Is Any Director Strong Enough to Unite the Academy

8/12/2019 Is Any Director Strong Enough to Unite the Academy

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Oscars 2014: is any director strong enough

to unite the Academy?

In our era of half-strength best picture winners, were torn between indie aesthetics,powerful stories and high-tech bombast

The film 12 Yearsa Slave which prompted William Hague, the foreign secretary, to comment on Britain's role

in the trade as 'shocking', yet the foreign office is resisting claims for reparation.Photograph: Allstar/NEW REGENCY PICTURES/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar

Each week before the Oscars,which take place on Sunday, Guardian film reviewerTomShonebreaks down the likely winners at this years Academy Awards. Today:best pictur e,

best di rector, best edit ing, best or igi nal screenplay and best adapted screenplay.

It feels like another of thoseyears. Why does it feel as if the Academy Awards are in great

shape except when it comes to the annual mouse-hunt known as the searchfor best

picture? The acting categories have never been more competitive; each year we get a raftof great nominees and winners, each making new claims for performance in a tech-heavy

universe. The same goes for director race, with the likes of Ang Lee, James Cameron and

Alfonso Cuarn pushing the envelope of that technology to diamond-cut their vision of a

glittering, global cinema.

But my, how ill-fitting the crown of best picture seems to fit on the recent pretenders to thatthrone: The Artist, Argo, The Kings Speech. The great consensus that lifted the winners of

yesteryearfrom The Godfather and One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest to Amadeus

seems long since scattered to the four winds. This year, you should be able to list the

winners for best picture, best director, best actor, best actress and best original screenplayand not list the same film twice.
http://www.theguardian.com/film/series/how-to-win-your-oscars-poolhttp://www.theguardian.com/film/series/how-to-win-your-oscars-poolhttp://www.theguardian.com/profile/tom-shonehttp://www.theguardian.com/profile/tom-shonehttp://www.theguardian.com/profile/tom-shonehttp://www.theguardian.com/profile/tom-shonehttp://www.theguardian.com/profile/tom-shonehttp://www.theguardian.com/profile/tom-shonehttp://www.theguardian.com/film/series/how-to-win-your-oscars-pool


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The film I have for best picture, meanwhile, faces the narrowest path to victoryjust three

winssince, well, last year, when Argo constructed a three-Oscar path to the podium.

Have winners ever wound such skimpy paths to best picture? Argos measly three were

beaten by Life of Pis four, Million Dollar Babys four were beaten by The Aviators five,and Crashs three were equaled by both BrokebackMountain and Memories of a Geisha.

We live in an era of half-strength best picture winners.

Cuarn may take adirection prize, but Gravity will not sweep the Oscars. Photograph: Sam Jones

Split yearswith best director and picture going home separatelyused to occur once adecade, but it happened three times in the 2000s, the year of Gladiator/Soderbergh (2000),

Chicago/Polanski (2002), Crash/Ang Lee (2006), and then again, last year, when Ang Lee

peeled away best director while Argo drove off with best picture. Not only does it look likehappening again this year, but for very similar reasons. If anyone wants to see in thesesplits an echo of the much deeper divide currently bifurcating Hollywood, between

blockbuster dollars and indie creativity, then give yourself a gold star.

Again and again at the Oscars, voters seem to have been confronted with the same choice

between a technological marvel like Avatar, Hugo, Life of Pi or Gravity, and somethingsmaller, critically acclaimed, with dust in its lungs and dirt on its feet, like The Hurt

Locker, Argo or 12 Years A Slave that connects with the Academys sense of importance.


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Steve McQueen

accepts the best film prize for 12 Years A Slave at the Baftas earlier this month.

Photograph: Jonathan Hordle/Rex Features

Its going to be a long night for supporters of 12 Years a Slave but then they should be used

to it by now, their powers of endurance tested by the film itself, whose neo-brutalist

aesthetic has been giving Hollywood such agita, and making for some nail-biting eveningsat the Globes (where it went one for seven) the CCMAs (three for 13)the Baftas (two for

10). Oscar night looks like being no different, with Gravity pinching everything in sight

winning six maybe seven Oscars, including cinematography, VFX, score, sound mixing

and editing, as well as best director for Alfonso Cuarn.

So why wont Gravity simply sweep, as some are predicting? Gravitys weakness as acandidate for best picture is revealed by its lack of a screenplay writing nomination,something no a best picture winner since Titanic has been able to do without. As the other

awards have peeled away, centrifugally, writing has been the one to grow closer. So expect

the first sign of Slaves eventual strength to be a best adapted screenplay win for JohnRidley.

Why will 12 Years will win best picture? In a word, history. Or as the billboards on the Fox

lot have it: Its Time.The Academy will not be able to live with themselves if they pass

up the opportunity to reward the definitive treatment of slavery or the black experience,

something they havent even touched since In The Heat of the Night in 1968, in much the

same way they couldnt miss out on their only opportunity to reward WiIl Shakespeareback in 1999, the first Mr-Potato-Head Oscars of the modern era, with Shakespeare in Love

swooping in at the last minute to pilfer four Oscars, including best picture, away from

Spielbergs Saving Private Ryan.

Its not just best director that has gone walkies lately. During the 1970s, best picture alsodrove best actor and best actress nine times out of 10only The Sting and Rocky failed to

generate wins for its leads. Thats wins, not nominations. Compare that with the 2000s,


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when director came apart from picture on three separate occasions, and only Gladiator and

Million Dollar Baby followed through for Russell Crowe and Hillary Swank. Everyone

briefly joined hands to coronate Colin Firth and Jean Dujardin for The Kings Speech and

The Artist in 2011 and 2012. No wonder Meryl Streep called Weinstein God whenHarvey has a bad year, the closest thing the Oscars has to a centre or consensus is gone.

Spike Jonze on the

set of Her Photograph: Sam Zhu

This year, the acting nominees come from the same place they usually do: small, grittyindies like Nebraska and Dallas Buyers Club, tucked far away from the ever-more frantichunt for best picture. The film that could have solved all of this, the answer to everyones

prayers, uniting best picture, director and all the acting categories, is David O Russells

conman fantasia, American Hustle, which garnered nominations in all four actingcategories, just a year after Russell pulled off the same feat with his previous film, SilverLinings Playbooka feat that has never happened in the Academys 86-year history.

Is Any Director Strong Enough to Unite the Academy

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