Judging Oscar: 1996

I have watched or re-watched all the nominees for Best Picture and Best Director, giving my assessments below.  Check out previous Judging Oscar assessments from 1973 and 1980.

BEST PICTURE

WINNER: The English Patient (Anthony Minghella, 1996)

A pretty typical historical epic of love and loss made more interesting by some decent performances and wonderful production elements yet is hindered by some lapses in story and character.  Minghella succeeds in crafting many wonderful scenes yet overall, the film can’t add up to more than the sum of its parts.  The central character of the Count is a bit murky and though Fiennes is committed, it is a character that should not seem as uncertain as he does.  Where the film shines is in the details of the scenes, the details given by Minghella in the image.  There is beauty and grandeur in the desert, in the war, in the cave, in the apartment, but it is all taken simply as beauty.  Caravaggio gets onto Hana for romanticizing the Count, but it is his stories that appear to us as romanticized.  Is this because of his description or her reception?  It isn’t clear but they play more as definitive reality than stylized remembrance.  Additionally, there are some portions of his flashbacks that he could not possibly know about (scenes with Katherine and her husband) which strike me as lapses in film logic.  Overall, the film feels very romantic toward the doomed relationship of the Count and Katherine, but the relationship I found most compelling was the one between Hana and Kip.  Hana and Kip’s relationship is based on genuinely expressed affection that comes out in unforced sacrifice and the paradoxical frustration of their allegiances to their particular occupations in the war.  Juliette Binoche and Naveen Andrews are wonderful.  The Count and Katherine’s relationship feels less grounded yet it is presented as the central relationship of the movie.  Perhaps the whole point of his character is that he sacrifices too late, but I found his sacrifice circumstantial, and his whole passivity toward death afterwards to be unjustified.  If he doesn’t care about dying, why try and make Caravaggio’s desire to kill him a potential threat?  The film touches lightly on a few interesting sub-themes including a post-nationalist commentary on war in general and WWII in particular, but it never explores these themes thoroughly.  Overall: a very ho-hum affair with sweeping imagery.

Fargo (Joel Coen, 1996)

Finally cashing in on the promise of their earlier films, the Coen brothers give us the film they had been trying to make since Blood Simple, the brooding yet entertaining neo-noir.  By setting the film in late 80’s Minnesota as opposed to 1940’s Los Angeles, they create an atmosphere unique enough to stand on its own without genre comparisons.  Bleak in its white outside spaces, warm inside the homes of people like Marge, convoluted yet never contrived, the strength of Fargo is in the characterizations, which paints the story of desperate men falling prey to their own stupidity and terrible choices.  Marge is the only one free from their game: decent, hard-working and observant, she has all the life skills the other men lack as they wonder through the snow trying to figure out how to get something for nothing.  Widely acclaimed and deservedly so, Fargo suffers from being so universally praised that I tend to tamper my enjoyment of it in response. 

Jerry Maguire (Cameron Crowe, 1996)

It is hard to argue with charm and that’s where Jerry Maguire always gets me.  I find Cruise to be deeply compelling, using his own star power to charismatically depict a man on the verge of losing it all because he briefly refused to play the game.  And Cameron Crowe refuses to play by the romantic comedy game, instead of ending the film with a wedding he gives us the wedding right in the middle of the movie and makes the rest of it about how the two people who rushed into marriage figure out how to make it work.  Jerry is a full-bodied character, whose grand ideals begin to waiver as he sees the reality of the world he is trying to work within.  And give Crowe credit for capturing the only great performance of Cuba Gooding Jr.’s career.  I have loved this movie for a long time and I’m not going to stop now. 

Secrets & Lies (Mike Leigh, 1996)

A strange choice for an Oscar nomination, but a worthy one.  Mike Leigh picks at the lingering scab of one British family and pulls out a whole slew of themes, from latent racism to class warfare, from familial entitlement to sexual looseness, Leigh doesn’t pass lightly over anything, giving the audience a wonderfully gripping story of what modern day abandonment looks and feels like.  An entire cast of richly textured performances, Leigh is able to find tiny details in behavior and cadence to pull out the truth.  One of the most mesmerizing sections is a photoshoot, ostensibly showing Maurice’s day job as a photographer, but really showing us how those tiny details, those tell-tale secrets can never be completely hidden, even from strangers.  A truly great film and unique in its honest observation of human behavior and response.

