It is, perhaps, the most feared and dreaded word in the entire Oscar lexicon (you know, other than the word ‘snubbed’).
Sending shivers down the spines of anxious studios and petrifying the anxiety-prone publicists entrenched in campaign mode (My word, I seem to have retreated to alliteration) it has the ability to completely alter the trajectory of what looked like an obvious winner.
The word I’m referring to, obviously, is controversy. And, like clockwork, it reared its ugly little head twice this week. Twice.
Yes, two films, which are predicted to have nice long runs in the nominees circle, find themselves having to face down accusations ranging from torture-endorsement to the over-celebration of violence and racial epithets. And all this comes before the general public has even had the chance to see the films and make their own minds up as to the validity of these debates.
Though these issues have been widely reported in the media, it might be prudent to mention that there are slight spoilers throughout the rest of this piece as well as vivid discussion on a certain racial pejorative beginning with the letter N.
Zero Dark Thirty, as you are probably already aware, is a film about the intensive and exhaustive C.I.A. manhunt for the mastermind of 9-11. And, as befits the film’s subject matter, there are scenes involving the use of the agency’s infamous “enhanced interrogation techniques”. Or simply put, torture.
But the heart of the debate lies in what the film says about these techniques. Or doesn’t say.
According to the film’s director, Kathryn Bigelow and its screenwriter Mark Boal, ZDT shows us these acts with neutral distance and without moral judgment.
“The movie has been, and probably will continue to be, put in political boxes,” said Boal in an interview with The Wrap. “Before we even wrote it, it was [branded] an Obama campaign commercial, which was preposterous. And now it’s pro-torture, which is preposterous."
Unfortunately, for the filmmakers, the pro-torture angle is what’s taken root. The lack of moral judgments on what most would classify as morally reprehensible acts that has many up in arms.
“As a moral statement, Zero Dark Thirty is borderline fascistic. As a piece of cinema, it’s phenomenally gripping—an unholy masterwork” writes New York Magazine critic David Edelstein in his otherwise good review of the film.
In a scathing write-up of the film, Zero Conscience in Zero Dark Thirty, The New Yorker’s investigative journalist Jane Mayer writes, “…what is so unsettling about “Zero Dark Thirty” is not that it tells this difficult history but, rather, that it distorts it.”
She continues, “In addition to excising the moral debate that raged over the interrogation program during the Bush years, the film also seems to accept almost without question that the C.I.A.’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” played a key role in enabling the agency to identify the courier who unwittingly led them to bin Laden.”
Responding to the film and Mayer’s article, Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Beast offers up serious questions of his own.
Sullivan writes, “One has to wonder whether any morally serious director would have chosen a morally-neutral approach to torture if she were portraying torture practiced by, say, the Iranian terror state, or by Nazis or Communists? The techniques are exactly the same. Is not taking a stand as you present such evil itself an endorsement?”
He then continues, “My sense is that Bigelow and Boal talked to some of those war criminals who did the torture and since torturers have to find some way to justify their acts, and because they are modern Americans fighting terror, the director simply did not have the courage to confront them with the fact that they belong in jail and hell for what they did.”
Meanwhile, Django Unchained, writer and director Quentin Tarantino’s violent slave-turned-avenger epic, began last week with one controversy and ended the week with two.
Last week, even as it was fêted with five Golden Globe nominations, including Best Picture (drama), it was reigniting the debate regarding the director’s very liberal use (in most all of his films, not just Django) of the N-word.
The Hollywood Reporter article, Tarantino's 'Django Unchained' Reignites Debate Over N-Word In Movies reports, “In total, the dialogue is peppered with over 110 instances of the n-word, uttered by both racist whites and black characters. It is used as an insult, a proper noun, and as throwaway filler. Whether it’s a sign of how far the nation has come in its race relations, or an indication of how much progress is left to be made, the use of the word has stirred debate … before the film even hits theaters.”
Indeed, this debate was kicked up several notches when the notorious site Drudge Report featured an attention-grabbing and (typical for Matt Drudge’s website) race-baiting splash linking to an innocuous Hollywood Reporter review by captioning, below Tarantino’s mug, “N*gger” (spelled exactly as I’ve spelled it here) seven times.
In typical Gawker style, their article, Why Is the Drudge Report Covered in ‘N*GGER’? The Coming Right-Wing Freakout Over Django Unchained explains “… in the world imagined by the extreme conservative web, a world constantly under the threat of race war, there is no acceptable space for righteous black violence — not as a firsthand depiction, not as secondhand reference, not as fact, not as fiction, not in the movies, and not on TV.”
Hollywood, to make it perfectly clear, cares little about what conservatives think. The Weinstein Company, which is releasing the film, cares even less. Had this been the end of controversies for the upcoming film, I would not have even mentioned it. After all, it seems a bit made up.
But Friday saw the country engulfed in a violent horror that was heartbreaking and all too real when a gunman walked into a school in Newtown, Connecticut and killed twenty six human beings, including the murder of twenty children.
