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Best Picture
| THE WINNER:
Not to sound like a hypocrite but watching both films again
I realized that even if they had made the right choice, I still wouldn’t
agree with them. That’s because I followed both films with Todd Solondz’s Happiness. In the game of word association, I equate Happiness with the word “challenging”
and it is challenging even to those who appreciate it. Solondz’s film
isn’t out to be loved, it’s out to be a sock in the gut to our
sanctimonious moral fibers and exposes the kinds of people who keep “American
Justice”, “Jerry Springer”, “The National Enquirer”
and Ken Starr alive and kicking. What works in Happiness is that Solondz stares at his characters but
doesn’t stare them down. They have a take-it or leave-it quality
that keeps us watching. He never does the thinking for us. We watch the
events in these lives unfold but we are asked to make our own judgement.
As the characters spiral into the abyss, beginning with Joy’s childishly
hilarious breakup the movie spirals deeper and deeper into depravity as
the situations and machinations grow darker and more grotesque. From Joy’s
romantic troubles, to the porno geek, down to the murder and finally down
to the pedofile, Solondz dares us to look into the abyss. And if you doubt
that you would be the candidate for voyeurism, ask yourself why “CSI”
and “American Justice” and “Forensic Files” are
so popular. |
Roberto Benigni (La Vita è bella)
Benigni is ingenious in the way that he establishes this ruse as a way of shielding his son from the horrors of the death camp to keep the boy’s chin up. There are bold echoes to Chaplin in this movie especially in his performance which shows Benigni using his unique gift for physical comedy - this is the movie that will define him. Yet, if I must carp, it must be on the point that I didn’t find anything really deep in Guido's character and the ending of the movie seems a little cold. Guido's son lives through the occupation but Guido doesn’t and the boy never asks what happened to his father, the film ends with a joyous reunion but a with that thread hanging. At the other end of the spectrum, also in the midst of war (but finding nothing to laugh about) is my choice for Best Actor of 1998, Dennis Quaid in Predrag Antonijevic's gut-wrenching Savior. If Benigni’s role in Life is Beautiful will define his work, Quaid’s dark turn in this movie should define his. Yet, this is not a movie that many people can sit through especially those drawn to Quaid’s usual charm. Quaid abandons all the things that have made him a movie star. Gone is the ordinary guy ebullience, the smooth ladies man demeanor and that broad trademark smile. All those things are gone and what we get is probably the most painful and effective character he is ever likely to play. Quaid plays Joshua Rose who, as Savior opens, it sitting in a Parisian Café with his family when the place is bombed by Muslim terrorists and both his wife and son are killed. In a rage, he walks down the street to a monastery and murders some Muslims in prayer. Joshua disappears, becoming a faceless soldier in the French Foreign Legion, shedding his name and becoming simply known as “Guy”. Six years later we find him fighting in the war between the Serbians against the Bosnians, on the side of the Serbs. The official record about this conflict tells us that the war was fought over religion but Guy understands that this conflict has less to do with any religious issues and more to do with an animalistic idealism that allows an epidemic of misogyny, cruelty and rape to flourish. He enters a landscape that has adopted an "eye for an eye" mentality that has given rise to a flurry of heartless thugs hiding behind a military uniform (I’m not pointing any fingers I am just going by what is portrayed in this film). We find that Guy isn’t exactly a saint either. Killing at will with his friend Dominic (Stellan Skarsgaard), Guy uses a sniper rifle to kill a young boy looking for his lost goat. A flashback shows a Bosnian girl with a grenade killing Guy’s best friend. It’s obvious that Guy has given into this senseless revenge nonsense because he blames all Muslims for the death of his wife and child. There is a turning point. Guy and his fellow soldier Goran detain a Serbian
woman that Goran knows and decides to kill. The woman
was raped and is now pregnant with a Bosnian child and in Goran’s
twisted thinking she should be executed for the crime of not killing herself.
It is that kind of cold twisted logic that causes Guy to have a change
of heart and kill Goran to save the woman’s life. This breaks Guy’s
cold exterior because he decides to go against his oath and be a protector
instead of marking woman, named Vera an easy target. The only problem
is that Vera understands the twisted logic and refuses to nurse her Bosnian
child. Most actors would instantly turn down a role like Guy, but Quaid abandons
his public persona in favor of a performance that is haunted and haunting. His
body language is a study in frustration and grief and he stays true to
the character, he sees in Guy that he has suffered a deep spiritual and emotional wound that cannot be healed. This isn’t one of those soppy movies where the wounded
soldier is brought out of his misery by the love of a good woman. In light
of the story. Savior is not a fun movie but it is an enlightening one
and Quaid is able to give it the right amount of depth and weight. Even
in the end, which is not happy in the conventional sense, Guy seems to
have been given a ray of hope even if it is only a pin-prick of light in the darkness. |
THE WINNER:
Of the nominees, my favorite is Cate Blanchett as Queen Elizabeth I in Elizabeth. She
isn’t just stuffed into a lot of pretty costumes Blanchett really
makes the 16th century monarch come alive, brilliantly conveying the frustrations
of the queen who had to learn how to run a country with the power that
is suddenly thrust into her hands. The trick to Ally Sheedy’s performance is that Lucy looks weathered and
well-seasoned. We don’t feel that she is just a character that exists
for the camera. The ending allows her a life-goes-on quality and it doesn’t
cheat. My feeling is that it would have been outside her nature to make
the change that we were expecting. The opening sentence of Sheedy’s
epitaph is going to begin with four words: “Brat Pack” and
“Breakfast Club” but for me she is going to be remembered
for a role in which she put her teen image behind her and really took
a chance to create a real character, the best kind, one with a past, a
present and a very questionable future. |
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