her venom that it makes her all the more terrifying. The Oscar nominee resurrects the icy menace of her Gone Girl performance in a darkly comic and bracingly nasty tale of a morally bankrupt legal guardian. Pike plays Marla Grayson, a professional legal guardian undaunted by ethical guidelines so long as she can skim a few extra dollars from her aging clients. She’s a satirical encapsulation of American capitalism gone haywire in the mold of Chuck Tatum from Billy Wilder's “Ace in the Hole” or Lou Bloom from “Nightcrawler.” Pike’s performance as anti-heroine Marla in “I Care a Lot” is the stuff of goosebumps, perversely tickling the dark side of the funny bone at the same time as it sends a chill up the spine. With the limelight squarely fixed on her, it’s easier to see Pike’s bold, distinct choices as an actress and how they shape such an indelible character. Because she cuts such an imposingly large and cleanly calibrated presence across the film, the brute force of the mechanisms through which she simplifies complex questions of legality become an indictment of the darkest side of capitalism. Source: theplaylist.net

Richard Brody: It's a pity that Palm Springs didn't get any Golden Globe. It's far way better than Borat Sequel. Andy Samberg may not be the most charismatic performer but he plays comedy with heart. The inescapable sentimentality of the way Conner4Real’s career crisis was resolved in Popstar—a resolution that’s been a staple of American comedy since Billy Wilder (the edifying message of “Be a mensch”)—finished off a torrent of gleeful gibberish that’s among the most inspired recent comedic visions, alongside Ben Stiller's Zoolander. And Samberg's hilarious songs in “Popstar: Never Stop” offered an additional enticement, bending the lyrics and his stage persona into another loopy dimension of astonishment. “Popstar: Never Stop” was indeed a well-tuned satire of celebrity self-indulgence.  

"Why don't you grow up a little, Baxter?" Behave like a mensch! Do you know what it means? A mensch is a human being,” Dr. Dreyfuss (Jack Kruschen) exhorts C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) in The Apartment (1960) directed by Billy Wilder. This injunction, “Be a mensch!” crosses a large section of American comedy, from its origins at the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day. Taken from the Jewish word "mentsch", the term entered into everyday language to define the moral man, the one who seeks to do good around him. The mensch type morphs into a typically American philosophical reflection of "moral perfectionism," of which Stanley Cavell offered great examples through his analysis of “remarriage comedies.” Cavell  was most known for his essay The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy (1979), which forms the centerpiece of his doctoral dissertation. In Pursuits of Happiness (1981), Cavell dissects his experience of seven prominent Hollywood classic comedies: 

The Lady Eve, It Happened One Night, Bringing Up Baby, The Philadelphia Story, His Girl Friday, Adam’s Rib, and The Awful Truth. Cavell argues that these films, from 1934–1949, form part of what he calls the genre of "The Comedy of Remarriage," and finds in them great philosophical, moral, and political significance. Specifically, Cavell argues that these comedies show that "the achievement of happiness requires not the satisfaction of our needs, but the examination and transformation of those needs." According to Cavell, the emphasis these movies place on the theme of remarriage draws attention to the fact that, within a relationship, happiness requires "growing up" together with a partner. Comedy is not the only genre in which a mensch may shine, but what could be more comical indeed than the tensions between a quest for morality and a resounding failure—however temporary—to achieve it? Whether he is adored or hated (usually seen by others as a schlemiel or pathological loser), the mensch is a endless source of laughter, intelligence and mixed emotions. Source: www.newyorker.com

Andy Siara: I thought one of the obvious meanings of Palm Springs was learning how to grow up and move on with your life. Nyles is a jaded man who has lived the same day over and over and he realizes nothing he does has any consequences. There’s no meaning or purpose. Then Sarah comes into the picture, they start to like each other, and they start to hurt each other. Eventually, the only way they can be together is if he takes a chance with her to try and go back to reality where their lives could have meaning. He decides to take a leap of faith with her, because dying is better than contemplating living in the loop without her. To me, the “loop” that Nyles is stuck in is symbolic of the “loop” a lot of people choose to get themselves stuck in their lives. All of the science of the time loop is based on real science. Theoretical Physicist Clifford V. Johnson (a professor at the University of Southern California Department of Physics) served as consultant on the movie. We were lucky to know there are some physical events in the universe that could cause a rupture in the space-time continuum, which would be represented in this world by something like an earthquake or a cave opening, which we already had written in the script. 

“It’s a love story,” said Palm Springs' director Max Barbakow: “But also there are bigger existential life questions, that’s what makes it so special.” “There’s definitely a running theme of loneliness and being stuck,” said Andy Samberg: “And also the idea of taking the leap into committing to somebody and being with another person for the long term.” “I feel like we really subverted the rom-com,” Cristin Milioti said. Samberg chimed in, “It’s more of a ‘melange of genres’.”

In his script, Siara made sure that both Nyles and Sarah got to be complex characters. They are both intelligent, childish, scared of relationships and lying to themselves. Their acceptance of something more romantic unfolds in a natural way. Samberg and Milioti deserve a lot of credit for this. The "trope" of two people who seemingly despise each other before magically falling in love has a long history. Consider Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant flinging vicious verbal barbs at one another in "His Girl Friday," all while being sucked into each others' orbit. Who else could put up with either one of these people? They are perfect for each other!  "Palm Springs" is genuinely romantic, in a way that sadly feels old-fashioned—but it isn't. Falling in love is not what either Nyles or Sarah expected at that moment in their lives. During one of their crazy stunts, Nyles tells Sarah, “Your best bet is just to learn how to suffer existence,” mutating briefly into Schopenhauer. If you've ever spent a holiday weekend at a resort in Palm Springs, floating in the pool for days straight, surrounded by palm trees and old Hollywood paradise vibes, you might understand how the whole place feels like time has stopped still. Source: www.eonline.com