Nathaniel

Shockey

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February 26, 2008

The Academy Awards Have No Integrity, But Daniel Day-Lewis is Awesome

I’m not a huge fan of the Academy Awards. The whole ceremony is ridiculously melodramatic. The cheesy orchestral music, the seemingly endless segments devoted to past winners, the gold, the glitter, the damnable red carpet charade – who can seriously watch all this without throwing up in their mouths at least once? And secondly, I don’t really trust “the committee” to give the awards to the best, as opposed to those that would make the best story, or be the most politically correct (that is, of course, by Hollywood’s warped political standards).

There is a huge array of evidence pointing to the Oscars’ lack of integrity, at least as far as I’m concerned, but perhaps the one that sticks out the most to me might also be Hollywood’s biggest defense – Return of the King and the 76^th Academy Awards four years ago.

It was the movie that strongly wrecked the recent trend of Oscar winners. First, the story was firmly planted in Christian values. Second, it was a huge budget film. Third, it did amazingly well at the box office. (Year after year, people who formerly considered themselves movie fans stare at the list of nominees and ask, “Is this this year’s list?” proceeding to point out the two movies they recognize, one of them by Pixar, and the other nominated for best sound editing.) Fourth, it was a fantasy. Fifth, it was up against two movies anyone in their right mind would expect “the committee” to choose over it – City of God and Mystic River – both really good movies with social/political undercurrents. How did they lose to a Christian movie with a huge budget that people actually wanted to see more than once? This doesn’t happen.

But here’s the thing – not only did Return of the King win Best Picture, it won every category for which it was nominated – yes, every single one, totaling 11. Doesn’t that smell just a bit fishy to you? My guess is the committee just said, “Screw it. This oughta shut up (people like me).”

I would not be at all surprised if a whole slew of calls were made to all those who lost to the Lord Of The Rings juggernaut, explaining that this was necessary in order to continue giving out awards to surreptitiously political, non-compelling, undeserving movies in the future. I’m not sure about the phone calls, but I’m pretty convinced about why the 76^th Academy Awards went the way they did.

One of the things I really enjoyed last night was when Daniel-Day Lewis kept saying that he was “delighted” about winning the Best Actor Oscar – not “ecstatic,” not “thrilled,” not “speechless,” but delighted. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone act so unimpressed about winning that award. To me, he just seemed over it. And instead of reveling in the glory of everything Hollywood, he made the classy move of talking about the late Heath Ledger. Granted, I’ve been on a huge DDL high ever since seeing There Will Be Blood, but he actually first captured my adulating with his role in The Last of the Mohicans, which happened to be one for which he was not even nominated.

Even Russell Crowe, who is one of my favorite actors, and always seems to act like he is above it all, became very emotional when he won the Oscar for Gladiator. (Can someone please explain to me how he lost to Denzel Washington’s performance in “Training Day” despite his amazing, compelling and clearly superior performance in A Beautiful Mind? Oh yeah, I remember. Let’s just not get into it.) The point is that if someone like Russell Crowe, who is repeatedly tagged by directors as a prima donna, gets choked up with a victory at the Oscars, it’s obviously quite rare to see someone maintain their composure the way DDL did.

Maybe, just maybe, Daniel-Day Lewis realizes that the art of film-making is immeasurably bigger than a place where a lot of movies happen to be made. I’d like to think that there are people out there, perhaps people like him, who care more about their craft than being recognized for it. I’d also like to think that more than a handful of wonderful artists – actors, writers, directors, etc. – who attend the Academy Awards proceed to crack jokes about the melodrama of the evening with their buddies directly after surviving it. And I’d definitely like to think that I’m not the only one who recognized the perhaps not-so-coincidentally shared initials of an awards ceremony and a recovery system for people who drink too much. I think DDL probably noticed it too.

Of course, it could be that I’m making one man a bit larger in my mind than he actually is. I’ve been known to do this in the past. But what really matters is that, 50 years from now, when his rendering of Daniel Plainview is still recognized as one of the top five performances of all time, the legend of that one man should, and will, cast a much larger shadow than a bunch of really big letters on top of a really big hill in southern California.

© 2008 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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