Politics as usual

For Hollywood, Oscar is the best revenge

Peter Keough

If the annual Oscar race means anything beyond an opportunity for Hollywood to promote itself and jack up the box office of a lucky few winners, then perhaps it can provide some insight into the cultural unconscious, the social and political concerns that trouble our spirits as refracted through the spoiled and superficial minds of the 5722 members of the Motion Picture Academy. Has that

ever been the case? Yes, but usually Oscar makes its political points by omission. Not to bring up ancient history, but back in 1956, as the rest of the country entered the civil-rights era with the Montgomery Bus Strike, the Academy acknowledged that turning point in history by nominating for Best Picture such milestones of enlightenment as The King and I, The Ten Commandments, and Around the World in Eighty Days, which won. The Searchers, John Ford's still-controversial exploration of American racism, didn't get a single nod. Or how about 1968, the year of Vietnam, riots, assassinations and Nixon's election? Funny Girl, The Lion in Winter, and Romeo and Juliet were among the chosen few, and Oliver! took the cake. So much for 2001, Rosemary's Baby, Belle de jour, and Weekend. The fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War marked 1989, and what better acknowledgment of that epic moment than giving filmdom's highest honor to Driving Miss Daisy?

The Academy has done better, it's true. In 1969 it acknowledged the divisions over Vietnam by nominating both M*A*S*H and Patton (the hawks won that one). In the post-Watergate gloom of 1974 it underscored the country's paranoia and cynicism by nominating Chinatown, The Conversation, Lenny, and The Godfather, Part II, which took the Oscar. When you throw in The Towering Inferno, it makes for one of the more daunting Best Picture line-ups. This year, too, when the nominations are announced on Tuesday (February 13), I suspect the Academy may vote more with its agenda in mind than with whatever else it uses in lieu of artistic judgment. The reason? The election debacle, and the lingering feeling that Gore and the 90 percent of Hollywood that voted for him got robbed.

What does this scenario sound like? A vibrant young leader, the appointed successor to a beloved ruler, gets rooked by an entitled and dissipated pretender to the throne. It's Gladiator, of course, one of the few sure things in this year's Best Picture sweepstakes, with Ridley Scott in the running for Best Director. It's also a wish-fulfillment fantasy of the disenfrachised Democrats, with everything coming down to the single combat between Best Actor nominee Russell Crowe as Al Gore and Best Supporting Actor nominee Joaquin Phoenix as George W. Bush. Those Academy voters who felt ripped off by the election will want to make damn sure that at least this vote will be counted.

As for those millions of ordinary people who also voted to no avail, they can take solace in seeing Julia Roberts's blue-collar babe take the power companies to court and shake them down for the hundred or so million they won't be donating to any Republican campaign. Expect Erin Brockovich on the Academy ticket next Tuesday, with director Steven Soderbergh getting a Best Director nomination, Roberts a cinch for Breast, er, Best Actress, and Albert Finney up for Supporting Actor.

Can Soderbergh double up with Traffic, getting two nominations in both Best Picture and Best Director categories? Francis Coppola did it in 1974 with The Godfather, Part Two, and Soderbergh's blithe tour of the cesspool of the drug war should delight voters who see George W. inheriting this legacy of the Reagan "just say no" policy. Given that he's the only stand-up guy in the corrupt bunch (Bill Weld excepted), you can look for the always charismatic Benicio Del Toro to get picked for Best Supporting Actor.

After Traffic, though, the picture gets murky. One hint that there might be more politics than usual in this year's bash came from the recent Screen Actors Guild nominations. A reliable guide to the Oscar selections (actors make up 23 percent of the total Academy membership), the nominations suggested that The Contender, Rod Lurie's thinly veiled vindication of the Clinton/Lewinsky imbroglio, is indeed a contender. It racked up three nominations -- Joan Allen for Best Actress and Jeff Bridges and Gary Oldman for Best Supporting Actor. Oldman hurt his cause when he badmouthed the liberal bias of the film, plus I think the Academy will satisfy its creep factor by nominating Willem Dafoe for his very funny performance in Shadow of the Vampire. Allen and Bridges, though, should get Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor nominations. But Best Picture for former film critic Rod Lurie, who once described Danny DeVito as a testicle with legs? I shudder to think it.

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Peter's Picks BEST PICTURE Almost Famous Cast Away Erin Brockovich Gladiator Traffic BEST DIRECTOR Cameron Crowe, Almost Famous Ang Lee, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon Ridley Scott, Gladiator Steven Soderbergh, Erin Brockovich Steven Soderbergh, Traffic BEST ACTOR Javier Bardem, Before Night Falls Jamie Bell, Billy Elliot Russell Crowe, Gladiator Tom Hanks, Cast Away Geoffrey Rush, Quills BEST ACTRESS Joan Allen, The Contender Juliette Binoche, Chocolat Ellen Burstyn, Requiem for a Dream Laura Linney, You Can Count on Me Julia Roberts, Erin Brockovich BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR Jeff Bridges, The Contender Willem Dafoe, Shadow of the Vampire Benicio Del Toro, Traffic Albert Finney, Erin Brockovich Joaquin Phoenix, Gladiator BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS Judi Dench, Chocolat Kate Hudson, Almost Famous Frances McDormand, Almost Famous Julie Walters, Billy Elliot Kate Winslet, Quills

Nonetheless, this late showing for The Contender suggests a need for some affirmation of Democratic values. How about Lasse Hallström's Chocolat, which the Oscar-promoting machine of Miramax has been pushing like a political-correctness campaign, with plaudits from human-rights groups and Nobel laureates? Hallström had his chance last year with The Cider House Rules, and this treacly trifle lacks that film's tartness. The Academy should be sweet, however, on SAG nominees Juliette Binoche and Judi Dench for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress.

