The Oscars

As usual, the Academy Awards arrive with me having not seen many of the nominated films.

Saw 'em: Crash; Good Night, and Good Luck; Junebug; Pride & Prejudice; Walk the Line

Didn't see 'em: Brokeback Mountain; Capote; Cinderella Man; The Constant Gardener; A History of Violence; Hustle & Flow; Mrs. Henderson Presents; Munich; North Country; The Squid and the Whale; Syriana; Transamerica

But even though I missed so many of these, I've read enough about them to disagree with John Horn and Susan King of the Los Angeles Times, who referred to this year's best picture nominees as "five overtly political message movies."

I'll grant that Good Night, and Good Luck is "overtly political," what with one of the key characters being a bona fide politician -- Sen. Joe McCarthy, playing himself in archival news footage. Like Munich and Capote, it's also, as they say nowadays,* "based on actual events." Clooney and Spielberg both chose to tell stories from another time because those stories speak to our time -- and specifically to political questions of our time. So, yes, these are "overtly political," if not exclusively political, films.

But Capote? Again, I didn't see it, but I don't remember the murder of the Clutter family being the subject of a partisan political dispute. And it's not like you can make a unique oddball genius like Truman Capote stand as an Everyman symbol for some larger political agenda.

I haven't yet seen Brokeback Mountain because it's a big, sweeping romantic tragedy. I have to get pretty psyched up before watching a two-hankie movie, even one that earns such critical acclaim.

I've seen Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet three or four times and I'd happily watch it again because I know it's a romantic comedy and that watching it will make me happy. I'm told that Brokeback, on the other hand, is a romantic tragedy and that watching it will make me sad. I'm not suggesting that all stories ought to have happy endings but when the question is "Do you want to feel happy or sad?" I tend, more often, to pick happy. (Roxanne expresses a similar reluctance to subjecting herself to what is advertised as a painful story.)

The theme of star-crossed lovers can certainly be "overtly political" -- just look at Romeo and Juliet. But I'm pretty sure that Brokeback doesn't end with two grieving families reconciling in a belated, "glooming peace." It's mainly, from what I'm told, just a love story.

Horn and King insist that this love story is "overtly political" because the two people in love both happen to be the same gender. But they didn't fall in love as a "political" act. No two people ever have. Not Romeo and Juliet, not Tony and Maria, and not Jack and Ennis.

Falling in love is, by definition, a personal and not a political act. The idea that "the personal is political" arose on the political left, but seems nowadays to be more embraced by political conservatives, who seem to mean something rather different.

Which brings us to Crash.

I understand why Horn and King would call Crash a "political message movie." It's about racism and prejudice, and these are seen as "political" subjects. But they are not exclusively political subjects, and Crash scarcely even hints at the realm of politics. Roger Ebert notes that its reliance on coincidence owes a debt to Charles Dickens. So, too, does its "politics" -- which is explicitly reformist. Paul Haggis' movie is, as George Orwell wrote of Dickens, "always preaching a sermon," and like Dickens' sermons, it is primarily a moral, and not a political, appeal.

Here is a rather large chunk of Orwell's essay on Dickens, much of which, I think, also applies to Crash:

His radicalism is of the vaguest kind, and yet one always knows that it is there. That is the difference between being a moralist and a politician. He has no constructive suggestions, not even a clear grasp of the nature of the society he is attacking, only an emotional perception that something is wrong, all he can finally say is, "Behave decently" ...

The truth is that Dickens's criticism of society is almost exclusively moral. ... There is no clear sign that he wants the existing order to be overthrown, or that he believes it would make very much difference if it were overthrown. For in reality his target is not so much society as "human nature." .... His whole "message" is one that at first glance looks like an enormous platitude: If men would behave decently the world would be decent.

It seems that in every attack Dickens makes upon society he is always pointing to a change of spirit rather than a change of structure. It is hopeless to try and pin him down to any definite remedy, still more to any political doctrine. His approach is always along the moral plane, and his attitude is sufficiently summed up in that remark about Strong's school being as different from Creakle's "as good is from evil." Two things can be very much alike and yet abysmally different. Heaven and Hell are in the same place. Useless to change institutions without a "change of heart" — that, essentially, is what he is always saying.

