Movies: Oscar Review 2009

As Oscar season begins in 2010, I thought I’d post the Fantasista review of last year’s Oscar ceremony to whet the appetite for the potential winners due to hit screens this month…

Oscar Review 2009

The Academy nearly always gives one or two awards to the wrong person or film, and this year’s gluttenous festival of self congratulation was no exception. Mickey Rourke may never better his performance in The Wrestler, but left Los Angeles empty handed. The pill must have been a even more bitter to swallow when faced with the realization that the eventual winner, Sean Penn, was awarded his second statue for little more than to make a political point. I have always liked Penn; he is an exceptional actor but I think his Oscar this time around for Milk, and even his first for Mystic River, do not represent the best performances of his illustrious career.

Alas, this is the trademark of the Oscars; Martin Scorsese finally scored ‘Best Director’ for The Departed. Not Raging Bull, Taxi Driver or the 1990 gangster epic Goodfellas. No doubt Rourke will (in a few years) receive the Oscar he should have won for a mediocre performance in a film no one will remember. What did Pacino win for? Scent of a Woman. Not The Godfather or Scarface. It is the way the Academy works so we may as well just bow to its hopelessly misdirected will.

I was pleasantly surprised to see The Curious Case of Benjamin Button receive exactly what it deserved; technical awards and no more than that. Oscar whoring films like this need to be banished from the echelons of cinematic history rather than continually pick up unwarranted praise. Fincher’s latest effort was a laughably self-indulgent piece of Oscar bait.

I’m less bowled over by Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire than others. While I was happy to see it win when faced with the alternatives, I’m really not sure it is one of the all-time great movies. For a Western audience perhaps the film represents some insight into Indian culture and modern-day life, but surely ignorance of a given subject is hardly criteria for an award? The film itself, for me, while highly stylized with an attention to detail that should be commended, doesn’t quite have enough about it to garner the praise it has done. Perhaps the bar just wasn’t that high this year.

What really greates, however, is that this is a film made for a Western audience and therefore Mumbai is presented how said audience wants to see it; it ends as a Western audience wants it to end, rather than in the fashion that should be deemed dramatically correct. The sad thing is that the far superior (and Hindi produced) Taare Zameen Par, receives no recognition whatsoever. This is almost certainly because of the attitudes and wants of Western audiences when they see ‘foreign’ films like Slumdog Millionaire. This is a Hollywood film presented in the style of a Bollywood one; this is merely masquerading as a representation of a world cinema triumph.

Considering that Million Dollar Baby won Oscars for near enough every aspect of it, I was surprised to see Clint Eastwood’s far superior and less heavy-handed Gran Torino pass by the Academy Awards like tumbleweed. Granted the themes and structure in the two films are uncannily similar, but Eastwood produced something fantastic here and it is a shame to see it go unrecognized.

In other news, Kate Winslet finally won her gold statue. And as you should know by now, she got it for the wrong film and in the wrong year. She should have won for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but this year has been rewarded with another typically Oscar-plated performance in The Reader. Her best performance this year was unquestionably Revolutionary Road. Heath Ledger deserved his statue for The Dark Knight; his tour de force as ‘The Joker’ this year was as exceptional a portrayal as I have seen for many, many years. It is only a shame that the snobbery of the Academy was at its usual level because Christopher Nolan and his film deserved far more recognition than it got. It transcended its genre and married critical appreciation with box office success in a way that no film has since Titanic.

Penelope Cruz in Woody Allen’s Vicky Christina Barcelona was a supporting actress gong that could be seen coming from miles away. A previous award winner (so she must be good, they think), a romcom doesn’t usually get recognition but Woody Allen’s name changes everything. You see, this must mean it is a really good romcom and not just the template films you see every month. Marissa Tomei was more deserving in The Wrestler.

2008/09 was still a good year for films. Here’s hoping 2009/10 will be even better.