Best Picture, 2001

Awards presented March 24, 2002

The nominees were ... 

• A Beautiful Mind 
• Gosford Park 
• In the Bedroom 
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring 
• Moulin Rouge! 

... when they should have been ...

• A.I. Artificial Intelligence 
• Gosford Park  
• The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring 
• Memento 
• Moulin Rouge! 

And the Oscar went to ...
A Beautiful Mind. It's cleverly constructed by screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, who won the Oscar. Moreover, Russell Crowe's genuine acting here overshadows the work he did the previous year that won him an Oscar. But there's too much gloss on this biopic of John Nash, the mathematician whose schizophrenia undermined his achievements. It's reminiscent of those Warner Bros. biopics of the '30s that starred Paul Muni and reduced the complex lives of men like Emile Zola and Louis Pasteur to melodrama.

... when it should have gone to ...

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

I think the Academy knew that there were two more movies coming in the trilogy and figured, Why not just wait and dump all the Oscars on the third film? Which it did, of course. So it handed out awards for Andrew Lesnie's cinematography, Howard Shore's score, and for makeup and special effects. But let's face it: The Fellowship of the Ring was an eye-opener for those who thought J.R.R. Tolkien's saga unfilmable, or anyway doubted that it could be brought to the screen as excitingly as Peter Jackson did. I think it deserved best picture just for that surprise alone.