Shine (Scott Hicks, 1996)

It’s taken a bunch of bad bio-pics to remind me how enjoyable this film is.  Anchored by Geoffrey Rush and Noah Taylor as adult and adolescent David Helfgott, the movie is quietly directed and beautifully woven together.  There are moments of expressionistic flourish that are intended to pull us into Helfgott’s psyche for a moment and the Rach 3 portion – prep and performance – is very gripping.  Armin Mueller-Stahl fills what reads as a stock character with enough humanity and unspoken conflict to create a tragic figure rather than a monster, a man consumed by his own pride.  It gets at the inherent sadness of the child prodigy phenomenon while maintaining the right level of sentiment and tragedy.  It is pleasant enough, but not earth-shattering in its revelation or impact.

MY PICK: Secrets & Lies

I remember 1996 because it was the first year I took serious interest in the Oscars.  The pundits were calling it “The Year of the Independents” because most of the nominees in the major categories were films produced independently and funded mostly outside the Hollywood studios.  Of course, I would find out later some of this was misnomer and hyperbole.  Miramax was basically it’s own studio with it’s own distribution and plenty of funding in place – The English Patient cost $27 million, quite a difference from Sling Blade’s $1mil budget (produced by Shooting Gallery and distributed through Miramax) or Shine’s $6 million (produced independently in Australia and distributed through New Line’s independent arm).  Only Jerry Maguire could claim mainstream Hollywood ownership and had a budget larger than the other 4 Best Picture nominees combined.

The English Patient is the type of film Oscar has often fawned over so I guess it should have come as little surprise to see it walk away with the win here, especially since the technical categories it swept (Cinematography, Art Direction, Costume Design, Editing, Score, Sound) were mostly deserving of their wins.  It is funny that a year or so after winning Best Picture, The English Patient was passed over for the AFI Top 100 list in favor of Fargo, which has been unequivocally declared one of the great American movies of the 1990s by most critics.  Somehow, though, if Oscar had it to do over again, they would probably still choose a sweeping historical epic over a small film about small people making stupid choices.  It would take the Coens years to get this close to Oscar again.

BEST DIRECTOR

WINNER: Anthony Minghella (The English Patient )

Minghella won this award more for being the director of The English Patient than for having

peculiarly elevated the film to sublime heights through his vision and care.  That isn’t to say that Minghella doesn’t elevate the material, because he certainly takes what could have been a trite and simplistic tale and expands it, adding astonishing visual flourish.  He gets some good performances but I feel that there is an uncertainty in Ralph Fiennes’ portrayal that drags the films down and ultimately comes from Minghella’s uncertainty about the true nature of the Count.  Is he a romantic at heart or is he truly the no-nonsense archeologist we first meet?  Is he a reliable narrator?  Obviously, some of these are story issues but they are also things that come out as confused because the director has not made a decision.  Minghella is much better at crafting individual scenes and moments (Kip dismantling a bomb’s fuse as the groundswell of approaching tanks rattle his tools and confidence, the death of Katherine in the cave), less sure when he has to bring all of these disparate moments together cohesively.  The film is greatly helped (and probably saved) by having the brilliant Walter Murch in the editing bay.  I wonder if the Academy were not just astonished that Minghella had one-upped the pictorialism of Braveheart for 2/3 less money.