... Two viewpoints are always tenable. The one, how can you improve human nature until you have changed the system? The other, what is the use of changing the system before you have improved human nature? ... Dickens, who had not the vision to see that private property is an obstructive nuisance, had the vision to see that. "If men would behave decently the world would be decent" is not such a platitude as it sounds.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* Call anything a "true story" now and you unleash the nitpickers who attack the film for any artistic license: because the dialogue was -- gasp -- crafted by screenwriters and not taken from a direct historical transcript, or because the real Hurricane Carter wasn't as good looking as Denzel, or because it was Glorfindel and not Arwen who really confronted the Black Riders at Rivendell.

Comments

[pharoute]

"like Dickens' sermons, it is primarily a moral, and not a political, appeal." To many social commentators on the right (and left admittedly) morality and politics are the same. Nothing is not political anymore.
(Wallace & Gromit were robbed! Best picture all the way!)

[bulbul]

It's tomorrow? I thought it was next Sunday, I planned to see most of the movies next week! Oh crap...

And I hate to disagree, Fred, but taking artistic license when filming a true story and ignoring the spirit, not to mention the text, of the book while adapting it to a movie are two completely different things. Arwen and the Black Riders thingie is fine with me, it was just a minor detail and, to be frank, it looked better in the movie. But turning Treebeard and Theoden into cowards ("I will not risk an open war!") and completely reversing Boromir's brother is someting that is just completely unjustifiable.

Kurňafix, I could have sworn it was supposed to be next week...

[Axiomatic]

On the other hand, bulbul, I couldn't have been happier to see Tom Bombadil go.

Watched Brockeback Mountain, too. Didn't make me sad at all. I still liked it, but I wasn't sad. In fact I found myself laughing often, but possibly that was because there's just something inherently absurd about cowboys.

[Kim]

I thought Brokeback Mountain was a beautiful love story and an excellent movie -- but not a "two hankie" movie. It was a classical tragedy, in the sense that the heroes are overcome by forces that are within themselves (as well as without), but they have some good in their lives too.
Great movie -- see it! (Jack's mother steals the show.)

[Julia]

Horn and King insist that this love story is "overtly political" because the two people in love both happen to be the same gender. But they didn't fall in love as a "political" act. No two people ever have. Not Romeo and Juliet, not Tony and Maria, and not Jack and Ennis.

We had a vegetarian in our house one evening when we were serving steak (not a problem, we'd underestimated the number of people who would be there for steak), and when someone asked her if her vegetarianism was for political reasons, she replied, "Every act is a political act."

I don't buy that. But probably a lot of things that a lot of people do can be looked at in political terms. So they didn't fall in love as a political act, but it had political repercussions.

(Not that I've seen any of the movies on the list. The one I most want to see is Walk the Line. I think I saw a movie in the theater last year, and I'm totally blanking on what it was.)

[Theo]

Thanks for quoting the Orwell piece. It's one of my favourites.

[Prankster]

Without having seen Brokeback, you've put your finger on it nicely. I saw it at a film festival months ago, before all the ruckus, and it never occured to me that the movie was making any kind of political statement. It wasn't even preaching, except inasmuch as all movies are. In fact, that's one of the movie's great strengths--a detached and matter-of-fact telling of the events. There are almost no scenes of emotional confrontation, and no melodrama. (Of course, some people have found the movie detached and arid for that same reason. It's all in how you look at it, I guess.)

However, it's this lack of political moralizing that, perversely, could have a powerful social effect. The media circus over this film always seemed to me like an attempt by the conservative media to create the narrative: this movie endorses homosexuality, it's part of the vast liberal agenda, etc. But if no one had made a flap in advance, I guarantee that the majority of Americans would have watched the film with no qualms at all, precisely because it doesn't pass judgement--favourable or otherwise. Heck, if you wanted to, you could interpret it as a cautionary tale against "becoming" gay--albeit one made with subtlety, restraint, and sympathy for its characters, which we all know the anti-homosexualists are incapable of.

As with homosexuality itself, the string-pullers have to work overtime to stigmatize Brokeback and create a controversy, since otherwise the average person (even the average right-leaning person) wouldn't have known to get offended. Of course, without the controversy, far fewer people would have seen the movie anyway...so maybe when people DO go see it expecting an endless polemic on the value of the gay lifestyle, and get something very different, they may (dare I hope?) come to the conclusion that Bill O'Reilly and his ilk are the screaming drama queens, not the shepherds. (For the zillionth time, they're NOT COWBOYS.)

