OVP: Best Picture (2005)
The Nominees Were...
Diana Ossana & James Schamus, Brokeback Mountain
Caroline Baron, William Vance, & Michael Ohoven, Capote
Paul Haggis & Cathy Schulman, Crash
Grant Heslov, Good Night, and Good Luck
Kathleen Kennedy, Steven Spielberg, & Barry Mendel, Munich
Caroline Baron, William Vance, & Michael Ohoven, Capote
Paul Haggis & Cathy Schulman, Crash
Grant Heslov, Good Night, and Good Luck
Kathleen Kennedy, Steven Spielberg, & Barry Mendel, Munich
My Thoughts: It is time! In what has been our most succinct and on-time OVP ever (sign of things to come?!?), we are at the end of our 2005 Oscars. Overall throughout this I've found that while the 2005 Oscars get a deserved bad rap (namely for our winner today), overall Oscar didn't have a lot of great options in 2005. Most of the best films of the year were either genre, foreign, or really unconventional (by Oscar standards), and so expecting AMPAS to get behind them might have been a stretch too far, but that being said...they deserve the shame for what they did here. So let's revisit arguably the lowest moment I've ever encountered at the Academy Awards.
We're going to start with Capote. Capote is the sort of film I gravitate toward. It's about a writer, it's dark & chilly, and it's not a film with a particularly happy ending, all cornerstones of my favorite movies. But it is completely reliant upon you loving Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance as the title character, and I don't. It's too broad, it's too mimic-y, it's everything that became wrong with biopics after the trio of Best Actor winners from 2006-07 proved that playing a real-life figure can guarantee you an Oscar. It feels unkind at this point to speak too ill of Hoffman (me a decade ago would have been much crueler to Capote than now), but even upon revisiting it doesn't gel-it's the sort of movie you have to be an uber-devoted fan of his to make work, and that wasn't me.
Munich is also a picture where I think you need to be an uber-fan of Steven Spielberg's, which I am to a much greater degree than Hoffman, but I'm not a "Stan" of him (always a dangerous thing to be when you're trying to be objective about the movies). Spielberg's work here is handsome, but frequently blasé. Munich has well-constructed action sequences, and I loved Lynn Cohen's brief turn in the movie as Golda Meir. But it's too long, and it doesn't flesh out its characters-it's the sort of movie that relies upon real-life and our collective memories of a tragedy to fill in the gaps of what the people onscreen are feeling, but while I am aware of the Munich Olympics tragedies, I didn't live through it, and Spielberg shouldn't expect that of his audience. This is the sort of movie that probably would have been ignored were it not from an Academy favorite.
Conversely, Good Night, and Good Luck is the best film from a director that oftentimes meanders or doesn't entirely know what he's doing in a film (Clooney's directorial work is mixed-at-best). The movie has ambiance, and ages really well, though it feels more an historic oddity in an age of Fox News and CNN talking heads becoming key members of the Trump administration. The movie isn't perfect-one has to wonder whether the decision not to have an actor play Joseph McCarthy deprives us of a more meaningful payoff late in the film between Strathairn and the senator, but it's much better than I remembered, and it has a cool, sophisticated motif that puts it kind of in a class its own when it comes to Best Picture nominees of the aughts.
Brokeback Mountain is thankfully no longer the only major LGBT-film that is universally-praised as a masterpiece. In its wake are Carol, Moonlight, and Call Me By Your Name (all armed with Oscar love of their own). But it stands apart as not only a pioneering film, but also a near-perfect one. It is the rare epic that's best moments are held in quiet onscreen glances, like the reunion of Jack-and-Ennis, or the emotionless phone call between Ennis & Lurleen. It's a handcrafted screenplay, a brilliant acting quartet, and a film that examines not just gay love, but the impermanence of our place on this earth, and how our decisions matter, even if they're the only ones we think we can make. Brokeback Mountain would've been one of the best films ever honored by Oscar in the Best Picture category, one of those moments that might have yielded a watershed conversation about their relevance and direction in highlighting unsung filmmakers. Alas, it was not to be.
Crash would be a bad movie even if it hadn't beaten Brokeback Mountain at the Oscars. The film feels decades old in the way that it handles race in broad, uncomplicated strokes, and it doesn't co-mingle the stories of these characters in a way that feels authentic or without surprise (you can see how different characters are going to interact without thinking too hard). That being said, it's impossible to separate such a film, one that wants to condone its racist police officer (because somehow having a dying father makes it okay to treat black people like monsters?), from its defeat of Brokeback, which was a groundbreaking movie in an era where George W. Bush was using anti-gay bigotry to defeat John Kerry. Giving Crash the Oscar over Brokeback was ugly not just because it's an inferior movie, but because it was a way for Hollywood to plug its fingers in its ears when it came to the gay rights movement, waiting until it was less financially risky to showcase acceptance.
We're going to start with Capote. Capote is the sort of film I gravitate toward. It's about a writer, it's dark & chilly, and it's not a film with a particularly happy ending, all cornerstones of my favorite movies. But it is completely reliant upon you loving Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance as the title character, and I don't. It's too broad, it's too mimic-y, it's everything that became wrong with biopics after the trio of Best Actor winners from 2006-07 proved that playing a real-life figure can guarantee you an Oscar. It feels unkind at this point to speak too ill of Hoffman (me a decade ago would have been much crueler to Capote than now), but even upon revisiting it doesn't gel-it's the sort of movie you have to be an uber-devoted fan of his to make work, and that wasn't me.
