By Roger Beebe, April 2008

Now that the traumatic memory of Daniel Day Lewis’s Broadway pirate outfit has faded from memory (but really, two hoop earrings? and that floppy ‘do? really?), it might be time to reflect back on the year in film and to see just what it is that we can learn from the 2008 Oscars.

 It’s perhaps not radical to suggest that the Oscars don’t always go to the film that history will judge to be the best of the year’s crop, but when you actually get down to cases, it still can be pretty shocking.  For example, in 1941, the award for Best Picture went to John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley. It’s a nice film (especially if you’re fond of Welsh folk songs), but it would be hard to imagine selecting that over two other notable releases that year: John Huston’s directorial debut, The Maltese Falcon, the first and arguably the greatest of the film noirs; and the film that’s widely hailed (correctly or not) as The Greatest Film Ever Made, Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane. 

One might argue that 1941 was long enough ago that this shocking selection was simply a matter of tastes shifting over time (that is, this only looks shocking in retrospect), but such oversights have happened much more recently too.  For example, in 1976 the Academy deemed Rocky more worthy of Best Picture than either Taxi Driver or Network, both undisputable classics.  (For what it’s worth, Rocky’s a good enough film—and was probably better before all the sequels corrupted its legacy—but it’s not necessarily an enduring work of the seventh art.) In 1979, Apocalypse Now, Manhattan, and Being There were passed over in favor of Kramer vs. Kramer—again, not a terrible film, but hardly one for the ages.  (Does anyone even watch Kramer vs. Kramer anymore?)  Of those three neglected 1979 masterpieces, only Apocalypse Now was even nominated.  Or how about 2000, when the Academy in its infinite wisdom couldn’t find a Better Picture than Ridley Scott’s sword-and-sandal epic Gladiator.  Granted it was a relatively off year, but there were at least some great (unnominated) international films like Lars von Trier’s musical foray, Dancer in the Dark, or Edward Yang’s lovely Yi Yi, or Alejandro Gonzâlez Iñârritu’s Amores Perros, the film that launched the Mexican New Wave on the world stage.  And speaking of the Academy’s neglect of international cinema, it’s shocking to know that they even totally missed the French New Wave, with none of Jean-Luc Godard’s film ever even being nominated for Best Foreign Language Film (much less Best Picture) and François Truffaut only finally getting the Foreign Language nod in 1973, well after he’d made the films for which he’s now known best.

Which brings us up to 2008, and the awards that the Academy recently bestowed on last year’s crop of films.  Despite everything that I said about their horrible track record, my impression is that this year the Academy actually got it right.  While the foreign language films remained the disaster they always are, with some of the best foreign films not even receiving nominations, there were a number of unquestionably great films year—No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly—and all of them miraculously got nominated for either Best Picture or Best Director with No Country… actually picking up both of these awards.  Why did the Academy get it right for a change?  Maybe it’s simply that these films were so good, it made it much harder to go wrong.  If you look down at the second tier of Oscar nominees, you do see a lot of the kinds of films that would’ve competed for the top prizes in other years—the rise-and-fall biopic (La Vie en Rose), the tragic costume drama (Atonement), the quirky indie film (Juno, Lars and the Real Girl), the less quirky indie dysfunctional family drama (The Savages), etc.  These are all pretty good films and are well worth seeing, but they may not prove to be enduring masterpieces like No Country… et al.  So bravo this year, Academy voters.  Let’s hope that the films of 2008 make your selection equally easy next year.

(Did I fail to mention that Norbit was nominated for an Academy Award?   It was.  Just goes to show that even in a good year for Oscar, they’re hardly perfect.)

OSCAR NOMINEES RELEASE SCHEDULE

out now:

No Country for Old Men

Michael Clayton

Eastern Promises

In the Valley of Elah

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Into the Wild

Away From Her

La Vie en Rose

American Gangster

Atonement

Gone Baby Gone

Ratatouille

Once

No End in Sight

Sicko

Sweeney Todd

There Will Be Blood

Juno

Lars and the Real Girl

upcoming:

The Savages (April 22)

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (April 29)

I’m Not There (May 6) 

Persepolis (TBA)