Ever since time began, mankind has yearned for justice to prevail at the Academy Awards. I don’t think all the films which landed nominations this year are worthy of approbation.
Inception is surely only in the running because it’s a popular favourite; the Best Picture category was expanded from five nominations to ten last year so that mainstream audiences could root for films they’d actually seen — a transparent bit of populist tokenism. And I’m baffled by the general admiration for The Town, a compendium of macho crime movie clichés. But even we terminal Oscar curmudgeons would have to concede it’s a pretty decent spread this year.
There’s lots of love for The Social Network, Winter’s Bone and The Fighter (out here on 4 Feb), as well as the odd crumb of comfort for Blue Valentine, Dogtooth, Biutiful and the Australian thriller Animal Kingdom (25 Feb). It’s rumoured within the industry that Mike Leigh receives a Best Original Screenplay nomination each year whether or not he’s actually written a new film, but that doesn’t make his nod for Another Year (his fifth writing nomination from the Academy) any less deserved.
I can’t even join in with much of the griping over at GoldDerby, where some of the exclusions are branded “shocking”. Yes, it’s a real shame that Andrew Garfield’s portrayal of Eduardo Saverin in The Social Network was squeezed out of contention, particularly as he provides the emotional centre; he wears all the movie’s pain in his worried face. But I can’t get exercised over the omission of Michael Douglas for Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (that would’ve been one of those “congratulations for still being alive” Oscars) or Robert Duvall for Get Low (ditto).
Casting a long shadow over the UK media’s reporting has been, inevitably, The King’s Speech. Supporters of the picture, who care not that it is dutiful and deferential to both royalty and to archaic wisdom about film acting and directing, may crow about its 12 nominations, but should recall the chastening example of The Color Purple (eleven nominations in 1985, but no prizes).
I won’t begrudge Colin Firth the Best Actor award that he is the favourite to win; those of us unconvinced by The King’s Speech might console ourselves by thinking of it as a deferred acknowledgement for his work last year in A Single Man (he was beaten to the gold by Jeff Bridges in Crazy Heart, who is in the shortlist for True Grit this time), much as Jeremy Irons’s Oscar for Reversal of Fortune was widely considered to be compensation for his stunning double-performance, ignored by the Academy, in Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers.
But I feel suspicious of any consensus, even if it’s one that builds up around a film I admire. I happen to think The Social Network does everything right, and couldn’t really be bettered, but I’m suspicious of the absence of any convincing counter-arguments (though Zadie Smith’s rigorous analysis of the film, and the phenomenon it describes, is a joy to read).
Likewise, it’s dispiriting to hear the party line being toed over The King’s Speech, as though to fail to root for it would be tantamount to incinerating a Union Jack. On Radio 4 last night I heard a news item in which the film was described as — let me get this right — a metaphor for the Anglo-American relationship, with the irreverent speech therapist Lionel Logue (played by Geoffrey Rush) as the funky, straight-shooting US figure helping the uptight Brit to loosen up. This, the reporter suggested, was why the film had gone down so well in America. Despite the fact that Logue was, erm, Australian. And that the only American character in the film, Wallis Simpson, is roundly disparaged.
A similar kind of consensus has built up over the Golden Raspberry awards — better known as the Razzies — where the nominations give new meaning to the idea of easy targets. The Razzies were once prized as an antidote to Hollywood sycophancy, and there was usually a comingling of scorn and affection for the films that figured on their radar. These days, they have an orthodoxy of their own that’s every bit as blinkered as the one promoted by The King’s Speech cheerleaders.
Rather than singling out the genuinely pitiful but supposedly prestigious lows of the year — The American, say, or Black Swan — the Razzies are an unpleasant reflection of adolescent fanboy prejudice. You can find some informed objections to the awards’ agenda (such as: Why do they aim most of their barbs at teen idols or gay icons?) here and here.
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