While
1999 saw the rebirth of the American studio system at its freshest and most
invigoratingly audacious in years, 2000 ran like a hangover in comparison,
and 2001, a number of critics may contend, reaffirmed '99 as a pretty rough
rush to recover from.
I'd
beg to differ.
Last year, admittedly, the barren wilderness of the multiplex scene,
rife with mediocre blockbusters of every size and shape, was the wrong place
to turn to for any truly gratifying filmgoing diversions. Unlike '99, in
which the industry's most inspired entrées like Three Kings, Being John Malkovich, and American Beauty lay right under one's nose in wide
release, 2001 presented somewhat of a challenge for audiences in search of
more adventurous film fare. The problem was in fact not a shortage of talent,
but simply a shortage of distribution. Thanks to the deplorable dynamics of
today's movie business, many of the year's most engrossing, hilarious, and
poignant productions simply came and went in ephemeral gusts of critical
buzz. Viewers were generally forced to subsist on a select few studio gems
that remained floating, quite miraculously, amid a sea of generally wretched
cookie-cutter muck.
Still, I hate to build the impression of a film geek who clings to
the obscure simply for the sake of it. To be fair, 2001 was by no means a
year without its share of marginal, appreciable, conventional pleasures, a
shortage of which one wouldn't have expected in the first place: Shrek, Joy Ride, Training Day, Ocean's Eleven, Iron Monkey, and Artificial Intelligence, to name just a few, remain among a number of competent, but
hardly brilliant entertainments destined to survive in our memories with or
without any measure of universal acclaim. They've more or less made their
mark, and rightly so.
BEST
PICTURE NOMINEES
But only a handful of 2001's major releases attained the transcendent
heights we usually acknowledge come Oscar season, indicating such a tragic
creative bankruptcy on Hollywood's part that all those self-opinionated
Californian filmmakers may have a thorny time honoring themselves exclusively
at this year's Academy Awards ceremony. Peter Jackson's The Fellowship of
the Ring, a rare
financial juggernaut that actually justifies its opulent production values,
and Ron Howard's A Beautiful Mind, classicist filmmaking at perhaps its most compelling, are the
year's only two contenders that exemplify the Hollywood formula for
"greatness" without necessarily sacrificing their integrity for
doing so (their integrity, that is, as would be judged by slightly more
objective critical precepts).
So is it any wonder that both films are now set at the forefront of
the nomination tally, with Fellowship garnering a hefty 13 and Mind a formidable eight? One would've been terminally
clueless to anticipate otherwise. But although the selections mark a step up
for the pusillanimous tastes that last year singled out Gladiator, they can't herald that same
refreshing departure from convention witnessed in 1999's glorification of American Beauty. The members of the Academy still
have their sights set on that same tried-and-true breed of moviemaking magic,
as has always been the case. But for this year, at least, we can offer thanks
that the two most obvious targets were of an intrinsically higher caliber
than one would normally expect.
To the Academy's credit, though, Gosford Park and In the Bedroom mark a pair of unusually canny
choices to tower beside Mind and Fellowship
for highest honors. Both of them having been drawn from the most finely
polished of the year's independent stock, it arrives as a delightful surprise
to catch them at the forefront with seven and five nominations, respectively.
Although neither holds a scrap of a chance against Fellowship for top prize, one or the other or
both could rob the lavish fantasy epic of some its thunder in the smaller
categories, if fortune smiles on the underdog directors Robert Altman and
Todd Field. But however matters work themselves out in the end, these two
nominees signify a subtle and encouraging evolution in the Academy's
cinematic predilections that may foretell a brighter distant future for
independent filmmakers, heretofore confined by the obscurity of film-festival
origins. In this sense especially, both films made for particularly astute
Best-Picture nominations, to say the least.
So Moulin Rouge!, tying Mind with
eight nominations of its own, emerges as the only incongruous selection in
the whole Best-Picture batch, a facetious, brazen, somewhat sloppy, and
hilariously self-aware neo-musical that almost makes a point to affront
audiences with its own excess (though it manages to entertain in spite of
itself). Either the members of the Academy just assumed the picture was
somehow intended as a "really fun" experience -- and therefore
worthy of the dubious honor of their golden statuette -- or they simply
overlooked a number of other equally audacious, but slightly more substantial
productions that would've been immeasurably more fitting for a Best-Picture
nod than Baz Luhrmann's quaint little music-box fiesta.
