Leave Oscar Alone

The start of a new year means one thing for film enthusiasts. Not an overambitious list of empty self-promises, underscored with the fantastic cliché ‘New Year New Me’. No, January comes around every year and with it a selection of the most daring and interesting film choices, all vying for the appetizing array of awards on enough, most alluring of all the Golden Baldie itself, the Academy Awards. Stars aplenty litter the billboards, journalise taglines like ‘This year’s Gladiator’ or ‘The Godfather meets American Beauty’, and indeed the ubiquitous ‘predictions’ flutter in by the thousands, a rite of passage for film buffs, and one I’m sure will appear soon on this page. It seems, however, that the Oscars are not as popular as they once were: on the contrary, the annual nominations announcement, and indeed the ensuing ceremony, is always followed by a compulsory ‘Oscar bashing’ in the film community. Complaints that the obvious choices are always made, that the winners reflect the patriotic narrow-minded sentiments of the Academy, and that any clear controversy gets ousted from the offset, in order not to offend the more sensitive of viewers. Mr Oscar, we can see, is not the man he once was.

And it is more than easy to see why the ceremony gets bashed year after year. We only need look down the timeline of film history to see that some of the most critically acclaimed films, celebrated directors, and nuanced performances have been snubbed by the Academy, without any clear explanation why. Citizen Kane, proclaimed by the American Film Institute as the greatest film of all time, lost out in the Best Picture category in 1941 to ‘How Green was My Valley’, a film which we have of course all seen. Al Pacino, delivering the performance of a lifetime in The Godfather Part II, practically carrying the film considering the amount of screentime he has, was snubbed in 1974. None of this amounts to the atrocity committed against the Master of Suspense Alfred Hitchcock, widely heralded as the greatest director of all time, did not receive a single win in his more than impressive vast filmography, including classics Vertigo, Psycho, North by Northwest, Rear Window, and The Birds. And, as if they hadn’t offended him enough, the Hitch was offered an Honorary Award in 1968 as a pathetic admittance of their errance, a gesture which was less than appreciated by Alfred in his now famous acceptance speech (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2zjm79Esq4). The list goes on and on and on.

But like any other awards ceremony, the Academy Awards is not without mistake. Indeed, we cannot expect them to be faultless in their actions. The Only Way is Essex took home a BAFTA in 2011 for heaven’s sake. In a body that large, with such a broad range of members, including a noteworthy collection of those from the olden days, we must expect a certain amount of tradition and conserve in the Academy’s decisions. It would grossly ignorant for us to expect some of the older members to sacrifice their own personal taste for what we might call brave new developments in film. The recent shock at the Academy screening of Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street resulted in the hurling of abuse at the director and his cast: but can we condemn this abuse, for a film which arguably glorifies a distressing process which one would imagine many of these members lived through. It would be hypocritical for us to celebrate the achievements of these older members, while simultaneous insulting them by questioning their taste in film.

Hindsight, furthermore, is a beautiful thing. I would not be the only one in admitting that we look back on our past actions with frustration and anger, only dreaming of what might have happened had we taken an alternative course of action. Why should the Academy be exempt from this basic feature of human nature? Yes, Forrest Gump was a sweet, heartwarming film, but no, it wasn’t better than its rivals The Shawshank Redemption or Pulp Fiction, and as Kirk Lazarus in Tropic Thunder so brashly says, ‘No one goes full retard’. Even last year, in a hotly contested Best Picture category, Ben Affleck’s flag waving Argo won out against the magnificent Life of Pi, not only an immensely enjoyable film, but a break through in 3D technology. We should not, however, attack these decisions of the Academy on the grounds that they were bad films: rarely do the Oscars award a real turkey of a film, instead perhaps making a slightly wrong decision with regards to the better film. Hindsight, as a said before, is a beautiful thing, and one which all of us has befallen.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), to use its full name, is not a faultless body. Indeed, everyone is entitled to criticize, and I would perhaps be one of the first to write a anger-fuelled Tweet at 3 am along the lines of ‘OMG wot iz wiv da Oscaz dis year theyre well shit’. Let us not forget, however, the hordes of fantastic decisions the Academy has made, celebrating the cutting-edge, the controversial, the brutal, and even the weird. I hope maybe you’ll think twice before throwing out that standard conversation starter ‘God, did you hear about Tom Hanks this year’, and maybe feel some sympathy for Mr Oscar and his hairless friends.