Oscar nominees 2009

The carpets are rolled out, the lights are shining and the statue is glistening with much awaited glory...

On January 22^nd, the Academy of Motion picture Arts and Sciences announced the nominees for the 81^st Academy Awards.

The Curious case of Benjamin Button, Frost/Nixon, Milk, Slumdog Millionaire and The Reader: A compelling catalogue depicting catastrophic worlds, the Oscar nominated movies are chronicles depicting lives caught in constant turmoil. Whether it is the depressing optimism of Slumdog Millionaire or the persistence of a gay activist in Milk, the movies depict the pressures and anxieties of surviving in an age that oppresses.

Take Stephen Daldry’s The Reader. Based on the book by Bernhard Schlink, it is a secret romance between a young man and an older woman, a war criminal who was an S.S. officer. A choice that leaves them both wrestling with guilt, Daldry’s depiction of fulfilled passion and guilty love, leaves the readers of the movie with a dilemma concerning thwarted choices.  Kate Winslet’s serious yet tender performance has already bagged her a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) and a Golden Globe, and can also snatch an Oscar, which she has been declined the last five times.

The Curious case of Benjamin Button, another highly acclaimed film, is a narrative about abnormality of body and time where Benjamin, played diligently by Brad Pitt, ages backwards till he dies of young age. Grappling with paradoxes of living and decaying, David Finch’s magic realist lens allows us to be a part of this unusual storytelling.

Another movie that bags the nomination is Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon, a tense drama about a journalist’s perseverance in uncovering the lie behind the President. Frost/Nixon is a slice of political history, shared between the rigorous journalist and the conniving ex-President and Howard has attempted to be as faithful to history while crafting this movie.

Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire is also a strong contender for the Oscars for its exciting script and inspiring performances. Winner of the best film at Golden Globes and BAFTA, Slumdog Millionaire has been hailed as a trans-national and global document that records the “rags to riches” journey of one Indian chai-wala. Set in the Maximum city Mumbai, Boyle (who is known for the cult hit, Trainspotting) traverses through its slums and chronicles lives that have been festering in crime and poverty. Based on the book ‘Q and A’ by Vikas Swaroop, Boyle creates an enthralling slum saga witnessed through western novelty.  

Gus Van Sant’s biopic of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in California, captures the intolerance and the subsequent revolution of America in the seventies. The movie Milk has been nominated for best film, best Director, best Actor and the best Supporting Actor. A moving tale of perseverance and pursuit, this true story of 1978, still possesses contemporary resonance. Set in the town of San Francisco, the biography of Milk becomes a treatise for making the personal life a political victory. Sean Penn plays Harvey Milk with ease and eccentricity, but at the same time instils in him a blossom of humanity.

Milk’s political cry of “I’m Harvey Milk and I want to recruit you” has bagged Sean Penn a best actor nomination. However, Mickey Rourke as the Randy ‘The Ram’ Robinson in The Wrestler is an intense study of the glory and the horrors of the wrestling world. An iconic performance by Rourke revives his dwindling career as he plays ‘The Ram,’ a battered hero who once sparkled inside wrestling rings, but is a failure in outside world.

Rourke and Penn are also competing with Brad Pitt’s performance as Benjamin Button, and Frank Langella as the imposing President in Frost/Nixon.

In the best actress category, Kate Winslet leads not only with her performance in The Reader, but also her highly acclaimed but sadly not nominated contribution in the Revolutionary Road, an account of the slow erosion of the American dream. However, Meryl Streep’s portrayal of Sister Aloysius Beauvier in Doubt can give Winslet a run for her money. Streep portrays Beauvier with an upright moral righteousness and Victorian discipline that terrifies her students and staff.

A dark horse in this category could be Melissa Leo in Frozen River, who plays a single mother who smuggles immigrants into the country. Her under-rated and subtle rendering of this character has won approval and applause from critics. Also nominated in this category are Anne Hathaway in Rachel Getting Married, a family drama amidst a wedding, and Angelina Jolie in The Changeling, a nightmarish story about a mother who has lost her son.  

Similarly, a diverse range awaits the best actor in a supporting role. The nominations range from a psychotic madman to a preacher accused of sodomy, from an award winning method actor, dealing in scatological humour to a disgruntled and homophobic murderer.

Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker in the Dark Knight has earned him an Oscar nomination for the Best actor in supporting role. His dark, menacing and fiendish performance as Joker (that has previously been portrayed by Jack Nicholson) stands as a mammoth tribute to his achievements. Due to his brooding and anarchist portrayal, Ledger’s Joker was more noticeable than the movie’s eponymous hero, Batman. Joker’s maniacal laugh, distinct and tottering walk, and hideous makeup all seem to scream out that “whatever doesn't kill you simply makes you... stranger.”

