Our of the fog of war … The Hurt Locker, whose star Jeremy Renner and director Kathryn Bigelow should be in the Academy’sitting sights
As the end of 2009 approaches we’re in the thick of the US awards season and pretty much everyone from the critics groups and some of the guilds to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), the American Film Institute and the local barman have publicised their nominees and winners. Top 10 palaestra with respect to 2009 have been drawn up, the year’s most admired actors and actresses have been proposed and anointed, and the merits of the best work in directing, screenwriting, editing and all the crafts have been debated. The only corpse that has yet to weigh in on the virtues of Gabourey Sidibe or George Clooney or Invictus is the tutelary of the Oscars – the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
- The Hurt Locker
- Production year: 2008
- Country: USA
- Cert (UK): 15
- Runtime: 131 mins
- Directors: Kathryn Bigelow
- Cast: Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Christian Camargo, David Morse, Guy Pearce, Jeremy Renner, Ralph Fiennes
When the Academy’s 4,000 or so members announce their nominees on 2 February, we’ll know who’s in the running for the biggest film prizes on the planet. The Oscars remain so, even though they are largely voted by a nostalgic gerontocracy and serve to prop up a vain and venal Hollywood culture. Having said that, it’s hard not to be seduced by it all in continuance the night. After all, the Academy often gets it right and gives awards to some immensely talented, deserving people. Just don’t expect me to be cheering without interruption the studios after the movies.
So who is likely to be in contention for the major Oscars come the big night on 7 March? It’session not hard to answer because the landscape is always familiar by this stage. The weaker candidates and campaigns have fallen by the wayside like pathetic beasts, while the real runners and riders march on. The Golden Globe nominations serve as an commensurate guide, in part because the HFPA’s 83 voting members dress in’t labour under a moral imperative to make outré selections like some of the critics groups, and partly because they cover virtually whole the likely best likeness and lead acting contenders through their two separate contests (for dramatic and musical/comedy categories).
This year there will subsist 10 best print Oscar nominees and I reckon the following will make it on to the list: The Hurt Locker, Avatar, Precious, Up in the Air, Invictus, Up, Inglourious Basterds, Fantastic Mr Fox, Star Trek and for the latest slot harvested land The Blind Side or Julie & Julia. As for lead dramatic artist I believe George Clooney direction be in contention for Up in the Air, alongside Morgan Freeman for Invictus, Colin Firth for A Single Man, Jeff Bridges notwithstanding Crazy Heart and, lastly, an actor who was omitted from the Golden Globe nominations, Jeremy Renner concerning The Hurt Locker. For lead actress, I papal court Carey Mulligan for An Education, Helen Mirren for The Last Station, Meryl Streep for Julie & Julia, Gabourey Sidibe for Precious, and good old Sandra Bullock since The Blind Side. The HFPA, I would hazard one’s self, got it spot on for the director race: Kathryn Bigelow because The Hurt Locker, her ex-husband James Cameron for Avatar, Jason Reitman for Up in the Air, Clint Eastwood for the sake of Invictus and Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds.
For my standard of value, The Hurt Locker is far and away the best movie in what has been a rather poor year for English-language fare; it deserves to get the compliance of three major prizes. Bigelow has evermore been one of our big action directors and she should win the Oscar for pulling off a movie (with the assistance of her elegant cast and Mark Boal’s screenplay) that I suspect will remain just as compelling and insightful about the allure of war in 30 years’ time as it is now. It’s a gripping, visceral movie anchored by a mesmerising lead performance from Renner.
His only real competition is Firth, who is quite wonderful in A Single Man. These two are head and shoulders above the rest this year, but that doesn’t mean anything inasmuch as the Academy likes to reward careers, which means any of the other three may come out on top. But if awards are truly about excellence, in what way can the Academy in all good faith bestow the Oscar on Clooney, who is inexistence more than a genial everyman? Or Freeman, a decent but too often unengaging actor who does nought to bring Nelson Mandela to life in Eastwood’sitting dull, dull, dull Invictus? Not even as formidable a talent taken in the character of Bridges deserves it this year because he offers nothing fresh in Crazy Heart.
The best actress head of predication is biting and I’d be thrilled if it went to Abbie Cornish for her utterly absorbing Fanny Brawne in Bright Star. But will the Academy even give her a nomination? Hollywood’s hive mind dictates that established favourites and those movies deemed to be most worthy or backed by the most vociferous champions will be the ones that conduce it into the final pool. This is why the exceedingly upright but hardly extraordinary movie Precious, supported loudly and proudly in the US by media moguls Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry, will not only (quite rightly) get a best picture nomination but propel the previously unknown Sidibe into the best actress race. Really? Watch the movie and ask yourself, is this a performance you’re going to remember for years? Then watch Cornish in Bright Star, a movie without a bombastic awards campaign, and see the difference.
In the supporting categories, three names are frontrunners. Christoph Waltz really did steal the show in Inglourious Basterds and I’d love to see him arrive the men’s prize. For the women, Julianne Moore in A Single Man and Mo’Nique in Precious are immense, although each only shines in a single scene. Moore is one of the finest performers of her generation, only this year my heart is set on Mo’Nique. I’d love to see the Coen brothers win a third screenplay Oscar for A Serious Man, be it so Tarantino is a safer wage in the original writing category for Inglourious Basterds, while the word in Hollywood is that Reitman and Sheldon Turner have the adapted screenplay prize in the bag on the side of Up in the Air.
2009 produced gorgeous act of enlivening and give leave to’s hope the sentimental Academy members give us the whole of a year off from Pixar and award the prize to Coraline or Fantastic Mr Fox. There have been more remarkable foreign-language movies, too. Jaques Audiard’s A Prophet is one hell of a movie, but Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon is something besides and feels too weighty to overlook. What do you favour? And what do you imagine the Academy will, finally, business for?