Joel Coen (Fargo )

Whether it is maturity or finally finding the right vehicle to marry the Coen brand of dark comedy and re-imagined noir, Fargo’s tone is consistently maintained and carefully cultivated.  It’s more visually conservative than Coen’s previous features, but it is still stylish enough to put itself ahead of the indie imitators.  But that stripped back approach is part of where Fargo finds its power.  The cold, the snow, the desperation seems overwhelming.  It all might be too much if McDormand didn’t inhabit that other part of the film, a pregnant police chief of a small town who happens to be the smartest person involved, yet the least assuming.  Perhaps it is great casting, but there is no part in this film that doesn’t seem to have a whole life of story behind it: the poor guy in Lundegaard’s office who forces himself to cuss after being tricked by the salesman, the two Brainard hookers recalling the night spent with a funny looking client, or the strange and inexplicable Mike Yamagita.  Buscemi and Macy are both brilliant, and McDormand finally finds the role to bring out her sharp yet graceful screen presence and comic timing.  But Coen’s major accomplishment is bringing the sort of pathos to the whole thing, a story about people: some desperate, some decent.  Is there a sadder image than Macy being pulled from a Bismark motel room trying to flee from police in his underwear?

Milos Forman (The People vs. Larry Flynt )

The Academy continues to love Milos Forman but for all the wrong reasons.  Though this is a tonally uneven and not wholly successful film depiction of Larry Flynt’s life and particularly his legal issues, Forman still takes the opportunity to present a complicated view of American capitalism and the protection it is afforded under law while pretending to be interested in a schmaltzy biopic about a pornographer and general scumbag who just happens to push the first amendment beyond what anyone thought were its limits.  Forman makes the audience reluctantly over-identify with Flynt so that it can feel exploited in the same way the justice system is by Flynt’s high-flying “well, if that’s legal, why not this” circular arguments.  The fact that Flynt wins in the end is the cynical point: capitalism always wins.  Forman also gets a solid performance from Harrelson and a career best from Courtney Love while using Larry Flynt in a reflexive bit of casting as the blubbering judge issuing a prison sentence to his doppelganger self in Flynt’s first court case in the film.  The fact that critics still think Forman is a director of skilled yet by-the-book Hollywood melodramas and biopics is testament to how well Forman smuggles his subversion underneath the surface gloss.  

Scott Hicks (Shine )

Hicks created a visually expressive and emotionally engaging film that is able to circumnavigate the difficult waters of “humble beginnings” bio-pic inclusivity, mental illness detachment, and coming-of-age story.  Hicks shows considerable restraint in his use of ellipses, in his graceful (yet, not unpolluted) depiction of the aged Helfgott, in the brooding stoicism of Armin Mueller-Stahl.  Geoffrey Rush must make the audience like David for himself, but the young Noah Taylor must bring us through the rigorous younger life of Helfgott.  Hicks pulls career performances from both as well as helping Mueller-Stahl find the decent man underneath the domineering father type, a tragic man who is crushed under the weight of his own personal pride.  Hicks doesn’t set out to make Helfgott the greatest unsung pianist of all time, instead, he crafts the story of a great stunted talent, the potential for greatness left on the wayside by his past, his fears and his own inabilities to express himself clearly beyond the means of the piano. 

Mike Leigh (Secrets & Lies )

Leigh’s restraint is admirable, keeping Secrets & Lies from becoming a cloying, sentimental melodrama and instead building an engaging and genuinely moving film about the affects of the unsaid things.  Leigh’s usual thematic subjects, unspoken class conflict and familial drama are here, added with unsuspecting racism and bitter entitlement.  He chose to have several pivotal scenes play out in one long, uninterrupted take, which only adds to the tension and beauty.  Despite the acting improvisations, Leigh is able to keep things focused, allowing his actors to reveal the depths without revealing the bottom.  Aesthetically restrained, Secrets & Lies is a film about the simple pleasure of watching a compelling story unfold without any pretense to artificial stylishness. 

MY PICK: Joel Coen

Forman, Leigh and Coen were all pretty close, but I'll give the edge to Coen for creating a classic and for finally bringing together the disparate elements of the Coen Brothers brand into a cohesive, entertaining and poignant film.  And just for fun, consider this: Anthony Minghella has won more Best Director Oscars than Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman, Charles Chaplin and Howard Hawks combined.  1.