Ironically, if Brokeback wins, it may be one of the few Best Pictures that we don't look back on in embarassment. That's because it's a very good movie that will be worthy of accolades even after the controversy has evaporated.

[Jesurgislac]

Brokeback Mountain is not, intrinsically, a poltical movie - no more than The Well of Loneliness was a political novel.

What Brokeback Mountain is is a gay tragedy. Ennis and Jack - and their wives and children - suffer as they do because Ennis and Jack fall in love in a homophobic culture. It wouldn't be the same tragedy if they were a mixed-sex couple: it wouldn't be the same tragedy if they'd both grown up in a non-homophobic culture.

Why Brokeback Mountain is political is because it says, clearly, directly, almost dryly: "This is what it is like to be gay and in love in a culture that cannot bear the idea of two men who love each other."

Why the Christian Right hate BBM so much is that their enduring response to GLBT people is to say "But we don't care that you're gay! We love the sinner, hate the sin! Marry someone of the opposite sex, repent that you're gay, and everything will be fine." And in the movie, that's exactly what Ennis does; he marries a woman, he tries to be straight, he repents being gay. He lives his life as the Christian Right say he should live it - and the result is godawful misery for himself, for his wife, for his children, for his lover. He cannot give up loving Jack - he cannot make himself love his wife as she deserves to be loved. This movie depicts, with cool precision, the effects of the Christian Right's prescription for homosexuality - not merely to Ennis and Jack, but to the women they marry, especially Alma, Ennis's wife.

Judging by repeated comments made by Maggie Gallagher, when hard-line proponents of this view go to see the movie themselves, they tell themselves that Alma's misery was caused by Ennis's failure to be a good provider, that Jack never really loved Ennis, that Ennis was fixated on Jack - they twist and squirm away from the meaning of the movie.

But they know - if they're smart - that there are people who watch the movie who might have been suckered by the Christian Right view of homosexuality before they saw Brokeback Mountain, who aren't going to be suckered afterwards. Who may have been made to think, while they watched the movie, and afterwards, "Who would have been harmed if Ennis and Jack had lived together and loved each other?" and "How can it be a good thing to encourage a gay man to marry a straight woman to their mutual misery?"

[bellatrys]

Capote is political because Truman Capote was gay. Anything that even acknowledges the existence of homosexuality is an attack on Traditional Moral Values, and an open endorsement of the Gay Agenda.

--God knows what the Theocons would do if Brideshead Revisited were being made these days.

[Bill S]

bellatrys, I wonder if that includes "Basic Instinct" and "Braveheart". (It probably does.)

[pharoute]

Jesurgislac: may I recommend in the future that you (and others) please preface movie commentaries with "SPOILER ALERT"? I'm sure the rest of your post after "that's exactly what Ennis does" is insightful, pithy and borderline genius but I'll not know until after I see BBM.
Thanks

[pharoute]

Bill S: from my experience theo-cons love Braveheart: the gay guy goes out a window, lots of swordfighting (hmm isn't that a gay saying for something?) and Mad Max...er...Mel dying a noble death. Everything but the dying for a cause the wingers are all for personally.

[Ben Allen]

Don't worry too much about spoilers, pharoute. Brokeback Mountain is one of those works where you more or less know what's going to happen right from the start. The interest in the work lies in how well the story arc (which, again, you pretty much know from the start) is portrayed. And for whatever it's worth, it's portrayed very well indeed.

[Axiomatic]

Yeah, it's not exactly a bed of plot twists.

What I really liked about it, however, was that it knew precisely which parts to skip. The parts that could be infered.

For an example, about the ending..
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buffer zone
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...we don't NEED to see our hero go up Brokeback Mountain one last time to the tune of some heartwrenching music, violins and stuff, and scatter the ashes. We don't even need to see him make the promise to do so. We know he's going to do that, and Ang Lee knows we know, so he doesn't need to show that. Just by showing us he does promise, we know exactly what's gonan happen next.

