Last night the Academy Awards presented Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Cinematography, and so on, with the implication that this would be done on a purely aesthetic basis. That is, that the best of its kind would merit the Oscar because it's better than the other contenders. I haven't seen all the contenders, but have seen Les Miserables, Zero Dark Thirty, Lincoln (3 times), and Silver Linings Playbook. I know something about the film Argo, but very little about Amour (which hasn't played within fifty miles).
What do the major contenders have in common?
Lincoln is about a man who stands up to a nation divided on the question of slavery and dies to reunite the country. Against him is the entire South armed and combative, and determined that neither legal nor physical force will make them give up their slaves. Lincoln, through both legal and military means, defeats them. He is killed, but his ideas triumph.
Zero Dark Thirty is about a woman who stands up to Islamic terrorism. She participates in the torture of Islamic terrorists, and uses information extracted from these murderers to find and kill Osama bin Laden, the top Islamic terrorist of the last twenty years, and the main financier of Al-qaeda. But the story is also about how this woman stands up to the male-dominated CIA and her vision triumphs.
Les Miserables is about a man who is on the run due to poverty. He has committed a crime and is hunted indefatigably by a fellow member of the lowest classes (Javert) who is determined to work for the government, and hunt down insurrection at any and every level in order to preserve the law. At the end of the film he dies, but his vision of a better world triumphs.
In Les Miserables, Jean Valjean helps a woman played by Anne Hathaway to bring her daughter to safety. He adopts her, and carries her through. So there is also a sense in all the top films of one person helping another to safety.
In these first three films, law itself is at stake, and law is explicitly seen as tied to the creation of a better world. Lincoln isn't quite certain that he has the legal right to go to war against the southern states. He has bundled together a number of presuppositions in order to ferret out a constitutional right to confront seceding states ostensibly to "preserve the union," in a sense using God (and his own personal disgust about slavery) to trump states' rights. In one key scene he discusses his misgivings about the law, and his own past history of flouting it: doing what he felt right, rather than honoring the letter of the law (he helps a woman escape from a Courthouse rather than be subject to the law for the killing of her husband). In the same way he's helping slaves escape their masters. He's obeying a higher law. Although he dies, laws are discovered that make for a better world.
Zero Dark Thirty centers on the legal restrictions surrounding "coercive interrogation" which meant waterboarding (experts differ on whether the scenes in the movie accurately depict what happened in CIA black sites). As the laws change with the new and supposedly improved president (Obama), the use of "coercive" techniques (a euphemism for torture), is slated for termination. But the information received (described as being a Costco-sized warehouse bulging with folders) is used by Maya, a cobbled entity, to ferret out the identity of OBL's courier, who is then traced to a small fortress in Pakistan. There are further legal problems when the Blackhawks descend illegally on the house, and snuff out the lives of OBL and his bodyguards. With OBL gone, we will presumably now have a better and safer world.
Legal versus religious law confronts one another in all the major films up for awards.
The oddest of these stories and the least momentous on the world stage is Silver Linings Playbook. This film is about a bipolar guy whose wife has ditched him. In a fit, he beats up the new lover and is sent to an asylum for his trouble. The legal status he endures there shifts, and he's permitted to return home on a probation deal. He then hooks up with another mental case, and they participate in a dance contest, which they then win, earning themselves enough money to open up a restaurant thanks to a bet (I think bets of this nature are illegal). The legal status of the bipolar whack job is always in question, and at times we fear for the people around him, as he doesn't seem stable. However, he finally appears to find his match, and everything turns out for the best.
Argo, the one real contender I haven't seen (and which eventually won Best Picture) harkens back through its title to Jason and the Argonauts. Jason, in quest of the Golden Fleece, sails out of Greece, and brings back not only the fleece, but some buxom babe by the name of Medea. She's a witch who's helped him get the fleece, killing her own family in the process. Once they return to Greece, they have two kids, but the drama doesn't stop there. In Euripides' sequel to Apollonius' adventure tale, Jason then dumps Medea, and mates with a princess in Corinth. Medea, furious, kills their two children in spite, and flees Corinth for Athens, where she has been promised sanctuary. This film doesn't delve into all that, but shows us six Americans stuck at the Canadian Consulate as they attempt to leave Tehran during the heady days of the Iranian Revolution. In most of our films there is a sense of triumph. But in the original Medea, there is only disaster. Unmitigated disaster ruled the prizes handed out by the Greeks. Medea helped Jason, and all she got is kicked to the curb.
