The
Oscars… The Oscars…
From the Desk
of Esther Cohen-Hamilton
Photos:
Best picture nominees: (clockwise from left) Lost in Translation, Mystic
River, Master and Commander, Return of the King and Seabiscuit
The
Oscar voters yesterday paved the way for the Lord of the Rings trilogy finally
to receive its due. Come the Academy Awards ceremony on February 29, it looks
a near-inevitability that
Return of the King,
the final part of this monumental trilogy, will be anointed best film, and
that Peter Jackson will walk away with an Oscar for direction. If it happens,
it won't be so much a triumph of craft over art as a triumph of
computer-generated imagery over both. Significantly, Return of the King gained
11 nominations, none of them
for acting; but, of course, acting is not what Lord of the Rings is about.
Still,
the trilogy has altered the landscape of mainstream cinema - for better or
worse. It will also end up grossing about $3 billion at the box office; this
is the sort of figure of which Hollywood really approves. Overall, the nominee
choices reflected a responsible, even sombre mood. Brooding, serious works
such as
Master and Commander
and
Mystic River
(10 and six nominations) scored heavily, while two excellent but harrowing
films as yet unreleased in Britain - 21 Grams and House of Sand and Fog - did
better than expected, with two acting nominations each. Two more went to
City of God, a brilliant epic about gang warfare in
Rio's slums that
was also a contender in the foreign film category last year.
Photos:
1st set:
Best actress nominees: (clockwise from top left): Diane Keaton, Keisha
Castle-Hughes, Charlize Theron, Samantha Morton and Naomi Watts
Photos:
2nd set:
Best
actor nominees: (clockwise from left) Jude Law, Johnny Depp, Bill Murray, Ben
Kingsley, Sean Penn.
There
was an exception to all this sobriety in the nominations for lead actor. The
Academy rarely rewards comic performances, but this year it confounded itself
and named two: Johnny Depp's flamboyant Keith-Richards-inspired turn in
Pirates of the Caribbean,
and Bill Murray's deadpan, bittersweet portrayal of a washed-up movie star in
Lost in Translation.
Even more remarkably, Murray has a serious chance of winning, though he must
first beat Sean Penn, playing a bereaved father in Mystic River.
It's
hard to imagine a British victory at this year's Oscars. Ben Kingsley (House
of Sand and Fog) and Jude Law (Cold Mountain) both did sterling work, but are
outsiders in the best actor category. The same is true of Samantha Morton, an
unexpected choice among the lead actresses for In America. The momentum here
seems to lie with Charlize Theron for playing a serial killer in Monster.
(Surprisingly, Scarlett Johansson fails to win a nomination: perhaps her
performances in Girl With a Pearl Earring and Lost in Translation cancelled
each other out.) But it was gratifying to see Steven Knight acclaimed in the
original script category. His script for
Dirty Pretty Things
is one of the best and most influential to emerge from Britain in the past
decade. The big setback is to Cold Mountain. True, it received seven
nominations, but three of those were for its music. Oscar voters may have
reacted against the aggressive marketing techniques of Miramax boss Harvey
Weinstein, or it may simply be that the film is easier to admire than to love.
Its
best chance of winning a major Oscar rests with supporting actress nominee
Renee Zellweger, even if her role essentially amounted to a Calamity Jane
impersonation.
Continues on the next page.
