2004
Winner:
Million Dollar Baby won Best Picture this year. To someone not familiar with the film, it appears to be about boxing. A young female fighter gets a tough, old manager to train her and rises through the ranks. That part of the story flirts with being cliched, though it avoids it because of the strong performances by Hilary Swank and Clint Eastwood that make it more about the gritty characters than a rags to riches sports story. Morgan Freeman’s character and its voiceover, while flirting with cliches itself, manages to strengthen the boxing elements as well and he was a good choice to win an Academy award for his supporting role. However, more than halfway through the movie you find out it is not just about boxing, but about the paralysis Swank’s character must face because of boxing. If you are not prepared for this, the emotional shift is astonishing. You go from cheering to emotionally devastated, because the performances are strong and make you emotionally invested in the story. The gritty script is far from flawless, but it is solid and memorable and deserved to be nominated for the screenplay. Regarding the performances, I would say Swank is a brilliant actress, and her performance rightfully won her second Oscar, but her two best performances have been about a bumbling but likable country simpleton. I scrolled through a list of all her roles, and not another performance stands out. She is excellent in these similar roles, and the same can be said about Clint Eastwood. He has made a brilliant career out of playing stoic men with ambiguous morals, flawed men who are occasionally heroic even if they do not seek to be. This was one of his best performances, one of only two Oscar nominations for acting for him, and I am surprised there were not more. I won’t argue he should have won for acting, because Jamie Foxx was brilliant in Ray. He did, however, deserve his win for directing. No one knows how to give a film such grit as him, and to make that grit feel beautiful. I’m surprised the only technical nomination was for editing. Eastwood also knows how to bring out the best in actors. If you look at his long list of films as a director, he manages to pull the some of the strongest performances out of his actors and actresses. Out of the nominees, I would give it the nod, though it is not an overwhelming winner. It’s a strong winner, and a borderline classic, though the harshness of the last third of the film likely distance it from many viewers.
Nominees:
The Aviator was the weak link among the nominees. When I decided to see every single Best Picture nominee, and looked through the list of films to see which ones I had already viewed, my thoughts of this film went something along the lines of… that film was nominated? It tells the story of Howard Hughes, a man who was an aviation visionary but suffered from extreme OCD and descended into madness on occasion. While Hughes may be a fascinating character, the story they tell is less than captivating. They tried to make an epic out of something that wasn’t very epic. Even if it was nominated for the screenplay, the writing is serviceable, though not particularly great. To be fair, it is hard to tell a linear story about a life so uneven, but the story seems to devolve along with the subject. Perhaps it would have been better if they gave a little more attention to his childhood, perhaps through flashbacks, to explain why he still acted like a child who had never been told no, yet one with an inferiority complex. Though the story is ultimately unsatisfying, the film’s components were superb and, technically, the film is brilliant. It was directed by Martin Scorsese, and though it wasn’t his best, he did deserve his nomination for Best Director. The film won Oscars for cinematography, art direction, costume design, and editing, and was also nominated for sound mixing. The period piece details were outstanding, the music perfectly fitting, and the cinematography spectacular, specifically the crash scene, for example. But the strength of the film was the acting. Leonardo DiCaprio was outstanding and might have deserved the award for acting, though it is a close call. Alan Alda was solid in his Oscar nominated supporting role. But Cate Blanchett stole the show as Katharine Hepburn and definitely deserved her award. She owned the screen, just like Hepburn did. The film is not bad, but not one to see over and over again, and only somewhat deserving of a nomination.
If there was a clear second best of the nominees, it would be Finding Neverland, but that’s not saying much. It was a magical story but not always a magical movie. It was modestly charming and delightful, and definitely something of a breath of fresh air as far as typical film subjects go. The strength of the film was Johnny Depp, who is charming with his eccentricities and it’s a man-child role that’s perfect for him. They could have let him loose a bit more but he very much deserved his Best Actor nomination. The rest of the cast is solid but no one really stands out and no one else was nominated for an acting award. It has some stars in the cast but they mostly give perfectly average performances. Kate Winslet and Dustin Hoffman, for example, are brilliant in general but turn in performances that could have been given by any average actor. Some of the best supporting performances were given by the actor and actresses who put on the play within the movie. Kelly Macdonald stood out as Peter Pan, for example. Marc Forster directed the film and his career is full of a wide variety of films, many successful. This was definitely one of his artistic highlights and his only Best Picture nominee so far. Many of the technical aspects of the film are solid. The costumes and the settings are perfect and the film was nominated for art direction and costumes. The one award it did win was for the score but it’s nothing exceptional or memorable and, like the film as a whole, is underwhelming. The film is stuffy to start. It mostly meanders with little focus on where it’s going. It starts to take shape about a half hour in but it still does just enough to keep you interested and not a lot more. It starts to get a little magical as it hits its stride but just a little. For something that’s about a man who was a giant of magical realism it failed to use much magical realism to tell the story and that was a missed opportunity. In some ways it’s about childhood and innocence but it fails to capture the sense of wonder it might have. It’s also occasionally deep, but not at first. In some ways it’s about how pain can produce something beautiful in art, but it fails to really hit home. There’s a lot of sadness in the story but when they show it, it mostly feels stiff and a little devoid of emotion, at least until the end. It starts to pick up momentum eventually. After meandering for so much of the film suddenly they put on the finished play, but without showing much of the magic of how it was conceived and constructed, or otherwise came to life. It’s way too slow until all of a sudden it’s too fast. It does have a sweet and modestly powerful and rewarding ending in which you see some of the magical realism that could have been, and it almost makes you forget everything that came before, but it hardly makes up for the rest of the film being underwhelming. In the end, there are no memorable lines or scenes outside of the ending and the film is a little forgettable. It’s safe and sanitary even if the storyline was screaming to take risks. Is it anything close to being a Best Picture? No, but in an underwhelming year, it might have actually been one of the best choices.
