By ALEX
FUNG
Last updated: 2001/12/09
PreambleHi.
This is the first of my annual Oscar columns leading up to the 74th Academy Awards presently scheduled for March 2002. For many years now -- this would mark Year Six -- I've been penning online commentary addressing developments during the period affectionally called 'awards season', with a particular focus on the various critics and industry awards doled out; the past columns generally appear to have been received warmly in certain circles.
(Regular readers may have noticed that the web site has been conspicuously dormant over the past several months. Thanks to those who were so thoughtful to write in to see if everything was all right; I was particularly touched by the concerned [or hopeful, depending on your interpretation] e-mails inquiring if I was dead. It was somewhat refreshing to take a break from the web site after maintaining it without interruption since 1996, although I kept myself occupied with film writing in other media during this 'downtime'. In any case, I plan to scribe regular columns in this section of the web site for the forseeable future, although I'm concerned that new Geocities restrictions forcibly limiting the amount of traffic my site will accept [by sporadically shutting down access altogether] may considerably hamper this initiative; anyone have any tips or suggestions about obtaining web page space elsewhere?)
One change I'm planning to implement for this year's series of columns is an overhaul of the Mailbag section. Although I appreciate the feedback, comments, suggestions and awards-related musings directed my way from reader[s] during Oscar season, I eventually found that the sheer volume of incoming messages became unsustainable, and the resultant backlog grew to daunting levels. I don't want to scrap the section altogether -- for me, it's one of the more enjoyable aspects of this exercise (hopefully reader[s] feel similarly about it) -- so I plan to revamp the Mailbag section by reducing it to a few selected letters per column. Or perhaps choice excerpts from a handful of letters. I'm haven't really nailed down how I'm going to handle it -- we'll see how things work out. Who knows, perhaps nobody will write in this year.
Danke
Mucho gratitude to JMSTREEP, Academy Awards scholar and historian, for invaluable assistance. Needless to say, I receive a great deal of help from numerous parties in managing the web site and penning these columns, for which I'm terribly appreciative, but I owe a particular debt of gratitude for the aid provided by JMSTREEP.
European Film Awards Reactions
While the European Film Academy's decision in 1997 to retitle their year-end accolades from the Felixes to the more nondescript European Film Awards and refocus them towards a more populist bent has certainly succeeded in improving their profile in the North American media, I remain terribly dubious about the extent of their prospective influence on the Academy Awards race; while it certainly won't damage a film or performer's Oscar chances to snare a Euro Award -- at best, it'll make for another catchy line in a For Your Consideration advertisement -- failure to do so is hardly a telling sign. Nevertheless, I thought I'd comment on some of the interesting choices made by the EFA, as presented at the beginning of December in Berlin.
Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain (shortened to a succinct Amélie for North American consumption) took the Best European Film Award this year over an unusually relevant (in terms of Oscar) list of nominated films -- Das Experiment (of which I'm particularly curious about), the Dogma picture Italian For Beginners, La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher) and The Son's Room were all submitted by their respective countries for consideration in the Best Foreign Language Film Academy category, while the remaining three European Film Award Best Film nominees -- the romantic comedy Bridget Jones's Diary, the semi-controversial Intimacy and the summer sleeper hit The Others -- all qualify for Oscar consideration on the basis of their 2001 theatrical runs. Considering its immense popular and favourable critical reception in France and elsewhere, Amélie's EFA victory comes as little surprise, and based upon the numerous Audience awards the film has racked up during its tour of film festivals and positive word-of-mouth upon opening in North American during fall 2001, it seems reasonably possible that the film may score a Best Picture Oscar nomination; Miramax has clearly been grooming the film for an Academy Awards bid over the past six months and has already declared that they plan to push it for Oscar consideration across the board. (That the film will score a Foreign Language Film nomination on behalf of France is both obvious and inevitable.)
Ben Kingsley took the European Film Award for Best Actor for his against-type work as an intimidating gangster in Jonathan Glazer's Sexy Beast. Given that Fox Searchlight has shown every inclination of pushing hard for a Kingsley Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination -- they started their campaigning for him back in June, an extraordinarily early point in the year to kick off Academy Awards promotion -- I fully expect that they will make extensive mention of his Euro victory to create a validated perception of his performance as award-calibre. None of the other individual EFA Best Actor nominees seem positioned to figure into this year's Oscar race, but it is worth noting that the European Film Academy saw fit to nominate the male ensemble of Last Orders en masse for a Best Actor nomination; this film has already opened in an exclusive release in Los Angeles and was singled out for its ensemble cast by the National Board of Review. (More on that later.)
