I've never been good at remembering what films won Oscars; I thought about it for about 15 minutes before looking up the winners of last year's Academy Awards.
Bong Joon-ho's "Parasite" won Best Picture -- there was a mini-controversy about a foreign language film winning the big prize, and the director got off that great line about what territories open up to us once we get over the inch-high barrier of subtitles.
Renee Zellweger won Best Actress for playing Judy Garland. Joaquin Phoenix won Best Actor for playing the Joker.
Doesn't that seem like a long time ago? It was in the Before, when we went to restaurants and ballparks, before we were all put under house arrest. It was, as they say, a simpler time.
Nominations for this year's awards were announced this week. And though our times are more complicated now, a lot of the things people always say when nominations are announced got said. Some variation on: "I haven't even heard of some of these movies, much less seen them!"
Most of this audience has at least heard of most of the movies nominated -- you're reading a column in a newspaper section dedicated to covering the movies. And you've probably seen some of them, though there's never any reason to apologize for having not seen a movie. But still, it feels like an odd year, with the likes of "Nomadland" and "Minari" (the two movies that seem clearly the year's best) and Netflix's "Mank" getting all those nods.
Every year kind of feels like an odd year to me.
I was reminded of this by the arrival of a Blu-ray set of 10 Best Picture winners from Paramount's home video division called "10 Best Pictures: The Essential Collection." (The retail price is $79.99.)
The 10 films included in the set are, in chronological order: "Wings" (1927), "My Fair Lady" (1964), "The Godfather" (1972), "Terms of Endearment" (1983), "Forrest Gump" (1994), "The English Patient" (1996), "Titanic" (1997), "American Beauty" (1998), "Gladiator" (2000) and "No Country for Old Men" (2007).
This seems a fairly representative sampling of movies that win the Best Picture Oscar; most of them aren't genuinely great (though a couple are) and there's nothing shockingly awful in the mix. William Wellman's silent movie "Wings" (1927) is, as the first Oscar winner for Best Picture, an unimpeachable inclusion, if only for its historical status.
But consider that while "Wings" was named the Most Outstanding Picture at that first awards ceremony (actually held in 1929, with films released in 1927 and 1928 eligible), F. W. Murnau's "Sunrise" was presented an Oscar for "Best Unique and Artistic Picture."
The next year, the two categories were collapsed into one, but even at the beginning the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences understood there is a tension between art and commerce, and that quality is hardly the only reason a movie captures the imagination of their voters.
The best movie of any given year is unlikely to be suitable for the purposes of the Academy, which means to promote movies and help the movie business grow. Still, we yearn for superlatives, even though we understand most superlatives are puffery. So we have contests.
So what if the Oscars are all studio politics and sloppy schmaltz? Movies are not about art; they're not even about storytelling. They are business ventures, and the best are nearly incoherent, approximating dreams. (Submitted for your consideration: Movies are the collective dreams of America; as such they are rarely profound and always important.)
Movies fashion our aspirations, they provide us with a national dreamscape, they mint styles -- they show us how to comb our hair and wear our red windbreakers. They are the drug of choice for the almost-chosen people. For two hours we can escape the world's grinding and delight like children in their flickering light, project ourselves into the screen's flat world.
Sensible people know not to expect art or moral lessons.
Of the 10 movies in this set, I genuinely love "The Godfather" and "No Country For Old Men," and though it's not fashionable any more, "American Beauty."
I do not love "Titanic" (though I respect it as a cultural touchstone) or "The English Patient" or "My Fair Lady." I sheepishly enjoyed "Gladiator," and I remember liking "Terms of Endearment" when I saw it in the theater when it was released, though I wonder if it would hold up after nearly 40 years.
The one that fooled me is "Forrest Gump," a film I suspected I'd praised when it was released, though I don't feel all that enthusiastic about it now. So I looked up what I wrote about it. Here's an excerpt:
"... the Academy Awards have nothing to do with rewarding merit, though sometimes good films win Oscars. 'Forrest Gump' will undoubtedly win its Oscars; it seems possible it may win five or 10 Oscars. [In fact it was nominated for 13 Oscars, it won six.] And it is not so bad a film.
"... technically 'Gump' is quite a good movie. The performances are strong, if not particularly challenging to the actors who inhabit them, and director Robert Zemeckis' use of computer technology to insert images of Tom Hanks into historical footage is as effective as it is startling. (Of course, Woody Allen's 'Zelig' attempted the same sort of dreamy confusion, with less technology and similar results.)
"And despite the moral fakery of would-be populist politicians who claim to discern some important truth in 'Gump,' the movie is nearly apolitical. The Pentagon and the Black Panthers come off badly, corporate America and hippie cant are depicted as hollow, as our hero (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Gomer Pyle, USMC) stumbles witlessly through the cultural landscape of the '60s, '70s and '80s.
"Like Gomer, Gump is a special man, not because of any particular talent or ability, but because he has somehow become a favorite of God. Each of these heroes' only real virtue is remaining true to themselves, while providence provides. Duh.
"But the real reason 'Gump' is a movie with a chance to win a bunch of Academy Awards is not because it has anything to teach you about the virtues of hard work and saying your prayers, but because it is exactly the big, safe cuddly family entertainment that Hollywood likes to promote. Every few years Hollywood rolls out an unabashedly sappy attempted mythology like 'Forrest Gump' or 'Field of Dreams.' And every few years, a certain kind of movie reviewer falls for it."
I wasn't the kind of reviewer who fell for it after all.
Anyway, on the OnFilm video this week, I'll talk about this year's nominations and what, if anything, we can make of them.
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