For a hypothetical replacement, I might propose Richard Linklater's
bull-session bonanza Waking Life, as self-aware in its intellectual pretensions as Moulin Rouge! is in its stylistic conceits, or
perhaps Terry Zwigoff's tragicomedy Ghost World, a periscopic examination of the decline of mainstream
Western culture. And I can't fail to mention that the nightmare opera Mulholland Drive, arguably the year's most
provocative motion picture, failed to follow through on the promise of its
Best-Drama nomination at the Golden Globes. Fortunately, though, its level of
recognition has at least been relegated to the Best-Director category, in honor
of the uncompromising and jarringly inexplicable auteur David Lynch. Ridley
Scott, failing to strike the same chord he hit with Gladiator, encountered the same dilemma with Black Hawk Down, remaining with Lynch vaguely out of
place alongside Jackson, Howard, and Altman in the race for the gold. (Odd
that two of 2001's supposed five best directors weren't talented enough to
spearhead two of 2001's supposed five best films, but that's Hollywood for
you!) In the end, one can only predict tossup odds between the latter three
candidates for the reception of the Oscar itself.
BEST
ACTOR NOMINEES
In competition for Best Actor, Russell Crowe seems to bear the most
promise for victory, this time in light of his scintillating embodiment of
the schizophrenic economist John Nash, a role dissimilar from his General
Maximus of Gladiator
in that it actually required talent. Interestingly enough, Sean Penn is
receiving recognition for his part in I Am Sam in spite of the picture's disappointing critical reception, as
is the case with Will Smith's nomination for his part in the brutally
amorphous biopic Ali; in the
latter instance, the Academy may in fact be paying homage to an impersonation
rather than a performance. Training Day earned Denzel Washington a spot on the list, as well,
as critics had anticipated ever since his over-the-top iconographic catharsis
first lit up theater screens last summer. Tom Wilkinson (In the Bedroom) stands out from the crowd for
delivering the only muted performance among a host of others that relied
primarily on behavioral extremes. The Academy should be duly congratulated
for recognizing that an actor needn't cling to portraying the dysfunctions of
the schizophrenic, psychopathic, or mentally impaired to fully glow in his
mastery of the art.
BEST
ACTRESS NOMINEES
Sissy
Spacek's position in the Best-Actress pack doesn't exemplify the same sort of
exception, as she's up against Halle Berry (Monster's Ball) and Renée Zellweger (Bridget Jones's
Diary) in a contest
concerning simple, down-to-earth nuance over blatant eccentricity. The odds
may nonetheless stand in favor of Judi Dench (Iris), with the obvious hook of Alzheimer's on her side in
her critically acclaimed depiction of the afflicted author Iris Murdoch --
the Academy may have to stick to singling out acting achievements purely on
physiological terms, as usual. But the only nominated actress whose work this
year would fail to even qualify as a performance is Nicole Kidman, her role
in Moulin
Rouge! remaining notable
only for its iconic one-dimensionality. She would've been more suitably
commended for her taxing efforts in The Others, or perhaps she would've just been better replaced by Thora
Birch (Ghost World), Naomi
Watts (Mulholland Drive),
Tilda Swinton (The Deep End), or -- not to fly too far off my rocker -- Julia Blake for her nice,
serene, human role in Paul Cox's Innocence.
BEST
SUPPORTING ACTOR NOMINEES
Sadly, the nominees for Best Supporting Actor constitute a rather
mediocre lot, with Ben Kingsley (Sexy Beast) and Jim Broadbent (Iris) standing as the sharp exceptions. Ian McKellen, a
serviceable Gandalf in Fellowship, seems like a perfunctory addition made for the sake of the
film rather than the performance; Jon Voight, who put on another stunning
impersonation alongside Smith in Ali, deserves less acclaim himself than does the makeup artist who
actually tailored his prosthetic Howard-Cosell facemask; and Ethan Hawke,
utterly eclipsed by Washington in Training Day, seems hastily designated merely to occupy a fifth slot
-- hence, Steve Buscemi's appalling shut-out after the performance of his
career in Ghost World. So Kingsley's hard-edged depiction of quasi-Mafioso angst in Sexy Beast stands as the cream of the crop
here, but Broadbent could possibly undermine his chances as he did at the
Golden Globes.
