I’ve spent this column space looking at the Oscar race and trying not to offer any of my opinions about how the whole thing was shaping up.
But now the Oscar race is almost over, the voting deadline has passed, and there’s little else to do but judge the outfits, open the envelopes and listen to the speeches. So, I think it’s time I stated my opinion about the film that now seems poised to win Best Picture.
After important wins from all of the industry guilds, including Producers, Directors and, most perplexing, Writers, Argo seems to be the obvious frontfunner for Sunday night's biggest prize. Considering the strength, depth and individualistic voice of most of the other nominees, this, in my humble opinion, is a depressingly mediocre choice.
Neither the most intelligent nor the most audacious film in the running by a country mile, the only thought in Argo’s head is to entertain. Not inspire. Not provoke. Not challenge. It demands absolutely nothing from an audience. It only wants you to like it. It only wants to thrill you with near-misses and countdown clocks and airplane runway chases. And it really does thrill.
It’s a well-crafted, white-knuckled actioner with all the thematic weight of The Avengers, except it has a 70’s aesthetic that many have been confused for actual artistic vision. It’s a good movie.
The problem I always have with the Oscar race is that the Academy bills itself as honoring great movies. Real achievements. And with plenty of great movies and real achievements to choose from, the fact that the industry appears to be falling all over themselves to honor a merely good one seems difficult to understand.
Except that it isn’t. It’s just business as usual at the Academy Awards. Given the choice between films that push boundaries or execute bold visions and a nice, safe film that doesn’t piss people off, the Academy will always go with the latter. That’s what the victories for The King’s Speech and The Artist were about. And so it looks to be true this year.
The great snub has made Best Director non-nominee Ben Affleck Hollywood’s biggest cause celebre since “We Are The World”. Their vote, as it has been communicated ad nausem through the latter half of the season, is put forth to right a wrong… correct a massive injustice; rescue the overlooked and under-appreciated underdog.
Ann?Punch me in the face. (And my undying love to anyone that recognizes where that line came from.)
The Academy’s directing branch didn’t snub Ben Affleck. They simply did exactly what they’ve been charged to do and identified, despite the percussive noise of campaigning and talk of supposed “locks”, five singular pieces of directing vision.
The director’s branch tried (almost certainly in vain) to steer the rest of the Academy towards more thought-provoking work and films with extraordinary vision and strong, authorial voices.
Life of Pi
What do I mean by that? Just as there is a different authorial voice from the works of Jonathan Franzen and Danielle Steel, so too does a film carry the voice and aesthetic of the person who directed it. After all, in film, the directors are the chief storytellers.
It isn’t always just shooting a scripted scene (coverage, close-up, coverage) and cobbling it together in an editing room. It’s taking every filmmaking technique or element at your disposal and using it, even bending it, to tell a story in a distinctive and idiosyncratic way.
I’ll keep my examples mainstream and modern and not go all “film nerd” on you, but think of any film by Joel and Ethan Coen, Spike Lee, Quentin Tarantino, David Fincher, Danny Boyle, James Cameron or even (and God help me, but its true) Michael Bay for example.
From the design, cinematography, pacing and soundscape, there isn’t a doubt whose directorial voice you’re absorbing. You know what a Coen Bros. film looks and feels like and would never confuse it with, say, a Wes Anderson film, even though those filmmakers have often been described as “quirky”. That is because of their singular authorial voices.
The nominees for (notice the official title) “Best Achievement in Directing” are…
Michael Haneke, Amour
Ang Lee, Life of Pi
David O. Russell, Silver Linings Playbook
Steven Spielberg, Lincoln
Benh Zeitlin, Beasts of the Southern Wild
From Amour’s austere and precise directorial work, Life of Pi’s use of 3-D in to immerse us in quiet moments of loss and pain and Silver Lining’s nervy, off-kilter footwork to the thick and pastoral weight of Lincoln and the astonishingly surreal window into Bathtub survival in Beasts, the films nominated in the directing category this year could only have been made by the directors that made them. Their voices are that distinct and rich. Oh my God, so rich.
That is the achievement they were looking for. Frankly, that is the achievement I’m looking for. So all of the talk of an Affleck snub strikes me as ridiculous campaign spin.
If Argo’s director weren’t such a famous actor, it would be impossible to know for certain who directed it. Gone Baby Gone, The Town and finally Argo are all very competently made. But after three films, there’s still not a characteristic Affleck vision screaming through. That’s not an insult or a slight, just an objective observation. He simply hasn’t found his voice yet.
But apparently the Big Snub was enough to capture the attention of voters across various guilds. Enough for them to vote Argo as the Best fill-in-the-blank. Enough for them to fête Ben Affleck for making a movie any number of filmmakers could have made -- and have made, quite frankly.
For me, the handwriting has been on the wall ever since I learned that the campaign consultants behind “Free Ben Affleck” are the same ones who guided the simplistic and sloppy Crash to a Best Picture victory over far worthier films such as Brokeback Mountain, Munich and Capote.
The worst for me is the idea that the Academy will follow suit with the WGA (Writers Guild of America) and award Best Adapted Screenplay to Argo over, quite frankly, the vastly superior screenplays of Beasts of the Southern Wild, Lincoln, and Life of Pi.
Talk about championing mediocrity.
It’s enough to make me go crazy. Those of us that still care about the Oscars really care about the Oscars. We beg for these members to do something they either don’t possess the capacity to do or simply lack the facility to do. Think outside the milquetoast box.
We plead for them to champion achievement instead of backstory. We beg for them to reward challenging, artistically successful films with big ideas and ambitions instead of reserving those honors for the milk and cookie set. We urge them take a friggin’ risk.
For the second year in a row, the most prestigious prize in film is set to go to a film that celebrates Hollywood. That, more than anything related to the Big Snub, is Argo’s real ace in the hole. Pucker up, Buttercup.
Enough. We long for Hollywood to stop congratulating films just for congratulating Hollywood. Keep that going and you’ll end up shoving Oscar’s head so far up Oscar’s derriere, we may never see the bald guy’s face again. The Academy is threatening to insulate themselves right out of relevance, if they haven’t already done so.
I certainly hope we see a courageous vote this year. It was so nice to see nominations based on their own idea of achievement and not because several hundred other award shows told them what to vote for. I certainly hope that individualistic streak continues.
But mainly, I want to see daring films win because that is the one assured way we get more daring films.
That’s what it’s all about. That is why I’m pre-emptively ranting. That’s why those of us that still care about Oscars still care about Oscars. We don’t want the industry to reward more vanilla filmmaking, filmmaking without a strong original voice, filmmaking that’s too timid or too shy or too worried about pissing some people off. When those films reap the rewards for playing it safe, studios large and small will just be encouraged to make more of those kinds of films.
It’ll be even more difficult to get stronger work made. It’ll be more difficult to find films, especially American films, with the stones to say something dangerous and messy and true about the world we live in.
It’s already too difficult for those films to get financed. It’s already too rare that they are made and distributed to a wide audience. Gay themed films, films about women and people of color… those voices are already whispers in the summer, we don’t need the Academy to ensure that they are whispers during award season too.
We need more Amour’s. We need more Beasts’. We need more Brokeback’s and Kids Are All Right’s and Do The Right Thing’s and Life of Pi’s. We need more Lincoln’s. Those kinds of films need Oscar as a champion. Not the safe Argo’s. We already have enough of those.
After all, and I cannot say this enough, those that still care about cinema really still care about cinema.
