Watching the 2020 awards season move along to its awkward, yet inevitable, climax, it was interesting to see how, after a year of madness and uncertainty in terms of what the movie year would bring, the awards managed to be as polarizing, and predictable, as any other Oscar year. The precursor awards spelled out the eventual winners, while some categories were a shock to the end. The entire time, maybe because I have the 1996 movie year on the brain, I was thinking about that year’s Oscars as a comparison for what happened this past year, when “Nomadland” ended up the winner after much confusion, and not just because of the way the show’s producers messed with the award order.
“Dances With Wolves”, “The Silence of the Lambs”, “Unforgiven”, “Schindler’s List”, “Forrest Gump” and “Braveheart”. With the possible exception of Jonathan Demme’s 1991 thriller, has there been a run of predictable Best Picture winners like this in Oscar history? Venerable genres, epic run times, and greats finally getting their due are the order of the day. (Oh, and three of those are from actors-turned-directors.) All the while, the box-office was booming as Hollywood shifted from the mindless action films of the ’80s- with stars like Stallone and Schwarzenegger starring- to the new evolution of them in the “event” films, movies that largely traded smart scripts for the most remarkably advanced visual effects money could buy. If the audience movie landscape was shifting, the Oscar landscape wasn’t, with safe picks that managed some popularity, as well.
In 1996, a fascinating thing happened. OK, maybe not that fascinating if you were paying attention. The disparity between the box-office blockbusters and the award winners seemed to grow tremendously. The top five hits of that year are “Independence Day”, “Twister”, “Mission: Impossible”, “The Rock” and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”. The previous six years saw at least one film from the top 5 in the Best Picture race; none of those even came close. If you go into the top 10, you’ll find the only major studio film to net a Best Picture nomination in “Jerry Maguire”, and if you take Tom Cruise out of the lead role, that could have easily been a Fox Searchlight or Sony Pictures Classics release itself. What audiences were buying that year, the Academy didn’t. But, audiences weren’t adverse to the indie landscape, either, and it was thriving. I remember the relative successes of “Fargo” and “Emma” and “Lone Star” and “Trainspotting” and that year’s eventual winner, “The English Patient”, and it seemed like two box-office trends were happening at once. Was something happening with the Academy, as well? (The answer, as “Titanic” would make abundantly clear the next year, is no.)
Throughout the early ’90s, Miramax Films was starting to assert itself as the “indie” brand of choice for the Academy, and it’s one of the reasons the studio’s reputation was one of bullying power plays (the other was Harvey Weinstein’s predatory behavior towards women). This isn’t to say “The Crying Game”, “The Piano” and “Pulp Fiction” didn’t deserve their moments in the Oscar sun, but when- in 1995- they pushed the Italian romantic comedy “Il Postino” into the race on the strength of the narrative of honoring its late star, Massimo Troisi, and netting it an Oscar for Best Dramatic Score (on top of Picture, Director, Actor and Screenplay nominations), you could tell Miramax had figured out a way to game the system in its favor; it was only a matter of time when not only they would come out on top, but other indies would catch on.
Rewatching “The English Patient” for the first time in 24 years, it’s neither an embarrassing winner nor a deserving winner; it simply feels like Miramax figured out the way to get the Academy’s attention at the time. What did they want? Big, broad epics, and it’s hard not to think of Anthony Minghella’s film as exactly that. It has sweeping vistas, romantic longing and a story of scope and intimacy- it’s exactly the type of movie they had already honored with “Dances With Wolves” and “Braveheart” that decade. That wasn’t the shrewdest move Miramax had that year, though; they also had an undercard that was a film festival favorite, and had an actor- and performance- that screamed “Oscar bait.” Of course, I’m referring to Billy Bob Thornton’s “Sling Blade”. I haven’t seen that one since 1997, either; I’m curious how it hits me this time out. Regardless, it was the second consecutive instance of an actor winning a writing Oscar (after Emma Thompson’s “Sense and Sensibility” win) and led to the next big coup, which was Matt Damon and Ben Affleck riding the narrative train to Oscar glory the next year with “Good Will Hunting” for Miramax.
