And the Oscar Goes To

The Oscar fever has reached its peak. With only a few hours left for the world’s widely watched media event to unveil this year’s winners, one is forced to contemplate on how some of the greatest films have rarely won the coveted statuetteWith the Oscar ceremony due in day, it becomes incumbent upon media watchers to take note and speculate about the possible winners. The Academy Awards telecast is widely recognised as the most widely watched media event originating in the US.

There is so much hype created around the Oscars that one tends to forget that the greatest American films have rarely won the Best Picture Oscar. Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’ (1958) and Welles’s ‘Citizen Kane’ (1941) widely regarded as the two greatest films of all time, have not won it while many of those which have – like ‘Cavalcade’ (1932) and ‘Chariots of Fire’ (1981) – do not figure in film history.

If one were to characterise the Oscar-winning film one could say that it is chosen to hold up, in a big way, the American values pertinent at the time. ‘The Lord of the Rings’ (2001-3), taken to be ‘fantasy’, is about good-hearted allies fighting an evil kingdom and came out in the prelude to the Iraq War of 2003. If one wants to predict Best Picture winners, therefore, one would do well to keep this political factor in mind.

As we examine this year’s nominees for Best Picture we find that the first one in alphabetical order is Clint Eastwood’s ‘American Sniper’. This film is about the doings of a Navy SEAL sniper employed in the middle-east largely to ‘take out’ terrorists. As may be anticipated it is also about the inner torment experienced by the sniper because of the kind of life he is forced to live and the uneasy way in which he negotiates a normal family life amidst the brutal circumstances he constantly copes with.

Eastwood has developed into an excellent director and has made some deeply sensitive films like ‘Unforgiven’ (1992), also an Oscar winner. President Obama purportedly described Eastwood's films as ‘essays in individuality, hard truths and the essence of what it means to be American.’‘American Sniper’ comes after several other films involving snipers like ‘Shooter’ (2007) and ‘The Hurt Locker’ (2008), with the latter film even winning the Oscar.

‘Birdman’ by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu is very different and is difficult to characterise generically. Inarritu is Mexican and has made two brilliant political films – ‘Amores Perros’ (2000) and ‘Babel’ (2006). If ‘Babel’ can be interpreted as highly critical of America in the global economy Inarritu has still been accepted by Hollywood. ‘Birdman’ is about a film star (played by Michael Keaton), who once played a super-hero (‘Birdman’), trying to make something of his life by adapting a Raymond Carver story (‘What We Talk about when we talk about Love’) for the stage.

Carver was a great American short story writer and wrestled with alcohol addiction; as a character in ‘Birdman’ says, ‘he left a piece of his liver behind with every story.’ Carver died in the 1980s and ‘Birdman’ can be read as commentary on the decline of culture from the 1980s onwards. Even if ‘Birdman’ does not win in the ‘Best Picture’ category it has two stellar performances from Keaton and Edward Norton. Norton has gradually evolved to become one of Hollywood’s most mesmerising performers and ‘Birdman’ provides more evidence of this.

Richard Linklater’s ‘Boyhood’ has won more major awards internationally than any other film and is ingenious in conception. It was filmed over 12 years and tells the story of a boy growing up. Its uniqueness lies in our actually seeing the four central actors ageing over 12 years. The way the film has been conceived means that the director wrote his script over several years as a series of episodes set in different periods of the boy’s life. His parents – played by Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke – are divorced but the central purpose is to show them as model parents always mindful of their parental duties, even when apart.

The film deals primarily with the Obama years and can be seen as the coming of age of a young American liberal. It is well conceived and, although not my favorite film, is most likely to win the coveted Oscar; Arquette and/or Hawke are also favoured get a prize(s) for Best Supporting Actor.‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ is the kind of whimsical half-comedy that Wes Anderson has become known for. Anderson’s films are eccentric re-workings of literary genres where he lovingly caricatures characters and situations familiar from the genre. ‘The Royal Tenenbaums’ (2001) can be seen as developing on JD Salinger’s Glass family stories (Like Franny and Zooey) while ‘The Darjeeling Limited’ (2007) is reminiscent of the Raj novels set in India like those of Paul Scott (Staying On).

Anderson hardly does straight adaptations and therefore does not acknowledge the sources of his inspiration but ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ acknowledges the novels of Stephan Zweig. The film is a charming enactment of convoluted happenings and conspiracies in a Central European hotel in the early to middle twentieth century and manages to have a kind of Tintin-like tone (as in the comic book King Ottokar’s Sceptre) that Spielberg failed to get in ‘The Adventures of Tintin’ (2011). But the film perhaps traces too much familiar ground to win the Oscar although it is a strong candidate in the design department.

Morten Tyldum’s ‘The Imitation Game’ is a biopic of technological genius Alan Turing – credited with being the father of modern computer science – who was employed by the British in World War II espionage by developing an electromechanical device to crack the German Enigma machine. His doings are said to have shortened the war by a good two years and saved millions of lives. Turing was also a homosexual and was persecuted after the War. He accepted chemical castration as punishment instead of going to jail – for his sexual conduct – but killed himself later in the 1950s.

The British Government later apologised for the way he was treated and he was granted a full pardon by the Queen. ‘The Imitation Game’ has Benedict Cumberbatch – who attained fame playing Sherlock Holmes on television – as Turing. Perhaps Cumberbatch will get a Best Actor Oscar as one more act of atonement for what was done to Turing.

Ava DuVernay’s ‘Selma’ chronicles the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march spearheaded by Martin Luther King, which precipitated the passage of the Voting Rights Act. A biopic of Dr King has been long overdue since we are now in the last years of the term of America’s first African-American President and ‘Selma’ may be doing just that.DuVernay’s film is earnest but it hardly lacks for power in its depiction of the treatment of African-Americans but one does not see race-driven issues as dominating America enough in the present for the film to win a major Oscar.

James Marsh’s ‘The Theory of Everything’ is a biopic of Stephen Hawking and is reminiscent of ‘A Beautiful Mind’ (2001), also about a scientific/mathematical genius with a disability of some kind – John Nash. Interestingly, John Nash was also employed in espionage the way Alan Turing was because of his abilities – although it was in the Cold War. The stories of remarkable people overcoming disabilities – and also finding love – has been a staple diet at the Oscar ceremony but the film perhaps comes after too many have already come from the category.

Damien Chazelle’s ‘Whiplash’ may be the most intensely dramatic film from the bunch because it is passionate about music. A student at a percussion school comes into conflict with his sadistic teacher and the film is remarkable for the director’s attention to the complexities of jazz music, the challenges and craft involved in a musical career. ‘Whiplash’ is the dark horse in the Oscar race and JK Simmons my favorite for Best Supporting Actor. Simmons is best known for playing Spider-Man’s bug-bear, editor J Jonah Jameson.

(The writer is an eminent film researcher, scholar and critic)

By MK Raghavendra