Today our prizes go to positive thinkers: people who don't quit even when the odds are against them. They triumph. This is the American story. We help others and by gosh, they appreciate it.
Aesthetic merit doesn't preclude moral merit or what we call stick-to-it-iveness. The two must reinforce one another. Day-Lewis won best actor. The major moral issues are settled, and we can feel good we were on the right side, but there is something ennobling about the contemplation of Lincoln as a character. Day-Lewis said he had the privilege to live with "Lincoln's beautiful mind body and spirit." I wasn't sure about "body" but the other two seemed accurate. ZDT is less certain as Maya's character was dogged, to be sure, but also somewhat ballistic. The character doesn't take the party line. What's missing in that film is a sense of character arc. Where had Maja been to be what she was? What drove her through those nights of archival research? Without this, it was impossible to relate. There were no Academy Awards for ZDT. Les Miserables is about the French struggle for human rights. Jean Valjean had a torturous road in front of him, but he walked it nobly, and did what he could until his dying breath. From the exhalation of his dying breath he burped up the Statue of Liberty. Silver Linings Playbook argues that we ought to be more inclusive of the mentally ill. After Newtown, I wonder if this is a sound policy. We don't want to become a nation of freaks who lash out and destroy others. We want to assert norms. And yet neither of the two main characters is a quitter. They do what they can with what they've got and even if they're only mediocre dancers, they at least do their best in the final dance contest.
The movie I think I might have liked best is Amour. It's about the extreme elderly (from the glimpses I got I believe they are ninety plus) and helping one another through the last stages. It's that stick-to-it-iveness that we appreciate. Go, old people! From what I've seen the film indicates that the initial getting-together-scenes of amorous life as they are depicted in Silver Linings Playbook are not as beautiful or touching as the final ones.
17 comments:
all screen actors should wear masks all the time
Another thing that three of the four movies that I saw had in common was guns. Les Mis, Lincoln, and ZDT all had significant gun use. There were no guns in Silver Linings Playbook. This made it boring.
Django had a lot of guns. I'm not so sure about Argo.
I don't think there is any violence at all in Amour but I could be wrong.
Violence is dramatic. Oedipus has it as does Antigone. Euripedes has it. Seneca has it. Shakespeare has it.
It's probably very hard to write a tragedy without significant violence.
Violence is generally tragic.
Guns are dramatic. Many gun manufacturers in America are moving to South Carolina and Texas which has pledged to protect them from Obamatons. This will probably take a couple of years.
I do not now and have never owned a gun. Apparently if you buy one the cheapest and easiest to use is a Glock. I've been invited to fire one at a barbecue this spring.
I'm mulling it. They apparently have quite the kick!
I do think violence is legitimate if it fits into the Just War paradigm. Self-defense is certainly justified. I still think Zimmerman is within the boundaries of pure and shining innocence on the rationale of self-defense. Why, the back of his head had been abraised. You can see for yourself!
I asked two classes of students today if they had seen any of the Academy Award films. They all raised their hands for Django. No one had seen anything else.
Saw Lincoln twice last week. Less than 10 people in the audience on Wednesday and less than 25 on Sunday. Its two week run won't be extended and the second week might get pulled if nobody buys any tickets. Too many subtleties in the script and too much 19th century prose for people whose second language is English.
Cloud Atlas ran for a month and a half, filling the balcony and half of the ground floor. All hail the replicant, Songmi451.
continually surprised by the way jesus used violence...he appeared bored by it...jesus packin' heat...now there's a story line...nuns with guns...cinema is virtually morally bankrupt...return to boredom...luther alive today would seek to literally assasinate the pope...hashashim...only stone masons hold some entertainment value for me
There is tons of violence in the OT. / can't thinknof Christ as a killer. He says he coulld call down legislative angels who could clean Rome's clock but doesn't. I think he woild be against the Glock. But where is He and moreover where His angels? We have Blue Angels.
Kirby:
You say:
"We want to assert norms."
I think this is a key point in your philosophy, something which we share and which could point to a detente in our relationship.
We have to be very careful about what "norms" we insist upon, but once we've settled on some, we need to legislate our beliefs with gentle, rational insistence, and then to concede some ground in the interests of tolerance, cooperation and modesty.
