Ah, award season, that magical time of year when the film industry gets together to congratulate itself for how great it is while the rest of the country sits around and watches. And sometimes people sing. It’s a special time.
Still, no matter how irritating, overhyped and more or less devoid of real importance things like the Oscars may be, they’re also an interesting gauge for mainstream American filmmaking and they give people like me with nothing better to do something to argue about. And given that 2012 was a pretty great year for movies, it seems worth discussing the Oscars at least.
As is true in most years, the Oscar nominations got some things very right (Michael Haneke for Best Director, “Beasts of the Southern Wilds’” popularity including Best Picture) and some things very, very wrong (no Best Cinematography for “The Master” and not a single nomination for “The Perks of Being a Wallflower”).
Regardless, this year the biggest prize, Best Picture, looks to be extremely competitive field, with nine very strong films nominated and no clear-cut winner in the bunch.
Take, first of all, the Spaghetti Southern, Tarantino’s “Django Unchained.” While it’s inarguably a masterfully made movie (I saw it twice within a few days), featuring an amazing script, brilliant Western-inspired landscapes and close-ups and inspired performances from Leo DiCaprio, Best Supporting Actor nominee Christoph Waltz and (the wonderfully hateable) Samuel L. Jackson, it’s been very controversial in its portrayal of slavery. Plus, its use of a certain word led to a maelstrom of controversy. Combined with the extreme, exaggerated violence of the film, “Django’s” best chance for winning may lie in how ridiculously pure entertainment value, its immaculate construction and in the fact that the Academy still owes Tarantino big-time for skipping over “Pulp Fiction” in 1994. While for some people (myself included) that might be enough, I’m not sure Uncle Oscar will agree.
Moving on to this year’s other big Christmas opener, Tom Hooper’s adaptation of “Les Misérables” was extremely ambitious in its attempt to bring the beloved musical to the big screen for the first time. It’s been panned by some for its use of long, unbroken close ups on the actors as they perform, a result of Hooper’s innovative decision to record the songs live on the set rather than pre-record the audio as most musicals do. This gives the film its undoubtedly finest moment in Anne Hathaway’s heartbreaking take of “I Dreamed a Dream,” (I cried…I’m not proud of it, but I cried), which should be enough alone to score her Best Supporting Actress.
Along with her (essentially shoo-in) performance, Hugh Jackman is great as Jean Valjean (and Sacha Baron Cohen has way too much fun, in the best way), but the film is far from perfect. Those who criticize the excess of extended close-ups aren’t totally off base. While they serve the extremely emotional nature of the film very well, accentuating the fantastic, personal performances, they do eventually grow repetitive. And while they’re meant to contrast the frailty of individuals in the context of the larger events of the story when put together with huge set pieces like the Barricade, the clumsy handling of some of these larger scenes diminishes the effect considerably.
Still, “Les Misérables” was both ambitious and, at least in terms of musicals, innovative, which it needs to be given credit for, and the results, while mixed, were easily more good than bad.
However, the Academy has a tendency to give the award to films that are more safely made or movies that don’t really have any mistakes in them, if only because they don’t really take any risks that could hurt them (think the cinematic equivalent of plain grilled cheese, where other movies are grilled cheese with tomatoes, mushrooms, peppers and three kinds of dairy). See “The King’s Speech” (also directed by Tom Hooper) winning Best Picture over “The Fighter,” “Black Swan,” “The Social Network,” “127 Hours” and essentially every other aptly-nominated movie that year for the most recent example of this.
This segues into our third nominee, the shameless Oscar bait that is “Lincoln.” It’s one nomination away from the “Big Five” of Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Director and Screenplay. It seems custom designed with this goal in mind. I mean, it’s a biopic of Abraham Lincoln, directed by Steven Spielberg (looking at another Best Director, potentially), featuring Daniel Day-Lewis (a lock for a record third Best Actor award), with Sally Field (aka Mama Gump) and Tommy Lee Jones (aka … Agent K?) —each of whom is also nominated.
It’s not even that there’s anything wrong with the movie (grilled cheese, remember). It’s very well made; some of the scenes are absolutely beautiful. It’s a great movie. It’s just so obviously tailor made for the Oscar audience, that it’s the one movie I would honestly have a problem with if it won.
Maybe it’s just me being bitter. Or maybe I’d like to see a risky, bold movie win and lend a little bit of validation back to one of the biggest prizes in filmmaking, like “The Artist’s” win last year. “Lincoln” winning, in my mind, would undo that progress.
