Best of Oscar, The Conclusion

Well, we did it! Victoria and I finally followed through on something that we’d been talking about since we started dating over four years ago: watch all Best Picture nominees of the year before the Oscar telecast, hoping to gain some real investment in the awards show. If you haven’t read the reviews yet, you can follow the links below:

Series introduction
Part 1: The Reader
Part 2: Slumdog Millionaire
Part 3: Milk
Part 4: Frost/Nixon
Part 5: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

It was a great experience. And we learned a few things along the way: for example that watching five movies in three weeks is quite a bit of work. That abiding by somebody else’s (the movie theater’s) schedule doesn’t come as natural as it once did. We watched two of the movies during the week, and working through lunch just so that I could leave on time to meet Victoria straight at the theater felt positively anachronistic.

But even in the age of home theater, 60 inch TVs and Blu-ray the experience of watching a memorable movie in the theater is still unmatched. It creates memories. A theater becomes synonymous with a certain movie. Especially when you have access to smaller, “art house” type cinemas. We watched Slumdog Millionaire and Milk at Sonoma’s Sebastiani Theater, a small, single-screen affair where we also watched Little Miss Sunshine and Cars. We were just as lucky to catch Frost/Nixon at The Lark, an restored non-profit theater in the heart of Larkspur. They serve alcohol! I remember watching Rent, Juno and a re-run of Donnie Darko there while drinking my beer.

And we went to the chain theaters and the megaplexes. Where a movie is being shown says a lot about the movie itself, and it only seems fitting that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, the “blockbuster nominee” of the bunch, the movie that was only running in one of those 15-theater monstrosities, also turned out to be the movie that felt the least deserving of a nomination. A great movie, but about as Oscar-worthy as Titanic, and suffocated by the sterility of the mall that surrounds the theater. (As a side note: the only time when the theater in question actually enhanced the movie-going experience was for 2004 version of Dawn of the Dead – we started the day by playing a round of Zombies!!!, then went to the mall to watch that movie, which set the tone perfectly.)

Anyway, we did it. And yes, we succumbed to the Oscar hype machine. But what about the movies? I quickly noticed that I had painted myself in the corner a bit when I gave the The Reader, the first nominees that we watched and which I had loved, only four stars. I didn’t know how good the remaining movies would be, and I still had great expectations for the much hyped Slumdog Millionaire, so some breathing room seemed like a good idea. In the end, The Reader turned out to be a most profoundly moving experience, and the slumdog kind of tanked. In fact, I was susprised by how much I disliked Danny Boyle’s Oscar entry. Of the five movies that we watched, Slumdog Millionaire comes in towards the very bottom of the list. I seem to be pretty isolated with this sentiment, but there it is: I don’t want Slumdog Millionaire to win the Oscar. In light of this, here’s my final tally:

• The Reader
• Milk

(I wouldn’t mind seeing either one of these movies with the award)

• Frost/Nixon

(Good, but a bit too reliant on the actual history to warrant the Oscar)

• Slumdog Millionaire
• The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

(Just didn’t quite work for me, or didn’t work for me on an “Oscar level”)

In the end, this was a very positive experience because this year’s batch of Best Picture nominees granted me some genuine perspective on life. Usually, most of the nominated movies explore the “human condition”, a subject matter that has been explored since the dawn of cinema. Not so this year! Four of the movies that we saw taught as they entertained:

• Slumdog Millionaire gave me perspective on India. Never mind that the film gave me a very negative view of the country, I gained insight. Into the slums that surround Mumbai; into the call centers I reach whenever I call Dell’s technical support.
• Frost/Nixon gave me insight into the fallout of the Nixon years. It’s quite educational to see history repeat itself, and understand America’s state of mind in the years following the Nixon years. People still upset about the Bush administration should take note!
• Milk gave me much appreciation for the American gay rights movement. The parallels between Prop 6 and Prop 8 are striking, and make me wonder if Prop 8 hadn’t been defeated easily if somebody like Harvey Milk had been around.
• The Reader finally found a good way of describing Germany’s feeling of national guilt that followed World War II. Most people don’t realize how much the nation has labored as it came to terms with its history (I saw the first proudly waving German flag in 2006(!), following the football world cup). The Reader found a way to express this sentiment through the relationship of the two main characters, and displayed it to the world.

That leaves Benjamin Button as the odd man out. It’s good in that it provides perspective on life in general, but that isn’t enough this year. In fact, it only adds to the Been There, Done That feeling.

So that’s it! I hope these posts have given you a bit of insight into this year’s nominees, especially if you hadn’t been able to watch (m)any of the nominated movies. Maybe you even found a movie to root for! I’m looking forward to the Academy Awards tomorrow evening, hoping that the reports of dread and impending doom won’t turn out to be true. The Oscars are taking a new direction this year, and that might just make for an exciting telecast.