The great irony of this year’s Oscars is the constant battle between the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other.
The Devil says, “The year is boring… we know all the answers already… is a classic Hollywood fantasia set in a poverty-stricken country of amazing colors and sights telling the tale of an underdog overcoming the odds really the best we can do?”
The Angel says, “Here is a movie from a director who had gotten typed into being a success only in x-treme cinema, set in another country, often in another language, with three sets of young, inexperienced actors playing the same kids from single-digits to 20-ish, delving into the internationalism of both human aspiration and the medium of television (which might as well be movies), unafraid to deliver some of the harshest moments in mainstream cinema this year, yet emotionally kind and compelling to its core… all of this, made for a studio Dependent that has been put out of business, sold off, in part, by the parent studio to another studio’s Dependent that passed on its first opportunity to make it, sold brilliantly, surrounded by talent that is both charming and unusually generous and kind of spirit, and now in line to win The Oscar and all that comes with that honor.”
Which story is more compelling?
For me, there is no question. The Angel has the goods.
But as usual, the perception of what a better story is, in the media, is always the more ugly story.
And now, with every competing studio, in its heart, knowing that the big prize is simply out of reach, here comes the treachery. Truly thoughtless efforts by journalists buying into the scam that there is any more discontent over this film in India – where it was the third biggest opening ever by a non-Indian film – than there is here. I have had the conversations with people who feel that the ultimate upbeat nature of the film is not in sync with the harsh realities of Mumbai. Okay. I can’t argue what you feel. But as the man said, that’s why there is chocolate and vanilla and 29 other flavors and more.
Then there is the mean-spirited bile that somehow the younger kids in the film were “used” and abandoned by the film and filmmakers. This was the attack used against The Kite Runner last year which tied that film’s marketing and publicity team up in knots for months before the film died its own form of awards season death. As it turns out, Danny Boyle and Christian Colson not only didn’t take advantage of the kids, but have been investing in the future of these two young people/actors since well before the movie’s success.
The goal of the “opposition,” which may not be able to win, but can be dogged in keeping on the attack no matter how long the odds, is to build negativity around the feel-good film and to fire up the xenophobia of older Oscar voters.
One fine publicist, sounding completely aware of how absurd the idea that was being floated was, suggested that the film they were representing was an American alternative to the “it’s good and all” Slumdog.
Then there was the effort to claim that the film’s Co-Director: India, Loveleen Tandan, was the victim of a sexist slight… though she is mentioned by Danny Boyle and cast members all the time and singled out for special thanks. This too is an old spin, based on City of God, in which Fernando Meirelles gave a co-directing credit to Katia Lund – with whom Fernando had worked with on the lead up film to C.O.G. and who found and nurtured much of the young first-time actors on the film – and got slammed for it, even though he too was completely open about Katia’s contribution when asked.
Journalists often go along with these idiotic stories because, first and foremost, there is nothing else to write about.
The problem for the studio, which makes it doubly unfair, is that responding always seems defensive, even if you are not guilty. And not responding leads to some assumption of guilt.
Now… don’t think my praise of the great stories of this year’s Oscar season is just about Slumdog, a film that I have supported without reservation from the day I saw it. The other four nominees have Angelic stories to tell too.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is a film that has gone as close as pre-production before being put into turnaround again… and again… and again… for over a decade. The ultimate choice of David Fincher, an aesthete of the highest order, was seriously daring. And the combination of the unsentimental Fincher and sentimentalist screenwriter Eric Roth results in what some people see as the best and others as the worst (and many in between) of all outcomes. But daring it is, even more so at its huge budgetary price.
Frost/Nixon – This adaptation of a great stage experience centering on two big performances by Michael Sheen and Frank Langella happens to be the perfect film for the very commercially savvy and directorially skilled Ron Howard. There who don’t see Howard as an emotionally raw, lay it out there, kind of director, but he found the resonance in this material as well, I think, as anyone could have and keeps it entertaining to boot. The performances are still tremendous and I expect this film will linger with viewers much, much longer that some expect.
Milk – Another hard-to-get-made project that has been on and off production schedules for over a decade, often intimidated by the great Oscar-winning documentary by Rob Epstein, The Times of Harvey Milk, made all the way back in 1984. The resulting film, directed by Gus van Sant, seems to be more controversial in the gay community than in the straight one, as Harvey Milk means such different things to different people who actually have an investment in the man’s legacy. Sean Penn gives a career best performance as Milk, overcoming mighty fears of what he might do playing a gay man who emerges from the closet and leads a movement. In fact, Van Sant, who obviously has no fear of making films with gay themes in them, hired straight actors for almost all of the lead roles here… to an effect which, like the movie itself, leaves people in different mind sets. But here is an overt gay agenda film that reaches past any specific agenda and manages to tell the tale of what one person can do in a relatively short period of time when they are focused on a cause they believe to be all-important. (Like Che, another 2008 miracle, the “real” politics sometimes get in the way of the message of the film, and the quality of the work gets lost in those bigger, historic disagreements.)
