28 March - 3 April 2002
Issue No.579
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 28 March - 3 April 2002 Issue No.579 |
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Limelight
-and the winner is....
The show of shows has come and gone. A year in the making, costing millions and involving tens of thousands, it has become the most anticipated, exaggerated, over-estimated, major international annual media event. Watched by one billion plus, it stands to bring twice as much in dollar revenues for the film industry. Viewed by some as a glitzy glamorous flight of fantasy, it remains the biggest, richest, loudest, Hollywood party of the year, the greatest show on earth -- it is the night of the Oscars.
Without a doubt, the year 2002 has been one of the toughest, most competitive, most confusing and most surprising year in Oscar history. The cost of the wars over the little "$500 statuette" has been high, fierce and downright dirty. Because an Oscar win translates into X-dollar revenues, film makers are rapidly refining the diabolic craft of political mud-slinging, dirt- dishing, name-bashing, until the enemy is demolished. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences has created a monster fed annually by more hyperbole, publicity and controversy, adding a steady growth to its present size of one billion viewers worldwide. This year, most of the controversy revolved around A Beautiful Mind based on Sylvia Nasar's awarding-winning biography of mathematical genius, Nobel Laureate, John Forbes Nash. The film explores his journey of survival and triumph over schizophrenia aided by a loving wife whose faith and devotion helps restore his sanity. His detractors attacked the film for not touching on Nash's anti-Semitic remarks, uttered during a period of delusional fantasies as well as ignoring rumours of alleged homosexuality. Mr Nash himself, now 74, with his wife Alicia, have refuted those claims and were both in attendance at the ceremony. It seems that good sometimes prevails, and the film has nonetheless overcome adversity and won four Oscars amongst them Best Picture, of the five nominated films, Ali, Gosford Park, Lord of the Rings -- The Fellowship of the Ring and In The Bedroom.
No monolith, the Academy is made up of around 6,000, white, middle-aged, affluent members with a mind of their own. Second guessing them is futile. They keep surprising, delighting and disappointing us. As a group they are known to have their weaknesses and predelictions. Above all, they favour epic films shot in exotic locations, cognizant of the amount of work which goes into such productions. The more people a film employs the more likely it is to receive nominations. LOTR garnered 13 nominations and took home four Oscars. The Academy is also partial to heroes who overcome adversity as in the case of A Beautiful Mind. Humour is not their strong point. In their long history they have voted for only nine comedies; the first in 1934 It Happened One Night, the last in 1997 As Good As it Gets. They are 'a serious lot' and prefer longer films, the winners averaging 156 minutes. They like to reward films that "illuminate and improve the human condition". Fickle and checkered they have been described as "a precious Aubusson rug laid over a cheap linoleum floor". Some don't even fill their own ballots. Most are engaged in working in low-brow, less than honorable projects and many are easily swayed by extravagant publicity, sumptuous dinner invitations and gifts of cases of wine and champagne. So when they stand in judgment of the best that Hollywood has to offer, it definitely must be taken with a grain of salt.
"This moment is greater than me", Halle Berry
A Beautiful Mind swept all the major awards
Their list of faux-pas, goofs and gaffes is long and embarrassing. Selections and ommissions often defy good sense and good taste. No Hitchcock, Grant, Burton, or Scorcese ever won an Oscar. They are nevertheless a sentimental lot handing down Oscars for reasons other than artistic. Personal tragedy or past neglect is often reason enough. Elizabeth Taylor, overlooked for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) as well as Suddenly Last Summer (1959), because of her scandalous episode with Eddie Fisher, was given the Oscar in 1960 when she was desperately ill, for Butterfield 8, a film she herself describes as "salacious trash".
