Something 4 The Weekend by
The Year of Living Dangerously?
Welcome ladies, gentlemen and film
fans everywhere to entertainment manchester's weekly
feature 'Something for the Weekend'. Every Friday, we
deliver to you the best (and, in the interest of balance,
worst) of this week's new cinematic releases. If, as
Forrest Gump once might have said were he a film fan,
cinema really is like a box of chocolates, then think
of us as your mini-menu, steering you away from the
coffee creams and towards the Turkish delights of the
movie world.
The Big Picture
It is a rare, rare thing indeed that the Academy Awards ever picks a worthy Best Picture winner. It is even rarer that it picks a controversial one. Want proof? Look at some of the most memorable gaffes in the ceremony's history. Ordinary People dramatically strolling over Raging Bull. Dances with Wolves conquering Goodfellas. Flippin' Rocky knocking out Taxi Driver. And what is the one factor that these three travesties of justice have in common (apart from the fact that it was Martin Scorsese who was denied on each occasion)? The Academy chose the nice, safe option over the more daring film each time. Even in more recent times, the likes of The Lord of the Rings and Gangs of New York were overlooked in favour of the more safe and traditional pictures such as A Beautiful Mind and Chicago. In other words, films which have been well liked in their times, but will be forgotten in twenty years.
Normally, each year throws forward at least one of such film for the Academy to pluck for. A get-out-clause, if you will, for the voters to ignore the more interesting films and award the conservative picture the gong. A Shakespeare in Love. A Chicago. A Forrest Gump. Not this year though. At this year's Academy Awards, the American right wing will be left fuming at a list of nominations which looks set to include gay cowboys, immoral soldiers and Middle Eastern terrorists. So to whom, pray tell, will the conservative members of the Academy give their coveted stature?
The reported frontrunner for the Best Picture gong is released today amid a mixture of fierce criticism and huge praise. Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain features Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as two farmhands who meet and fall in love, but realise if they are to continue their relationship they must do so incognito. Five star reviews have flooded in, making it many peoples' top choice for the Oscar. But this is a film which not only focuses on one of the biggest American taboos, but does so against the Western backdrop - the very symbol of American masculinity, begging the question: is it just too damn controversial for the Oscars?
There used to be a time when such questions weren't asked. During the 1960s, of course, the Oscars were in much the same position as they are now, with the cheery likes of West Side Story (‘61), My Fair Lady (‘64), Sound of Music (‘65) and Oliver! (‘68) all picking up the golden baldy. But once the Vietnam war hit its peak at the end of the decade a seismic shift in the tastes of the Oscars took place. Suddenly, things took a turn for the dark and out were happy go luck sing-alongs and in were down and dirty dramas.
In 1969, Midnight Cowboy scooped the prize, to this day the only X certificate to win Best Picture. Patton, The French Connection, The Sting, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and both Godfathers followed. Gritty, hard-hitting and more often than not controversial films all of them. Films which, more to the point, deconstructed the American Dream, slaughtered it - at the time it was most vulnerable no less - and placed it in contexts as disparate as a war biopic, a mental ward and a gangster epic. Something was happening. Perhaps the films were just getting darker or perhaps the Academy was simply reflecting the mood of a damaged nation. But whatever the reason, the only thing that's for sure is that by '76 the short-lived era of controversy was over, never to return.
At that year's ceremony, it seemed possible - perhaps even probable - that the run of edgy films would continue. Taxi Driver, All The President's Men and Network battled it out for Best Picture along with Rocky and Bound for Glory. What won? Rocky, of course. Flippin' Rocky. It may seem innocuous enough. After all, Sly Stallone's boxing drama was the biggest earner of that year, raking in some $20,000 more than its closest contender A Star Is Born. But beneath Rocky's win is a more underhand motive. The film, with its care-free, feel good Cinderella story delivered to the American public a band-aid, giving it exactly the kind of self-perpetuating, myth laden, American Dream redeeming picture it - and perhaps the Academy - needed.
Light comedy Annie Hall followed with the respectable dramas Kramer vs Kramer and, of course, Ordinary People, not far behind. Then the 80s happened, and while the American public was content to watch Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger rewrite history and win the Vietnam war in Rambo and Predator, the Academy was looking even further back with the return of the epic.
Chariots of Fire, Ghandi and Amadeus beat the likes of Warren Beatty's Reds, The Verdict and The Killing Fields respectively while Driving Miss Daisy (DRIVING MISS DAISY?!) beat Oliver Stone's incendiary Born of the Fourth of July in 1989. Rain Man and Stone's Platoon offered some respite, but despite Silence of the Lambs' clean sweep in 1991, the prestige picture continued to dominate into the 90s. The Western was reinvented by Unforgiven, Steven Spielberg finally proved himself to be 'Oscar Worthy' with Schindler's List while the epic was represented with the horrendous collection of Dances With Wolves (beating Goodfellas), The English Patient (beating Fargo) and Titanic (shockingly beating LA Confidential).
