Thoughts on the Oscars

Well, I’ve been away from the blog for a while (you can read me on Nerd Stew), but I’m back to offer my two cents about last night’s Academy Awards. The big awards, at least, the ones people tune in to see.

Best Picture: 12 Years a Slave

They certainly got this one right. The Wolf of Wall Street was one of my two favorite films of 2013, and certainly was one of the best movies of the year. But favorite is more a measure of individual taste and enjoyment than a picture’s merit. I wouldn’t say I enjoyed 12 Years a Slave, but it was definitely the best film I saw last year, the most powerful, most affecting. I think it’s one that can and will be viewed highly for years to come simply on its own merit, but having the Oscars’ seal of approval certainly helps to immortalize it.

Best Director: Alfonso Cuarón, Gravity 

This I can see. Gravity was an amazing and thrilling technical picture, capturing very well what it’s like to be in space (at least to me, the layman viewer, if not to someone more scientifically learned). But if it were me, I’d have given the award to Steve McQueen for 12 Years a Slave. Every scene and sequence in the movie is a carefully calculated, detailed expression of feeling, alternatively searing fear and horrific pain both physical and psychological. Cuarón’s work on Gravity made me feel like I was floating in space, but McQueen’s direction actually moved me. 

This was the second year in a row a director of a picture consisting mostly of extensive visual effects won the award (last year it was Ang Lee for Life of Pi). As films become more digital, could this category be becoming more of a technical award?

Best Actor: Matthew McConaughey, Dallas Buyer’s Club 

Well, I won’t go so far as to say this was a wrong choice. McConaughey was very good in Dallas Buyer’s Club. It’s not the choice I would have made, however. Like many, I was really hoping Leonardo DiCaprio would win it for The Wolf of Wall Street. The way he made real life stock swindler Jordan Belfort so charismatic and funny yet clearly monstrously evil, and the insane energy he brought to the role (not to mention the way he put his body into it in a few appallingly shocking scenes), was incredible. You could have also made strong argument for Chiwetel Ejiofor in 12 Years a Slave, who managed humanity and even dignity among all the hopelessness and horrors in that film. But the award still should have been DiCaprio’s.

Best Actress: Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine

Haven’t seen Blue Jasmine, so I can’t comment on Blanchett’s win. Of the two nominees in films I did see—Amy Adams in American Hustle and Sandra Bullock in Gravity—I don’t think either role was exactly award-worthy. I wasn’t a fan of American Hustle at all, and though I enjoyed Gravity, the movie is more about the viewing experience than its story or characters. While Bullock was good in it, I’m not certain the film would have been a whole lot different with other actors working around the special effects.

Best Supporting Actor: Jared Leto, Dallas Buyer’s Club

Leto was the only nominee not based on a real person (Dallas Buyer’s Club is based on a true story, but this character is a fictional composite). Perhaps the biggest complement you could pay is that if you didn’t know better, Leto would make you think his character Rayon had to have been a real person. On the same token, Michael Fassbender in 12 Years a Slave and Jonah Hill in The Wolf of Wall Street almost seem like exaggeratedly horrible characters, but are actually embodiments of real people, and apparently pretty accurate ones. I might have voted for one of those two for just going all out on their specific brand of awfulness (my favoritism toward The Wolf of Wall Street had me pulling for Hill), but Leto’s more understated grace and humanity is certainly not a bad choice.

Best Supporting Actress: Lupita Nyong’o, 12 Years a Slave

Absolutely the right pick. Nyong’o is the target of most of the worst torment in the Best Picture winner, and it’s so heartbreaking it’s almost hopeless. Even in a smaller supporting role, her suffering and dehumanization encompasses nearly all imaginable evils of bondage. I hope now she becomes a big star.

Snubs:

The Academy’s gotten some criticism for not giving any nominations to Fruitvale Station, and rightly so. I’m not going to speculate on whether it was studio politics or the film’s controversial subject matter or some other reason it got ignored. But if the Oscars really are the awards for the best films, it should have been nominated (it was certainly more deserving than American Hustle). It’s also too bad because even if it didn’t win anything, some recognition from the Academy might have gotten more people to see it.

Also ignored was my other favorite film of 2013: The World’s End, which I’ve come to like more and more after rewatching it a few times. This didn’t surprised me at all. Aside from a few more artsy types like Woody Allen, the Oscars rarely recognize comedies. But with their Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy, the team of Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright have made the best and smartest film parodies since the heyday of Mel Brooks, and The World’s End might have been their most original and thoughtful work. No, I don’t think it’s the best picture of 2013, and the acting was more of an ensemble job with equal parts instead of any one role rising above the rest. But, maybe it could have gotten a writing nomination? It’s seriously that clever and funny.