Could Quills make the cut? Philip Kaufman's raunchy immorality play of censorship and freedom of expression was deemed best picture by the National Board of Review (a former censorship body itself) and earned nominations from SAG for Geoffrey Rush as Best Actor and Kate Winslet as Best Supporting Actress. The Academy should concur with the latter two distinctions. But I can't see it honoring a pæan to the Marquis de Sade as the best the film industry can offer. What would Joe Lieberman say?

When Thirteen Days came out, a film based on the specious and self-deluding rationalizations outlined above, I felt sure that this ode to Camelot, this slap in the face of the Bushite poseur, was the picture to beat. Well, it was. Beaten, that is: no Golden Globes, no critics' awards, and a no-show not only in the SAG nominations but in the Directors Guild and Producers Guild runoffs as well. When I heard that George W. had invited Ted and other Kennedys to a screening of the film at the White House, I could smell the dead dog. Just goes to show what Kevin Costner and a bad Boston accent can do to a mythic moment in American history.

So now I'm thinking, maybe the Academy shares the feelings expressed by people like Robert Altman and Alec Baldwin and just wants to pretend the next four years will never happen? Escapism, then, and what better escape than into a martial-arts fantasy set long ago and far away starring Asian actors and spoken in Mandarin? Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon has won every major award since Cannes, including a nomination for Ang Lee for Best Director from the Director's Guild (he'll get the Oscar nomination, too, since the directors' branch of the Academy determines that category), and will soon break the box-office record for a subtitled film formerly held by Life Is Beautiful. Shouldn't it repeat that film's success with the Academy, earning a Best Picture nomination?

There are crucial differences, however, between the two films. First, that title, Crouching Tiger, Sleeping Beauty -- even people who claim to love the movie can't get it right. Second, no Benigni. A blessing in my opinion, but it's a liability for a foreign film to have no memorable performances, and to judge from the lack of any acting awards up to and including the SAG nominations, the fancy high-wire act didn't cut it. And finally, no compelling theme. I mean, at least Life Is Beautiful had the Holocaust -- who cares about a green sword?

True, the fate of the nation did hang for a while on a dimpled chad, so I'm probably wrong on this one. But I think escape, for the Academy at any rate, lies elsewhere. Like in the past, in 1973, when Cameron Crowe and everyone else was young and rock still ruled and Nixon was about to get reamed. Almost Famous never made much money at the box office, but it's been cashing in with the prizes, culminating in a nomination for Crowe from the DGA, a Best Picture nomination from the Producers Guild and SAG nominations for Kate Hudson and Frances McDormand. The Academy should repeat those honors because, what the hell, the film is almost worthy and needs the money.

Then there's the Hanks factor. What other star would you take with you on a desert island if you wanted to make $200 million and keep your integrity intact? True, Cast Away has not received much in the way of awards recognition so far, and they've all been for Hanks -- a Golden Globe, Best Actor from the New York Film Critics Circle, a Best Actor nomination from SAG. He'll get that nomination from the Academy as well, and so will Cast Away as Best Picture. Who in Hollywood doesn't daydream of being a castaway for the next four years?

Joining the castaway workaholic played by Hanks on the Best Actor island, along with the aforementioned enslaved gladiator played by Crowe and the imprisoned pornographer played by Rush, should be the persecuted gay poet Reinaldo Arenas played by Javier Bardem in Julian Schnabel's impressionistic bio-pic Before Night Falls. Although SAG snubbed him (do I detect a note of xenophobia in that organization, what with it shutting out Crouching Tiger as well?), and though the film does play hardball with Castro, it is otherwise politically correct, and Bardem's is simply the best performance of the year. And should we grant passage to Michael Douglas's rueful pothead professor in Wonder Boys, the complement of sorts to his drug czar in Traffic? I think not -- it's not an image Hollywood is proud of, and besides, the Academy, like SAG, will probably conclude that with Catherine Zeta-Jones Douglas has already won his trophy. On the other hand, every award ceremony needs a beaming child actor, and this time I think it will be SAG nominee Jamie Bell of Billy Elliot, with that film's marvelous Julie Walters rounding out the Best Supporting Actress category.

Speaking of actresses, supporting and otherwise: this turned out not to be such a bad year, especially if you're into inventing ways of tormenting single mothers or independent-minded professional women. Rounding out the Best Actress category, in addition to Allen's candidate for vice-president hounded for her past sex life in The Contender, Julia Roberts's divorced mom beleaguered by bills and miracle bras in Erin Brockovich, and Juliette Binoche's nomadic unmarried mother nearly burned at the stake for her sugary goodies in Chocolat, there's Laura Linney's divorced mom besieged by her raffish brother and anal boss in You Can Count on Me and Ellen Burstyn's widow with a junkie son, an animated refrigerator, and a diet-pill jones in Requiem for a Dream. With Bush in the White House, Ashcroft as Attorney General, and who knows who appointed to the Supreme Court, their suffering might be a foreshadowing, for women and all of us, of the next four years to come.