Easily the biggest "Duhh" in recent memory. Normally, predicting a "Best Picture" is mechanical anyway (the film directed by the Director's Guild winner usually gets the Oscar) but there's just so much momentum behind "Chicago" that if it fails to win, it'll only be because so many people assumed it would win without their vote that nobody voted for it. An episode of "Head Of The Class," in which Arvid became class president instead of the varsity quarterback, can illustrate this phenomenon in greater detail.
It's too bad. "Chicago" is easily the weakest effort of the bunch. It never got any bigger than the screen, which is just an amazing thing to say about a big, glitzy musical. When you're creating a musical, you've got a huge ally: music is powerfully manipulative. Last night, I was fortunate enough to catch one of TBS's daily airings of "The Blues Brothers." Something has to happen to change Jake Blues' mind about saving the orphanage he grew up in. What's going to turn him around? A trip to the Triple Rock Baptist Church and a powerful song performed by the good Reverend of Soul, James Brown. Even when watching it on TV, I'm practically leaping up off the sofa and yelling "Yes! Jesus H. Christ, I HAVE SEEN THE LIGHT!!!" along with John Belushi.
So what about "Chicago"? For me, it all played like an elementary-school Christmas pageant. "Yes, I intend to win this case through flash and showmanship, not through the strength of our case. In fact, I have prepared a musical number explaining my thoughts on the subject. I shall perform this musical number for you now." Good. Very nice. That was quite enjoyable. What's the next song, then?
I don't understand the criticism about "Gangs Of New York." The one consistent complaint is that the story's a confusing mishmash, but that misses the point. The film opens with a gangfight and ends with another gangfight sixteen years later. You're supposed to notice that New York City changed during the time in between. In the first, the principals were fighting for the power to determine the destiny of the Five Points district. We believe that the same things are at stake with the second, and so do Bill the Butcher and Amsterdam (Daniel Day-Lewis and Leonardo DiCaprio) and we're all let down when that turns out not to be the case. It's a marvellous film, and setting it more than a hundred years in the past removes many of the signature images and themes that we associate with Martin Scorsese. As far as I'm concerned, Scorsese gambled big and won big.
Now it's time for "The Hours," so letttttt's meet our characters! [cue "Dating Game" theme music]
Virginia Woolf is a respected essayist and novelist in the early 1920's! She's survived a suicide attempt, and while convalescing in the London suburbs, she's just gotten an idea for a new novel entitled "Mrs. Dalloway!" ["Applause" light]
Laura Brown is a housewife and mother of one living in a suburban post World-War-II development! She's struggling with a crushing sense of uselessness and confronted by thoughts and impulses that mystify and terrify her! And she's reading "Mrs. Dalloway" to help her to get through the day!" ["Applause" light]
Annnnd finally! Meet Clarissa Vaughan! She's a successful book editor living with a domestic partner in New York City! Her college lover has just won an prestigious poetry prize, and she's preparing a lavish dinner party in his honor! She's feeling just a trifle overwhelmed by life at the moment, but get this: The former lover's pet name for her is "Mrs. Dalloway!" ["Applause" light]
Will all three of these lucky ladies make it to the end of the movie without offing themselves? Let's find out as we play…The Hours! [Music ends on a bright and loud fluorish]
"The Hours" would have been so easy to mess up. The film cuts between all three of these women, noting thoughts and actions that are at turns coincidentally similar and universal to the human experience. It's so easy to over-do that sort of thing; it can work brilliantly when used as a structure for storytelling (as it is here) but can quickly turn into an alternative to storytelling. When old lovers casually walk into characters' lives and just as casually stroll out again, we're not looking at a cookie-cutter approach to storytelling; we're looking at different reactions to the same challenges. We're also looking at clues into how each of these stories will end. Woolf is fully in control, taking a certain pride in her ability to think her way around and through things. Brown is the opposite: completely numb, feeling as though she terrible thing she's contemplating is inevitable even though of course, she has the power to put down the knife, flush the pills down the toilet, to simply not slip her head into the noose. Clarissa Vaughan is probably the best-equipped of the three. Her currency is emotion and feelings, not logic or destiny.
