Award shows for film (and in most other forms of art) are
essentially redundant. Recipients of these awards can surely be chuffed with receiving
them, but ultimately they do not represent the overall success of the film as a
piece of art, and it definitely does not place a film above other films which
have not won awards. This is blatantly obvious in the world of music where you
have artists such as Justin Bieber and One Direction as shoe-ins for awards,
but it is less obvious with film because there is a certain amount of perceived
prestige that goes with an Academy Award. This is an Award that you will receive
after a chosen selection of ‘experts’ including academy members and critics
vote for a majority, unlike the shit award shows which allow the general public
to vote for the winner. However, the Oscars still manages to fuck a lot of shit
up every year.
This year in the best picture category we were treated to
some distantly ‘okay’ films as opposed to literally the best possibly films of
the year. The films I am refereeing to are The
Imitation Games and The Theory of
Everything. They are both Biopics of which the stories themselves are quite
interesting, with Alan Turing’s efforts to crack the Nazi code, and Stephen
Hawking’s genius and decline in physical health. However, the way that these
stories are presented is so formulaic that it is unbearable at times, and i don’t
even mean strictly in terms of progression of story. Throughout both films the
cinematography was awful, just straight shots of one person in a room then
switch to a straight shot of someone else. Little Movement. Little Imagination.
As Alfred Hitchcock famously said with regards to this back and forth way of
shooting scenes “All i see is photographs of people talking, and it bears no
relation to the art of the cinema” It limited both films and for me shelved
them as ‘safe’ films.
The cost of whoring out these safe, samey films has been to
the detriment of more inventive and interesting films, which were better in
many ways. My thoughts are drawn to the lack of nominations for both Interstellar and Nightcrawler. Both films were left out from the Best Picture
category where and I feel they easily should have been, and Jake Gyllenhaal I
feel was extremely hard done by to not be nominated for best actor for his
creepy performance in Nightcrawler.
The final major thing
which caught my eye from browsing the nominees was the omission of The Lego Movie from the Best Animated
Feature category. This was one of the biggest box office smashes of the year,
and its not as if it did a Transformers either, The Lego Movie was also critically acclaimed. To add insult to
injury, Boxtrolls managed to get a
nomination out of nowhere, a crudely animated film about trolls that live in
boxes. Whatever.
As i said, Award shows don’t
matter. Great pieces of art will live on regardless of whether they won an
award or not. Just be thankful that
Award shows like this exist and that not all of them are public voted,
otherwise I would suspect Mrs Brown’s
Boys D’Movie would be taking home Best Picture
Conor M.
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