Uncertainty Never Killed Anybody, by Chris Derrick – Sympathy for the Devil #10 | @MDWorld
February 24, 2012 Chris Derrick 2 Comments
Psychologically speaking uncertainty foments such emotionally hyped-up states like anxiousness, anxiety, frustration, impatience… those kind of unsettling physical emotions. Many times in life we seek out uncertainty, most particularly in entertainment (that’s what we love about horror and thrillers) – comedy, tragedy, book, TV show, film, sporting event; uncertainty heightens our awareness and the drama as it knocks the bottom out of your stomachs a you feebly attempt to anticipate what… will… happen… next…
There’s almost no worse of a cardinal sin in a dramatic situation than draining the uncertainty from the penultimate moment. As the drama unfolds and we come down to the wire of the climax, everything starts to get tense – physically and emotionally. When you’re having sex, you don’t know – ahead of time – exactly when in the act that you will explode and be awash with an overwhelming sense of earth-shattering ecstasy (when the sex is good, that is). When it becomes fait accompli, you become a little (or a lot) disinterested, perhaps even bored.
This weekend brings us around to the annual Academy Awards show, then end of the “seriousness” in a town that whole-heartedly embraces bombast. And has there ever been an Oscar show that has such little uncertainty about it? The nostalgic, Hollywood valentine “THE ARTIST” is a shoe-in to take home Best Picture and perhaps Best Actor, as well as Best Director. Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer pretty much have the two actress categories on lock for the controversial, feel-good movie “THE HELP.”
The Best Picture category… with its range of number of nominees had one uncertain moment… way back when the nominees were announced in January, when no one knew how many films (5? 7? 10?) would be nominated.
I can’t remember when there was an upset at the Oscars (Eddie Murphy losing to Alan Arkin five years ago for Best Supporting Actor? But was Eddie really going to win? I mean really?) and hardly ever in the top categories – Picture, Director, Actor and Actress . The anticipation is perhaps in the two screenplay categories and cinematography, but outside of Hollywood industry types who is invested in those? Particularly the writing, because it’s such a shit upon segment of the industry (however, Geoffrey Fletcher’s win for “PRECIOUS” was actually unexpected, as he beat out Hollywood scion Jason Reitman and his writing partner Sheldon Turner for “UP IN THE AIR” and Nick Hornby for “AN EDUCATION.”
Say what you will about the merits of all the nominees (as the talked about films are all wonderful), there’s all sorts of pomp, but no circumstance. Usually, I win (or take 2nd place) in the Oscar pools that I play, so maybe I’m cynical about the amount of uncertainty surrounding the Oscars, but you can’t deny the fact that if you know the ending ahead of time the story isn’t as captivating (sure, you can be dazzled, albeit briefly, by style and flash (i.e. The Red Carpet), but you want to see the dark horse candidates take center stage. Will Rooney Mara be that dark horse? Any anticipation for that surprise? What are the Vegas odds on her snagging Oscar gold?
We’ll find out in a few days.
JosephW
February 25, 2012 - 3:58 pm
Not really sure how much of a “lock” the actresses from “The Help” have on their categories.
Best Actress is pretty damned competitive with two of the finest actresses of the modern era in competition with a pair of strong performances. Bear too in mind that Helen Mirren won a couple of years ago for playing Queen Elizabeth which gives Meryl Streep a good shot, plus–since the 2000 Oscar ceremony–8 of the winning performances were for portraying real people: Hilary Swank as Brandon Teena in 2000; Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich in 2001; Nicole Kidman as Virginia Woolf in 2003; Charlize Theron as Aileen Wuornos in 2004; Reese Witherspoon as June Carter in 2006; Mirren in 2007; Marion Cotillard as Edith Piaf in 2008; and Sandra Bullock as Leigh Anne Tuohy in 2010 for “The Blind Side.” Side note: The last time an actress playing a real character lost to a fictional character was in 2001 when Judi Dench playing the real-life Iris Murdoch lost to Halle Berry playing the fictional Leticia Musgrove from “Monster’s Ball.” And Meryl has been nominated in 3 of the last 5 years, and lost every time. Plus, Meryl is LONG overdue for that second Best Actress Oscar (she’s won two Oscars–1 for Best Actress in “Sophie’s Choice” and 1 for Best Supporting Actress in “Kramer vs Kramer”). In one of those little quirks of Oscar fate, both Meryl and Viola Davis co-starred in the film “Doubt”; both were nominated (for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, respectively) and both lost (to Kate Winslet and Penelope Cruz, respectively).