Isabelle Huppert's victory over (artificial)-flavour-of-the-moment Audrey Tautou for her performance as a demanding piano teacher engaged in a sadomasochistic relationship with a pupil in Michael Haneke's La Pianiste came to me as quite a surprise -- and, to me, a welcome one. Although the film did not quite live up to my (admittedly heightened) expectations -- I'm positive on La Pianiste with significant reservations -- veteran Huppert's authoritative, controlled performance in a complex role was far more impressive than popular Tautou's charmless work in the cuteness-saturated Amélie. (For the record, the Jeunet film completely failed to win me over, instead succeeding in alternately annoying and boring me with its heavy doses of pandering whimsy. That some are falling for this stuff is something that I must acknowledge -- I sat in quiet amazement as the audience around me roared with laughter at the film's many banal sight gags and unconvincing playfulness -- but cannot for the life of me share in. That some -- the hype machine, probably -- are trying to liken Tautou to Audrey Hepburn is so outlandish as to be offensive.) Despite Huppert's victory with the European Film Academy and her Best Actress prize earlier in the year at Cannes 2001, she will not be a factor in the Academy Award Actress race; Tautou, however, remains a possibility. Although the fact that Tautou's performance is entirely French-language (curiously, Emily Watson was originally conceived to play the role of Amélie) must be considered, recent years have demonstrated that the current climate isn't entirely prohibitive towards Oscar nominations for foreign-language performances. Personally, if one of the five EFA Best Actress nominees ought to get serious Oscar consideration, I'd suggest that Charlotte Rampling be given attention for her accomplished, finely-modulated performance of a woman's attempt to come to terms with the sudden disappearance of her husband in François Ozon's compelling Sous Le Sable (Under The Sand). The film has qualified for Oscar consideration -- it had a theatrical run in Los Angeles in May 2001 -- but given its limited profile and the unlikeliness of an aggressive campaign by the film's U.S. distributor, Winstar, I'm regretfully not hopeful about Rampling's chances.
Amélie performed strongly at the European Film Awards, snaring the Best Director (Jean-Pierre Jeunet) and Cinematography (Bruno Delbonnel) prizes in addition to its Best Picture award. Both are genuine possibilities for their respective categories in the Academy Awards race. While much has been made about the film's chances in the Best Picture category, I've been a little surprised that more hasn't been made about Jeunet's prospects in the Best Director category; if AMPAS voters fall for the film's loopy escapism in the numbers which I fear they might, Jeunet's effectiveness in bringing his distinctively eccentric vision to the screen could demand serious attention. (Miramax will have their hands full this season, with Amélie, Lasse Hallström's The Shipping News and Todd Field's In The Bedroom heading their pack of Oscar candidates in multiple categories.)
Danis Tanovic's EFA victory for Best Screenplay for the satirical Bosnian war drama No Man's Land may aid the film's prospects for in the Best Foreign Language Film category. Given its reception elsewhere, at this point it must be considered a likely candidate to snare a nomination. Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge picked up the EFA prize for Best Non-European Film, albeit against competition which will not factor into the Best Picture Oscar race: Henry Bean's fact-based portrait of a Jewish neo-Nazi (which I anxiously want to see), The Believer, headed to video, while Majid Majidi's Baran and Ashutosh Gowariker's cricket epic Lagaan have been submitted by Iran and India, respectively, for the AMPAS Foreign Language Film category. Hou Hsiao-hsien's contemporary Millennium Mambo, Mira Nair's Venice-winning Monsoon Wedding, Mohsen Makhmalbaf's fortuitously-timed Kandahar and Alfonson Cuarón's road movie Y Tu Mamá Tambien were not submitted for Oscar consideration and will not have the requisite L.A. theatrical runs in the 2001 calendar year to qualify.
In the various People's Choice Awards, Jeunet took Best Director for Amélie, while Colin Firth won Best Actor for his performance in Bridget Jones's Diary and Juliette Binoche triumphed with the public for her Chocolat work. For obvious reasons, Binoche won't be a factor in this year's Academy Awards race (for those who have understandably forgotten, she received a Best Actress Oscar nomination for the performance last year). After some reported waffling between the Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor categories, Miramax appears to have settled on promoting Firth in the former category. Despite the Euro accolade, I'm currently skeptical about his chances at reaching the Academy's final five; a Golden Globe nomination, however, is not out of the realm of possibility given that ten male performances are recognized as opposed to the AMPAS quintet. As previously mentioned, I consider Jeunet a possibility for a Best Director performance, although hopefully a wave of resistance in the Hollywood community will build against his film.
