“Have the Oscars become too elitist?”
So asked a teaser on one of the Oscar-watch websites recently. The phrasing prompts this retort: Isn’t “too elitist” a bit like being “a little bit” pregnant? And the wonks of Lalaland had a point.
Something’s up with Oscar. Hollywood’s golden guy isn’t the populist he once was.
Last year, as “Crash” and “Brokeback Mountain” duked it out for best picture at the Academy Awards, the grumblings about independent flicks crashing Hollywood’s big party began getting louder.
It’s more than a coincidence that at the same time this tut-tutting is going on about the Oscars, a number of critics and indie-film aficionados bemoan what they see as the increasingly mercantile aspects of the Sundance Film Festival.
Excise the films with independent roots from tonight’s Academy Award contenders, and you’d have a very different picture. Gone would be Alejandro González Iñárritu’s towering “Babel.” The family road-trip flick “Little Miss Sunshine” would be sent packing. “The Queen” – dethroned.
Performance categories would be even more deserted. Ta-ta Helen Mirren, Judi Dench, Penélope Cruz, Kate Winslet. Meryl Streep smiles devilishly. Will Smith and Leonardo DiCaprio would be a lonesome pair. Oddsmaker picks Forest Whitaker and Peter O’Toole would vanish. Of course, Ryan Gosling’s low-budget, lovely performance in “Half Nelson” would get tossed off the mat.
Going deeper into the roster of nominees yields similar results, especially in the best- supporting-actress race. Jennifer Hudson and Eddie Murphy would still represent for the studios, and in fact, in an indie-free Academy Awards, “Dreamgirls” finally starts to look like the winner it was touted to be back in the fall.
This exercise isn’t simply a game of subtraction, any more than tracking box-office grosses come Monday morning is a tutorial in creative accounting. It’s a demonstration of the wrestling match that goes on in American film culture’s heady mix of art and commerce.
Saturday night, the Independent Spirit Awards were set to stage their 22nd bash. Last year’s overlap with the Oscars was marked: “Brokeback Mountain,” “Capote” and “Good Night, and Good Luck” were contenders in each.
This year the members of Film Independent seem to be trying to stake out less-trammeled territory. “Little Miss Sunshine” is up for best feature, as are “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “Half Nelson.” (Go to film independent.org.)
But if purists of independent cinema or studio fare are anxious, they should be. This bleeding of boundaries has legs.
In order to take roles with teeth or tell stories studio execs shrug off, actor-producers like Brad Pitt (“Babel”), George Clooney (“Good Night, and Good Luck”) and Don Cheadle (“Crash”) will continue to cross the border from studio and indie and back.
Studio scribes have yet to consistently pen interesting roles for women. Take note: The past five winners of the Oscar for best actress were Halle Berry (“Monster’s Ball”), Nicole Kidman (“The Hours”), Charlize Theron (“Monster”), Hilary Swank (“Million Dollar Baby”) and Reese Witherspoon (“Walk the Line”). Three of the five came from the indie side of the equation. And “Million Dollar Baby” filmmaker Clint Eastwood is arguably the most independently minded director working in Hollywood.
In Denver last week, Virginia Madsen saw promise in this year’s slate of best-actress nominees.
“Is this a sea change?” said Madsen, in town to promote “The Astronaut Farmer.” “I hope so. I’m always optimistic.”
After the 2004 Oscars, the best-supporting-actress nominee had reason to believe.
But after too many scripts casting her as “the good listener who gently loves her man,” she said, she’s decided to start a production company.
“What I really want to focus on besides projects for myself are films about young women in their 20s. I rarely see that age depicted in a real way onscreen. It’s an incredibly passionate time of life. People get married, people come out of the closet, people become drug addicts, and women have these intense friendships with other women. All of this, I’m told, is not commercial.”
What Hollywood doesn’t give, indie film can provide.
And if the outcome is a quality film, the Academy’s members, who also increasingly move back and forth between big-budget fare and indies, will pay their respects.
Of course, kudos don’t always translate into a change in Hollywood’s business as usual.
“I really thought after a movie like ‘Sideways’ there’d be a string of movies about relationships and unusual people,” she said. “And really the only one that came close to that was ‘Little Miss Sunshine.’ At least it’s in there.”
Film critic Lisa Kennedy can be reached at 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com; try the Screen Team blog at denverpostbloghouse.com.