I've spent too much time stuck on this silly planet to imagine that "The Lord Of The Rings" will ever win a "Best Picture," particularly if the studios produce more than one traditional drama over the course of a year. "Rings" has things that these awards shows either can't or won't acknowledge: scale and drama and emotion written in truly epic form. There is great emotion in the tale of an author grappling both with a new novel and her desire to kill herself, but the tale of a man who must journey to the very nexus of evil to destroy a ring of ultimate power – oh, and by the way, dude, the ring will corrupt all the allies who have pledged to help you, and it'll even start to corrupt you by degrees, so good luck with all of that – is equally important.
As a member of that tribe that, having been skipped over by both the Baby Boomers and Generation X, proudly describes itself as "the Star Wars generation," it pains me to say this…but the standard bearer for fictional universes is no longer George Lucas. It's Peter Jackson. Both filmmakers are pursuing the same goals: to create a three-part epic story set in a vast world of thrilling unfamiliarity, aided by aggressive and ambitious use of digital effects. There's certainly more variety in the worlds, lands, and cities of "Star Wars" but "Rings" is more real. When both directors lay down their keyboards and mouses, George Lucas will have made three very wonderful films. But Peter Jackson will have constructed a true, nine-hour Biblical epic.
If there's justice in the Academy – I'm not suggesting there is, but we live in a world in which Ringwraiths and clone armies are real, so anything's possible – Peter Jackson will be rewarded with a special Oscar honoring his achievement in bringing something as ambitious and rich in texture as "The Lord Of The Rings" to life. Particularly as a single, seamless tale with two (rather lengthy) audience intermissions.
Like most comic-book readers who were relieved to discover that as adults, we could continue with our hobby so long as we started calling them "Graphic Novels," I eagerly read "Maus," Art Spiegelman's two-volume tale of his father's survival of the Holocaust. One line really stuck with me, though. Art is talking with his psychiatrist about his father:
"So do you admire your father for surviving?
"Well…sure. I know there was a lot of luck involved, but he was amazingly present-minded and resourceful…"
"Then you think it's admirable to survivie. Does that mean it's not admirable to not survive?"
"Whoosh…I think I see what you mean. It's as if life equals winning, so death equals losing."
"Yes. Life always takes the side of life, and somehow the victims are blamed. But it wasn't the best people who survived, nor did the best ones die. It was random!"
"The Pianist" brings this thought to life. Almost by necessity, studio-style Holocaust films have a driving storyline. The story's all about choices, and being able to maintain even the most tenous amount of control over fate under the most warped circumstances imaginable. Take "Schindler's List." Jews are being herded into ghettos, loaded onto trains, led into shower rooms, and then fed into cremetoria. What if there were a scheme to create a fraudulent arms factory, whose real product was a list of safe Jews and their families?
There's no such luck in "The Pianist." It's remarkable to witness the progression of pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman. At the start of the movie, the Szpilman family knows that the future looks bad for Poland in general and Jews in particular. What should they do? Should they move to another district? Move out of the country entirely? Stay put, and hope that this nonsense with Hitler blows over? If they do stay, should they hide their money? Where? How about the plant, or in one of the leaves of the table?
From infinite options, life collapses into the simple mindset of Where You're Standing and Where Your Next Step Should Be. By the end of the film, it's down to just the former. Earlier, the idea of obtaining food required planning and stealth and allies. During the final reel Szpilman miraculously comes across a can of preserved fruit in a bombed-out building. He's in hiding, but the amount of noise he makes in trying to bash open the can isn't an issue. He hasn't eaten in days, he wants those peaches. End of story.
Szpilman survives. But he survives without an Oskar Schindler, without a plan, he even survives without Embracing Life, particularly. There are people who helped him and he made some very good decisions along the way, but in the end, he survived because he was favored by random chance.
