Time-sensitive considerations
We live in modern times, but the Academy Awards’ 84th edition is more concerned with golden ages
Time rewinds at the 84th Academy Awards, as a silent film may well take top honours, Billy Crystal hosts for the ninth time (after stepping in for Eddie Murphy), and heavyweight directors Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese lead the charge of directors making movies about bygone eras.
A striking majority of the nine best picture nominees have plots that dig into the past. French director Michel Hazanavicius’s cheeky black-and-white, silent movie The Artist stands a good chance of winning thanks to the novelty factor and an influential push by maverick producer Harvey Weinstein. Set in 1920s Hollywood, it tells of a silent film star who has trouble adapting to the advent of the “talkies.”
Woody Allen also goes back to the ’20s in his charming, timetravelling hit Midnight in Paris. Owen Wilson is a goofy writer who finds a portal to the city’s heyday and hangs out with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein and everyone else who mattered at the time.
Also set in Paris, in 1931, Scorsese’s Hugo digs back even further as the titular 12-year-old orphan (who takes care of the clocks – how à propos – in a train station) uncovers the key to a mystery that pays tribute to the dawn of cinema.
It doesn’t stop there. Spielberg’s War Horse is a kid’s movie about a noble steed’s adventures in the First World War. The Help and The Tree of Life find inspiration in the ’50s, with mixed results. The former is a feel-good movie that rightfully got flack for glossing over the uglier aspects of segregation; while the latter stars Brad Pitt as a stern family man in a mesmerizing, grandiose reverie about childhood, loss and the history of the universe.
Whether The Tree of Life’s lofty ambitions resonate with Academy voters remains to be seen. Though hailed at Cannes and by critics, the film prompted numerous walkouts by viewers unwilling to follow Malick on his esoteric journey.
Closer to now are two mov- ies inspired by real events of the early 2000s. Moneyball is an unconventional baseball movie featuring Pitt (again) in the role of manager Billy Beane, who in 2002 used a bold new approach to scouting in hopes of leading the Oakland A’s to the World Series. Director Bennett Miller brings intrigue to this cerebral David vs. Goliath tale of one man trying to find a way for his small market team to beat the game’s big bucks franchises.
Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock lend star power – but unfortunately not substance – to the sappy Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, about a boy’s attempt to reconnect with his late father, who died in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center.
Rounding out this bloated category (do we really need nine nominees?) is the most modern one of the bunch which, nonetheless, in its very title, nods to the past. George Clooney plays Matt King, a Hawaii lawyer trying to reconnect with his daughters and make peace with his comatose wife in Alexander Payne’s The Descendants. Meanwhile, King must decide what to do with a valuable plot of beachfront property that has been in the family for generations. It’s a quirky film that mixes comedy and drama in equal measure – a winning formula at the Golden Globes, where The Descendants won best picture and Clooney took best actor. Though a little too smug for its own good, it could well repeat the feat Sunday night if The Artist doesn’t sneak up, silently, and make off with Oscar.
While these films reappear in various other categories – see best director, where Hazanavicius, Payne, Malick, Allen and Scorsese duke it out – there is room for surprises.
Yes, Clooney and Pitt will armwrestle for best actor, but The Artist’s Jean Dujardin could cement his hollywood ambush with a win. In the long shot category is Mexico’s Demián Bichir, who is stoic yet sensitive as a tough-luck immigrant gardener trying to keep his son on the straight-and-narrow in the L.a.-set A Better Life; and let’s not forget Gary Oldman as unsmiling agent George Smiley in the moody John le Carré adaptation Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
Veterans Glenn Close and Meryl Streep each have reason to walk away with the prize for best actress: Close is uncanny in drag in the quietly feminist 19th century tale Albert Nobbs; and Streep nails Margaret Thatcher in the glossy The Iron Lady. But Michelle Williams summons her inner bombshell in My Week With Marilyn; and Rooney Mara is gnarly in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Viola Davis, while solid, didn’t have much to work with in The Help.
Kenneth Branagh (My Week With Marilyn) could take best supporting actor just cause he’s Kenneth Branagh, but Christopher Plummer deserves the award for his playful performance as a gay senior in Beginners. Then again, it would be too cool to see Jonah Hill swipe it for his deadpan portrayal of Pitt’s numbers-crunching assistant in Moneyball.
Best supporting actress is a crapshoot, with strong performances across the board. Bérénice Bejo is a delight as talkies star Peppy Miller in The Artist; Jessica Chastain and Octavia Spencer show gifts for comedy in The Help; and Janet Mcteer offers Close a strapping bosom buddy in Albert Nobbs; but no one can touch Melissa Mccarty’s riotous turn in Bridesmaids.
For the second year running, Montrealers have reason to cheer in the best foreign language film category, as Monsieur Lazhar follows in the footsteps of Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies (see Brendan Kelly’s story on Page F2). But the cards seem stacked in favour of Asgar Farhadi’s excellent A Separation, which deftly eluded Iranian censors to deliver a poignant tale of love, bureaucracy and miscommunication. We’ll also keep our eye on Montrealer Patrick Doyon’s Dimanche, up for best short film (animated).
If The Tree of Life doesn’t win best cinematography, I give up. And how about art-house hero Wim Wenders’s wonderful Pina, a dreamy 3-D dance film about the work of late German choreographer Pina Bausch, in the running for best documentary?
Margin Call may claim best original screenplay for its incisive take on the 2008 economic crisis, or Midnight in Paris could win for sentimental reasons. The Artist and Bridesmaids were both entertaining, but A Separation boasts the most artful and sophisticated script of the bunch.
The Descendants should take best adapted screenplay, although Moneyball has an outside shot at a come-from-behind victory. Hugo, The Ides of March and Tin- ker Tailor Soldier Spy will watch quietly from the sidelines.
All this amounts to little more than an educated guessing game, however. The Academy voters are a capricious bunch, nice guys finish last (except when they finish first), and you just never know.
If I could skip into the future, I would lay it all out for you, right here right now. Barring that, all predictions are on hold until
Monday morning.
The Academy Awards are broadcast live Sunday at 8:30 p.m. on ABC and CTV.