BEST
SUPPORTING ACTRESS NOMINEES
But the contest for Best Supporting Actress provides vastly more
intrigue, with Helen Mirren and Maggie Smith at odds to represent Gosford Park, Marisa Tomei earning a feather in
her cap for her first convincingly multi-dimensional performance (In the Bedroom), Jennifer Connelly managing her
long-awaited Oscar breakthrough with A Beautiful Mind, and Kate Winslet (Iris) returning for her next stab at the gold after her 1998
nomination for Titanic.
Connelly's odds have been bolstered by the most media buzz, but she's
otherwise stranded on a level playing field with four other equally laudable
contestants, leaving ample room for surprise on Oscar night.
Best
Foreign-Language Picture Nominees
In
the Academy's single most offensive category, Best Foreign-Language Film (the
nominees of which are apparently regarded on a lower plane by default), the
winter's mesmerizing romantic-comedy sleeper hit Amélie fortunately earned part of its due,
accompanied by well-deserved nominations for its screenplay, art direction,
and cinematography to cap off its relatively lucrative run in the States last
year. The only other noteworthy contender here is Danis Tanovic's acclaimed
Bosnian war comedy No Man's Land, still cramped by a limited U.S. release, but more than likely
predestined to nab "first prize" in light of its triumph at the
Golden Globes. The other three selections – Elling, Lagaan, and El Hijo de la novia -- have been filtered from a pool that few critics and fewer
audiences have yet had access to, so they may remain standing until their
potential 2002 release dates as virtual nonentities.
Best
Animated Feature Nominees
And
it's unfortunate, but hardly shocking that the Academy's first outing with a
category honoring animated features happened to neglect the industry's most
breathtaking technological innovation of the past decade: not the CGI
textural enhancements championed by Shrek, but the hypnotic approach to rotoscoping illuminated by Waking Life. The Academy's choice of Jimmy Neutron: Boy
Genius and Monsters, Inc. for the other two slots also seems
to indicate a prejudice against traditional, two-dimensional animations,
which, were they not degenerating into somewhat passé oddities on this side
of the Pacific, would have provided valuable opposition in a five-slot
scenario. 2001's most sumptuous piece of pure, visceral, animated ecstasy was
actually a Japanese import, acclaimed visionary Yoshiaki Kawajiri's Vampire Hunter D:
Bloodlust -- while its
frenetic plotting and cornball dialogue may sometimes distract from the
richness of its visuals, the picture in its entirety shames Shrek and Monsters, Inc. on the terms of its inventive
imagery alone. But as far as the cold reality of the matter is concerned,
“Shrek” is guaranteed to emerge on top, especially considering the previous
prospects surrounding its aspirations for a Best-Picture nod. To be sure,
Pixar's good-natured warmth and subtle in-jokes are still no match for
Dreamworks' studied brand of cynicism -- animation's slightly darker
dimension now represents the unequivocal audience favorite in 21st-century
U.S.A.
Omissions?
But despite my rather hardnosed grumbling in concern over what
"should" or "shouldn't" have quite made the cut, I ought
to applaud the Academy for at least scattering its attention across a broader
range of releases this year. Though they overlooked a multitude of
"diamonds in the rough" – The Circle, The Widow of Saint-Pierre, Innocence, Bully, and Under the Sand, to rattle off some of the most
memorable -- their radars still acknowledged the modest virtues of indie gems
like The
Royal Tenenbaums, Memento, and The Man Who Wasn't There. Judging that Hollywood's year in
film wasn't quite as prolific as movie moguls may have hoped, the Academy may
have thawed its shield of insular self-importance out of sheer necessity, but
it still managed that progressive leap all the same. No one would've expected
a revolution in the arthouse market to generate much more of an impact,
anyway. In any case, a fruitful year in film has raced past us in the blink
of an eye, and whether or not the Academy may ultimately grace much more than
tip of the iceberg, there remains much for the ardent moviegoer to gaze back
on in appreciation.