Munich is also a picture where I think you need to be an uber-fan of Steven Spielberg's, which I am to a much greater degree than Hoffman, but I'm not a "Stan" of him (always a dangerous thing to be when you're trying to be objective about the movies). Spielberg's work here is handsome, but frequently blasé. Munich has well-constructed action sequences, and I loved Lynn Cohen's brief turn in the movie as Golda Meir. But it's too long, and it doesn't flesh out its characters-it's the sort of movie that relies upon real-life and our collective memories of a tragedy to fill in the gaps of what the people onscreen are feeling, but while I am aware of the Munich Olympics tragedies, I didn't live through it, and Spielberg shouldn't expect that of his audience. This is the sort of movie that probably would have been ignored were it not from an Academy favorite.
Conversely, Good Night, and Good Luck is the best film from a director that oftentimes meanders or doesn't entirely know what he's doing in a film (Clooney's directorial work is mixed-at-best). The movie has ambiance, and ages really well, though it feels more an historic oddity in an age of Fox News and CNN talking heads becoming key members of the Trump administration. The movie isn't perfect-one has to wonder whether the decision not to have an actor play Joseph McCarthy deprives us of a more meaningful payoff late in the film between Strathairn and the senator, but it's much better than I remembered, and it has a cool, sophisticated motif that puts it kind of in a class its own when it comes to Best Picture nominees of the aughts.
Brokeback Mountain is thankfully no longer the only major LGBT-film that is universally-praised as a masterpiece. In its wake are Carol, Moonlight, and Call Me By Your Name (all armed with Oscar love of their own). But it stands apart as not only a pioneering film, but also a near-perfect one. It is the rare epic that's best moments are held in quiet onscreen glances, like the reunion of Jack-and-Ennis, or the emotionless phone call between Ennis & Lurleen. It's a handcrafted screenplay, a brilliant acting quartet, and a film that examines not just gay love, but the impermanence of our place on this earth, and how our decisions matter, even if they're the only ones we think we can make. Brokeback Mountain would've been one of the best films ever honored by Oscar in the Best Picture category, one of those moments that might have yielded a watershed conversation about their relevance and direction in highlighting unsung filmmakers. Alas, it was not to be.
Crash would be a bad movie even if it hadn't beaten Brokeback Mountain at the Oscars. The film feels decades old in the way that it handles race in broad, uncomplicated strokes, and it doesn't co-mingle the stories of these characters in a way that feels authentic or without surprise (you can see how different characters are going to interact without thinking too hard). That being said, it's impossible to separate such a film, one that wants to condone its racist police officer (because somehow having a dying father makes it okay to treat black people like monsters?), from its defeat of Brokeback, which was a groundbreaking movie in an era where George W. Bush was using anti-gay bigotry to defeat John Kerry. Giving Crash the Oscar over Brokeback was ugly not just because it's an inferior movie, but because it was a way for Hollywood to plug its fingers in its ears when it came to the gay rights movement, waiting until it was less financially risky to showcase acceptance.
Other Precursor Contenders: The Globes split their nominations between Comedy/Musical and Drama, so we have a full ten nominees here. Drama went to Brokeback Mountain over Good Night, Match Point, The Constant Gardener, and A History of Violence (man is that an improvement over Oscar's lineup), while the top Musical or Comedy was Walk the Line above Mrs. Henderson Presents, Pride & Prejudice, The Producers, and The Squid and the Whale. The PGA went for an almost carbon copy of the Oscars, save for Brokeback winning and Walk the Line besting Munich, while the BAFTA's also gave Best Picture to Brokeback, this time substituting The Constant Gardener above Munich. All things considered, I have to assume that the 5/5 matchup between Picture/Director in 2005 probably was a close call-it's easy to see a situation where Walk the Line gets into Best Picture while Spielberg competes for Best Director, making the country music biopic our sixth place.
Films I Would Have Nominated: I'm going to do something weird here and also copy Oscar when it comes to 5/5 with Best Director, but not with the same films. I recently re-watched King Kong, and while some didn't love it (then or now), I did-I thought it was a flawed but really captivating movie, and it'd make my list. I'd also include Terrence Malick's visual masterpiece The New World (and not just cause I'm a devotee) & Michael Haneke's best movie (saying something) Cache, which unlike Crash ages brilliantly in a way that I wonder if even Haneke could've predicted.
Oscar’s Choice: Oscar picked Crash. It probably was a close contest, but there's no getting around it.
My Choice: No question that it's Brokeback-even a movie that I adore as much as Cache couldn't compete had it been nominated. I'd follow that with Good Night, Munich, Capote, and in the far rear, Crash.
And with that, we close 2005, though it will carry on in the comments if you so choose. Anyone coming to the comments ready to side with Oscar had better come prepared, but I suspect most of us are on the Brokeback train. What's your favorite of the remaining three nominees (so often forgotten in this rivalry)? And overall-what is your favorite movie of 2005? Share your comments below!
Also in 2005: Director, Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Original Screenplay, Adapted Screenplay, Foreign Language Film, Animated Feature Film, Original Score, Original Song, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Art Direction, Cinematography, Costume, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Makeup, Previously in 2005
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