Even with the fresh presiding of host, Hugh Jackman, the Oscars this year was more of a ho-hum affair. You cannot fault Jackman for that, as his opening song and dance number was a welcome contrast to the usual, now somewhat tiresome routine of a stand up comic. The ceremony, however, was still too long and had a sense of overt smugness among celebrities in giving pats on each others’ backs and basically trying to please everyone. It also did not help that there were some disappointing wins based obviously more on general politics than true merit.
But first, some positives: Slumdog Millionaire won the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director as widely expected as well as six other wins including Best Adapted Screenplay. Considering that the other small number of brilliant movies such as WALL·E, The Dark Knight, The Wrestler and The Visitor were ignored from the Best Picture race, it was the only sensible and valuable movie to win. It was also nice to see the kids from Mumbai getting their big, prestigious Oscar moment when the Best Picture winner was announced and the moment when director Danny Boyle jumped up and down like Tigger was priceless.
Also, as widely predicted, Heath Ledger received the first posthumous Oscar in 32 years for The Dark Knight and I am relieved that they kept the emotionality of the late Heath Ledger’s crowning moment fairly low-key. Heath’s parents and sister calmly came up to the stage to pay the most personal tribute to the distinctive work that he accomplished and no extraneous montage was needed to express the pervading sentiment that a great actor will be missed. And who knows, maybe his truly final onscreen role in Terry Gilliam’s The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus will also be worthy of a nomination next year.
Unfortunately, however, that was about the only thoroughly deserving acting win of the night. I know I am not alone in saying that the most disappointing was certainly Sean Penn in Milk upsetting Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler. Yes, Penn’s work was a technically great piece of acting but was nowhere near as raw or potent as that of Rourke who found the character that he could just commit and throw himself into. The Academy, however, often likes to try to “dictate” their own winners’ speeches, I think, and they wanted Penn to make an Oscar speech that would make a grandstanding political statement for the times. Well, once the political issues and baggage pass by, time will tell which performance in which movie will be better remembered in the years to come.
The Best Actress in a Leading Role went unsurprisingly to Kate Winslet for The Reader. Now she was passed over many times with her past nominations and arguably should have really won for her first nominated role in 1995’s Sense and Sensibility but I do not believe that her performance in The Reader is the one she ought to be remembered for (and I actually feel pretty confident in saying that it will not be). I also know that as consistently great of an actress as she has been, we have not seen the best from her just yet. Personally, equal to wanting to see Rourke up on the Oscar stage perhaps giving a blunt, most politically incorrect speech, I would rather have loved to see Melissa Leo humbly rewarded for her fearless, entrenched performance in
Penelope Cruz took the Best Supporting Actress prize for Vicky Cristina Barcelona, although I hoped that the Academy would show a little more imagination and depth to appreciate work like Marisa Tomei’s in The Wrestler or Viola Davis in Doubt. I, for one, felt, however, that Cruz did not even give the best performance in the movie itself; the lesser known British actress, Rebecca Hall did in a much less flashier and more understated way and should have received a nomination instead. But Cruz’s performance was compared in some circles to that which might have been given by a younger Sophia Loren and thus was probably deemed friendlier to win. She also had the benefit of a rather recent nomination in a more memorable performance in Pedro Almodovar’s Volver from 2006 and, much like Winslet’s award, this might have been another makeup Oscar that might not be completely deserved (right, Martin Scorsese?).
All the acting categories were presented in the new format of bringing five past winners within the given category and each of them picked one nominee to pay a direct and more personalized compliment speech to. This may have sounded good on paper but without showing the actual clips from the movie and with the unevenness of the quality of the speeches (and also some of the performances), some ended up coming across as sappy while others came as weak praise. Anthony Hopkins’ compliments to Brad Pitt’s work in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was particularly faint with the only good specific thing he could say about the performance being that he aged backwards (also because it is true). As a result, along with the other categories' presentations showing a prolonged generalized montage of achievements before saying the actual nominees, the whole affair ended up feeling a little more self-congratulatory and dragging the ceremony way too long. Perhaps if they are going to try this again next time, they should also play the clips from the nominees so that they serve as a terse evidential guide on what makes the characters and performances in the respective films deserve their merit.
