Bread and circuses

Oscar gives thumbs up to Gladiator

by Peter Keough

It's the 21st century, the year 2001 presaged by the 1968 Stanley Kubrick film of the same title, and the best they can come up with is the edgeless Spartacus-clone Gladiator?

Last year was a bad year for movies, but not that bad, not Chocolat bad. Throw in the overrated Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Steven Soderbergh's hyped-up diptych Erin Brockovich and Traffic and you have the weakest slate since My Fair Lady beat out Mary Poppins in 1964.

Yes, each nominee has some political relevance, featuring a social outsider and underdog who beats the system via unconventional means. And four feature women in leading roles. There's Best Actress nominee Juliette Binoche's saccharine subversive in Chocolat, and unnominated Zhang Ziyi's rebellious gilded lily in Crouching Tiger (or, more to the point, Cheng Pei Pei's matronly outlaw Jade Fox). Soderbergh's two films boast antithetical heroines, with Julia Roberts's trailer-trash outsider taking the legal road to vindication in Erin Brockovich and Catherine Zeta-Jones's rich pregnant housewife going underground in Traffic.

Who will win? The spoiled white guy, of course. Think of Gladiator as a reprise of last year's American Beauty with more bloodshed and special effects -- a revenge fantasy of the entitled whitebread male fighting back against a system of which he is in fact the chief beneficiary. With its combination of extreme arena theatrics and gory historical hero worship, you could also see Gladiator as a combination of previous Best Pictures Shakespeare in Love (1998) and Braveheart (1995). Add the likelihood that the huge production probably hired half the voters in the Academy and you've got a shoo-in.

For Best Picture, that is. The rest, as usual, is shaky. Gladiator's Ridley Scott for Best Director? When you figure that Steven Soderbergh will do in himself with his double nomination (the first since Michael Curtiz in 1938, who also lost), and that fluke nominee Stephen Daldry of Billy Elliot hasn't a prayer, it's between Scott and Crouching Tiger's Ang Lee. In this duel between swordsmen, I'd opt for Scott's Maximus.

Give Russell Crowe the nod for Best Actor, too. After more than a decade of watching wimps, halfwits, nutballs, and whiners take home the Oscar, we're in the mood for the kind of red-blooded hero who seduces leading ladies and (it's reported) shouts out his name at the moment of orgasm. That rules out two-time winner Tom Hanks, who's taken his Forrest Gump persona to the point that he can relate only to a volleyball in Cast Away (a film that is far more deserving of Best Picture than any of the actual nominees), or Ed Harris dripping away in Pollock, or Geoffrey Rush trading in Rachmaninov for his own excrement in Quills, a kind of victory of shit over Shine-ola. As for Javier Bardem in Before Night Falls, his may well be the best performance of the year, but the film, both pro-gay and anti-Castro, will alienate both extremes of the political spectrum and thus guarantee his defeat.

The Gladiator juggernaut won't sweep up Joaquin Phoenix for Best Supporting Actor, however -- his sniveling emperor pales in villainy before, say, John Ashcroft. Neither will Jeff Bridges's Clintonesque president in The Contender have much of a chance; it's a reminder of the administration that won't go away. Speaking of the living dead: Willem Dafoe's revenant in Shadow of the Vampire should bring rueful laughs from Academy members as he snacks on members of the film-within-the-film's production crew, but not when their own profession is the main course. So it comes down to the worthy old codger -- Albert Finney, splendid in Erin Brockovich -- and the deserving minority -- Benicio Del Toro, quirky in Traffic. The codgers -- James Coburn, Michael Caine -- won the last two years. With its lily-white slate of nominees this year, the Academy might make a gesture at inclusion and choose Del Toro.

As usual, the female nominations provide a glimpse into the current status of women in Hollywood. Take the Best Actress category. Except for Joan Allen's scandalized vice-presidential candidate in The Contender (she had sex but didn't enjoy it), the nominees consist of single mothers who are social outcasts doing battle with the system. I think the Academy will just say no to drugs and Ellen Burstyn's speed-addicted babushka in Requiem for a Dream as well as to Binoche in Chocolat; one is too bitter, the other too sweet. Laura Linney shows spunk in You Can Count On Me -- but too much, since she smokes a joint and sleeps with her boss. Which leaves Julia Roberts in Erin. She flaunts her cleavage but remains chaste; from the push-up bra to the saucy dialogue, this is the film that shows her to the best advantage. Give her the Oscar now before she can make another film like The Mexican.

As for the Best Supporting Actress nominees, all but Judi Dench's curmudgeon in Chocolat are muses to aspiring male protagonists. Marcia Gay Harden cleans up after Pollock, Julie Walters teaches Billy Elliot to dance, and the '70s poster boy in Almost Famous gets two nurturers -- Frances McDormand as mom and Kate Hudson as groupie. I'd say it's the usual dowager/ingenue match-up in this category, the chain-smoking Walters vying with the flower-powered Hudson. Gilded nostalgia should win out, highlighted by a sobbing Goldie Hawn as her daughter Hudson claims the prize, in a year in which spectacle and sentiment have triumphed over substance.

Peter picks

BEST PICTURE
Gladiator

BEST DIRECTOR
Ridley Scott, Gladiator

BEST ACTOR
Russell Crowe, Gladiator

BEST ACTRESS
Julia Roberts, Erin Brockovich

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Benicio Del Toro, Traffic

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Kate Hudson, Almost Famous