Quendrith Johnson

by Quendrith Johnson, Los Angeles Correspondent

For France, David O. Russell's Oscar-contender American Hustle is aptly retitled "American Bluff." And recently Russell told Le Monde by telephone interview, "Aujourd'hui, je suis fatigué, j'ai un rhume. Et je plane à 2000," on reaction to the 10 Nominations the film received from the Academy. Tired, with a cold, this is still The Year of David O. Russell as a unique American voice in filmmaking.

With Silver Lining Playbook (2012) he minted Jennifer Lawrence, the power talent from Winter's Bone, into an Oscar winner. He did the same with Christian Bale in The Fighter in 2010, and now Russell has teased Academy-award caliber performances from Amy Adams, Bradley Cooper, and personally for Best Direction with American Hustle.

He is up against Scorsese's Wolf of Wall Street, Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave, Alexander Payne's (Sideways, The Descendants) Nebraska, Her with Joaquin Phoenix, and other notable films of 2013 for the 2014 Oscar race - but there is no doubt, given the performance nominations that this is his year. Born in New York, the 55-year-old was not always the humble auteur who would admit to being exhausted.

In 1994, his film Spanking the Monkey starred Jeremy Davies, who would later unravel personally and reboot himself on the TV series Justified, and resulted in a debut performance award for that actor. Spanking was followed by Flirting with Disaster (1996/7) with an all-star cast including Mary Tyler Moore, Ben Stiller, to name a few, and this is when we met for the first time.

The David O. Russell on the press junket for Flirting was an entirely different person than he is today. Another fine director, James Mangold, also came into the public eye in the mid-1990's. His Liv Tyler-starrer Heavy (1995) was a portent of what would come in his later film Walk The Line with Reese Witherspoon giving an exciting Oscar performance. Mangold was easy to figure, Russell not so much. Brash and cocky then, his bravado was more remarkable than his filmmaking - until Three Kings, that is.

With the 1999 release of the George Clooney-driven Three Kings, it was clear Russell had vaulted into a whole new echelon in storytelling and cinema craft. Mark Wahlberg also in that film, emerged with a range unseen before; also Jamie Kennedy, once a comedian, now an actor. Same for Michael Pena. (No surprise Pena is great in American Hustle too.)

I Heart the Huckabees (2004) was a fun release from Russell, but by 2010, The Fighter with Christian Bale continued the remarkable trajectory of an emerging American Voice in Cinema. That inkling was confirmed with Silver Linings Playbook, and now cemented with American Bluff.

In a re-interview on the red carpet at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in 2012 for Silver Lining, 15 years later, Russell, now a father with a teenage son, proved to be a thoughtful, patient, and captivating presence with all the humble hallmarks of a legitimate auteur.

Whether David O. Russell's film collects even a fraction of the 10 noms at the 86th Academy Awards presentation on Mar. 2, 2014, his place as a leading player in the direction of American movies is uncontested. We are privileged to have a talent like this coming out of a country at odds with itself, in a time of an unchecked NSA, which has engendered worldwide suspicion in terms of who we are as a country.

At the movies at least, America is well-represented in all its glorious contradictions by David O. Russell and his ensemble, including Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper, and Christian Bale, who give a glimpse at the real US and the real us.

American Hustle was released on Dec. 13, 2013, and has crossed the $100 M USD mark, with bullets to spare a month later. According to stats from The Numbers, a box office tracking site, Russell is now in the rarified tier of bankable directors in both indies and Hollywood blockbuster fare. # # #