Now, to argue for Glenn Close. She’s earned a total of 6 Oscar nominations in her entire career without winning any at this point. Three Best Actress noms (in addition to this year’s nom for “Albert Nobbs,” she also earned nods in 1988 for “Fatal Attraction” and in 1989 for “Dangerous Liaisons”–both of those times she was in competition with Meryl Streep; the first year she lost to Cher for the rom-com “Moonstruck” and the second year she lost out to Jodie Foster’s rape victim in “The Accused”) and three Best Supporting Actress noms (from 1983 to 1985 for “The World According to Garp,” “The Big Chill,” and “The Natural”) with no wins.
Then, there’s the other nominee playing a real-life person: Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe. Michelle’s been decently represented at the Oscars (Best Supporting Actress in 2006 for “Brokeback Mountain” and Best Actress last year for “Blue Valentine” but losing out both times–to Rachel Weisz in the first case and Natalie Portman last year).
I think in the Supporting Actress category, a win for Octavia Spencer will be seen as a type of reverse racism since she’s competing in the category with the white Jessica Chastain (the fact that Emma Stone was overlooked in either acting category, when her character is the one that sets the whole story in motion seems to have been part of that “uncertainty” that you wrote about; it’s obviously not an unprecedented occurence–see Amy Adams and Anne Hathaway for a pair of actresses whose set-the-story-in-motion characters failed to earn a nod in “Julie & Julia” and “The Devil Wears Prada” respectively). Additionally, the odds aren’t really good for Davis to win simply going by the track record of “multiple Supporting Actress nominees from the same film.” With this year, this makes the 31st year that a film has had multiple nominees in the category (there’ve actually been 32 films–at the 1950 awards, the films “Come to the Stable” and “Pinky” each had two women nominated in the Supporting Actress category) and only 10 instances where one of the nominees won (on an interesting and somewhat coincidental side note, the first time it happened was in 1940 when Hattie McDaniel won over Olivia de Haviland in “Gone with the Wind”; the only other time that there was a “white vs black” competition from the same film was in 2003 when Catherine Zeta-Jones won over Queen Latifah in “Chicago”). It’s usually recognized that multiple nominees tend to cancel out each other.* Of those 10 winning instances, the first 3 came in ceremonies in the 1940s (1940, 1943, and 1948); the next four came within the span of just 10 years (1971, 1972, 1974 and 1980) with the last 3 occasions coming in 1983, 2003 and 2011. The years in which these multiple nominations came are a bit more spread out–7 ceremonies in the 1940s, 5 in the 1950s, 3 in the 1960s, 4 in the 1970s, 3 in the 1980s, only 1 in the 1990s, 5 in the 2000s and 2 in the 2010s (3 counting this year’s ceremony). The fact that Berenice Bejo seems to be completely ignored in the talk about “The Artist’s” shoo-ins exhibits perhaps a bit of sexism in the industry. How does Dujardin get all the acclaim and Oscar talk while Bejo seems to be completely out of the picture? (I haven’t heard anyone describe her as any sort of dark horse to win but Dujardin’s chances are put right up there with Clooney and Pitt’s.) Janet McTeer is given a much lesser chance of winning the Supporting Actress award than Close is for Best Actress though with this being her first Oscar nom, that’s somewhat expected. (To that point, is this the first time since the category was created that this is the Oscar “debut” for ALL 5 Supporting Actress nominees? It seems as though every year–at least for the last several decades–that at least one nominee had earned an acting nomination in a previous year.) The only one of the Supporting Actress nominees that I’ve heard on having anything close to a real “lock” is Melissa McCarthy from “Bridesmaid.”