The host, Hugh Jackman, however, came away largely unscathed from many of the ceremony’s problems and, if anything, the great talent and showmanship he has shown in Broadway gained wider visibility and will earn him more notice. His opening number showcasing a literally cardboard cutout scenarios from the Oscar-nominated films (after cracking a joke that the current state of the economy has caused this downsizing) were quite hilarious from re-enacting the game show from Slumdog Millionaire, putting his face through holes on top of cardboard drawings of reverse aging or replaying the duel of Frost/Nixon in a surprising duet with Anne Hathaway. Then, the skit with Tina Fey and Steve Martin that followed and presented the screenplay Oscars was a comedic jewel, particularly the opening line when Fey said, “It has been said that to write is to live forever,” and Martin replied, “The man who wrote that is dead.”
There were two more distinctly memorable moments, however. One was when James Marsh’s Man on Wire won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature and Philippe Petit came up on stage to perform a magic trick and then try balancing the Oscar trophy on his chin for several seconds. The other was the “In Memoriam” montage that had the brilliant background addition of Queen Latifah’s beautiful live rendition of “I’ll Be Seeing You.” Numerous significant people passed on in the last year such as Anthony Minghella and Sydney Pollack (who were posthumous nominees as producers of The Reader), Bernie Mac, Charlton Heston, Roy Scheider, Paul Scofield, Stan Winston, Ricardo Montalban, Isaac Hayes and, of course, Paul Newman. Having Queen Latifah’s smoothly legato jazz singing voice was a masterstroke and did wonders for capturing the perfectly reverent tone for the annual tribute.
What really, really fell flat though was the idea of performing the medley of the three songs nominated for Best Original Song right before announcing the winner. I had shivers thinking about how they will awkwardly combine the more Bollywood-styled songs like “Jai Ho” and “O Saya” from Slumdog Millionaire and the slower, more contemplative song, “Down to Earth” from WALL·E (which was performed in the ceremony by John Legend). When they actually shamelessly meshed “Down to Earth” with “Jai Ho” at the end, it was really like fingernails on a chalkboard and I was literally shaking my head in disbelief. They were not just ramming globalization down our throats but the entire globe itself. When they announced the final winner, “Jai Ho,” I was simply glad that it was over and maybe wished the Bollywood dancers and performers would do just that song again to make me forget what just happened.
In total tallies of awards, Slumdog Millionaire scored eight (besides the three major awards, it also won Best Original Score, Best Original Song, Best Editing, Best Cinematography and Best Sound Mixing), Milk scored two with Penn’s win and Best Original Screenplay for Dustin Lance Black and I was relieved that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ended up taking home just three technical Academy Awards including Art Direction, Makeup and Visual Effects, all of which were deserving despite the movie’s general failure as a sweeping story. I can also understand why Best Sound Mixing ended up being awarded to Slumdog Millionaire because sound mixing is about controlling sound levels and getting that right was crucial to giving a sense of spatial reality in the slums of Mumbai, along with providing a great Bollywood musical number at the end. But why, oh why did WALL·E, which unsurprisingly won the Best Animated Feature Oscar, lose out the Oscar for Sound Editing (which gave The Dark Knight its second Oscar)? I guess that the flashy whiffs, booms and bangs are easier to notice than the carefully timed electronic noises and space object movement that are more subtly buried and notably crucial to the story.
Another shocking result was the awarding of Best Foreign Language Film that went to Departures from
Apropos to the overall ceremony, at least you have to give the director, Baz Luhrmann some points for trying to make a Broadway-styled Oscar show and I actually hope they try it once again. But I really wish that the
