Academy Awards Predictions

I’m going to watch the Academy Awards tonight. I don’t know why, exactly, because I know that doing so is setting myself up for a lot of disappointment.

Disappointment, because the Film Academy isn’t an impartial, idealist group of film lovers. Disappointment, because the films that win tonight are more likely to win for reasons political rather than for their sublimity and accomplishments in filmmaking.

To start with, The Constant Gardener isn’t going to win Best Picture. Just like Saving Private Ryan lost out to American Beauty 1999, The Constant Gardener isn’t going to win because the 6,000+ members of the Association of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences don’t, to be crass, have the balls to vote for a film as strong as The Gardener. And, doubtless, half of the Academy members are invested in various pharmeceutical corporations, or happen to believe very firmly in the mission and purpose of the UN, and are thus unwilling to vote for a film that indicts both for their greed and for their failures. Yeah, it’s a bold film. So was City of God (Cidade de Deus, 2002), which directory Fernando Meirelles also could have / should have won best directory and / or best picture for. But again, it’s too rough. To gritty. Too hard to sit through. Film, like the news, should be pleasant, right?

Like Brokeback Mountain. That was pretty pleasant. I mean, it wasn’t– tortured loves, hate-crimes, poverty– no, not that pleasant, at the same time there’s lot of pretty cinematography of the Canadian Rockies (wait? wasn’t this movie set in Wyoming? why wasn’t this filmed in Wyoming? Meirelles films on location. He didn’t go to Arizona to film his scenes in Kenya…), and happy moments, and an overall hopeful tone to the conclusion of the movie: his little girl’s gettin’ married. Guess they’re going to have to find themselves another cowboy, right?

But the point is this: Brokeback Mountain, subject matter aside, was not an especially well-made movie. The direction was plain and uninspired– even when filming with the Canadian rockies as a backdrop. Ang Lee is not an especially talented directory, and his lack of telent demonstrated itself visibly in Brokeback. Any studio back-lot, B-movie director could have done just as well.

As much as I love Jake Gyllenhaal, his performance as Jack Twist was stilted and forced. Every moment he was on screen, his body language and inconsistent, forced accent belied what he doubtless must have been thinking: “how does a cowboy act? how does a cowboy talk? what does a cowboy think? I don’t know, and I don’t think Lee knows, so I guess I’ll just trust his direction and hope it turns out alright.” Bad move, Jake. Unfortunately, because (I imagine) few, if any, of the Academy members have met or grown up around real cowboys– people who actually rodeo, who have broken bones and nasty scars to prove it– they probably won’t be able to recognize that Gyllenhaal’s portrayal of a cowboy is unseemly as trying to pass off Canada as Wyoming.

Michelle William’s performance as Alma was a good performance, but only mediocre in comparison to Rachel Weisz‘s performance as Tessa Quayle in The Constant Gardener.

Roman Polanski’s Oliver Twist won’t be winning best art direction or best costuming, despite it’s rich and detailed realization of 19th century England. I don’t doubt that Dicken’s would have approved whole-heartedly of Polanski’s adaptation. Unfortunately, the Academy as a whole doens’t seem to approve of Polanski, and probably doesn’t want to suffer the embarrassment of giving an Oscar to a director who can’t come within American borders to receive his prize. Homosexuality is in with the Academy, and molesting children, it seems, is most defiantly out.

Crash was a good film, but in no regard was it a great film. The script and direction were very heavy-handed (perfect for your average American audience, on which subtlety is lost), the performances were over dramatic, and the editor tried too hard to be trendy, at the expense of the film as a whole.

The Academy may not have much love for Roman Polanski, but they do love Stephen Spielberg. THREE nominations for War of the Worlds? Admittedly, the technical aspects (sound and visual effects) that it was nominated for were well done, but the overall movie was so poor that it shouldn’t even be dignified with a single Oscar nomination, let alone three. How many nominations did Oliver Twist garner? And War of the Worlds has THREE? Fortunately, there’s little question that the Visual Effects award will go to Jackson’s King Kong.

Unfortunately, I haven’t seen a good number of the nominated films. Most notably, I haven’t seen Munich.

I’m sad to see that Batman Returns didn’t garner any nominations. The sound editing and special effects were spectacular. And the cinematography was significantly better, in my humble opinion, than Brokeback Mountain.

Capote was the best picture of the year, but of the nominated films, it may have been the best directed. Bennett Miller’s direction shows a maturity and elegance that many of the so-called Hollywood greats fail at, which is especially impressive considering that Capote is Miller’s first major release.

The biggest let-down of this year’s nominations, however, is the conspicuous absence of nominations for Frank Miller and Robert Rodriguez’s Sin City. Not only did it warrant a nomination for the best adapted screen play (well, maybe– a nomination, but not a win), and best direction (I have never seen a better screen adaptation of a comic-book– none of the Marvel movies even come close), but it also could have (and probably should have) been nominated for Best Picture. But, again, it’s a rough film. A really rough film. And it’s probably exactly because it managed to leave so many viewers with a sick feeling in their gut that it didn’t get nominated. And its for that exact reason that it should have been nominated.

So, what-ev. I tend to assign far greater importance to the Academy Awards than they’re due. At the end of the day, the Academy Awards are as whimsical, seemingly political, and potentially errant as any American political election, and I must remember that the failure of the Film Academy to recognize a great film is exactly that: a failure of the Academy, not an insult to the film.