The Reader – Love it or hate it, The Reader found its place at the Oscar table via the ballots of the first group… not with a mega-marketing campaign… not with grand emotional appeals to the film being important for Jewish Academy voters… not with tricks and subterfuge. This is a small, independent film with a last minute change in the lead actress, made by a filmmaker who hasn’t done a film in a while, with an unknown young man in the co-lead role, pushed into this year by a big name whose company ha been suffering some rough times in the last couple of years. And it made it. While Geek World screams and cries about The Dark Knight not making the cut with Academy voters (cut to Tom Rothman’s great comment that he would take his award at the bank when he had a terrific film that did a lot of business, but didn’t get the Academy love), even those who don’t love The Reader should be excited that this little engine made it up the hill for, whether we concur or not, all the reasons we all claim all the time that we want films to find Academy love… for the film and not for the hype machine.
So…
Slumdog Millionaire is about as likely to win Best Picture now as Lord of The Rings, A Beautiful Mind, American Beauty, and Titanic were at about this time in the race. Everyone knows. Brickbats are flying. But a loss at this point would be a fluke.
And from my perspective, the film deserves the win. Why? Because it is a movie movie, the way the Academy and all Americans love movie movies. Does that really make it the BEST movie of the year? That is for each person to decide. And if you are driven by a certain aesthetic, the answer is most certainly, “no.” And God bless you and be well. Nothing wrong with that.
But Slumdog takes what the great Hollywood films does and in the great tradition of this town, turns it on its ear, keeping the clean, cool lines that are so familiar, but giving it a new coat of paint that feels fresh and exciting.
Just look at what has won Best Picture over the years. Yes, there have been No Country For Old Men, The Departed, Crash, Chicago, American Beauty, The English Patient, and Unforgiven, twisting the mythology of the “good guy” past the point of obvious tradition, though decades of WB hero-gangsters suggest that they weren’t too far from certain Hollywood traditions.
But look at the winners… Maggie Fitzgerald, Frodo, John Nash, Maximus, Will Shakespeare, Jack & Rose, William Wallace, Forrest Gump, Itzhak Stern, Clarice Sterling, Lieutenant John Dunbar, Raymond Babbitt, Pu Yi, Private Chris Taylor, etc, etc, etc…
The Academy loves the underdog story. Even in the darker films listed two paragraphs up… Tommy Lee Jones chooses old age over death in the end, Mark Wahlberg gets justice in the end, Roxie Hart overcomes her anonymity even if its just to be a famous dancing/singing murderess, Kevin Spacey dies after finding an internal peace, and Eastwood, not unlike Wahlberg, sets things straight in the end. (Crash and The English Patient… not really happy journeys.)
Of the four BP contenders other than Slummy, Milk, in spite of his death, has the only really upbeat ending, a positive legacy moving forward. Frost/Nixon and The Reader leave their star villains to their ignominy. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ends with Hurricane Katrina coming and while touching, the dying tale told by a mother who has lied to her daughter for 40 some-odd years about her paternal history. This doesn’t mean that we can’t make the arguments for ambiguity a la Crash or The English Patient. But the odds are stacked against.
But more to the point… when you walk out of Slumdog Millionaire, humming or singing Jai Ho… dancing a little… talking about the kid and the outhouse… the death of a mother… the blinding of a child… trying to pronounce, “Chai Walla,” correctly, the beauty of Freida Pinto, the thrill of feeling like you are in a movie filled with darkness and danger only to be exhilarated by the power of fate and love in the end…
When I hear some people saying that Slummy will be like some of the Oscar titles that have not aged that well, I have to laugh. First, there is the arrogance of the dismissal of some of those titles. If Forrest F-ing Gump opened last month, it would have been associated with Obama instead of Reagan and swept the Oscars the same as it did in 1995. Maybe Reds and Raiders have more cultural weight than Chariots of Fire and Ordinary People did beat Raging Bull, but to kick the two winners from those two years because you prefer another one or two of the movies is not really fair or fair-minded. Chariots of Fire is a great movie. And they truly don’t make movies like Ordinary People anymore… and it was a lot better than this year’s attempt, Revolution Road. Both films were imitated and imitated and imitated to the point where the impact of the original faded into cliche’. But there is no shame in being the truthful source of the cliches of the future.
And after that first laugh subsides, I laugh again, because I think of the joy that I have seen in people after they have seen Slumdog Millionaire for themselves. And that is at least one big reason why we all love the movies.
Jai ho, y’all.
– David Poland
January 29, 2009
This is the shortest award season EVER!
Excellence in Costume Design for Film – Period