It's easy to over-estimate the importance of the "My God, Why Hasn't He Won An Oscar Yet?" factor. Last year, I mentioned that it could come into play for Robert Altman, 77 years old and nominated for "Gosford Park." But you notice that I still predicted that DGA winner Ron Howard would win for "A Beautiful Mind." And of course, he did.
"Chicago." Biggest hit on the slate. DGA winner for Rob Marshall. Almost a dead-lock for Best Picture. It's gonna be Rob Marshall, right? Right?
Um…
Well, let's turn back to that later. No chance for "Talk To Her." It should have been submitted as a Best Foreign Language Film but wasn't, hence the rush of sympathy nominations here. I'm trying to think of a reason why "The Hours" would get enough votes to beat "Chicago" and I'm coming up blank. So it's no slam against Stephen Daldry – who of all the nominated directors can take the greatest pride in finding solutions to incredibly sticky problems – but he's out.
Polanski. Legendary director. Directed one of the absolute enduring classics of the cinema. Never won an Oscar. Directed an intensely personal story, drawing from his own experiences as a Holocaust survivor. Convicted in absentia for statutory rape and living in exile ever since. "The Pianist" is such an important film that I could almost imagine that voters could overlook this last fact and give the Oscar to him instead of Rob Marshall…
…If it weren't for the nomination of Martin Scorsese. Another legendary director who against all logic hasn't won an Oscar yet. He's got a clean record and he'll be in attendance should he win.
But…it's going to be Rob Marshall, right?
I want Scorsese to win. I really want him to win. Can I come up with a logical argument that there'll be an upset?
Well, how about this: in Roger Ebert's Oscar picks, he claims that Harvey Weinstein has been burning up the phone lines, lobbying for a Scorsese victory. Not his boy Rob.
And this: Yes, the DGA winner almost always wins Best Director. Almost. There have been plenty of exceptions.
And how about this: During the DGA awards ceremony, Scorsese was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Soooo…maybe there are actually two DGA winners nominated for Oscars this year? So I can, you know, predict a Scorsese win anyway? I mean, the man is soooo well-liked. Please?
As I say every year, this is a great audience category. Relax in the seat. Don't focus on the name-brand actors in the scene or what they're saying or try to anticipate whether any of the ladies are going to be in a situation where they might take their tops off. Try to look at that screen as a canvas, a mural, a picture. Which film had the greatest pictures?
Out goes "Chicago." If it wins for cinematography then any movie – including the Spice Girls movie, which wasn't even released in 2002 – could have won for cinematography this year, so there's no shame in not predicting this one correctly. Out goes "The Pianist," too. By design, the film is filled with overcast, bleak images and given the nature of the film the photography is probably the last thing you'd be likely to notice.
I'm going to strike "Gangs Of New York" as well. How do I make these choices? Well, I sit back in the chair and I try to conjure up an image of the movie in my mind's eye. With "Gangs Of New York," the images are all tied to characters, or situations. There's nothing in my mental file that says "Here's a sweet-looking shot."
But with "Far From Heaven," I see a colorful upscale Fifties living room dappled in late afternoon colors. I see people framed against autumn leaves. I see the executive level of a large corporate office building late at night, in which sumptuous paneled walls are darted with opportunitistic seams of light. And "Road To Perdition" is no less provocative, with a shootout shrouded by a driving rainstorm.
"Road To Perdition" was lit by Conrad L. Hall, one of the true old-school legends of film. He was nominated for nine other Academy Awards in his career and won twice, for "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" in 1969 and again just a few years ago, for "American Beauty."
(Incidentally, he also lit one of my favorite unsung movies, "Smile.")
I keep getting burned by this category. It's not hard to choose a winner based on the job title: on that basis, it should go to "The Hours" to acknowledge the difficulty of juggling footage from three different timelines to build one seamless story. It's not just a case of lining up two shots of women putting flowers into vases; it's maintaining a delicate grasp of where each of these women are, emotionally, and continuing the thoughts of one character in the appearance and action of another one, thirty years on.
