The Oscars are silly but I love them anyway, so here’s my contribution to the water cooler discourse. I would be happy if True Grit won a lot of awards, but The Social Network will enjoy the biggest partial sweep, and for good reason. I realize there is a Weinstein-led warm and fuzzy attack from The King’s Speech, but I don’t think it is ultimately going to friend the Academy on Face Book. However, Colin Firth’s relationship status to Oscar will change, as will Annette Bening’s. The Black Swan will remain an ugly duckling. Inception will become a video game. The Fighter is TKO’d. 127 Hours, while disarming, lacks scale and faces a rocky road. As for Winter’s Bone, shame on the system that does not place it in multiplexes. Toy Story 3 gets its win in the animation category. The Kids are just all right.
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
WILL WIN SHOULD WIN
The Kids Are All Right The Kids Are All Right
The Fighter is a good script and movie, but too formulaic to feel special. Inception is a muddle, script-wise. The King’s Speech, with its high-brow bromanticism and multiplex-friendliness makes a tight race with the gender-political defense-of-family message (well delivered) found in The Kids Are All Right. The ostensibly liberal Academy membership should vote for The Kids Are All Right, not because it is politically correct, but because it delivers a big truth in a subtle, masterfully crafted package.
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
WILL WIN SHOULD WIN
The Social Network The Social Network
The nominees in this category are all excellent. Even if the tide turns against The Social Network, the script will win. As storytelling, True Grit is as deserving, but The Social Network holds up a mirror to our wired culture as we are now, on the precipice of a technology/ capitalism abyss. Hard to trump Sorkin’s tour-de-force.
BEST PICTURE
WILL WIN SHOULD WIN
The Social Network The Social Network
Intentionally or not, The Social Network plucks a dark chord of uncertainty about who we are and where we’re going in the Internet age, where privacy and freedom have become commodities trading on an open market, altering the gap between haves and have nots, while making billionaires of barons so young they’re still on their parent’s health insurance (barring repeal, that is). Deep down we feel some loss of soul is in the equation, for the barons and the consumers. The movie presents a heroic/ apocalyptic paradox, and is the only nominated film that provokes thought beyond escapism or triumph-of-human-spirit hokum.
BEST DIRECTOR
WILL WIN SHOULD WIN
David Fincher David Fincher
Fincher is ruthless and exacting in his vision and control of cinematic material. He’s a Kubrickian technocrat with Hitchcockian showmanship. What he does not project is populist Capri-corn emotionalism. His vision is dark and cynical, and his choices and execution have kept him out, though Benjamin Button launched a direct assault on the Oscar fortress. The Social Network is the perfect vehicle for Fincher’s vision, at the perfect time. I can’t wait to see what he does with Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
BEST ACTRESS
WILL WIN SHOULD WIN
Annette Bening Annette Bening
She did it without fear, sentimentality, or showing off, and she led us to an emotional catharsis in the meaning of “family” that felt utterly true: a rare achievement in movies. My only reservation is that I have not yet managed to see Jennifer Lawrence in Winter’s Bone. They should have sent me a screener. Nicole Kidman is great but her perfs are feeling repetitious, and just because you’re in a depressing movie doesn’t mean it’s good. Natalie Portman is great too, but could only be a puppet in Aronofsky’s parlour-trick of a movie. Michelle Williams was lost in improvisational goop trying to out-gritty her co-star.
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
WILL WIN SHOULD WIN
Melissa Leo Hailee Steinfeld
The Supporting Actress roles were not strong enough to produce real contenders beyond these two (though it was fun ogling Amy Adams). Melissa Leo’s role in The Fighter is showy and dressed up in chain-smoking, hair-do trashy mannerisms, but she’s of a certain age and with a trooper cred that will win ballots from the Academy’s actor-heavy membership. The Coen brothers slyly disguised their harpy-in-trousers as a precocious innocent, and Hailee Steinfeld pulled off an amazing feat of restraint and physicality with an air of effortlessness. What’s kind of weird is that she’s nominated as supporting actress, rather than the lead (her role is bigger than Annette Bening’s, after all).
BEST ACTOR
WILL WIN SHOULD WIN
Colin Firth Jesse Esienberg
I’ve loved Colin Firth ever since I saw his Darcy in the A&E miniseries (It’s the best Pride & Prejudice of them all). Audiences seem to like him in cutesy mode, as in Love Actually, and The King’s Speech allows him to deliver that. And, like Melissa Leo, his time is due, so he’s going to be rewarded for his years in the trenches. Jesse Eisenberg embodied something far more powerful and complex, but without the feel-goodism that often seems to drive Oscar choices. Jeff Bridges can’t possibly win, because Bad Blake is only a small step from Rooster Cogburn.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
WILL WIN SHOULD WIN
Geoffrey Rush Mark Ruffalo
I haven’t seen John Hawkes in Winter’s Bone, so I am hobbled, but his nomination, voter-psychology speaking, is his win (same goes for Jennifer Lawrence). Geoffrey Rush will benefit from anti-Christian Bale sentiment (Bale’s performance reeks of grandstanding and his persona of arrogance), though Mr. Rush offers little more than his old schtick in the King’s Speech. It will be a tight split between Rush and Ruffalo, and though Ruffalo also does not go outside of his comfort zone in The Kids Are All Right, he manages to hide a deeply flawed character beneath his easy-going veneer. In the process, he makes the movie.
OTHER WINNERS (Should Win)
Cinematography – True Grit
Editing – Social Network
Art Direction – True Grit
Visual FX – Inception
Costume – King’ Speech
Make Up – Who knows? Wolfman?
Score – Social Network
Sound Edit / Mix – Social Network
Animated – Toy Story 3
Documentary - Inside Job
Foreign – Biutiful
