Are the Oscars in touch with the present day? Not in this category, where period pieces, sci-fi and fantasy films have maintained an almost perfect monopoly of wins (and largely, nominations) over the last four decades. But you can’t fault this year’s impressive lineup, in which psychological dimensions pervade each film’s look, whether it’s 1957 Manhattan, 1925 Montana, a traveling carnival, a Scottish castle or planets of ice, rock and sand.
DUNE, Patrice Vermette and Zsuzsanna Sipos
After Arrival, Blade Runner 2049 and Dune, Denis Villeneuve is fast gaining a reputation as a filmmaker who prefers building sets and shooting “in the camera” as opposed to turning everything into visual effects. “For Denis and I, the importance when we create a story is to anchor it in some sort of reality, even if it’s subliminal,” production designer Patrice Vermette said. True to form, for a single set in Dune, Vermette built a 20-foot-high dome through which soldiers could descend, draping it with fabric to create the illusion of shadows. The design, Vermette quipped, was just “crazy enough to work.”
NIGHTMARE ALLEY, Tamara Deverell and Shane Vieau
If you’re looking for a meaning behind the title of Guillermo del Toro’s dark drama, search no further than the narrow, lacquered office of psychiatrist Dr. Lilith Ritter (Cate Blanchett). It was created by production designer Tamara Deverell, who had been inspired by a 1920s apartment that’s on display at New York’s Brooklyn Museum. “It’s a beautiful study, made up of olive wood veneers, somewhat of a different path from typical art deco,” she said. And she even added some subliminal Freudian imagery to the office’s woodwork: “I wanted something that would be a sort of Rorschach imprint of Lilith’s persona.”
THE POWER OF THE DOG, Grant Major and Amber Richards
Though set in the Montana of a century ago, Jane Campion chose her native New Zealand as the locale to film this Western psychodrama. And she picked Grant Major, her collaborator 30 years ago on her second feature An Angel at My Table, before he embarked on a long creative partnership with Peter Jackson. Some of the Lord of the Rings majesty is evident here, not just in the stunning mountain ranges but in small, strange details like a driftwood tunnel. “Story-wise, the tunnel represents a transition into a different world,” said Major. “There is a magical quality about using nature in this way. I love it when trees, whether standing or collapsed, become environments in themselves.”
THE TRAGEDY OF MACBETH, Stefan Dechant and Nancy Haigh
Every staircase is an optical illusion in Joel Coen’s noirish version of Shakespeare’s tragedy. “The look of the stairwells, whether we are looking up or down, was all intentional,” said production designer Stefan Dechant, a first-time nominee. “We talked about the line in the play, ‘I have not seen a day so fair and foul.’ The days and nights are not much different in this world, and that led us to think about the film’s point of view. Like when you see ravens in the sky in the opening shot, you’re not sure if you’re looking up at them or down at them. Joel wanted the audience to be confused about what point of view they had.”
WEST SIDE STORY, Adam Stockhausen and Rena DeAngelo
Adam Stockhausen is the man behind the production design of Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies and West Side Story—which is notable because both movies begin in the same year (1957) and the same place (New York City). But they couldn’t be more different. In West Side Story, Stockhausen, a frequent collaborator with Wes Anderson (he won a design Oscar for The Grand Budapest Hotel), built a sprawling, dirty demolition site to open the film with, brilliantly highlighting the themes of tumult and dislocation that thrum through the musical film.
Steve’s Perspective
The world-building of Dune might be considered the favorite here, but in recent years Oscar voters haven’t indulged in many sweeps—and they may settle for saluting Dune in noisier categories like sound and visual effects. If they opt to go in a different direction here, they could easily turn to the noir pleasures of Nightmare Alley, which would be the third Guillermo del Toro winner after Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water.
