If I were the Academy Awards…
June 24th, 2008 | 
Author: After talking about “There Will Be Blood,” I thought I’d post a revisionist history of what the “Best Picture” awards would look like if I could deterine the winner. I have obviously not seen every movie, and there’s obviously many reasons why they don’t just ask me to pick the winner that are all correct reasons. But, I thought as a speculative exercise, it would nevertheless be fun, and maybe stir some comments and conversation. I arbitrarily will start with 1979, the first year where I’ve seen most of the nominated films in my lifetime (though I was 1 year old at the time they came out)
Steve’s Best Picture Votes: (Actual Best Pictures in Parenthesis)
1979: Apocolypse Now (Kramer v. Kramer)
1980: Ordinary People (Ordinary People)*
1981: Raiders of the Lost Ark (Chariots of Fire)
1982: E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial (Ghandi)
1983: The Big Chill (Terms of Endearment)
1984: Amadeus (Amadeus)
1985: Out of Africa (Out of Africa)
1986: A Room With a View (Platoon)*
1987: The Last Emperor (The Last Emperor)
1988: Working Girl (Rain Man)
1989: My Left Foot (Driving Miss Daisy – ugh!)
1990: Goodfellas (Dances With Wovles – double ugh!)
1991: The Silence of the Lambs (The Silence of the Lambs)
1992: Unforgiven (Unforgiven)
1993: Schindler’s List (Schindler’s List)
1994: Quiz Show (Forrest Gump)*
1995: Sense and Sensibility (Bravehart)
1996: Fargo (The English Patient)
1997: Titanic (Titanic)*
1998: Life is Beautiful (Shakespeare in Love)*
1999: The Insider (American Beauty)
2000: Crouching Tiger, hidden Dragon (Gladiator)
2001: The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (A Beautiful Mind) *
2002: Chicago (Chicago)
2003: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (LOTR:ROK)*
2004: The Aviator (Million Dollar Baby)
2005: Munich (Crash)
2006: Children of Men (The Departed) *
2007: There Will Be Blood (No Country for Old Men)
Over almost 30 years, I have only agreed with 7 choices for Best Picutre. I wonder how many Best Picture choices over the same time period others would agree with and even if you find one or two of my choices outrageous, if others would not still find my votes more agreeable than the actual best picture list as a whole.
Footnotes:
1980 – How can I take Ordinary People over Raging Bull? Isn’t this one where everyone agrees the Academy is wrong? Yes. But not me. I think that Ordinary People has been watched less than Raging Bull because they are about the same topic, but Redford’s film is more close to home and more devastating than Scorsese’s. The fame of Jake Lamotta, and the peculiarity of his id (and of the filmmamker’s) gives people who are sane a bit more distance. I think Ordinary People is a devestatingly great film, and it is the devestating part that is causing its fade. Redford is really hit or miss as a director, and this is one of his two great hits.
1986: This has to be the worst film year of all time. What a scrap heap. One is tempted to pick Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as a Best Picture Nominee.
1994: 1994 is one of the best film years of my lifetime, if not the best. And yet, the Academy picked by far the worst film out of all the nominees. I picked Quiz Show, but I would not begrudge a vote for Pulp Fiction or The Shawshank Redemption one bit. I am not voting for Quiz Show becuase of the saturation levels of “Pulp” or “Shawshank,” but instead for the absolute class of Quiz Show as a remarkable film in its own right, that happens to boast the best screenplay of the three, in my view. These are all easily three of the top 10 films of the 90′s in my book, they just happened to come out in the same year. Ultimately, I think it comes down to taste and is a “pick ‘em” situation. Which only further requires us to wonder to the Academy, Forrest Gump?
1997: Titanic? Well, after the backlash against its popularity has died down, and with some time behind us, it appears that the movie is a pretty decent movie, and also, the alternative nominees, I would dare say, have done much less well with age than Titanic.
