Awards presented March 5, 2006
The nominees were ...
... when they should have been ...
And the Oscar went to ...
Crash. Perhaps the most vilified Oscar winner of recent years, though it's really not so bad a film as all that. Paul Haggis's Oscar-winning screenplay deftly handles interrelated stories all centering on race relations in Los Angeles, and Haggis the director manipulates a large ensemble cast that includes Sandra Bullock, Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Terrance Howard, Thandie Newton, and others. (Only Dillon received an acting nomination.) But its win came as a surprise because there had been a clear front-runner.
... when it should have gone to ...
When on Oscar night Ang Lee received the directing Oscar and Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana were honored for their screenplay, it seemed like a sure thing that
Brokeback Mountain would take the best picture Oscar. It had been critically praised: The Rotten Tomatoes Web site, which tallies critical response to movies, records an 87 percent favorable rating, to
Crash's 75 percent. But when the unexpected happened, Oscar pundits immediately went to work: The Academy members, they surmised, were squeamish about
Brokeback's treatment of a gay relationship, and choosing between socio-politically controversial films, decided it would be safer to honor one about race over one about homosexuality. I'm not convinced that it's true. And even though I'm picking it as my should-have-won, I'm conflicted. This blog is about hindsight, and I think it's entirely possible that
Brokeback Mountain will look as dated in the future as, say,
Gentleman's Agreement, with its finicky handling of anti-Semitism, does today. Much of the fuss about this movie centers on the spectacle of two hot young actors, Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, in passionate liplock. But we didn't really need this movie to tell us, as Willie Nelson puts it, that cowboys are frequently, secretly fond of each other. Just look at
this picture, for example, or the scene in
Red River in which Montgomery Clift and John Ireland compare
dicks guns. What
Brokeback Mountain really has going for it is the terrific performances of Ledger, Gyllenhaal, and Michelle Williams, who were all nominated, as well as Anne Hathaway, who wasn't but should have been.
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