So the Oscars have come and gone once again, and I know this is late but, I mean, for the most part they just sort of happened? Ellen was charming, Jared Leto plugged his band is his acceptance speech and “12 Years a Slave,” thankfully, won Best Picture (I didn’t love it like I loved “Her” and “Inside Llewyn Davis,” but it was the right choice for a lot of reasons).
There is, however, one thing that bothered me. You know what no, I’ll say it: I was upset by it. I was upset by the fact “20 Feet from Stardom,” and not “The Act of Killing,” won for Best Documentary.
Now before I start, I want to express that I did sincerely love both of these films, and I’m in no way trying to take anything away from “20 Feet.” It was a gorgeously moving film, brilliantly constructed and it got me a dose of Talking Heads. I adored it.
So, that being said, I also want to acknowledge the long history the Oscars have with playing it safe in the Documentary Feature category, rewarding technical excellence over formal innovation. And with straight goofing on films like “The Thin Blue Line” and “Hoop Dreams.” Really, this isn’t anything new.
But this year, the Oscars made a mistake. This year they picked the safe option, the Hollywood option, the film about show business and art and struggling to reconcile the two ideas, over a film that asked a nation to own up to its genocide, specifically the, uh, people who did the genociding. That seems… important.
And yeah, “The Act of Killing” is also just an insane reinvention of the idea of a documentary; it challenges both its audience and its subjects to reexamine everything from human nature to the way art allows us to reflect on and potentially redeem ourselves, to how these things can be allowed to happen. If you haven’t seen it you need to—like actually need to see it. The movie’s significant.
But we need to set aside all of that because, you know, the Oscars are subjective and not really about actual innovation or quality, but about validating certain works over others within the mainstream. Which is why the documentary issue is such a problem for me.
Because documentaries are so much more likely to be political than other types of film, given the whole idea of a documentary, the validation (or not) that can be given by something like an Academy Award takes on an actual significance that moves far beyond the realm of “Matthew McConaughey won, the McConnaissance is in full effect” or “Alfonso Cuarón won because he invented the future of action filmmaking.”
It moves into “the issue is important, it needs attention and we can bring it to the attention of millions of people with our platform.”
And they failed. I won’t say it’s the only useful role the Oscars can play, but socially it may be the most important. And they goofed. To paraphrase/quote a hero of mine, FILM CRIT HULK, they chose the film about how underrated Hollywood people are over the film confronting an unpunished atrocity.
This might come down a little hard on “20 Feet from Stardom,” but the point is valid. The Oscars goofed, as they usually do. And it isn’t even the fact that they missed out on the ability to use their cultural position to do something important, because they do that with their documentary picks all the time. It’s the fact they are unhesitant to apply this logic to their picks in other categories, all the way up to Best Picture. How else can we explain the awards “Crash” won?
What upsets me most is this: the misapplication of whatever power we’ve given the Oscars, and their apparent inability to fully understand what exactly that power means or is capable of doing.
But at any rate, both films were excellent, people at least found out about “The Act of Killing,” and Darlene Love was able to insert some soul into the otherwise sterile award show proceedings. Please go watch both of these films. Regardless of what award things happen, I think they’re both really wonderful, and I hope y’all will as well.
Do you share Austin’s opinion? Email him at wellens@wisc.edu and tell him what you think.
