Guilt, worthy of an Oscar

Hi, I’m Mr Oscar and I feel really, really bad…

Let’s be honest, the Oscar race has never been based solely on meritocracy. It’s a mighty shame, but here’s another little tidbit for you: it makes it so much more interesting. Coming into play in deciding nominations and eventual winners of the Golden statuette include:

• Staunch conservatism: Crash prevailing over Brokeback Mountain for Best Picture in 2006 stunk of right-wing bias among the Academy, hell, Sandra Bullock’s best actress victory for the cloying Blind Side must have been due to conservative Academy support for the good-old ‘soccer mom’, because if it wasn’t that, it was just plain stupid.

• Highly publicised campaigns: the Weinstein brothers in the late-nineties waged fierce and often ultimately successful campaigns for their films, resulting in most prominently the victory of light, forgive me for saying…throwaway Shakespeare in Love’s victory over the pulsating Saving Private Ryan.

• Widespread dissemination of screeners

• Box Office receipts: the Best Picture increase to 10 nominees after the controversial 2009 snub of The Dark Knight is meant to ensure more box-office hits receive nominations, and thus give the Oscar telecast ratings a boot upwards.

• Genre: lets’ just say, the Academy aren’t a bunch of Trekkies. Sci-Fi isn’t their favourite and Animation is often given the heave ho but anything ‘worthy’ is on a fast track ticket – biopics and historical epics particularly curry lots of favour.

• Oh, they also don’t mind if you’re quite attractive, and de-pretty yourself for your love of film – see Charlize Theron in Monster, and Nicole Kidman’s prosthetic nose in The Hours.

Wow, they’re a conflicted bunch that Academy.

There are now 2 weeks until the unveiling of the 83rd Academy Awards nominations, and looking at the runners and riders, likely nominees and snubs, it’s come to my attention that there might be another interest at play. Colin Firth is certain to receive a Best Actor nomination for The King’s Speech, is the big, big favourite to scoop the accolade and yes, he’s very good, but other performance have been braver and personally deserving of more plaudits this year: Bardem in Biutiful, Gosling in Blue Valentine and Franco in 127 Hours in particular. Now transport your mind to a year earlier and the ultimately fruitless nomination for his gut-wrenching performance in A Single Man. Could the Academy feel bad about his defeat last year, and thus may award him the trophy this year, even if it is not his best work or even the best work of any actor this year?

Does the Academy have a guilt complex? Just like Germany post-World War Two or Tiger Woods post-728237 affairs, they might just do. Ironically Firth’s vanquisher in 2010, ‘the Dude’ himself Mr Jeff Bridges, may have himself benefited himself from this – ‘Crazy Heart’ was by no means his best work, but, considered a generally under-appreciated actor, his Oscar almost acted as a lifetime achievement award. Kate Winslet received 5 nominations before her eventual victory in 2009 for an acclaimed turn in The Reader but was it really better than Meryl Streep’s towering turn in Doubt? Did they feel bad about those 5 previous nominations, and give her the 2009 one, you know, just as an act of appeasement? Even more shocking than the fact Mr Martin Scorcese didn’t win an Oscar in the first 35 years of his career, is the fact when he did win one – he won it for The Departed. Yes, The Departed. It’s hardly his best work, not a Goodfellas or a Raging Bull, but that doesn’t matter, Mr Oscar felt guilty. This is rife and infecting Oscar voters everywhere, another example being the victory of the Return of the King in 2003 (over the vastly superior previous two LOTR instalments). Assuming Colin Firth is next on their apology list, who is next going to benefit from the Academy’s over sensitive side? The furore over the snub of the Dark Knight and the critical and commercial success this year of mind-bending thriller Inception (with probably no Best Picture or Director victory this year in sight) means Christopher Nolan’s name is probably being scribbled down right now on Academy members Ipads.

This guilt complex definitely exists, but an element of caution is needed. It’s not reached epidemic proportions – if so, Sharon Stone would have received a Best Actress Oscar for her salacious turn in the near pornographic Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction, to apologize for her loss in 1995 to Susan Sarandon. Oscar can feel guilt, but the rewarded film in apology does has to be good – the sad thing about it, is it doesn’t have to be great. Firth’s turn in The King’s Speech isn’t earth shattering, neither was Bridges in Crazy Heart or Winslet in The Reader among others. But if they are going to win these awards and given the title, ‘Best’ of the year, they should be. To be the best performance in a whole year of film is quite something after all. A singular performance should be judges against all others from the same calendar year – anything else the actor/actress/director has ever done before should be (and sadly is not) ignored. So Mr Oscar, if you’re going to feel guilty about anything, feel guilty about…feeling guilty. It’s your guilt complex that is resulting in the wrong winners.