Blogging the Oscars

Columnists :: Kilian Melloy

Blogging the Oscars

by Kilian Melloy

Sunday Feb 26, 2012

This year’s crop of contenders for the gold--the golden-plated Oscar statuettes for Best Picture, that is--range from the retro-charm of "The Artist" to Terrence Malik’s ultra-arty, hyper-literate "The Tree of Life," with a few more likely candidates ("Moneyball," "Hugo," "The Help," "The Descendants") thrown in for good measure. Then there are the oddball nominees: "Midnight in Paris," "War Horse," and "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close," which tends to suggest, in the former case, that those in charge of the nominations are susceptible to inexplicable bouts of silliness ("Midnight in Paris?" Really? A badly miscast Woody Allen flick with a ramshackle plot and a lightweight pseudo-philosophical message?) and far too impressed by late-breaking, ostentatious movies.

Myself, I can’t help thinking that it’s a race between "The Help" (social message movies, especially when the social message is at a safe remove of four or five decades, are a good bet) and "Moneyball," with "The Descendants" running a close third.

The field of nominees for Best Actor is a bit more satisfying: Demián Bichir for his role as an illegal immigrant in "A Better Life," George Clooney as a grieving cuckold in "The Descendants," Jean Dujardin for his turn as a Hollywood silent movie star facing career death with the advent of talkies, Gary Oldman for his interpretation of Smiley in "Tinker Tailor Solider Spy," and Brad Pitt for... no, not "The Tree of Life," but rather the much more commercial "Moneyball."

Your humble columnist’s call: Pitt will take it. Immigration is too hot a issue politically for Tinseltown to do more than give "A Better Life" a nod with a nomination; "The Artist," for all its charms, isn’t quite commercial enough; Gary Oldman’s performance was terrific in "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy," but the movie is a little too authentically British in tone and flavor, and a little too old school for a broad appeal to an American electorate used to slick action flicks like the Bourne movies. As for Clooney, he’s so good at almost everything he does that the Clooney version of compassion fatigue is likely to have set in.

Up for Best Actress: Glenn Close for her gender-bending role in "Albert Nobbs," Viola Davis for "The Help," Rooney Mara for "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," Meryl Streep for "The Iron Lady," and Michelle Williams for "My Week with Marilyn."

Close is at a disadvantage given the very name of her character, Albert Nobbs. The opportunity for cheap jokes is enough in itself to derail her chances. Streep might win, if only because she ought to have won for "The Devil Wears Prada" and she ought to have won again for "Julie and Julia." But there’s no sidestepping the fact that Streep portrays Maggie "Milk Snatcher" Thatcher, and though the film does poke a little fun at the Conservative icon (the first shot of the movie is, after all, Maggie’s crabbed hand choosing a carton of milk at a convenience store), its protagonist is, well, just not the stuff of which Oscar is made.

Now, remember what I was saying above about slick action flicks? I’d be into Rooney Mara, star of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," winning if only for the fact that her character, Lisbeth Slander, is bi. But Salander is also a powerful, competent female character so in charge of her own sexuality that she’s willing to allow herself to be violated in order to gain the upper hand (not to mention her idea of a kinder and gentler roll in the hay consists of taking the initiative when it comes to bedding her startled leading man, Daniel Craig). In short, she’s the kind of woman who scares the shit out of Middle America--so don’t expect her to walk off with the gold. No, I’m getting the sense that our poor, shaken nation, dipped as it is in nostalgia and soaked in fictitious "family values" is more in the mood for a woman who might be smart as well as gorgeous, but who plays it dumb and breathy, and is genuinely emotionally fragile besides. Michelle Williams plays Marilyn Monroe wonderfully--enough so that despite the movie not exactly being a hit, I’m thinking Williams will take the prize.

And for Best Director: Michel Hazanavicius for "The Artist," Alexander Payne for "The Descendants," Martin Scorsese for "Hugo," Woody Allen for "Midnight in Paris," and Terrence Malick for "The Tree of Life."

Now, come on. Are they going to go for Allen? Hardly. The guy can’t be bothered to show up for the Oscars, and to nominate him for a trifle like "Midnight in Paris" is a backhanded compliment at best--they might as well say "Woody, you’re kinda old and likely to drop dead any time now, so we just through we’d toss you a gold-plated bone." Except I really don’t think they will.

It’s a brave and noble thing to have nominated Malik at all--but he’ll never take it. Hazanavicius charmed the hell out of those who attended "The Artist" and actually understood that it was supposed to be a silent movie... but an awful lot of people just didn’t get it. It’s a tossup between Payne for "The Descendants" and Scorsese who, let’s face it, we expect to deliver blood-spattered classics like "Goodfellas"--so what a twist and delight to see him behind "Hugo." For sheer go-against-the-grain audacity (that actually works this time; let’s not even get into his forays into comic films like "Bringing Out the Dead," and "After Hours" or his, er, literary sojourns "The Last Temptation of Christ" and "The Age of Innocence"), Hugo should be the one to beat. But will the Academy agree? Dear readers, let’s find out.