Director Showdown – Round 1, Match 5 – Todd Field vs. Luca Guadagnino
September 18, 2024
You’re listening to episode five of Director Showdown! In this series, we pit 64 of the biggest directors to debut since 1998 against each other in an elimination bracket to determine who will walk away the greatest director of the last 26 years!
In the last episode we examined two relationships in flux, and what they can tell us about our wider world at large. In the battle between Darren Aronofsky’s mother! and Sarah Polley’s Take This Waltz, Polley came away the first victor to deviate from the Rotten Tomatoes bracket that inspired ours!
Moving on, we’re taking another look at relationships from a different angle…
Californian director Todd Field, has only three films to his name, but an astounding number of Oscar nominations. Notably, each of his films has managed a Best Actress nomination for its leading lady, though none yet have won. Fittingly, Field’s films include complex characters (male and female), the screenplays filled with poignant dialogue and juicy roles. This is perhaps most exemplified in his phenomenal debut In The Bedroom, in which a small-town couple struggles to put their lives back together after tragedy strikes.
Squaring up against Field is one of Italy’s best living directors, Luca Guadagnino! Hailing from Palermo, Guadagnino has over 10 films under his belt as a director, splitting his time between narrative features and documentaries. In recent years, films like Bones and All, Suspiria, and Challengers have made him a formidable and exciting name in cinema. But the film that really put him on the map was 2017’s Call Me By Your Name, which would go on to be nominated for four Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Actor, finally winning for Best Adapted Screenplay.
In this episode, we look at how relationships, particularly taboo relationships, are approached by both directors through In The Bedroom and Call Me By Your Name. How do Field and Guadagnino approach the inner lives of their characters?
Joining us on today’s episode is film critic Jericho Tadeo! Jericho makes his Classic Movies Live! debut here, and what a debut it is!
Jericho’s work can be seen at The Asian Cut, as well as over on MovieWeb. Jericho was recently at TIFF, where he got to see and review a film by his favourite director, which you can read here!
This episode was inspired by Rotten Tomatoes’ Best Director Showdown, which was conducted among RT users over the summer of 2023. The results of that competition are summarized in this article.
Special thanks this week to our good friend Cris, who made the cover art for this episode! Follow her on Instagram, Twitter, and Letterboxd to see more of her artwork, film opinions/reviews, or both!