As Miramax figured out how to win Oscars, other indie distributors figured out how to get nominated for them. Grammercy would be the bridesmaid of the year with the Coen Brothers’s “Fargo”, Sony Picture Classics emphasized the “improvisatory” nature of Mike Leigh’s cinema with the critics darling, “Secrets & Lies”, and Fine Line struck a chord with Geoffrey Rush’s performance as pianist David Helfgott, who suffered a mental breakdown, in “Shine”. (That Miramax couldn’t quite land Best Actor for Thornton is due to Rush playing the “handicapped” card just a bit better.) In 1997, this was an exciting Oscar list, with “Jerry Maguire” fitting in nicely, despite its major studio support. And further down the nominees, the indies came to play, with Emily Watson breaking through in Lars Von Trier’s punishing “Breaking the Waves” for Best Actress; John Sayles netting an Oscar nomination for his screenplay for “Lone Star”; Barbara Hershey getting a nod for Jane Campion’s “The Piano” follow-up, “The Portrait of a Lady”; and Miramax also getting nominations for Diane Keaton in the forgettable “Marvin’s Room”; a screenplay nod for “Trainspotting”; and a Best Comedy Score win for “Emma”.
Looking at the nominations now, it’s remarkable how many came from Sony, or Sony subsidiaries, on the major studio side. In addition to “Jerry Maguire”, “Hamlet” hit it big in the technical categories (and a Screenplay nomination), and they got a couple of nominations for “The People vs. Larry Flynt” in Director and Actor, Lauren Bacall a Supporting Actress nomination in “The Mirror Has Two Faces” (which also got a Best Song nomination), and a Supporting Actor nomination for James Woods for “Ghosts of Mississippi”. Were the rest of the majors too busy counting their money? (Fox did get “The Crucible” a couple of nominations, and Paramount landed Edward Norton a nod for “Primal Fear”.) They did get some technical love for “The Ghost in the Darkness” (the Sound Editing winner), “Independence Day” (the Visual Effects winner), “Evita” (for the obligatory “original song to get the Oscar” for a famous musical) and “The Nutty Professor” (the Makeup winner), but with few exceptions in the major categories, they sat it out, and honestly, the Oscars were better for it.
As with the 2020 Oscars that just passed, there really are not any embarrassing Oscar choices in the major categories, even if I think “Fargo” should have won Picture and Director, and it would have been nice for Bacall- the living legend- to win Best Supporting Actress; with hindsight, Binoche’s surprise win was actually a deserving one- she was the heart of the film, and it was a terrific, binding performance for a structurally complicated film. And I can’t even argue with the Original Score winners that year- they were weak categories.
What would I have voted for? Here you go:
Best Picture: “Fargo”
Best Director: Joel Coen, “Fargo”
Best Actor: Tom Cruise, “Jerry Maguire”
Best Actress: Frances McDormand, “Fargo”*
Best Supporting Actor: William H. Macy, “Fargo”
Best Supporting Actress: Juliette Binoche, “The English Patient”*
Best Original Screenplay: Joel & Ethan Coen, “Fargo”*
Best Adapted Screenplay: John Hodge, “Trainspotting”
Best Foreign Language Film: N/A (Winner- “Kolya”)
Best Documentary Feature: “When We Were Kings”*
Best Documentary Short: N/A (Winner- “Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien”)
Best Live Action Short Film: N/A (Winner- “Dear Diary”)
Best Animated Short Film: N/A (Winner- “Quest”)
Best Original Dramatic Score: “Shine” (David Hirschfelder)
Best Original Musical or Comedy Score: “Emma” (Rachel Portman)*
Best Original Song: “That Thing You Do!” from “That Thing You Do!” (Adam Schlesinger)
Best Sound Effects Editing: “The Ghost and the Darkness”*
Best Sound: “The English Patient”*
Best Art Direction: “The Birdcage”
Best Cinematography: “Fargo”
Best Makeup: “Star Trek: First Contact”
Best Costume Design: “Emma”
Best Film Editing: “The English Patient”*
Best Visual Effects: “Independence Day”*
*- The actual Oscar winner.
At a time where blockbusters were king, and finding run in the Oscar race, one year stood out for its adventurous nominations, and the indie spirit living large. Am I referring to 1996, or 2020? Let’s put it this way- it’s not the year where a pandemic tipped the scales that way.
1996: The Movies and Me
1996 Movies: Kidnapping Audiences
Viva La Resistance!
Brian Skutle
www.sonic-cinema.com
