Last week I had a fit, a fit of immense proportions in which I threw my binder across the room in my passion. You see, I had learned of a quite unfortunate truth only moments earlier when I glimpsed a record of past Academy Award winners and noticed that a terrible injustice had occurred in 1965. Apparently there was a huge error in judgment on the part of the Academy because, for some strange reason, My Fair Lady, an enjoyable affair but not much more, had won the Best Picture prize over one of cinema’s greatest films: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. To be honest, I didn’t actually throw my binder. It was mostly in my head. But I sound a great deal more passionate if that’s the story so we’ll pretend it happened.
Let’s take a moment and let this sink in. A musical with Audrey Hepburn lip-syncing, full of sexist clichés, and with very little value aside from mere entertaining indulgence, supersedes the greatest satire of modern cinema. We all know the Academy has had a history of fumbles, but we have to draw the line somewhere. However, I will grant the Academy some credence, acknowledging that, in the past few years, it has exhibited a more partial attention to the quality of the films it nominates and awards rather than the popularity. Looking back, the Academy’s history has been populated by some rather disappointing and infuriating gaffes.
The most obvious Academy fault of the past 20 or so years lies in, without a doubt, its bestowal of Best Picture to a movie about Kevin Costner in the West (fascinating), Dances With Wolves, over the absolute masterpiece that is Goodfellas. One long, drawn-out, bloated ‘passion piece’ meant to stroke Costner’s ego, Dances With Wolves is contrived, trite and banal in acting, direction and, most of all, writing. Sweeping shots of America’s great Western frontier don’t make a film incredible, as proven by Brokeback Mountain. Little about that film qualifies as good cinema let alone cinema good enough to surpass the profound nature of Goodfellas, Scorsese’s greatest film other than Taxi Driver.
It’s no wonder the Academy Awards telecast has suffered a severe drop in viewership over the past few years. The explanation is simple: the league of voters seems to have finally concluded that it should be voting for the best films of the year, not the highest grossing. Rather than simply nominating the films that much of the general public has seen, the Academy has seemed to actually choose the films that are, in essence, the top films of the year. If films such as No Country For Old Men or Little Miss Sunshine had been released a decade prior, they would undeniably have not received the same accolades by the ass-kissing voters of the former Academy. And, even though it’s incredibly hard to forget the many sins of Oscar ceremonies past, I am starting to warm up to the idea of forgiving the ceremony and even, perhaps, admiring its willingness to suffer ratings cuts in the name of good cinema. Now that’s a value I can stand for. Keep it up my friends and you’ll win my undying appreciation, but, I swear, if you revert to your old ways (i.e. if The Curious Case of Benjamin Button wins the top prize), I’ll drop you like the conniving bitch you are. *Air kisses*