*Just by way of comparison, in the Best Actress category, there’ve been only FOUR instances when two women from the same film have competed against each othre (1951, Anne Baxter and Bette Davis for “All About Eve”; 1960, Katherine Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor for “Suddenly Last Summer”; 1978, Anne Bancroft and Shirley MacLaine for “The Turning Point”; and 1992, Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon for “Thelma and Louise”) and in each of those years, the winner has been from another film. The Best Actor award hasn’t been subject to the “fear of the split vote.” Although no ceremony since 1985 has seen multiple actors vying for the Best Actor award, of the TWELVE times it happened from 1936 to 1985, there’ve been four cases where the winner has been one of the multiple nominees–“Going My Way,” “Judgment at Nuremberg,” “Network,” and “Amadeus. Additionally, the Best Supporting Actor category has seen multiple nominees from one film at 17 ceremonies and the award has gone to one of the nominees 5 times; the category, however, has seen 3 nominees from the same film on three separate occasions, with one film producing the winner. But no film has produced multiple Best Supporting Actor nominees since the 1992 ceremony and no winners since the 1984 ceremony; the 5 wins came in the 1972, 1975, 1978, 1981, and 1984 ceremonies. (As a truly bizarre side note, the last two times that the Supporting Actor category has seen 3 nominees from the same film were for “The Godfather” and “The Godfather, Part II” and, of the 6 actors nominated, De Niro won for his role in “Godfather 2.”) One could wonder about the seeming sexism in the nominations process or the entire acting field. Is it that the Academy doesn’t believe that a film can have two LEAD roles for women as easily as men (history seems to back up this idea–0 of 4 times for women, 4 of 12 times for men) or is it that the Academy believes that women’s roles are designed more as “Supporting” roles in any film (again, history seems to back this up–10 of 31 times for women, 5 of 17 times for men)? And even more notably, no women have competed for Best Actress against each other from the same film since 1992, and no men have competed for Best Actor or Supporting Actor since 1985 and 1992 respectively, while this year marks the EIGHTH time in 12 years that two women from the same film have competed for Supporting Actress with 2 wins from the competing co-stars (the last time there was such a “streak” was the nine times in the twelve-year period of 1940-1951; during that time frame, only 3 actresses beat their co-star) and this is the first time since the period 1948-1951 that we’ve had four consecutive years in which there’ve been two women competing from the same film for Supporting Actress (in that period, there was only 1 case where one actress won out over her co-star; in the current period, that was matched last year so a win for either Spencer or Chastain would beat that “record” and would be the first time that there’ve been back-to-back cases of “beat your co-star” since 1972).
Chris Derrick
February 25, 2012 - 5:41 pm
Joseph… solid arguments all around. And while I do believe Meryl Streep’s performance THE IRON LADY was absolutely remarkable, this might be the only “upset”… and yeah, it would be about time that Streep does win her second Oscar for all the deserving performances in the last 15 years. And if she does win, it’s not a “make up” win, which so many actors seem to get as they get older and are routinely overlooked.
But one sticking point is the huge success of THE HELP and the basic dismissal of THE IRON LADY by the moving going public. I do agree the Glen Close probably should win for her passion project, but again… how many of the Oscar voters saw that performance? Her career is remarkable and up there with Streep. But that doesn’t mean there’s any level of uncertainty, she didn’t win any awards this season. And there is that “once a train is moving” syndrome most of the time.
As for Emma Stone not getting nominated, she didn’t put in a memorable performance, not to say that it was good, truthful and the catalyst for the story, but it wasn’t standout from a crowd… just solid, solid acting from a solid, solid young actress. If you remember the movie, the screen crackled when Chastain and Spencer were on the screen… especially in the scenes they played together.
Overall, my main point is there are impressive arguments for why most people get nominated, but the “they got robbed” refrain seems less and less over the past decade. You make strong statistical points, but there’s still a lack of uncertainty about the proceedings. If Octavia Spencer doesn’t win, and neither does Viola Davis, where does that leave THE HELP? Won’t happen… as it’s not going to win Best Picture.
I applaud your near-encyclopedic of Oscar history, and that goes back to my point, pre-2000, there was more excitement, in my mind. You bring up ALL ABOUT EVE, Anne Baxter and Bette Davis burned on the screen, so it was surprise that they lost (to who? Was it Judy Holiday in BORN YESTERDAY? My memory isn’t that good… although I could just look it up). But 1950 was an upsetting year, but who would have that that WIlliam Holden would have lost for this performance for the ages in SUNSET BLVD? It happened then, not so much now. Even worse was 1968, no Best Picture nom for 2001 and OLIVER! won…
Also, I as pointed out, maybe I’m just cynical because of my string of 1st or 2nd place finishes in my Oscar pool the last 10 years running (I do have trouble with the pesky Doc & Live Action Shorts and Original Song!!!).