So what do we think of the Oscar nominations?
I guess it’s my job to complain about unfortunate omissions and additions—and
complain I shall!—but when your #1 and #2 movies (Brokeback Mountain
and Munich, respectively) are among the five Best Picture nominees,
any minor misgivings sound needlessly churlish. No doubt Hollywood will be patting
itself on the back plenty for this, but the nominees (and 2005 films in general)
are remarkably engaged with the world around them. Brokeback Mountain, Munich, and Good Night And Good Luck are all period pieces,
but drop them in a time capsule and they’ll say something very particular
about what it was like to live in America in 2005. On the other hand, drop Crash
in a time capsule and you’ll see what it’s like to live inside some
dude’s ruthlessly deterministic screenplay. In any event, the Oscars are
shaping up to be the most politically charged affair in memory, and that’s
even before you consider that Jon Stewart is hosting and Robert Altman is achieving
lifetime achievement honors. (Early prediction: Altman’s speech will be
a bombshell along the lines of Harold Pinter’s recent Nobel oratory. Ever
the iconoclast, he’s always been a Hollywood outsider and I imagine he’s
allergic to the self-serving pageantry that is the Oscars. He’s also unafraid
to voice provocative opinions—remember when he basically blamed Hollywood
for the September 11th attacks?—and too old to care about the repercussions.)
Because I’m too lazy to write a proper essay, let me break down the four
major categories:
Best Picture
Nominees: Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Crash, Good Night And Good Luck, Munich
Thoughts: Munich was probably on the bubble here,
just eking past Walk The Line and properly so—the lead performances
in Walk The Line, particularly Witherspoon’s, are first-rate,
but the film doesn’t do enough to shimmy out of biopic conventions. Inaugural
A.V. Club Film Poll winner A History Of Violence seemed like it
had an outside shot, but were it not for William Hurt’s presence in the
supporting category, I’d have wondered aloud whether any Oscar voters
had even seen the film. Crash is the only stinker in the bunch, yet
it also has the most momentum, thanks due to an aggressive campaign and the
collective bad taste of Academy voters. (And they’re not the only ones: Crash recently took the critics guild award for Best Picture here in
Chicago, a fact that would incense me more if I…well…remembered
to vote.)
Will Win: Brokeback Mountain. Unless Crash
continues its ascendancy and positions itself as a darkhorse possibility, there’s
no stopping Brokeback. Obviously, people can feel good about voting
for it (and there’s nothing Hollywood types like more than feeling good
about themselves) and it’s certainly a landmark of sorts, but not so incidentally,
it’s actually a worthy choice and deserves to win for reasons that have
nothing to do with its politicization.
Should Win. Brokeback Mountain.
In A Perfect World: Brokeback Mountain. Though if
the world were progressive enough culturally and aesthetically to give the prize
to the year's other great gay film, Tropical
Malady, what a world it would be!