The Hindu Business Line : Why they made it showbiz

Why did George Clooney, the dishy actor who played the lead role in the same movie and the one who was supposed to take the Oscar away from Day Lewis, not make it?

Daniel Day Lewis (centre right) in a still from There Will Be Blood.

Shubhra Gupta

A question a TV anchor asked me as we analysed the winners and losers at this year’s Oscar awards spilled over later into a discussion about the kinds of movies which make it, and those which don’t.

So, do you like these bad characters, she asked. The reference was to Daniel Day Lewis and Javier Bardem, who won the best actor and best supporting actor awards on a night which bowed to grimness and grit, rather than glitter and shine. There was tha t too, on the red carpet, where all the lovelies in their designer gowns preened and pirouetted for the paparazzi, and the fashion police.

But the real business was conducted on stage, as the winners and acceptance speeches came and went, the highlights of a hastily put together ceremony: the three-month- long Hollywood writers’ strike had put a crimp on other award nights, and the strike being called off just 20 days ahead prevented this edition of the Oscars from being the grand spectacle it usually is.

The actors and the movies that the Academy voters honoured were in keeping with the low-key, sober tone this year. Daniel Day Lewis got best actor for his act in There Will Be Blood as an ambitious oil man at the turn of the century, who is so completely focused on getting where he wants to that he lets nothing and no one get in his way, certainly not little things like conscience and scruple. Javier Bardem plays a sociopath with no human feelings: his serial killer snuffs out humans as if they were flies. Unlike Lewis, who is shown to have a soft corner for a young boy he adopts as his son, Bardem has no redeeming features. He kills, and he moves on to his next target.

The best picture and the best director went to No Country For Old Men, in which directors Joel and Ethan Coen outfit Bardem with a hideous wig, and allow him to go on a rampage. The Coens have always been on the fringes, doing their hard-edged movies, which do not give you easy options: you have to sit there and watch men doing unspeakable things to other men, and sometimes, women. This is the first time they have done anything remotely so ‘mainstream’, if you can call No Country For Old Men mainstream at all. This is superlative movie-making, but very demanding: you need to be strong-stomached to watch it.

So why did these characters win the sympathy vote in an extremely stiff competition? Even the best supporting actress award, which went to Tilda Swinton in Michael Clayton, is for a role of a corporate attorney who orders the execution of two men and plans to live with it. Why did George Clooney, the dishy actor who played the lead role in the same movie and the one who was supposed to take the Oscar away from Day Lewis, not make it? Clooney’s act as a lawyer who discovers that he does have a conscience, is the kind that the Academy loves: a not-such-a-good-man turns over and becomes a good man.

This was Day Lewis’s day. No one could take that trophy away from him (he last won it for My Left Foot). When you see the ruthless oil prospector, you do not see actor, you see only the character, and that kind of submersion is not possible for most actors. And Clooney is that kind of actor who can’t totally hide himself away; some amount of Clooney-ness is left behind.

Two, this was the year when the Oscars were more about the movies which went where they’ve never been before in the choices of the stories and the characters. No huge animated vehicles like Lord of the Rings, which swept the previous Oscars. This year, there were greyer, more complex movies and many more individual voices.

The Academy voters did hedge their bets with a couple of more ‘traditional’ movies. French actress Marion Cotillard got the Best Actress for her portrayal of the singer Edith Piaf in La Vien En Rose, a kind of bio-pic that is high on emotions, which is usually a safe bet at the Oscars. Marion’s win is the only disappointment in the best actress category; she’s good, the movie is nice. But there’s no comparison with veteran Julie Christie, who was nominated for her searing act in Away From Her, as a woman who is losing herself to Alzheimer’s. To be there and yet not to be there, the way it happens in this condition, is the hardest thing for an actor to do and Julie does it with marvellous delicacy and grace.

The other affecting performance was from 16-year-old Ellen Page in Juno, about a teenager who turns up pregnant, and goes looking for the right couple to adopt her baby. It’s more than just a comedy. It has the undertow of real feelings and real people, and Ellen is quite wonderful as the little girl who’s about to become a mommy and is struggling with all kinds of conflicting feelings. She didn’t get an Oscar either, but that’s okay. She has years to go and there will be others. But Julie’s loss is the kind of inexplicable thing which makes you wonder about awards; who’s doing the deciding?

Why not?

Still, at the Oscars you expect a base minimum of quality. And the kind of characters which make you look at the person sitting next to you and wonder, “Hey! can he or she really be like that?” When was the last time a movie India sent to the Oscars pushed the envelope right across the table?

Our choice this year was Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Eklayva, which was about a royal family and their loyal guard. It was a good-looking film, beautifully shot, and with good-looking actors. But it didn’t blow anyone away, not the critics, nor the box office. It’s not as if we don’t make those kinds of movies. We may be years from taking the kinds of risks that bravehearts who make independent movies around the globe do, but there are dozens of terrific films we make which could at least get the Academy buzzing. But we do not know how to select our own films; the process is rife with favour-seeking and being with the right people.

And therein lies the rub. Ultimately, it’s got to be about the movies. And only about the movies.