Polishing the Oscar, Part 5: Best Picture

So we now come to the last of the major categories, and soon I'll turn it over to my pal Arion Berger, Arts Editor of the Washington Post Express, to fearlessly prognosticate on who will win the Best Picture Oscar, to be followed by my weepy aesthete's musing on who ought to win. I've been seeing in comments a buncha folks agitated not over our predix/desires but over who DIDN'T get nominated. I agree it's criminal that the likes of Zodiac and 4 Months got, um, cockblocked...and somewhere above this post I'll try to get a thread going wherein we can address the outrages before the big night. In the meantime...

Arion Berger PREDICTS the Best Picture Oscar winner:

My Walter Monheit impression isn't exactly bringing down the house, is it? Oh, well, I was never the publicist's friend.

So I sail straight-faced into the best picture category, my least favorite. I mean, Rain Man? Forrest Gump? That piece of trash Wings? (Kidding; jeez.) It isn't a question of whether this Oscar matters, it's just that, once you winnow the choices down to five in any given year, they look so * trivial *. There are exceptions, of course – big, gorgeous, epicy things that made trillions (Titanic, Lord of the Rings, Part Trois) seem hefty enough to bear the weight of this particularly onerous crown. I suppose it's a matter of time righting our perceptions—The Greatest Show on Earth doesn't look so terrible now, and I can't stand the kind of people who moan that Hendrix was never on the cover of Rolling Stone or that Citizen Kane didn't take best picture. We don't submit art to the academy salon in this country; even the French have cut those shenanigans out. I just fear for our collective cinematic amour propre—no one wants to look back and say, "Juno in 2007? What the hell were we thinking?"

Surely no one will have to. Poor Juno. It's like the character Ben in Lost; people keeping beating the hell out of it and it's still snarking at us. I'm starting to wish someone would wipe the blood off it and hand it a Mountain Dew.

The days of grand, accented Oscar-bait actually winning an Oscar are waning; I suspect we have Shakespeare in Love to thank for that. So no Atonement. I always think it's awfully queer when a film is nominated for best picture without its director getting a nod, and I maintain
that it has a chance to take the best adapted screenplay prize, so the voters can tuck themselves in that night with a mug of Ovaltine and tell themselves America knows they still recognize "quality" filmmaking.

Michael Clayton is almost like this year's The Insider. Except Michael Mann's excellent film lost to that steaming sack of pretentious, woman-hating rubbish, American Beauty. Anyway, Clayton would have an excellent chance, if it weren't for …

There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men. This is a tough call, but the madness of crowds is a syndrome not unknown to Oscar voters and, since the balance has to tip, it's going to tip in the direction of the movie that's getting a buttload of non-Oscars, has a hot buzz, and is drawing in crowds of civilians or, as I like to call them, mortals. And, although my critic's hat – black velvet, small bow, very saucy – is at the cleaners for the duration of these posts, I would love to see this happen. It will be like watching Unforgiven win in 1992 and realizing that sometimes mainstream culture gets it right (cf: Nirvana, Harry Potter). Joel and Ethan Coen have had this date with Oscar for a long time. They're not young guns anymore, their movie was fabulous, and it's not like the rules say the losers get their throats cut or anything. It's enough just be nominated. Hahahaha! No, it's not.

Glenn Kenny ANOINTS the should-win:

Is it parochial for me to say that Juno is just too small to win? In so doing, am I oblquely acknowledging genre hierarchies that I deny in the rest of my life's work?

No, I don't think so. (Of course I was gonna say that.) I think Juno is a victim of that peculiar algebraic formula wherein a movie's"importance" is artificially inflated by the amount of money it makes. As soon as I saw that idiot Caitlin Flanagan yammering about the movie in The New York Times—even before that—I knew that the picture had, in a sense, become the victim of the success Fox Searchlight so deftly micromanaged for it. Am I a hater? No, dammit, I gave the thing a three-star review! But the fact of the matter is, cute and sweet is as good as this movie ever gets, and other pictures competing here have a lot more than sweet and cute going for them. Other pictures here also have more than hot and smart (and British) going for them, which takes care of Atonement. Which no one is even, like, talking about any more. Weird.

I recently watched Michael Clayton a second-and-a-half time and it's a denser, better-wrought picture than even some of its critical champions give it credit for; when George Clooney himself says that "it's the best it can be in that genre," I think he's underrating it a bit, actually. But yes, Arion, and yes, George—its misfortune is that it's a 2007 release.

Which leaves me to my final answer, and I can't flip a coin, Friend-O. I've been telling my friends and colleagues that for me it's very simple: I love No Country; it's just that I love There Will Be Blood a little more. Today, I'm not so sure. I just got the BluRay disc of No Country (out March 13) and I popped it in to check out the quality, with the intention of watching the whole thing for review a little later; the thing just sucked me in. It's not just that it's staggeringly engrossing—it's a gorgeously detailed film, with visual themes and tropes intermingling with each other in ways that only reveal themselves depending on the angle of your own perception at the time. It's a marbled film, if you get my meaning. There Will Be Blood is genius, I'm convinced; it's also something of a blunt object. The two films have so much in common (it seems) on the surface, and yet couldn't be more different. They both deserve the damn Best Picture Oscar.

