Like many of you, I stayed up to watch the
entirety of the 85th Academy Awards Sunday night. Unlike many of you, that meant being awake until
6 a.m., because the 6-hour time difference between Germany and the East Coast
is, sometimes, very much an inconvenience.
Despite my massive lack of sleep deprivation, I still managed to enjoy
myself (until the very end, but we’ll get to that).
Let’s
look at the show first before delving into the awards themselves. The actual performance aspect of the Awards
is always a mixed bag. Some years it’s
well-done and a lot of fun, like when Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin teamed up
during the 2010 show (which still ranks as my favorite of all the Oscar
telecasts I’ve watched). Some years it’s
terribly awkward to sit through, like just one year later when Anne Hathaway
famously ended up next to a *possibly* drugged James Franco for the entire
night.
This
year, honestly, I thought was more or less in the middle. Yes, Seth McFarlane’s „Boobs Song“ was a
reach, and I perfectly understand the arguments that it was ultimately
degrading and unnecessary, regardless of the self-aware, parody-related reasons
he *probably* had for singing it.
However, the sock puppets video was pure gold, the Sound of Music
throwback was great, and although he pulled no punches with his roasts, as many
others have pointed out, these people spend their days pretending to be other
people. So I don’t see a little
irreverence once a year (twice if you count the Globes) as a bad thing for
this crowd.
All
of the none-Seth McFarlane-related parts of the show were equally mixed. Some presenters (like the Avengers team) were
funny, but the rest ranged from „nothing special“ to „how did those two manage
to wander on-stage“ (if you were watching, you know who I’m talking
about). The broad montage of big
show-piece numbers from past musical films sounded good and looked good (as did
Adele’s performance of „Skyfall“), but the whole time I couldn’t help but feel
bad for the other nominated songwriters.
Why devote a whole show to „Music in Films“ (and section off huge chunks
of time for performances) and not bring up the nominated artists to perform
their songs? Why instead drape adoration
across the shoulders of a single nominee in a way that screams, „Yeah,
hopefully the rest of you stayed home tonight?“
Just saying.
Alright,
enough of that nonsense, onto the awards!
Honestly, I’m *relatively* pleased with how they turned out. In a year filled with strong, memorable
films, the Academy found a way to spread the love pretty evenly. 6 different films went home with multiple
awards- 4 for Life of Pi, 3 for Argo and Les Mis, and 2 for Lincoln,
Skyfall, and Django Unchained. I actually
had no problems with Ang Lee taking home Direction, and was quite glad to see Django win for Screenplay. Although I would have preferred Zero Dark winning that one, Tarantino’s
speech was easily the best of the night, second only to Daniel Day Lewis‘. I also would have preferred seeing Lincon take home a few more, but that’s
a personal nitpick.
Not
that every award sat well with me, however.
I held out hope to the last minute that Sally Fields would sneak out
with Supprting Actress for Lincoln,
but every rumor was confirmed when Anne Hathaway took the trophy. I am still of the opinion that she won the
award NOT for her performance, but simply because she played a character that
has been a cultural fixture for a century and a half, and also benefited from
trailers that lavished a HUGELY inordinate amount of attention on her
character’s 10 minutes of time in the story.
Ah well, what’s done is done.
Hopefully she’ll use her newfound renown for good and not evil.
Although
I am very much a defender of Brave as
a good Pixar movie, I was still surprised that it managed to take away Animated
Film from Wreck-It-Ralph, which I
thought had waltzed away with the award months ago. I still maintain that ParaNorman was better than both of those though, and I‘m sad that
the team at Laika will have to wait a bit longer to get a big award. Seriously, if their first two films are signs
of things to come, they could become the studio to break the long-standing
Dreamworks/Disney/Pixar stranglehold on American animation. Fingers crossed.
Aside
from those two, I felt the awards were going along swimmingly until Jennifer
Lawrence managed to take Best Actress away from....well, any of the others
would have been a better choice, in my opinion.
My attitude towards Silver Linings
Playbook has softened considerably since I saw it (and promptly smacked my
head in astonishment that it was considered more Oscar-worthy than The Master, Moonrise Kingdom, or Cloud
Atlas). My grudging appreciation of
the film as an above-average rom-com aside, however, Jennifer Lawrence remains
the least interesting and least engaging part of a film that had no business
getting nominations outside of the male acting categories (seriously, Jacki Weaver
got a nomination? For saying „I’m making
food for the game“ about 10 times?). I
had also been forced to spend several weeks prior to the telecast voicing my
issues with the film just to get responses like THIS- „But Jennifer Lawrence is
so hot!“
The frustrating part
is, I like Jennifer Lawrence. I like her
a lot. Winter’s Bone was a fantastic movie, and I’m willing to chalk her
lack of energy in Hunger Games up to
the lackluster direction that infected the rest of the film. I’d love it if she could join Anne Hathaway
in the next wave of top American actresses.
This just was not the performance that should have gotten her an
Oscar. Like with Anne Hathaway though,
if she is able to parley the fame she’s getting now into better roles in better
movies, then this might end up not being such a bad deal after all.
That brings us to
the last big surprise of the night- Argo
winning Best Picture. Not that it was a
surprise, exactly, the winds of fortune had been blowing in Ben Affleck’s favor
for weeks prior to last Sunday, but I was still disappointed. Not surprised though. This year was loaded with very good
historical period pieces, most of which centered around specific events in
American history. Out of all of those
films, Argo was the most straightforward and uncomplicated, the most positive
and uplifting, the least controversial (read, „least likely to make you
question your faith in America’s moral righteousness“), and had the most
„dramatic“ ending.
And right there is
my biggest problem with Argo- aside
from the romping comedy bits of seeing Hollywood heavyweights help the CIA do a
good thing for a change, the part that seemed to appeal to audiences the most
was the skin-of-the-teeth chase at the very end to get the operatives out
before their identities are discovered.
Sadly, Argo achieved this by
bending history far more than Zero Dark or
Lincoln do. Not one part of the chase and the associated
close-shaves happened the way Ben Affleck plays them, at least not to that extreme.
Not that that’s a
bad thing- a movie needs to be a movie first, and history second. But by doing that, Argo sacrifices its shot at being a solid and educational drama for
the sake of being a solid, old-school thriller.
And it is a great, classical-style thriller. But ultimately not a very deep or engaging
movie (although it does take the time to remind audiences of America’s
oft-whitewashed role in causing the Iranian Revolution, for which it deserves
credit). Lincoln, Zero Dark, and Django took a lot more chances, ask much
harder questions, and challenge audiences much more. In my opinion, that makes them better movies,
and more deserving of Oscar Gold.
In the end, of
course, all of this (even the Academy’s choices) are mere subjective opinion,
and are only as important as we make them.
It’s all part of the great big ongoing debates that make artistic
pursuits so much fun. Every so often, we
need to remind ourselves of that.
Especially when smaking the couch in anger that „your film“ got
denied. Which I may have done quite
often Sunday night. Possibly.
-Judge Richard
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