Oscar Couture, Courage and Outrage

Carey Mulligan is a better actress sound asleep than Sandra Bullock is wide awake!

George C. Scott won an Oscar in 1970 for his eponymous role in the film Patton. He refused to accept it and sent a curt note to the Academy saying that he considered awards ceremonies, especially the Oscars, trite. He’s right, of course. The Oscars honor “movies,” not “films.” The difference is that of surface and depth. Films make us think and probe the human psyche; movies are gauzy little entertainment moments whose impressions vanish before the credits finish rolling. As for Oscar night, I often don’t make it past the second cheesy dance number before I turn off the television and, as a guy whose idea of a fashion designer is Leon Leonwood Bean, I couldn’t care less about who’s wearing who. But, by God, it’s our God-given right as Americans to argue over who won and who lost, even if we didn’t watch a glitzy second of the broadcast.

Courage

Let’s start with what Oscar got right. It’s hard to dispute Mo’Nique as Best Supporting Actress. It was a fine performance in an important film (to use the distinction made above). Oscar also got it right in not heaping honors on Avatar, a movie that’s really little more than an expensive video game. It got geek-tech awards, which is what it should have gotten. The Best Original song, “The Weary Kind” from Crazy Heart, was an Oscar rarity—a song that can actually be sung! And I was shocked when The New Tenants won for best Live Action Short Film. It deserved to win but I thought it would be way too snarky and cynical for Oscar. And that goes doubly for the brilliant Logorama as Best Animated Short. It so incisively skewers shallow materialism that it’s almost an act of self-loathing for Hollywood to honor it.

Can Live With It

The best "films" are never nominated, let alone win. With that in mind I can live with The Hurt Locker carrying off Best Picture and Best Director. Neither is true, but Hollywood could have (and has done) done worse. Christoph Waltz apparently was superb in Inglorious Basterds, a movie I won’t see because I can’t abide Quentin Tarantino. I would have preferred honoring the wonderful Christopher Plummer, but quality is quality. Congratulations to Waltz. I can live with Up as Best Animated Feature as well, even though it was saccharine in places and killed off its only interesting female character. That said, it was a visual feast and magical. I’m also fine with The Hurt Locker for Best Screenplay simply because it faced no serious competition. I was happy it beat out the grossly overrated A Simple Man.

They Wuz Robbed

There are always snubs and flubs. Flub number one was ten Best Picture nominees. Hollywood doesn’t make ten great movies per year; this strictly every-child-is-an-honors-child fluff. Actually, it’s a naked ploy to boost the box office by allowing more movies to advertise as having been an “Oscar nominee.”

The worst travesty was Sandra Bullock as Best Actress. She’s a celebrity, not an actress, and Carey Mulligan was flat-out robbed. So was Meryl Streep. Bullock didn’t even belong in this company let alone win the hardware. I wasn’t fond of choosing Jeff Bridges as Best Actor either, though I predicted his victory. But to see a performance that is superior in every way to that of Bridges, see Colin Firth in A Single Man. I’ve not seen Foreign Language winner The Secret in Their Eyes, but its victory was an upset that hasn’t played well in the international community, where The White Ribbon has been hailed as one of the finest pieces of cinema in the twenty-first century. Many also feel The Cove was a rather slight film vis-à-vis its competitors in the Documentary Feature category. Best Costume Design for The Young Victoria? Since when is dressing people like a BBC horse drama creative costuming? Avatar for Cinematography? How did CAD become cinematography?

George C. Scott was right: Oscar is trite. So let the debates begin!