1998: As long as people have known me, they have heard me talk about how much I love Saving Private Ryan. I do love it. It is a favorite movie of mine. I think it is, despite its flaws, and exceptional movie. I think its reputation suffered at the hands of Miramx’s brilliant discovery that winning Oscars is worth spending a lot more money campainging for it than anyone had realised before. And, as that campaign fades, the reputation of “Ryan” seems to be coming back over time. Yet, as time has passed, I cannot help but notice that the way that Life is Beuatiful handles the same war, in the same time period, is such a brilliantly different breath of air that it deserves recognition above even my much loved “Private Ryan.”
2001: This was a year so weak, they should have righted past wrongs and given 2001: A Space Odyssey an Oscar just for having the year in the title. I give it to LOTR not because I am a huge fan of the films (I like them enough), but to acknowledge the groundbreaking achivements of the first film, and to note that it was the only thing groundbreaking in any way as far as I can tell for this year.
2003: I didn’t really think the last Lord of the Rings movie was that great. I also thought that Master and Commander was a very good movie, and I have since grown to love Patrick O’Brian’s novels very much. I find Sophia Coppola’s style very off-putting for some reason and I’m not voting for Seabiscuit, so that leaves me with these two epics. I think that Master and Commander is a beautiful looking film, that really conveys the realities of life at sea in an innovative way for film, is a film about relationships in a meaningful way without trying to hard to do so, and is wonderfully controlled and restrained for having such lofty themetic ambitions on what are notoriously sparse storylines. It would be my pick as one of my worst best picture-pictures, but it’s a much better film than the academies worts choices by far.
2006: This is the only year I picked from off the nominee sheet, and I justify doing so based on the fact that the Foreing Film category often causes the academy to not nominate best pictures that also are in best foreign film. Children of Men is film told visually in way that no serious film has ever pulled off before, and easily gets my full endorsement for 2006.
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1989 = cinema paradiso — hands down, best movie of the past twenty years.
I missed Cinema Paradisio as an addition to the Foreign Film exception to my rule of picking from the nominees, I would definitely place it as the best picture of 1989.
Quiz Show is a nice piece of classic film making, but I think I’d still take Pulp Fiction over it from that year’s crop of films. But just by a hair.
Titanic for ’97 is defensible, but I’d still lean to L.A. Confidential. I think Curtis Hanson’s inconsistent career has hurt the film’s rep a bit, as has the relative over-praise Kim Basinger received for the film. But it’s still a crackling entry into the meta-noir genre.
Oh, and Working Girl? Really? Not a bad movie, but 1988 is one of those years where the most significant films weren’t nominated. The Last Temptation of Christ, Die Hard, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit? were all from that year, but weren’t competitive for best picture. All were probably more significant, in one way or another, than any of the nominated films.
Brad,
re: Pulp Fiction v. Quiz Show – I think it is a matter of taste. Like I said, I don’t really think I could argue a reasonable person off any of the big three films of that year.
re: Working Girl: Unless I invoked the foreign film exemption, I voted from the nominees list – as a general rule, the nominees usually contain the best picture, whereas the picking of the winner from the nominees is much less specific. Also I think Working Girl is very brilliant look at the place of women in a very bizarre 1980′s culture, at time when movies like “Wall Street” were looking at the same culture and even while more outspokenly critical of the 80′s, films of the “Wall Street” vein wreak of misogyny. “Working Girl” tells a great story about women trying to make it in the world nestled inside of a larger narrative that sits more in the background. On reflection, I’d vote for it over any of the movies you mentioned anyway.
I saw both Raging Bull and Ordinary People, and I don’t think there’s anyway Ordinary People is a better movie. Ordinary People is certainly gut wrenching and more applicable to the average person, but Raging Bull is a work of genius.
I also think the first LOTR is a better movie than the last, but the last one seems to have gotten the nod for all three. And I like Master and Commander a lot, but I thought any of the LOTR movies were better movies.