Same applies to the other beautiful hints scattered through the movie, like the scene were the daughter spills some stuff at the market, and the manages is just half a note too kind to the wife about it.

When she's left our hero and is married to the manager...we're not really surprised, and we don't need to get shown how that happened.

[Victoria]

I think Capote has been considered "political" in large part because of the death penalty subplot. Because we should all know by now that dramatizing the complexities inherent in capital punishment is part of the Liberal Hollywood Conspiracy to brainwash us into abandoning Bible based "eye for an eye" vengeance.

[Jesurgislac]

pharoute: Jesurgislac: may I recommend in the future that you (and others) please preface movie commentaries with "SPOILER ALERT"?

Actually, I very carefully put nothing in the commentary that you couldn't figure out yourself from the reviews of BBM and the cast list. Otherwise, I would have added "SPOILER ALERT"... even though I'm amazed there are people out there that haven't seen it yet!

[Puck]

Completely agree that Crash was a wonderful movie. Delighted to see it win. Delighted also that they didn't shutout Walk The Line - as I was sure they would.

Found it disgusting that - like all Left-leaning institutions - Hollywood spends a great deal of time wrapping itself in morality and pretending to oppose censorship ("Good Night and Good Luck) and then bends over to Israeli power and attributes Paradise Now to "The Palestinian territories."

Cowards.

[Victoria]

The fact that "Paradise Now" was included for consideration is a step forward for the Academy--a couple of years ago "Divine Intervention" was supposedly unable to be submitted for consideration because Palestine wasn't recognized as a country. That's not to say I agree with the choice of terminology used, after all, I don't think films from Hong Kong are listed as being from the "Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China," for example. So I *gasp* agree with Puck that it would be better to say the film is from Palestine. HOWEVER, I do not agree that this proves Puck's point about the nature of "Left-leaning institutions."

[bulbul]

Hollywood spends a great deal of time wrapping itself in morality and pretending to oppose censorship ("Good Night and Good Luck)
GNoGL was about censorship? Hm... Either I need to see it again or our dear friend Puck has completely missed the point of that movie.

Victoria: back in the 90's, a Macedonian film "Before the Rain" was nominated for an Oscar. All official communications listed the movie as originating in "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia".

[wintermute]

The term "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" is the name of the country, as used by the British Foreign Office, the European Union, the UN, and many other international organisations. "Macedonia" includes territory inside Greece, and failing to distinguish that the republic only includes former Yugoslavian territories makes the Greeks understanderbly jumpy.

As ever, Wiki has more details about the controversy than you could ever want.

[Kim]

like all Left-leaning institutions - Hollywood

"Hollywood" isn't an entity -- unless you mean the town. It is a bunch of movie studios, which are all Big Business concerns, generally owned by even Bigger Business.

Puck -- are you saying that Big Business has a left wing? Are you further saying it shouldn't have a left wing? That ALL Big Business connections should all toe the right wing line? You are for complete conformity? You must be a Communist! :-)

[wintermute]

Kim: As we know, all media companies, be they making movies, newspapers or music, are all left-wing organisations dedicated to the destruction of the American Way of Life. You just need to watch Born on the Fourth of July to see how much the hate America.

Also, communists are pretty much as left-wing as you can get. As a confomist insisting everyone align themselves to the right along with Big Business, Puck would be a fascist.

[Axiomatic]

It's kinda hard to keep track of who owns the media. If I understand it correctly, the Left controls the media on mondays, wednsdays and fridays, whereas on tuesdays, thursdays and the weekend, the media is owned by the Jews.

[Merlin Missy]

That had to be one interesting custody battle ...

[Puck]

Yes Kim. Capitalism is a left-wing concept. It cannot occur in the absence of strong centralized control - to ensure uniformity in law, monetary units, transportation systems, work-rules, etc.

Wal-Mart takes advantage of a Leftist worldview to destroy localism and diversity - the last bastions of true conservatism.

Tell me - do you think that federal regulations mandating expensive additions to automobiles, health care, industry, telecommunications, etc. helps small business or does it help big business?

Does a good interstate highway system help Mom & Pops Hardware - or does it help WalMart?

Did the supercession of states militias by a standing federal army help Imperialists and Global capitalists - or did it help your neighborhood?