National Board of Review Reactions
Moulin Rouge's selection by the National Board of Review as the year's Best Film can't qualify as a total surprise -- Roger Friedman had reported its probable selection a week prior to the NBR announcement -- but it nevertheless officially kicks off this year's award season in a distinctly unconventional manner. Honestly, when I saw the film theatrically earlier in the year, I would've never guessed that Moulin Rouge could possibly become a potential Best Picture Oscar candidate; I empathized with the marketing representative who publicly mused at the film's Cannes 2001 bow that running its domestic campaign would be of wrist-slicing difficulty, and marvelled that the picture managed to even crack $50 million domestic. It isn't that I disliked the film -- on the contrary, Moulin Rouge is one of my favourite studio pictures of the year, and I'm itching to see it again -- but that the film is so aggressively noncomformist, so frenetic, so frequently outrageous and garish, and so determinedly divisive (I can't think of another studio film this year which would so obviously split its audiences into camps of love-it and can't-stand-it) that it struck me as being a brutally tough sale to the public despite the presence of stars like Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman, let alone tenable as an Academy Awards Best Picture candidate. I greeted Fox's decision to reissue the film in November (clearly for Oscar purposes) with a raised eyebrow, but in retrospect it does make sense -- after all, what else are they going to push this year, Glitter? Shallow Hal? They clearly seem to be behind Moulin Rouge in this year's Oscar race, and getting Robert Wise on board -- the repeated reports of the veteran director's authoritative public stamp of approval for "reinventing the musical" can only help the anachronistic film's credibility in certain circles, especially with older, conservative voters -- was a bonus. Still, while I think there's a lot of conventional aspects about Moulin Rouge to like -- the charismatic performances by Kidman and particularly McGregor, the film's unabashed romanticism -- I remain cautious about its eventual prospects in the Best Picture race at this point despite the NBR prize. Will Moulin Rouge get singled out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for a Picture nomination? You can bet on it. Will the film get a Best Picture Oscar nomination? I'm not sure -- but goodness, it'd be something if it did.
On to the other nine 2001 films cited by the National Board of Review. I'm a little bit irked that they picked out Todd Field's debut feature In The Bedroom for accolades (ranking it their #2 film of the year, awarding Field their Best Director prize and the film's script their Screenplay Award), thereby stealing the thunder from my due-for-imminent-release 2001 Toronto International Film Festival report where I'd planned to suggest that Bedroom could very well pose a factor in this year's Oscar race. A modest independent film which deconstructs retribution, the film was acquired by Miramax (for a reported $1 million -- could be a steal if this picks up AMPAS nominations) at Sundance 2001. It strikes me as a certain arthouse hit -- it's English-language, profiles a recognizable cast, it's compelling and engaging, and is definitely accessible and relevant to a mature crowd -- which could play very strongly to AMPAS members; deadly somber and eminently respectable, it's an accomplished bit of filmmaking by Field that I expect few will actively reject and many will admire to varying degrees. (While I'm positive on the film with mild reservations, I know of many who are very enthusiastic about the film; it's certainly destined to be a critical favourite.) It's too early to forecast it for an Oscar nomination, but I would certainly consider it to be a viable sleeper candidate. Incidentally, while most of the press the film has received have focused on Sissy Space and Marisa Tomei as possible Actress and Supporting Actress possibilities, respectively -- and deservedly so, in my opinion -- Tom Wilkinson has received far too little attention for his performance in the film; he deserves to be given serious consideration for a Best Actor nomination. (If nothing else, you can bank on In The Bedroom racking up multiple Indie Spirit nominations.)
I've yet to see the NBR's #3 film, Ocean's Eleven (as I've been occupied writing this column -- witness the sacrifices, dear readers), but do not anticipate the film factoring into this year's Oscar race; by all accounts, it's an enjoyable diversion but not the sort of stuff from whence Academy attention emerges. I do think that people are being a little too hasty in writing off Memento as a possibility; while it obviously has much going against it -- low-budget indie production, a challenging (to put it mildly) narrative structure -- the film has ardent supporters (I can't remember where I read it, but one critic suggested it might make an appearance [highly unlikely, in my opinion] in the next installment of the Sight & Sound Best Of All-Time poll) and has been bandied around in conversation as one of the best of the year for roughly nine months now. The word-of-mouth on Memento is tremendous, and if enough AMPAS members pop in the tape or DVD and aren't put off by the unconventional narrative structure, I'm not entirely convinced it might not surprise. Obviously, smart money would be against Memento getting an Oscar nomination in the Best Picture category -- this, as with In The Bedroom, seems certain to score Independent Spirit award nominations -- but I'm not going to rule it out as a possibility. (If nothing else, Memento ought to score an Adapted Screenplay Oscar nomination.)
