Oscar night is approaching fast, and the movie fans everywhere are putting down their bets for who will take home the statue for best director and best picture. The academy has a tendency to choose the dramatic films over the fast paced, action blockbusters, but this year there is really only a two way battle between Avatar, and The Hurt Locker. Both are action movies, but one has broken nearly every box office record, while the other remains largely unseen. The other nominees are heavy underdogs, and as there are eight underdogs this year, I would wager that none will even come close to the frontrunners. What makes this Oscar race special is that Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow was once married to James "King of the World" Cameron himself, and the former spouses will duke it out to the death on March 7, But who will come out on top? and who should?
Let's start with looking at what the Academy tries to do. One of its functions is to promote movies as an art form rather than popcorn entertainment. This is why it tends to ignore movies like Transformers, and favor movies like Precious (which I haven't seen). Even though the Academy is oftentimes egregiously annoying (I still haven't forgiven them for not even nominating The Dark Knight for best picture, which both hurt their credibility and showed open disdain for the public and most critics), still it performs a valuable function which is to make people go out and see movies that they might not otherwise see. Between the months of January and March, many people will find themselves stumbling into the art house theaters to catch a movie which might actually be good rather then showing up to the nearest Regal Cineplex to fork over their money for a movie they're already convinced will be above average at best, below the lowest common denominator more often. If the Academy even gets a few people to take a chance on a good movie every once in a while, it is a positive force in the world, even if it is pretentious and self-aggrandizing.
Another important function of the Academy, is that it might make a viewer reexamine a past movie which he may have shrugged off on first viewing, but it might deserve a second chance. Most recently for myself, that movie was Titanic, and it surprised me a bit. When the movie came out it was over hyped and quickly became such a cultural force that separating the film itself from its surroundings was nearly impossible. Citizen Kane is similar when you watch it for the first time. The position these films occupy in our culture makes it harder to see them for what they are. For Titanic it's cultural position is still too near for me to become objective, and every time the stupid love theme played (you know it, the one by Celine Dion) I shuddered. Still, the movie, if inferior to one of the other nominees from 1997, L.A. Confidential, is a great example of an exciting blockbuster which builds up themes and take them to a satisfying conclusion. Cameron, as he always does, paints his lead characters in absurdly broad strokes. So much so that when Billy Zane's character begins chasing Kate & Leo around the ship, he reminded me most of the hilariously campy villain played by Gary Oldman in "The 5th Element." The lines drawn between people who love money (the rich ones), and people who love people (the poor ones) are so blatant that it's difficult to take them seriously until the end. What the film does well is equalize, for the most part, the good and the bad in people when faced with death. As we watch the characters accept their fates, both rich and poor behave the same. Both struggle to survive, and the ones that do are often the ones who are willing to behave immorally. If only Cameron had spent a little more time painting some shades of gray instead of patronizing poor people by proclaiming their supposed virtues (other rich white people as well as long winded Russian novelists tend to do this. Probably to assuage their guilt about taking advantage of the lower class, but I digress). Maybe it's partly because I love epics, and maybe because the movie is pretty good after all (not great), but I do understand why this movie won its best picture awards, and I approve that the Academy was willing to support a movie which combined blockbuster effects with thematic elements.
I'm not sure if the plot of Avatar holds up in the same way as the Titanic does. Though Avatar has anti-war and environmentalist themes, it lacks any progression of those themes. There isn't the same "oh shit" moment that Titanic has at the horror of watching the boat sink, and the ways in which different characters face their guilt. The closest Avatar has to something like that is the discovery of how the Pandora wildlife is connected like a network of computers, and the obvious point about our own ecosystems that follows.
What Avatar is praised most for is, however, the incredible world and the cgi that brings it to life in 3-D. I felt watching the movie that I was experiencing something similar to what people saw when 2001: A Space Odyssey came out. There has never been a movie made quite like Avatar in terms of special effects, or one that has used the new 3-D technology not as a gimmick, but as an essential part of bringing a director's vision to life. The problem with Avatar is, that without it's 3-D trappings, it wouldn't have even gotten a nomination, and preserving the film for posterity might be difficult because our current TV's and computers can't display the new digital 3-D. If Avatar's plot isn't half good enough to win a best picture, and it's legacy may never be a film to watch over and over again but instead only known for its box office records, then there might not be any purpose in giving this movie a Best Picture Award.
It probably won't win anyways, and if the Hurt Locker wins, the Academy has done well by me. Maybe when the Hurt Locker does win people will actually go see it.
Oh, and if the title still needs to be answered, I'm okay with the Titanic winning, but I don't think Avatar should.
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