| There were no surprises at the Academy Awards The Oscars were presented at the Kodak Cinema in Los Angeles in front of a large crowd of recognizable people. The main result of the ceremony was clear from the very beginning: this year was supposed to be the year of the final and irrevocable triumph of The Lord of the Rings - and it became it. For the first time since Bernard Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, the film The Return of the King received prizes in all the categories for which it was nominated (and there were no less than eleven of them), and was one of the three most deserved Oscar winners, along with Ben Hur. and Titanic. The third series of The Lord of the Rings (and in fact, of course, the entire trilogy as a whole) received an Oscar as the best film of the year, and in addition, director Peter Jackson was awarded gold figures; the art team of Grant Major, Dan Henna and master Tolkien illustrator Alan Lee; Richard Taylor and Ngila Dixon, costume designers; editor Jamie Selkirk; make-up artists Peter King and the same Richard Taylor; composer Howard Shore; "From the West" songwriters Howard Shore, Frances Walsh and singer Annie Lennox; the literary adaptation team of Philippa Boyens and the Jackson-Walsh couple, as well as the special effects and sound teams. Thus, Peter Jackson's epic is forever inscribed in the Hollywood annals, and next time you will no longer have to worry about the New Zealand nugget and his comrades and remember that on earth, in addition to The Lord of the Rings, there are some other films.
But if with “Lord” everything happened exactly as it should have happened, then those few nominations where they did without him raise much more questions. It is still absolutely unclear what the most respectable academic audience found special in the completely helpless film “Monster”, where one of the most beautiful American actresses, Charlize Theron, portrays a prostitute and a murderer and quite deliberately completely disfigures herself with makeup. However, it was this role that was recognized as the best. And it certainly doesn’t go anywhere that film academics ignored Bill Murray’s masterpiece benefit performance in “Lost in Translation,” preferring to him the professional, but absolutely ordinary and calculated role of Sean Penn in “Mystic River.” Penn has had half a dozen roles of adequate strength and will probably have as many more. Watching an actor who had done a good job climb onto the Kodakov stage, while a truly brilliant actor applauded him, remaining in place, was simply uncomfortable. The Academy missed a miracle (even two, because Johnny Depp, nominated in the same category, deserved the award no less than Bill Murray) and is now forced to bear this indelible stain. The recognition of best supporting actor for Tim Robbins, who in the same “Mystic River” performed at his usual strength, but nothing more, also left a dubious feeling. The triumph of Renee Zellweger, who was awarded a golden statuette for her supporting role in Cold Mountain, was also predictable and did not evoke positive emotions: everything goes according to plan, and nothing more.
In essence, there are only a few other winners left: Sofia Coppola, nominated both as best director (by the way, the first woman in Oscar history to be nominated in this category) and as screenwriter, received only one statuette - as playwright. Peter Weir's multi-nominated and much-loved Master of the Seas was singled out for its sound editing and Russell Boyd's cinematography alone. The best animated film was, of course, “Finding Nemo”, the best short documentary was “The Heart of Chernobyl” by Marianne De Leo, and the long one was “The Fog of War” by Errol Morris and Michael Williams, and the short cartoon was “Harvey Crumpett” by Adam Elliot, and the best fiction short film was the film adaptation of William Faulkner's story "Two Soldiers" by Aaron Schneider and Andrew Sachs.
Perhaps this year there were only two nominations about which any doubts were impossible: this is the award for the best non-English language film, which rightfully went to the brilliant “Invasion of the Barbarians” by the French-speaking Canadian Denis Arcand, and an honorary “ Oscar for his contribution to cinema, which was received by comedian Blake Edwards, who staged a crazy and incredibly funny show at the awards in the style of his regular character, Inspector Clouseau from the Pink Panther film series.
But in general, the current ceremony, which has become the longest in history (about four hours), could take place fifteen times faster. If the film academics hadn’t tried to intrigue out of nowhere, but simply, without letting Peter Jackson and his comrades leave the stage, gave them all the statuettes at once and calmly went home. Re-watch Lost in Translation. Stanislav F. ROSTOTSKY |
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