I can't yet comment on the NBR's #5 film, Monster's Ball, or Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down, ranked #6 by the National Board of Review (other than to say that it can't possibly be any worse than Hannibal). The Coen brothers' film, The Man Who Wasn't There, was the NBR's #7 picture; although I admired the B&W Cain-esque noir homage, I can't really envision it attracting sufficient attention for a Best Picture nomination. One ought to never discount Steven Spielberg, but his A.I. Artificial Intelligence appears to have divided audiences to such an extent that its Oscar prospects seem to be dwindling. Sean Penn's The Pledge failed to click with audiences and was released in January 2001 -- I'm mildly surprised and impressed that the NBR even thought to vote for it -- while it's hard to see NBR #10 picture Mulholland Drive (which I admired a great deal -- and yes, it all does make sense, dammit!) being a potential Best Picture Oscar bait movie.
The National Board of Review has a predilection for recognizing performers for their body of work in a given year, rather than singling out a particular performance. This habit was demonstrated with a few of their acting awards this year: Best Actor Billy Bob Thornton was cited for his work in Bandits, The Man Who Wasn't There and Monster's Ball, while Jim Broadbent took the Supporting Actor prize for Iris and Moulin Rouge, and Cate Blanchett won the Supporting Actress award for Bandits, The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring and The Man Who Cried. In the case of Broadbent, it's hard for me to project his prospects in the Supporting Actor Oscar race, particularly since I haven't seen Iris yet and have no idea which of the two performances the National Board of Review were focusing upon when bestowing upon him their accolade. As mentioned earlier, I've yet to see Monster's Ball and skipped Bandits (incidentally, am I the only one who found MGM's excuse that the film's dismal box office performance could be attributed to fear of terrorism to be rather nebulous? Could it instead be, oh, because the film looked awful?), but Thornton's low-key work in The Man Who Wasn't There is award-worthy; however, I'm very reserved about his actual Oscar chances. As frequent an Oscar-bait candidate as Thornton is, USA Films will have to run an impressive campaign to float him to a nomination. I've not read a single page of J.R.R. Tolkein's series of books and would otherwise have absolutely no interest in New Line's gargantuan The Lord Of The Rings trilogy (other than from a film industry observer's perspective) were it not for the casting of Cate Blanchett in the picture. I've yet to see the Peter Jackson film, but I have little trouble buying the suggestion that Blanchett's performance in the picture might be award-calibre given her excellent track record; aside from her Elizabeth nomination, she's been wonderful in such diverse fare as Oscar And Lucinda, Pushing Tin and The Talented Mr. Ripley. Definitely worth keeping an eye out. (Incidentally, isn't it remarkable that Johnny Depp and Christina Ricci can be credited with helping to drive Sleepy Hollow to some $80m+ domestic, and yet reteaming the same duo and tossing in Blanchett for good measure for The Man Who Cried failed to scare up even a fraction of the business? Goes to show how misleading it can be to inordinately attribute a film's box office success to its stars.)
As for NBR Best Actress winner Halle Berry for her performance in Monster's Ball, I'll have to see it to believe it. I know that she's won awards in the past -- the Golden Globe for her starring performance in Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, for one -- and there admittedly has been a buzz around Berry's performance in the Forster film (the recognition did not come out of the blue), but for now, I'm sustaining a healthy skepticism towards her selection. Suffice it to say that Halle Berry is not the first name to come to mind when someone mentions award-calibre actress, but I'm certainly hopeful that she'll prove me wrong.
The National Board of Review's selection for Best Foreign Film sheds little light on this year's Oscar race -- Alejandro González Iñárritu's raw, kinetic film Amores Perros was submitted for last year's Oscar race and surprisingly managed to grab an Academy Award nomination, inevitably losing to the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon juggernaut. However, the four NBR runner-ups, Behind The Sun from Central Station director Walter Salles, Dark Blue World, No Man's Land and Amélie are all very much in the race for this year's Foreign Language Film Oscar race. I'm not certain what to make out of the fact that Jeunet's film apparently ranked only fifth among this crowd -- perhaps I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high -- but I'm fairly optimistic that the latter three films (Amélie, Dark Blue World and No Man's Land will score Academy Award nominations, and although Behind The Sun is reportedly a radical departure from Central Station in tone and style, it may very well be a strong possibility. Meanwhile, George Butler's film The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition scored the NBR Documentary prize, and seems like a viable candidate for eventual Oscar attention, while Shrek took the NBR Animated Feature prize. Suffice it to say that it is obviously a foregone conclusion that the blockbuster DreamWorks fairy-tale spoof will receive a nomination in the inaugural Best Animated Picture Academy Award category.
Alex Fung (aw220@freenet.carleton.ca)
Back to Oscar Columns for the 74rd Annual Academy Awards.
Back to film page.