Quality control

The Academy strikes back with this year's Oscar nominations

by Peter Keough

Perennially overhyped, the Academy Awards this year might deserve the hoopla. A revolution seems in the making, with rank and file members of the Academy expressing their disgust over studio-made features by nominating five independent movies for Best Picture. The truth, though, is that the studios are the iconoclasts, having abandoned the Hollywood tradition of high-quality, character-driven films to make packaged commercial fodder. If the Academy is rebelling, it's against a system that usurped control of the industry some 25 years ago -- one in which movies are made not by moviemakers but by entities balancing profits and losses in corporate offices.

Where, the Academy asks, are this year's Gone with the Wind, Lawrence of Arabia, Unforgiven, or even Braveheart? Special effects and superstars may bring in the big bucks, but credibility as an art comes in the form of literate, intelligent, well-made films that vindicate the common values of freedom, justice, perseverance, self-sacrifice, and true love.

The Academy certainly didn't find these in Mission Impossible, Twister or Independence Day, or in such half-hearted studio efforts at recapturing past class and glory as A Time To Kill, Sleepers, and Evita. It turned instead to independent productions, not to embrace the spirit of innovation, but as a conservative -- even reactionary -- attempt to return to the past of the old Hollywood.

That spirit of old Hollywood is now moribund, much like the titular hero of that ersatz classic The English Patient, the odds-on favorite for the major awards. Why? Did anyone actually enjoy this dreary, cinematic coffee-table book, this pretentious and often incoherent pseudo-art movie? Well, at least it looks like one of the grand epics of the past. And in theory it includes some of their key elements: doomed lovers, the chaos of history, exotic locations, neat clothes and uniforms. It's a kind of obese David Lean movie. Most important, it's innocuous, unlike the category's actual best picture, the Coen brothers' Fargo. The English Patient's ambiguities are the result of confused filmmaking; Fargo's dark parable of good and evil in the frozen heartland seethes with irony. But irony, except when wielded by Billy Crystal, does not play well on Oscar night.

The English Patient will win Best Picture, and Anthony Minghella, who's already won the Director's Guild Award, will win for Best Director over the enigmatic Joel Coen. But when it comes to the acting categories, Patient's weakness -- do we care about these characters or even believe in them? -- will begin to tell. As the arrogant Hungarian explorer who accommodates himself with the Nazis, Ralph Fiennes has a bit too much of Amon Göth about him.

Other nominees? Tom Cruise is too smarmily and self-righteously moral as Jerry Maguire. Woody Harrelson is being perceived as too smarmily and self-righteously amoral in Larry Flynt. So it comes down, as it so often does, to a battle of the mental incompetents: Geoffrey Rush as sweetly demented pianist David Helfgott in Shine, Billy Bob Thornton as the sweetly demented vigilante in Sling Blade. Do we want our nutcases redeeming themselves through tickling the ivories or splitting skulls? Helfgott's real-life concert tour (the critics' outrage merely adds to the legend) makes Rush's truly great performance a sure thing.

Just as the Best Actor award tends to be given to physically handicapped heroes who prevail over adversity, the Best Actress award tends to go to socially handicapped women who prevail over self-interest. Or to a prostitute -- a trend that seemed to have halted last year when three whores and Emma Thompson went up against a nun -- the nun. Susan Sarandon in Dead Man Walking won.

On the surface, Emily Watson's staggering turn in Breaking the Waves, a parable of spousal sacrifice brought to an insanely logical conclusion, would seem a sure thing. On closer inspection, the Academy might have trouble with a character who equates her marital vows with a masochistic one-night stand with Udo Kier. Similarly, Frances McDormand's subtle and solid rendition of the small-town sheriff in Fargo may be a pregnant pillar of middle-class society, but her key line is still "I assume that's your accomplice in the wood chipper."

As for the two British entries, Brenda Blethyn in Secrets and Lies and Kristin Scott Thomas of The English Patient have both been pushed hard by their studios. But after rewarding the Australian Rush, the Academy is unlikely to dis the homegrown talent in this category. Besides, it loves comebacks, and it likes to vindicate past choices. So look for the unassuming Diane Keaton's performance as the mousy, self-sacrificing sibling in Marvin's Room to win her a second Oscar in an upset.

Does anybody remember or care about the Best Supporting Actor categories? Their booby-prize quality make them ideal for empty gestures, especially to minorities. The lack of color in every other category this year suggests Cuba Gooding Jr.'s over-exuberant football player in Jerry Maguire as a likely choice, although William H. Macy's diabolical dipshit in Fargo was more substantial.

The Best Supporting Actress line-up features a battle of sentimental favorites. Will Barbara Hershey, unaccoladed after 30 years in the business, get the nod for her passionate and complex Madame Merle in Jane Campion's largely dismissed The Portrait of a Lady? Or will Lauren Bacall, receiving her first nomination in 53 years, get it as the troglodytic mother in Barbra Streisand's largely dismissed The Mirror Has Two Faces? The Academy believes in age before artistry; Bacall's honking self-parody will win.

Had the Academy been really revolutionary this year, its new spirit would be evident in its foreign-film choices. So where is Ulysses Gaze, The White Balloon, Lamerica? Nope, this is the same bunch who picked Mediterraneo a few years back. It's a tough choice between the overstuffed, empty spectacle of France's Ridicule and the crotchety old-man/cute-child tear-fest of the Czech Republic's Kolya, but as a nod to the future of democracy, the latter should win. A better choice, though rough-hewn and sentimental, would be Russia's Prisoner of the Mountains. But who cares about Chechnya these days, or Russia, for that matter?

So on Tuesday morning the Academy can look back at its choices and feel reasonably proud of itself. It will have sent a message to the powers that be: either turn out product of quality or buy out those who do. Like the Rebel Alliance in the Star Wars trilogy (which started the whole blockbuster trend and reconfirmed it this year with its record-breaking re-release), this mild Academy uprising is an illusory attempt to reclaim a nobler past. What's different is that the Force isn't with it. The Academy might have its night, but the Empire will win the day.

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