We can't be completely certain of our righteousness, and we have to acknowledge that others can feel very "right" about their positions. In addition, we have to curb our own enthusiasm and pride by hedging our bets: We may be wrong, or be proven wrong eventually.
For instance, though I am against monosexuality in principle, I respect LG people generally, and individually. It's possible to respect and to feel affection for people, for instance, who are alcoholics, or adulterers, or other deviations from "norm". We want to advocate the norm, but "normal" must admit to exceptions. Not everyone can be exactly alike, or ethically pure. This is why our public policies should have moral principles, instead of just constantly widening the harbor of tolerance, or "inclusion." This makes a lot of people very angry. "I belong too!" But belonging has limits.
The thing about the academy awards is that there are a number of factors that enter into the selection process that tend to water down the meaning of the prizes.
It's a little like umpiring. Some actors are chosen to honor their past achievements, or to rectify previous lapses in recognition. Or they hesitate to give the same people multiple Oscars, even though they may be out-classing the competitors year after year. If they were being truly honest, Kate Blanchett would have about five Oscars by now. But she has nonem and has only been nominated once. Sandra Bullock? Hilary Swank? Nicole Kidman? Give me a break.
Then there is the problem of competition. In a year where there are two very good films, only one can be voted the best.
Then there are instances of "small films" being better, but not of interest to large audiences. The industry wants to foster financial success, so it keeps an eye on trends and popularity. Big splashy films make more money, so there's a tendency to honor ambitious productions.
Then there are sentimental awards. Each year, lately, there's been a nostalgic desire to locate and pick a bright young thing--a kind of ingenue. This tradition goes all the way back to Lillian Gish, but it really got traction when Audrey Hepburn won for Roman Holiday, when she was barely out of the starting-gate. It was a shrewd choice, and a correct one--she went on to have a great career, very popular both as a model and an actress. But it's gotten out of hand; Jennifer Lawrence isn't a great actress. She may be someday, but she hasn't shown anything much yet.
Woops.
Blanchett did get a Best Supporting Oscar in 2004 for her part in The Aviator--but they could well have given it for Best Actress. Hilary Swank got it that year for Million Dollar Baby--about the grungiest piece of trash to come out of Hollywood in a decade.
i can't understand why we accomodate these people who get paid way too much for garnering attention corrupting the minds of a whole culture and then pander to one another in an egomaniacal festival of cultural insignificance
what am i missing
did i miss something
these "beautiful people" are somehow important
excuse me
we're pouring perfume into the cesspool
Curtis, I don't think we want a truce so much as we want a common area of investigation. I will accept that the notion of norms and standards is something we both want.
Not everything should be an anomaly.
We have to be able to evaluate according to a standard.
Those standards might be too strict. Or they might wobble and warp the population.
I'd rather be too strict. But we need someone to uphold stricter norms. You need a culture in order to have a counterculture.
Now the counterculture and hipsters are become the culture itself. Obama is a big fat hipster.
Hipsters are anomalous and can't accomplish anything that can actually be done. They are big fat dreamers.
They need to get the axe.
As Eastwood put it.
But instead Obama was handing the axe and he's trying to cut the giant climbing vine that brought us gigantic prosperity. He thinks if he cuts it down there will be more for everyone.
It would be better to have Mitt. He was more normal, and was not a hipster. People think they should have a hipster for president. I think we should have a square.
A square asserts norms.
A square is a norm.
A norm is fair and square.
Obama isn't even circular. I think he's an elongated oval or perhaps a wobbling parabola.
I don't think anyone knows what he is. He may be a form for which there is not as yet any name.
He calls himself a community organizer.
He couldn't even organize a closet. You can't do things like that unless you assert standards.
I've been watching James Whitmore's Give 'em Hell, Harry about Harry Truman--a one-man show, like Hal Holbrook's Mark Twain.
It paints the picture of a very practical and straight man who was a populist, who didn't pander to big business or any crank ideologies.
You should read about Truman. You'd have liked him, I think.
He dropped the Bomb--probably the most controversial act of any leader in history. But he defended it rationally. He took responsibility.
Mitt never took responsibility for anything. Just an ordinary, garden-variety crook.
They're a dime a dozen. They grow them on trees in Utah. They have to throw most of them away, because they're genetically flawed. But some look just like real fruit. Except no taste. And impotent.
God's mistakes.
If you were to organize a closet could you do it on the basis of hope and change¿
Wouldn't that just make a worse mess?
how do you make the question mark turn upside down
That just happened.
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