They have also been known to give Oscars to those who do not wish to have them, such as George C. Scott, who despite numerous declarations that he neither wished it, nor would accept it, still got it for Patton (1978). The strangest ommission of all is nominating a best picture without nominating its director. It happens regularly. Last year Gladiator (2001) won best picture, but director Ridley Scott, was not even nominated. This year Ron Howard gets his first nomination as well as his first Oscar
While it is a rare year that they do not hand a foreigner an Oscar, Academy members seldom acknowledge their own minorities, Blacks, Hispanics and Asians. Accused of being "a bunch of racists", this year they were boycotted by Latino actors, for casting a non-Latino in the role of Alicia Nash in A Beautiful Mind who is of Chilean origin. Only three Latinos have been recipients of Oscars, Anthony Quinn for Viva Zapata and Lust for Life, Rita Moreno for West Side Story, and Benicio del Toro for Traffic. Asians fared even less with only Myoshi Umecki, the first Asian ever, to receive an Oscar in Sayonara (1957) and Hang S. Dor in The Killing Fields (1967). African Americans who play an integral part in Hollywood films have only received 6 Oscars in 74 years. But this was the year to make amends and to make history. Both Best Actor and Actress Oscars went to African Americans. Denzel Washington for his first villain role as a corrupt policeman in Training Day and Halle Berry, a 33 year-old beauty for her first serious role as a broken down widow of an executed man in Monster's Ball. Totally overcome by her win she managed through gasps and tears to deliver the lengthiest speech of the evening. She is the first African American woman in history to win Best Actress category. The first went to Hattie McDaniel as Best Supporting Actress for Gone With The Wind (1939) and forty years later to Sidney Poitier for Best Actor in Lillies of the Field (1963). Poitier gave us the finest moment of the evening in his dignified and noble speech accepting his Life Achievement Award. Actor/director/producer founder of the Sundance Film Festival Robert Redford, described as "beloved and invaluable force in American film" also received a Life Achievement Award. A moment of levity was provided by composer Randy Newman who won for the first time for Best Original Song If I Didn't Have You in Monsters' Inc. He had been nominated 16 times before. One of the many Brits who regularly dominate the Oscars, Jim Broadbent, won Best Supporting Actor for his role as John Bailey, adoring husband to author Iris Murdoch in Iris.
A Beautiful Mind has won all the major categories and owes its success to Russel Crowe's performance. Yet the Academy, who has never rewarded corrupt villain roles, chose to honor Denzel Washington, which seemed more of a reprimand to Russel Crowe for his demeanour off the screen. Washington has always been a class act and a perfect role model.
For the first time ever animated films have their own category. Three films were in competition and Shrek grabbed the Oscar from Monsters Inc., that fared slightly better at the box office.
"Oscar" was born in Hollywood 74 years ago at the Ambassador Hotel Ballroom in 1927. The first show was a small dinner gathering hosted by Douglas Fairbanks and the award ceremony lasted all of 13 minutes. Since then, the awards grew and evolved moving around to bigger and better auditoriums, always remaining in Hollywood. But that was 4 decades ago. The last show was presented from the Pantages theatre in 1960. For the last 42 years "Oscar" has strayed away from home wandering around Los Angeles. Finally the prodigal returned in grand style to a newly refreshed, rejuvenated and refurbished Hollywood. For years tourists to the great entertainment capital were shocked to find that the centre of glamour was nothing but a decrepit and deteriorating old neighbourhood. Businessmen, determined to raise Hollywood from its ruins, have for the last decade been working on a $645 million extensive face lift. It now houses a variety of posh shops, theatres, elegant boutiques and movie complexes, as well as the $95 million Kodak Theatre, which is to become Oscar's permanent home, at long last.
The finery and frippery, the resplendent gowns, the dazzling gems, the spectacular extravagance of money, beauty and talent provided a blinding kaleidoscope of colour, a feast for a billion pairs of eyes. The television production though slick and smooth, was long and tedious lasting 4 and a half hours. The acknowledgment speeches, as usual, were an endless ad lib, ad infinitum, ad nauseum.
Known for his biting satire, pianist and sometime actor, Oscar Levant commented about tinsel town
"Strip the phony tinsel off Hollywood
And you'll find the real tinsel underneath"Like it or not, this is Hollywood. No other place in the world has done as much to promote and to serve the seventh art as has Hollywood. Blessed by great weather all year round and an abundance of the mighty dollar all year round, Hollywood has produced, perfected and rewarded the art and craft of film-making more than any other place in the world. We love it, we watch it and we cannot get enough of it.
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