Oscars 2010: The Hurt Locker is a worthy Best Film winner
The prevalence of odds-on favourites in all the acting awards diverted attention to the big struggle of the night, for best film: Avatar against The Hurt Locker. The giant, all-encompassing, unprecedentedly successful sci-fi blockbuster against the small, intense, thoughtfully conceived war movie. Commerce versus art, if you will.
I’m delighted The Hurt Locker won out in the end. Kathryn Bigelow’s triumph in The Hurt Locker’s award for best film is equalled by her own award as best director – the first woman in Oscar history thus to be honoured.
But I have to admit, I couldn’t see it happening. It was one thing, surely, for the BAFTAs to reward Bigelow in these two categories, thus delivering a snub to Hollywood by shutting out James Cameron and Avatar. Yet given the amount of money Avatar has grossed - well over $2 billion worldwide at this point - surely the Academy voters would take the broader view, calculate the benefits this film has brought to an entire industry that currently feels beleaguered on a number of fronts, and act differently when the Oscars were handed out? ‘Follow the money,’ it seemed, was the only conceivable logic.
As it happened, the BAFTAs were prescient, and Bigelow duly cleaned up.
There are two ways of looking at this result. Let’s take the positive one first. In its virtuosity, The Hurt Locker is in the tradition of many previous Oscar winners. It is hard-hitting yet complex, hugely intelligent and mature. In its examination of the lives of a US bomb disposal unit in Iraq, it never descends to making cheap political points about the war, but merely states that the business these soldiers are involved in is dangerous, grim and dispiriting. It is sceptical on the subject of heroism and heartbreaking about the adrenalin rush this work involves, traumatising its participants past a point where they can adjust to normal life.
And as its director, Bigelow puts her cameras right in the heart of the bomb disposal action, creating such an intense atmosphere that you’d be forgiven for forgetting to breathe. All in all, then, a worthy Best Film winner.
Theories about Avatar’s defeat will be aired for months. Was it a petulant, envious snub to the film’s stupendous box-office success? Well, maybe. Was it a personal slight to Cameron, whose overbearing, brusque manner alienates many people? Possibly, though Cameron is not alone in the film industry in being a prickly, difficult person. Those very same qualities never prevented Miramax’s Harvey Weinstein from collecting a truckload of Oscars over the years.
I’m now wondering if Avatar’s implicit promise, that 3-D will ride to the rescue of the film industry, has already been found wanting by Academy voters. As 3-D movies go, it’s unquestionably state of the art – but does it really hold out that much hope for the future? Avatar was the best part of five years in the making; it is, if you like, a glorious one-off that offers no easy solution to studios who must release films on an industrial, assembly-line basis: you cannot pull an Avatar out of the hat three or four times a year.
Intriguingly, Avatar’s Oscar setback comes at the very time when industry insiders are voicing doubts about 3-D: will it soon come to look like a short-lived craze? Notably, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland has done extraordinary business in this, its opening weekend, but almost no-one thinks its 3-D effects are a patch on Avatar’s. It relies on virtues other than being in 3-D.
In other awards, Jeff Bridges finally cracked his Academy Awards jinx at the fifth time of asking, though his role as a washed-up country singer looking for redemption was in Crazy Heart, a film that couldn’t qualify for even an expanded list of 10 Best Films. Bridges will now surely become an Oscar night staple – maybe as soon as next year, for playing Marshal Reuben Cogburn in the Coen Brothers’ remake of True Grit.
Sandra Bullock had a big role in The Blind Side, a film reviled by most critics but apparently beloved by middle America – including evangelical Christian groups whose adherents attend cinemas only selectively. Bullock’s Oscar gives her the chance to break free from unrewarding romantic comedies - and frankly, her time in that genre was running out. She’ll now be a serious contender for meaty, major dramatic roles.
Christoph Waltz, whose performance in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds was the most enjoyable acting work to be seen all year, has surely secured himself a lucrative career as a character actor with his Oscar. As for Mo’Nique, the co-star of Precious, her success is more likely to be a one-off.
Apart from costume designer Sandy Powell’s Oscar, Britain had a disappointing night. For the past few weeks, Carey Mulligan has been the pin-up of choice in our newspapers, with picture editors featuring her on front pages on the slightest of pretexts, as if willing her to Oscar victory. But her role in An Education, while delightful, stood little chance against powerhouses like Bullock or Meryl Streep in Julie and Julia. Mulligan has time on her side; she’ll be back.
Colin Firth’s restrained, delicate performance in A Single Man was worthy of a nomination, but again could not withstand the all-American juggernaut of Bridges’ campaign. The estimable Firth was hardly short of work even before his nomination, though it was a worthy acknowledgement of a thoughtful actor.
As for Sandy Powell, it’s time to underline what a world-class costume designer we have living on these shores. This was her third Oscar – she has won previously for The Aviator and Shakespeare in Love – and she has been nominated on five other occasions. Her success this year is all the more remarkable for her work in a largely overlooked film, The Young Victoria. Powell is good news all round; we should be celebrating her.
Nick Park, Wallace and Gromit’s creator, has won four Oscars in his time, but this year was not one of them. A Matter of Loaf and Death lost out in the animated short category; it’s the first time another animator has pipped Park to an Academy Award. Unlike 2009, in which Slumdog Millionaire triumphed, this just wasn’t Britain’s year.