Ray tells the story of legendary soul singer Ray Charles. It takes some liberties with the truth, but nothing that affects the storytelling or history in a notable way. It was directed by Taylor Hackford, who was nominated for Best Director. It was his only Best Picture nominee though he directed several films in the 1980s and 1990s that were memorable and high in the public consciousness. Perhaps the most notable was An Officer and a Gentleman. The film was excellently produced, especially in recreating the scenery of the time. It was nominated for costume design but not art direction, which seems a bit of an oversight. It won for sound mixing and was also nominated for editing. The acting was brilliant and the strength of the film. Jamie Foxx was superb as Ray Charles, well-deserving of the Oscar even if Leonardo DiCaprio was also brilliant in his role in The Aviator. The entire cast was stellar and it’s a little surprising one of them didn’t slip their way into a nomination for supporting acting. But all of the technical parts of the film that make it worth watching can’t make it a superb film overall. The story, while interesting, suffers from dreadful writing and stretches far too long. It seems to rely too much on the flawed greatness of Ray Charles and forgets to include a satisfying narrative arch. In fact, the entire film hinges on the charisma of Jamie Foxx to succeed, and while it modestly does, it could have been so much more. But it’s still interesting and somewhat moving film and deserving of a nomination for Best Picture.
Sideways was an odd movie, the kind of quirky humor that critics of the decade loved, though the story was only mildly interesting. It was in some ways a character study about two men who are only marginally likable and with whom most people cannot identify. I am generally a huge fan of Paul Giamatti, and this was a superb performance, but he is not quite the lovable loser that might have made the film better, despite the sheer force of his will. I find that more a product of the writing than his acting. It’s a bit surprising he was not nominated for an acting award, but Thomas Haden Church and Virginia Madsen were nominated for their supporting roles. The details of the writing are always good and occasionally brilliant, such as the discussion about why they like pinot noir, and wine in general. As for the larger story, it seems to ramble to an ultimately sweet ending, but feels like someone’s personal story that likely has little in it with which an audience can identify. It was adapted from a novel and won the award for screenplay, which I would argue against though it’s not a bad choice. It was directed by Alexander Payne, and was the first of what would be several Best Picture nominees for him so far. Though his future films would occasionally earn technical nominations, they primarily depend on the warm but quirky storytelling to be effective. Payne was nominated for Best Director for this one, but otherwise it had no technical nominations, and nothing about the production was exceptional or even close to it, though it is good enough. It does make you want to drink wine and visit California, however, and it probably works better as an advertisement for the state than as a Best Picture nominee. Though I would not argue against its nomination, and most of the time I enjoy the indie films that end up as critical darlings, why the critics lauded this one to the degree they did is beyond me.
Other notable films - Hotel Rwanda is on the borderline of warranting some consideration. While it had shortcomings, it was an undeniably important film and was better than some of the nominees. / House of Flying Daggers is a hypnotizing thing of beauty and better than some of the nominees. / If it was not so divisive, The Passion of the Christ might have received some consideration. Technically, it was a very good film. / Actually, the best movie of the year, in my opinion, was easily The Sea Inside, which won Best Foreign Language Film. It was an immaculately written movie about an important topic, the right to die, a subject on which the actual winner touches. The direction and acting were flawless. It’s a slow-paced movie that still manages to command your attention. It makes you think, and stays with you after and makes you think some more. It’s very rare to see a foreign film among the nominations, though some of the best movies are not American. / A Very Long Engagement is a visually beautiful film, with a tone that feels almost magical and perfect for a seemingly impossible love story. It’s easily better than most of the nominees.
Top Five: The Sea Inside, A Very Long Engagement, House of Flying Daggers, The Passion of the Christ, Million Dollar Baby