WE DON’T usually dwell on the Oscars after they’re over, simply because they’re so boring and lacking in surprises (there’s a reason why British bookies had already stopped taking bets on Chicago several days before the ceremony). This year’s awards, on the other hand, were a different matter, as if the removal of red-carpet preening and gushing had also somehow removed the mental shackles that always make results so staid and predictable.
Some of it was due, no doubt, to the Current Climate (though of course votes were cast long before the outbreak of war in Iraq); but at least a couple of awards point to a more broad-minded Academy than we’re used to, boding well for the future.
Chicago did win Best Picture, of course, and five other Oscars besides – but all, with the exception of Catherine Zeta-Jones, relatively minor technical awards like Costume Design and Editing (it’s certainly the most edited film of the year!). Renée Zellweger lost Best Actress to Nicole Kidman and – more surprisingly – director Rob Marshall failed to win for Best Director, only the fourth time in the past 20 years that the Best Picture director hasn’t been recognised on Oscar night.
Strangely, three of those four occasions have come in the past five years (Shakespeare In Love and Gladiator being the other Director-less Best Pictures), whereas it only happened once in the 16 years between 1982 and 1997. Even more strangely, this year’s Best Director – Roman Polanski for The Pianist – is a convicted felon unable to enter the US on pain of being imprisoned for statutory rape. It’s the kind of controversy one would never have expected the Academy to sanction — yet it does look like things are changing. As with the new disparity between Picture and Director, it looks like voters may actually be voting for the best in each category, instead of going on familiar formulas and easy choices.
Consider the evidence. It used to be a given – still is, in fact – that the Oscars exist to reward and congratulate the Hollywood Establishment. Thus, for instance, veterans had an advantage, because they’d often be rewarded for their entire body of work – the equivalent of a pat on the back from their peers – whereas youngsters often had to ‘prove’ themselves (unofficially, of course), winning on their third or fourth nomination. Yet this year’s Best Actor – Adrien Brody, again for The Pianist – is a first-time nominee and the youngest Best Actor winner ever, at 29. Marlon Brando, by way of contrast, was nominated four years in a row from 1951-54, before finally winning (at 30) for On The Waterfront.
And what happened to rewarding the Hollywood Establishment? The Pianist – which also won Best Adapted Screenplay – was made in Europe. Disney are the kings of animation, yet Best Animated Feature went (quite deservedly) to Spirited Away, made in Japan by Hayao Miyazaki. Michael Moore – a professional outsider – won Best Documentary with Bowling for Columbine.
Strangest of all, however, was the Best Song category. Here, after all, was a chance for Chicago fans – who presumably liked the film in large part because of the songs – to reward legendary songsmiths John Kander and Fred Ebb (who also wrote the score for Cabaret). Since the film was based on a Broadway show, none of the songs was eligible (the category is for Best Original Song), so the film’s producers got Kander and Ebb to write a new song, ‘I Move On’, which is played over the closing credits. The song was added for one reason only: to get Kander and Ebb an Oscar nomination, which it duly did.
Given that Chicago is a musical, you’d expect all the people voting for it in Best Picture to also give it Best Song, in recognition of its score. But maybe they wanted to reward something less frivolous – in which case there was also ‘The Hands that Built America’ from Gangs of New York, sung by U2. Not only is this a more sombre song, as befits the Current Climate, but Bono (of U2) is also a well-known activist for worthy causes.
Either choice would’ve been respectable, hence predictable. But no-one could have predicted that Best Song would go to Eminem for ‘Lose Yourself’ (from 8 Mile), a singer best known for hateful lyrics and inflammatory, sometimes homophobic, comments. Above all, a singer with few if any fans in the over-50 bracket, which is where a large chunk of Academy members belong.
What’s going on here? One simple explanation may be that this year saw an unusually high incidence of vote-splitting. Thus, for instance, Best Actor was widely seen as a two-horse race between Jack Nicholson and Daniel Day-Lewis, so it’s possible they simply cancelled each other out, allowing Brody to squeeze in between them. The same may be true in Best Director, where Marshall and Martin Scorsese (for Gangs of New York) were more-or-less equal favourites, and in Best Song with Chicago and U2.
Maybe. But the sheer number of surprises raises a more interesting possibility – that the Oscars are gradually becoming less hidebound, and will actually start reflecting the year’s best films even when they have nothing to do with Hollywood. Was 2002 the shape of things to come, or just a fluke? I guess we’ll have to wait till next year to find out.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