Predictably, modern day ceremonies have continued in the same vein with A Beautiful Mind proving its pen is mightier than The Fellowships of the Ring's sword and Chicago tippy tapping over Gangs of New York, The Two Towers AND The Pianist. It's a desperate state of affairs indeed when Catherine Zeta Jones is named a better actress than Kathy Bates, Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep. But things could finally change in this year's ceremony. If the Oscars went black in 2003, they'll go pink in 2006 for not only is Brokeback Mountain looking set for a nomination, but a biopic of Truman Capote is also being strongly tipped for glory.
But will either of them win the top prize? Not likely. Ang Lee may be trying to sell his film as an epic romance (right down to a poster which cheekily riffs on that of Titanic) but the media has forcefully sold it to a gullible public as 'that gay cowboy film' and that stigma will simply be too much to shake off. Don‘t believe me? Just read what some right-wing alarmists are saying:
"[Brokeback Mountain] is a brilliant propaganda film, reportedly causing viewers to change the way they feel about homosexual relationships and same-sex marriage," blares David Kupelian in his review 'Brokeback Mountain: Rape of the Marlboro Man. "By utilizing two of the most attractive and popular young Hollywood actors for these roles in such a compelling story, they have created characters people can identify and sympathize with to sway the public into believing this is natural behaviour." God forbid!
Meanwhile, Patrick Hurley of The One Republic website dubs the film Some Like It Hot Along a Barbed Wire Fence (hur hur) and writes: "Hollywood is trying REAL hard to convince all of us to accept gay cowboys, just like they worked mightily to get us to melt at the sight of a dying boxer babe who got hit one too many times with a left hook...Homosexuality is with us to stay in our society, I respect that...But, I feel uncomfortable with the film industry shoving a gay premise for a movie down my throat just because it has won a few awards in its early run for credibility."
In the face of such opposition, Brokeback Mountain, along with Capote, stands very little chance of winning Best Picture. What it does stand a good chance of claiming, however, is the Best Adapted Screenplay award (normally the place you can find the film which should have won Best Picture anyway), a directing nod for Lee (after all, they can acknowledge the film is directed well, just not the film itself) and both Gyllenhaal and Ledger are good shouts for the acting gong, as is Phillip Seymour Hoffman for Capote.
So, with Capote and Brokeback Mountain out of the running that leaves Sam Mendes's Jarhead (also starring Gyllenhaal) and Steven Spielberg's Munich. But lukewarm reviews for Mendes's film and the late arrival of Munich (Boxing Day in the States, the end of this month here) leaves them as distant outsiders, despite their directors' Oscar-clutching pedigree. Memoirs of A Geisha, Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line and George Clooney's reds under the bed drama Good Night, And Good Luck are also rank outsiders, respectively too popular and too low key to succeed.
All of which leaves the biggest outsider of them all: The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. Not heard of it? Neither have most other people. But, if you’re looking for a good dark horse this year all you need to know is that it's a lauded, Cannes-winning resurrection of a former Oscar favourite genre (the Western), is directed by and starring an undervalued veteran (Tommy Lee Jones) and, while containing a slice of violence and grit, is in no way as controversial as its opponents. Perfect Oscar material then. Whatever happened to the year of living dangerously, eh?
Also Playing...
Also released this week is this year’s Woody Allen film. The prolific director releases at least one picture every year (apparently as a way to fend off depression) and Match Point is this year’s annual offering. Finding himself away from his native New York, Allen shot the film in London (a place he was so impressed with he also filmed his next offering, Scoop, there as well), with a plot centring Jonathan Rhys Myers’ ex-tennis pro who marries into Emily Mortimer’s rich family but is lured away by that foul temptress Scarlett Johansson. The trailer makes it seem like a typical Hollywood thriller, just with Allen’s trademark self-loathing and relationship troubles. But although the diminutive director has done thrillers before, this seems to be far more straight up then any of them and whether it will work or not remains to be seen.
Finally, Just Friends also strolls onto the big screen this weekend. A teen rom com featuring Amy Smart, Anna Farris and irritating old Ryan Reynolds, it focuses on that age old cliché (sorry problem) of finding the woman you love not wanting to take your relationship beyond being…’Just Friends’. Wit, comedy and much joviality probably ensues.
NEXT WEEK: We look at war films ahead of the release of Jarhead.
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