A nation, awash in fresh sorrow for what feels like the millionth time this year, had searing and indelible images of pain and unimaginable grief on their television screens mixing with a plethora of talking head pundits talking about gun control, the NRA and, yes, violence in music, video games and movies. And when you changed the channel, you were being bombarded with television ads for the gun-slinging, ultraviolent Django.
In his blog post, Trouble for Django, Hollywood-Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells writes, “The Newtown revulsion of the last three days is very much in the air, and I don't think this is going to do any favors for Django Unchained, which [NON-SURPRISING SPOILER] is drenched in blood towards the finale...bodies on the floor, blood on the walls.”
He continues, “It would be one thing if Tarantino was an earnest, hard-core, straight-on filmmaker in the Michael Haneke mode. But he's all about "attitude", flip humor, irony and references to '70s movies, and to pour blood on top of that? Doesn't feel right in this climate.”
By the following Tuesday, the Weinstein Company announced they would cancel the red carpet premiere of the film (though the film is still scheduled to open Christmas Day and the company has denied this move was due to the violence depicted in the film itself).
Whether both of these films are being fairly or unfairly tarnished with the controversy brush is a bit beyond the ultimate point. Oscar ballots have hit the mailboxes and inboxes of Academy members just as these stories are hitting the sphere. Of course, there’s every chance that none of this affects their chances for Oscars.
And a chance that they will.
I know I’ve said this before, but Academy members aren’t voting for the “Best” anything. Some of them might. But on the whole, they are voting for the films they most want to hug. Films that make them proud to be a part of the industry they are in. Films that the world can look back on in 80 or more years and not feel like they’ve Milli Vanilli’d that decision.
A film they love in that way can withstand certain kinds of controversies. The acclaimed-despite-inaccuracy A Beautiful Mind, for example, brushed off some of the (faux) concerns about it because they wanted to hug Ron Howard. Some films, like the vilified-for-inaccuracy The Hurricane, suffer under their controversial weight.
Though it still remains to be seen, it will be very interesting to see if Zero Dark Thirty and Django Unchained can weather these storms. If they are deserving films, I certainly hope they will.
We will soon find out.
Reader Questions
Dear Brian,
Quvenzhané Wallis and Dwight Henry received some attention from major critics' groups, but they were deemed ineligible for the SAG awards, which are usually quite influential in the Oscar race. Do you think the fact that they're both amateur actors will count against them at the Oscars, or will their wonderful performances in Beasts of the Southern Wild be enough for a nomination? Thanks in advance.
Lion King
Thanks for the question, Lion King. You’re the undisputed champ of question-asking.
Quvenzhané Wallis and Dwight Henry were just so amazing in Beasts that I think both of them deserve to be nominated.
SAG has funny rules about Guild membership as a precursor to nominations and their Globe snubs can be attributed to, well, the Globe voters are what we politely refer to as starf**kers. Their omission does not surprise me.
But both actors are working various screenings and charming the pants off of voters. Right now, I’d say Wallis still has an excellent chance at a Best Actress nomination (they’re suckers for cute and she’s adorable in the film and on the circuit). Henry remains a dark horse for a Best Supporting Actor. Stranger things have happened.
What did you think of Nicole Kidman getting a Golden Globe and a SAG nod for The Paperboy? Does it mean she’s getting an Oscar nomination?
Matt
Hi Matt.
Speaking of stranger things, this was, undoubtedly, the biggest WTF of last week’s announcements. But Nicole Kidman was working the circuit like nobody’s business and she is beloved by her fellow actors (not to mention star**kers).
Still, I don’t think she gets in. She’ll get Academy members to watch their screeners of The Paperboy which will lead them to ask, after twenty minutes or so, “What the hell is this piece of crap?”
Hi BriOut
I love the new column. Keep up the good work. You said you loved Tinker TailorSoldier Spy last year which got me curious about what was your favorite nomination from last year was? Thanks.
Sarah
No, thank you, Sara.
As much as I was thrilled about Gary Oldman getting nominated for Best Actor for Tinker Tailor…, I cheered my head off for the completely unexpected nomination for Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation. The Writers Branch is consistently among the smartest, and most adventurous within the Academy. They pay attention, of course, to good writing which A Separation most certainly is.
It also meant that the film would get attention beyond the Foreign-Language Film ghetto and get to a wider audience, which I’m pleased to say that it did.
Wow… three questions instead of my usual, um, one. Keep them coming. However, now it is time for your favorite and mine...
Trivia Time
The answer to last week’s trivia question - Name the only one performer has ever won an Oscar for playing another Oscar winning performer - is…
… the great Cate Blanchett, who played the legendary Katherine Hepburn in The Aviator.
Congratulations to everyone that participated. The winner of this week's BriOut ShoutOut is…
EK2002
To get your BriOut ShoutOut next week, be the first to correctly answer this week’s trivia question.
Name the shortest performance, in terms of screen time, to ever win the Oscar for Best Actor.
Fun or serious questions about the award season? Send them in to get answers. You can pose them in the comments section, email me at BriOutAE@gmail.com, or tweet them to @BriOutAE and I’ll get right to work. Answers will appear in next week's column.