Ledger’s last on-screen work, is in stiff competition with Philip Seymour Hoffman who plays Father Flynn in Doubt. Straddling innocence and guilt, Hoffaman’s performance as Father Flynn is compassionate and strong but just enough human to make us doubt. Another nomination in this category is Tropic Thunder’s Robert Downey Jr. who plays a method actor, generating laughs by his racial embodiments as the painted blackface. Josh Brolin has also nabbed a nomination for his performance in Milk, a movie about Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to be elected in a public office.

Film critics like Roger Ebert, however, have already pronounced Heath Ledger as their favourite man, who far from being a caricature is a vicious match for the title character.

Critics have also declared Viola Davis from Doubt as front runner for the best actress in the supporting role. Her minute appearance of ten minutes shakes up and stuns the audience. Other nominees include Penelope Cruz from Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona (who has already won a BAFTA for her performance), Amy Adams as the young and innocent nun in Doubt, Marisa Tomei as the stripper in The Wrestler, and Taraji Henson in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

When the results will be declared on February 22^nd, irrespective of the wins or the losses, it will be a victory for History, which has been presented with honesty and laced with tastefulness. The nominations are stories of individual triumphs in socially evolving times and the Oscar nominations have tried to enunciate the potential of human suffering and will. 

Vanshika Sahni

Slumdog Blues

To travel, and to look up in wonder at new cultures, is indeed a virtue. It is when you look for something with an agenda in mind that problems arise. Such problems are not new – colonisation was a mix of wonder and commercial aspirations.

To make a good movie is looking at the art itself with wonder, but wanting to make a good movie about India for the world audience is agenda-setting.  This means that you have to avoid cumbersome details, use clichés aplenty to get the message across and make the language much simpler for a foreign audience. This also means that you end up alienating your subjects themselves.

“What works for the West may not necessarily work for India,” Madhur Singh, writing for the Time magazine hit the nail on the head while commenting on the lukewarm response to “Slumdog Millionaire” in India (Slumdog Millionaire, an Oscar Favorite, Is No Hit in India; January 26, 2009). There is a sense of “so what?” as you watch the supposed classic. Brilliant as it may be, the cinematography of Anthony Dod Mantel captures nothing more than what a pair of eyes never fail to steer clear of in this country.

In retrospect, making the characters speak English, that too, in British accent may not have been a bad idea, after all. It is only a natural extension of looking at the oriental from your perch, and it helps immensely if the exotic can be made to speak in your tongue. Also, imagine Mr. Boyle spending valuable time and resources in research, only to come up with the same script in Hindi, which would, of course, flop worldwide trying to look like a cheap version of “Salaam Bombay.” Now at least “the world is watching.”

Bi/multi-linguals are not new to the Indian movie industry, but they were always made with a certain degree of sensitivity. The standardisation of language in “Slumdog” is pathetic; it assumes that a mass of people will pass up the fact that our chaai-waalahs rarely speak fluent English, rarer still, with a British accent. The use of Hindi is merely an ornament – probably for lack of good translators, Hindi expletives had to be retained in an otherwise-English torture sequence.

But of course, Bollywood cannot wash its hands over this attempt at standardisation, for it is guilty of doing the same to the various dialects of Hindi. Bollywood, though can claim that it was denied many Oscars in the past in the event of “Slumdog” winning any. Even though music is no concern of mine, it can be said with confidence that A.R. Rahman can woe the many missed Oscars if he receives one this time.

The movie itself, as many would agree, is entertaining like Vikas Swarup’s “Q&A” on which it is based. It is fast-paced, tells an interesting story told in well shot frames with Rahman’s music to boot. The children are cute; the violence, shocking. In other words, typical Bollywood fare. For those who never saw that before, “The film's universal appeal will present the real India to millions of moviegoers for the first time” (Roger Ebert, in a website named after him). Whatever the “real India” means.

Maybe he was too engrossed in drawing up the perfect tourist guide that Danny Boyle forgot that something different was expected of him. Nothing changes in the movie – the old stereotypes are maintained and clichés preserved for a sequel. Freida Pinto remains a prop, which would have been no different had it been another Indian movie. Salim’s change of heart at the end is unconvincing, so are the death sequence and the cryptic “God is great” line, which pretty much adds nothing. Simon Beaufoy has done a commendable adaptation for the screen, but the western world’s attitude to Muslims is telling in the change of name of Mr. Swarup’s protagonist from Ram Mohammed Thomas to Jamal Malik.

It is sad to note that for all the talk of meritocracy, good marketing makes good cinema. As things stand, “Slumdog” is poised to win multiple Oscars. One merely hopes that this inspires a new crop of filmmakers to tell the world that there is more to India than Danny Boyle.