When Blockbusters Deserve Oscars

The most talked-about performance of the year was a man covered in face paint with lint and knives in his pockets. But will Heath Ledger’s phenomenal embodiment of The Joker really be considered for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar when the next Academy Awards are held on 22 February 2009? Will any of the superb performances in Chris Nolan’s The Dark Knight be considered? Gary Oldman’s world-weary Commissioner Gordon? Aaron Eckhart’s tragic Harvey Dent? Not to mention Nolan himself, who’s directed one of the most exciting, emotional and intelligent movies in years.

 

Trouble is, it cost the best part of $200 million and features some very big explosions. And blockbusters, it seems, are traditional herded briskly into the technical categories. Visual effects, editing, make-up, costume, cinematography, sound... you know, the ones where men in beards come up and everyone at the ceremony nips out for a loo break. The big ones – Best Film, Best Director and the acting awards – ignore blockbusters.

 

It doesn’t matter that Ron Perlman’s lead performance in Hellboy 2 is a witty, touching portrayal of growing pains, uncertain love and existential angst. The Oscar voter just sees the big red suit, not the living breathing character inside it.

 

It was the same story last year, when Daniel Day-Lewis rightly nabbed the Best Actor. But the performance that arguably had an equally thunderous impact on cinema that year didn’t even score a nomination. After all the gushing praise of Daniel Craig’s bruised and brutal reinvention of James Bond on Casino Royale, he might as well have been a walking tuxedo mannequin come Oscar time.

 

Of course, there’s always the argument that blockbuster simply can’t compete; that they’re big, empty spectacles with no artistic value. But in the case of the very best – like The Dark Knight and Casino Royale – that argument is shot to tatters - snobbery be damned. A call, then, for this year’s Oscar voters to look past the florid make-up and screen-filling ka-booms and reward some of the world’s best movie-makers for making great cinema. After all, these are the films that keep Hollywood alive - that keep cinema-lovers’ pulses pumping.

 

2009 Awards Special  

And, if we look back over the recent years of Oscar, there is some real hope that The Dark Knight’s lost star might become only the fourth man in history to win a posthumous Oscar (after Casablanca screenwriter Sidney Howard, Network star Peter Finch and Road To Perdition cinematographer Conrad Hall). Or that Craig won't be overlooked in Quantum Of Solace...

 

Fantasy mega-epic Lord Of The Rings won Best Director and Best Picture  – grudgingly – at the third attempt, after Peter Jackson’s first two instalments has missed out on Best Picture to polished nonsense-fare A Beautiful Mind and Chicago. That year was special: thinking-man’s-blockbuster Master And Commander was also nommed, as was Johnny Depp’s riotous performance as Jack Sparrow in Pirates Of The Caribbean - the most successful blockbuster series of the modern age. Robert Downey Jr's crowd-pleasing turn in Iron Man could take heart from that.

 

Ridley Scott’s digitally constructed ancient epic Gladiator also did the double, nabbing Best Film and Best Actor for Russell Crowe’s tragic warrior Maximus. It was a big, bombastic performance, like the one that bagged Charlton Heston Best Actor for Ben-Hur - one of the original Golden Age blockbusters that mopped up at the Oscars.

 

Consider the role that won Denzel Washington his only Best Actor Oscar: not political icon Malcolm X, not political pugilist Robin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, but a murderous, foul-mouthed, corrupt cop in Training Day, beating Will Smith (transforming completely in Ali), Russell Crowe (as fractured maths genius John Nash in A Beautiful Mind) and Sean Penn in I Am Sam.

 

Does this mean that Ron Perlman could be Oscar nominated for playing a big, red son of Satan? Stranger things have happened. After all, they did give an Oscar to Shakespeare In Love.

 

2009 Awards Special