By Linda Winsh- Bolard
I take my hat off to the smart man in LA Times who, at least two weeks ago, argued that Revolutionary Road will not be nominated because for balding, past middle age men, who make those decisions, it strikes way too close to home.
He was right.
Revolutionary Road is the best film I saw this year. I'd say it is followed by The Reader and Waltz with Bashir.
Neither is comfortable to watch. All ask question and unsettle. But still Revolutionary Road is ahead.
Ditto for Kate Winslet performance in that film. She is wonderful in The Reader but excellent in Revolutionary Road.Yet the film did not get Screen Actors Guild ensemble cast nomination, a leading indicator for which films will earn a pivotal best picture Oscar nomination. Two of the actors got nominated for an Oscar. I'd say it is a case of getting to close to home with the story. Sam Medes was not forgiven for hitting the pain button.
The film got nothing.
What makes Revolutionary Road so different from the slap dash almost-but-not-really comedy like Slumdog Millionaire is distance. Of course, we have the same piles of trash, gangsters, poverty, prostitution, and generally the same problems as India in the USA, every country has them. But Slumdog Millionaire is safely distant- it's India's problem- and that ridiculous love story slapped on it makes such a good feel film! Brains not required. I am guessing an Oscar in our new non divisive, forgiving (we forgive unpaid taxes- as long as you high up in the hierarchy- than you can tax others while owing your own) society.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is even safer; none of our prominents in any field will be reborn as an old man to face life. It matter nothing that the film is a copy of Forrest Gump, then a simpleton watching world passing him by, now a reverse case of senility doing the same with same lack of feeling or involvement. As long as it does not touch on our real problems- which it certainly does not- it does not matter how preachy and average it is.
Then there is Milk, a pleasant little film, which, however sketchily, records to career of Harvey Milk. How much safer can you get in 2009?
Frost/Nixon is annoying. When, for the umpteenth time, somebody in the film repeated that Nixon had done the worst to the presidency, there is a number of way saying this, the stupidest one being that he killed 10,000 men (presumably in a war that he inherited from previous presidents and managed to end), I felt like screaming: then what about Bush?
Well, perhaps after say 30 years, when it is safe and does not affect invitations to the White House.
Talk about literal and preachy! Accurate? As in what? Yeah, Nixon, the only president who did not belong to the Harvard elite, was suspicious of the power of the entrenched elite, justly, I suspect. Else then that, what the film does not say is that all president behave very similarly, some much worse.
Lastly, the up to now much overlooked , film: The Reader. Now, that is not a "safe” movies. It is film about unfulfilled moral obligation, not Hanna's but Michael's. Viewed from that angle, it poses number of very uncomfortable questions to all Americans: from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Guantanamo, CIA prison's abroad, Abu Ghabir and who was prosecuted for what, to the power grab by Morgan's bank, sanctioned by our Fathers, many of whom have close ties to the grabbers, the lost 770 000 billions our elected officials awarded to Wall Street for their performance...all the way down to nepotism and closed lists where only the Presidential "peers" as in "social equals" need to apply for any meaningful jobs in the administration (old or new).
But the film is presented as a love affair between an older women and a boy (he is 16 and she is Kate Winslet, I am sure he suffered terribly). Or as a question of German guilt. Or both. Or a soft porno. As a moral question, reaching far to all of us, it is not.
The Jewish law professor, a survivor of the camp, says in the film: If you have learned nothing from all what happened to us, then it was in vain.
Looks like it was.
I am disturbed because I had not perceived Oscars as a prize for inoffensive, good feel family entertainment. I though it was about quality films with serious content.
On the other hand, I do recall past blunders such as The Titanic and The Gladiator.
Perhaps is time for those who wish to see good films to institute a new nomination ceremony.
Ideas?
