Academy shuns the blockbuster

Crash writer and producer Paul Haggis and Cathy Schulman with Jack Nicholson.
10 April 2012

It was more than just a surprise. When Paul Haggis's Crash won the Best Picture Oscar early this morning, you could almost hear the gasps around the film world - particularly as Ang Lee won the Best Director Oscar for Brokeback Mountain a few minutes beforehand.

The two awards generally go together, and Brokeback Mountain, the tale of two cowpokes in love with each other, had been the hottest favourite. When Ang Lee, the first Asian to win Best Director, stepped up to the stage, it seemed certain his film would triumph.

How did it happen? Perhaps because a large number of Academy members live and work in Los Angeles, and Crash, which told the stories of a dozen denizens of that city as they try to negotiate racism, violence and bigotry, was very near to them.

Brokeback Mountain, nominated eight times, won only three of the categories, adding Best Adapted Screenplay (Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana) and Best Score to Ang Lee's award.

For the Brits it was a lean year, but things were brightened by Rachel Weisz's well-deserved Best Supporting Actress award for her part as the murdered wife in The Constant Gardener, and by Nick Park, our most prolific living Oscar winner, who took his fourth gong for Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

We couldn't, in all honesty, have expected more. Park's achievement is little short of phenomenal, making Wallace and Gromit among the most successful cartoon characters in film history.

Crash apart, it was a night for favourites. Philip Seymour Hoffman and Reese Witherspoon won the main acting awards for Capote and Walk The Line, though George Clooney winning the Best Supporting Actor gong for Syriana was more of a surprise. His fine directing effort, Good Night, and Good Luck, got nothing.

A popular, and expected Oscar, went to March of the Penguins as Best Documentary, a French film tarted up with an American commentary and music and one of the most successful non-fiction films of the past 10 years.

This was a year when Hollywood finally decided to take little or no account of boxoffice success in favour of films generally considered almost in the art market bracket. The total world take so far of all the Best Film nominees is just over $200 million, far less than the cost of most of the big budget movies of the year.

That's the real story of the Oscars 2006, and it remains to be seen whether the general public watching the broadcast from LA will be as interested in the winners as they generally are. If the audience is down, Hollywood and the Academy may change their minds about going up-market next time round.

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