So let's say it's between "The Hours" (on merit) and "Chicago" (because it's the Oscar front-runner). Ultimately I'm going to have to back "Chicago." I think in the presence of a clear Best Picture frontrunner and the absence of a truly Herculean editing task (like assembling "JFK" out of so many shots, styles, and angles) you have to vote with the numbers.
The Screenplay categories are often used as a sort of second-tier Best Picture award. So if a stupid idiotic moronic stinky mess of a movie like "Chicago" looks like it's gonna win Best Picture, then Best Screenplay can go to a movie that should have won.
(OK, "Chicago" really wasn't a bad movie.)
"Chicago" really isn't seen as anything spectacular from a screenplay standpoint. In people's minds, it was a stage show that became a stage film, which ignores the fact that dragging this into a form that would work as a film took a lot of effort and many writing teams had tried and failed over the past 20+ years. But out it goes. Out goes "About A Boy," too, until I can prove that eleven people in this country actually remember this thing.
"Adaptation" is a tempting vote; it's an adapted movie about a movie writer trying to adapt a book for a movie. Cute. But what a mess of a story. Charlie Kaufman (there is no Donald; Donald is his fictional brother in the movie, and Charlie continued the gag in the official credit. Ho ho.) seems to have a problem with endings. "Being John Malkovich" started off well but completely fell apart halfway through. "Adaptation" started brilliantly and then proceeded brilliantly, but then he decided to do something Clever with the ending that totally wrecked everything he'd been building.
What did he do? (Possible spolers ahoy)
Well, "Adaptation" is the story of Charlie Kaufman, who's struggling to turn an utterly unfilmable book into a workable screenplay. While he keeps pontificating about the need to break new ground and avoid cliches (and keeps struggling harder and harder to produce a single page of script), his twin brother attends a screenwriting seminar and, embracing what he's learned, quickly writes a cliche-ridden thriller which is immediately snapped up for about a million bucks. Meanwhile, the film's producers are putting more and more pressure on Charlie to finish his screenplay. So in desperation, he asks Donald to help him with the ending. You figure out later that from that moment onward, we're no longer watching Charlie-the-screenwriter struggle to finish the screenplay; now, we're watching the crappy Hollywood ending that Charlie-the-character-in-his-own-movie came up with, with Donald's help.
You see the problem. All through the movie, I'm investing in the "real" Charlie. He has moments of despair and moments of real breakthroughs and I can't wait to find out how his struggle to adapt "The Orchid Thief" ends. But of course, I never do find out. I find out how the screenplay ends. Was Charlie happy with the results? Did he think he was striking a balance between the needs of the artist and the needs of the story? Is he still getting along with Donald? Did he ever introduce himself to "The Orchid Thief"'s author?
It's not as bad as what happened to "Being John Malkovich." But it still reminds me of all the stories I had to read when I edited my school's literary magazine. Some authors don't realize that they have an amazing story on their hands. They lose faith in their abilities. And that's when they have aliens land, or one of the characters tears her face off and reveals herself to be a robot, or it turns out that everything since Page 11 has been a dream and the district-attorney has been the killer all along. I think "Adaptation" still needs to be finished.
It could go to "The Pianist." But you don't hear much about that film's screenplay, do you?
This one quickly collapses into a two-horse race. I've seen other people backing "Talk To Her," but I find it hard to believe that it'll happen. Best Screenplay? To a foreign film? Naw. Not in the face of real competition. And if it won't go to "Talk To Her" (which I saw and liked) it sure won't go to "Y Tu Mamá Tambien."
"My Big Fat Greek Wedding" was a mediocre movie. I think people here were just nominating the most profitable movie in movie history. Out.
"Far From Heaven" and "Gangs of New York" are the ones to watch. I believe and hope it'll go to "Far From Heaven." It's a film of incredible restraint and delicacy and I think folks will want to acknowledge that with a major award.