And since I'm the guy saying what should happen, then that's what I'm gonna say: No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood ought to tie. It'll be just like Hepburn/Streisand.

SCORECARD:

Arion Berger says No Country For Old Men WILL win Best Picture

Glenn Kenny perversely says No Country and There Will Be Blood SHOULD tie for Best Picture.

What say you?

Comments

[Ti Alan Chase]

If you can argue that two films SHOULD tie for best picture (which I agree with), would you also argue that there are some years when NO film should win best picture?

[Owain Wilson]

Referring back to people moaning about certain populist films winning Best Picture, I personally can't stand it when that happens.

Since when is LA Confidential a better film than Titanic? Is it because its characters talk quietly to each other and frown a lot? LA Confidential has got stuff Titanic couldn't match, but it goes the other way, too.

Titanic is an absolutely amazing film - exactly the kind of film movie lovers always complained was not being made anymore. It's an experience, an astonishing achievement, and is as entitled to win Best Picture as any other film.

Don't get me started on the miserable old goats who can't believe Taxi Driver was beaten by Rocky.

I'd love to comment on this years nominees, but my local cinema here in the UK still hasn't shown There Will Be Blood.

[Ryland Walker Knight]

I want a big (say, 42-inch) TV. And a blu-ray player. Modest goals for 2008, right?

Once I make those, um, thousands(?) of dollars a year, as I'm so sure I'll do (nah right) given I'll be a college graduate (finally) by summertime, maybe I can buy those things. Until then, I better go catch _TWBB_ in a theatre before it loses (I bet on _Juno_ in our pool) and gets shunted out of theatres real quick. No, I don't think a Best Actor nod will sustain its release longer than a week or two. (Why am I even playing this prognostication game? Don't I have homework to read/write? Why do the Oscars suck in those of us who say they don't even really care? Do I really care? Weird.)

[Glenn Kenny]

Have faith, young Ryland; some day all this could be yours.

And if it's any consolation, I still rent.

Also: I think a combination of the Best Actor nod and—I hate to say it—the unwitting catchphrase, may keep "Blood" in theaters a bit longer than you believe. Of course I'm known as an optimist in these respects...but still, I didn't see "No Country"'s B.O. bonanza coming...

[oakling]

Huzzah for calling American Beauty like it is, and for juxtaposing "Shakespeare in Love" (with its fabulous crossddressing) and "queer."

I'll give Juno a little more credit - besides being spunky and sweet, it's also the first move in what will hopefully be a long tradition of women writing and starring in the kind of "Freaks and Geeks"-alumned movies that have previously been so thoroughly a "male genre".

[Arion Berger]

Aw, oakling. I'm all blushy.

And Owain, you're dead right. And since when is "X example of worthy" anything better than "Y example" of the same thing? Awards are bogus; bar-fueled arguments about Dashiell Hammett versus Camus are bogus (this happened in my hearing; maybe your bars -- pubs -- are different); apples and oranges are both fruits, and so what? It goes both ways, as you say, all across the board. But if we're buying into the premise of the Oscars at all, we have to talk about worthiness as if Juno and There Will Be Blood are competing on some kind of level playing field. The convergence of quality and box office Godzillaness that was Titanic may not be seen again in our lifetimes, but that didn't stop it from being up against films it had nothing to do with. Nature of the Oscar beast, alas.

[Ray]

I'm completely with Glenn Kenny on this one. Both films are magnificent in their own ways--they're superficially comparable, but each is unique--and both are entirely deserving of the Best Picture award. It's just chance that these two extraordinary movies came out at the same time and have to compete with each other.

Now, could this mean that the two will split the vote, and Juno will walk away with the award? Worse things have happened, I guess.

[Michael]

I couldn't agree more with Glenn. BLOOD & COUNTRY should tie. They're both glittering examples of innovative cinema with a distinct narrative, performances to beat the band, cinematography that holds the audience still and masterful scores.Both directors are at the top of their game using every inch of the screen to illustrate their visions and both directors are due for credit. It's a great thing to watch films like this. For every second of BLOOD, Anderson never forget his audience and for every second of COUNTRY, you could feel how much those Coen boys were enjoying the construction process of their extraordinary thriller. Devastated as I was (when is the Academy going to learn it doesn't matter what time of the year a film is released?)that ZODIAC didn't make it to the final round (just finished watching the director's cut and once again marvelled at the artistry of Fincher's genius), if it had, well...menage a trois anyone? Just a thought, perhaps JESSE JAMES was shut out because two westerns were enough?

[Glenn Kenny]

If 'Zodiac' had made the final round...well, Michael, I love the film, but I'm not sure I would have been as torn as you, and it looks unkind of me to say why, but the fact is after watching it a couple times I agree with Kent Jones that Gyllenhal is the picture's weak link. He's a fine actor who was wrong for the part, essentially. I imagine you disagree. But you are right, it's a remarkalby strong film and I'm saying for the gazillionth time that its snub from the Academy is near criminal...

As is the snub for "Jesse James." But I don't think its Western component did it in. No, more like "too long," "too subtle," "too obscure" combined with all kinds of rumors about its shaping, the implication it was some kind of Pitt anti-vanity project, etcetera. I think it's great, and I think it's gonna get rediscovered at some point by an at least slightly wider audience.