Sorry Kim - capitalism is Leftist.

[bulbul]

wintermute: thank you, but I am very well acquainted with the FYROM controversy. And btw, the Greek jumpiness is rather silly. As was the Macedonian choice for their flag. Ah well, the Balkans...
I was merely poiting out that the Academy seems to refer to countries by their accepted name. There is no country called "Palestine" (yet), therefore I do not see anything hypocritical about listing the country of origin for "Paradise Now" as "The Palestinian Territories".

[Puck]

Well bulbul hetetofore it had always been the filmmakers who designate the country of origin - not the Academy.

In any case the issue is hot - not because there is no Palestine political state - it's hot because there is a Palestinian nation without a state because they have been evicted from their homeland by Zionist Israel. It is important for Israel to deny that there ever was a Palestinian state (and a Palestinian nation) because the eviction of a nation from its home and the denial of a peoples nationhood is one the ways Israel defines genocide.

In any case read this link quick - because Israeli pressure will ensure it's removal soon

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060212/film_nm/oscars_israel_palestinians_dc

The reason I call it hypocrisy is because the Academy clearly kowtows to the racist whim of a very powerful group at the expense of a powerless minority.

[madjoey]

Oh dear. Either my food poisoning is making a resurgence, and thus delirium, or I cannot believe what Puck writes:

Yes Kim. Capitalism is a left-wing concept. It cannot occur in the absence of strong centralized control - to ensure uniformity in law, monetary units, transportation systems, work-rules, etc.
Funny, that sounds like fascism to me. Free-market capitalism is supposed to reflect private ownership of the means of production, subject to the same rules for all competitors (weakly aka "the free hand of the market"). When the state gets involved and appropriates the machinery of the state -- e.g., strong laws, stable currency, the Autobahn, mandatory time in the factory -- to the exclusion of the general good (now there's a Leftist ideal), then you've got Uncle Benito's Producapalooza.

Wal-Mart takes advantage of a Leftist worldview to destroy localism and diversity - the last bastions of true conservatism.
WTF? Wal*Mart's just really, really good at the basics of our current so-called "global economy" -- externalize your costs by offshoring to places which don't carry the burdens of environmental, health, labor, and other laws; and focus on the bottom line to the exclusion of everything else (including localism and diversity).
btw, I like the notion that localism and diversity are conservative values. I didn't realize Backwards Day was today!

Tell me - do you think that federal regulations mandating expensive additions to automobiles, health care, industry, telecommunications, etc. helps small business or does it help big business?
It helps neither type of business. If it helped big business, you'd find lobbyists demanding more regulation. Regulations are the impositions that everyone who isn't the industry (e.g., local communities, national security, the environment, John Q and Mary J Public) places on the operation of these companies. You really ought to read up on corporate governance reform to understand that Business didn't always run the Government. (Now, do regulations impede the operation of business? Absolutely. Are the regulations sometimes onerous? Yes. Are small businesses unfairly treated? Sometimes. But you know what? It's not a free-for-all. Capitalism is not Calvinball. Play within the rules, or end up being Duke Cunningham's bitch.)

Does a good interstate highway system help Mom & Pops Hardware - or does it help WalMart?
It helps Wal*Mart considerably more. Given that Wal*Mart the Corporation outdrives Mom & Pops Hardware by 70 kajillion miles a year, that's not surprising. Next trivial point.

Did the supercession of states militias by a standing federal army help Imperialists and Global capitalists - or did it help your neighborhood?
Here in America? The jury's still out on what happens when the housing bubble collapses and the banks come for their foreclosed properties. Will the National Guard stand with the evictees or the Gummint? Stay tuned!

Sorry Kim - capitalism is Leftist.
Yes. True. So very true.

[Kia]

I am rather disgusted at the political turn the Oscars have taken (perhaps it's a turn, perhaps I've just not been paying close attention?) this year. I've always been frustrated that the fantasy films do not get a lot of attention, even when they're amazing or extremely thoughtfully-done (Case in point: Narnia and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory did not get nominated for best adaptation--CatCF only got nominated once, period!). Anyway, though I do like the occaisional political film (Kinsey being a favourite), and don't want to sound as though I'm barring them from the court, I would like to see more attention and respect given to films that are purely about entertainment.