For some of the reasons I detailed in the Best Director thread, I think it's pretty clear to everybody that
The Reader and
Frost/Nixon have about no chance of winning. I'd be shocked if either got more than 5% of the total vote. So forget them.
I think like Best Director this is a three-way race, and therefore difficult to call.
MILK is the kind of socially relevant biopic the Academy likes, as well they should. But this one is no stuffy history or acidic polemic, but a charming and humanistic epic of one man's soul. That man's last act of his life was devoted to a public defense of his beliefs, but Van Sant's movie doesn't spend a lot of time cramming that stuff down your throat or stacking the deck with manipulative graphic scenes of Gay bashing or arch over-the-top bigots (the clips of Anita Bryant, not withstanding). But when you consider how all of that could have been played, the script and film exercise a lot of restraint, instead focusing on the personal toll these campaigns took on Harvey. And it's a great performance by Sean Penn (who I think will win Best Actor). Harvey's sexuality is presented in the film, but it is neither lurid and exploitative nor is it completely neutered or downplayed. It is presented in a matter-of-fact fashion without pushing buttons, which makes his losses in love feel real and universal. That
MILK's release corresponds with the passing of Proposition 8 in California this past November only helps it, both to put it into both an immediate and historic context and, in Oscar voting terms, to put it in the front of people's minds instead of the back.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is an epic romantic fantasy. Those of us who like it got wrapped up in it all, despite the conceit of its plot, and its detractors just plain don't get what we all like about it. The haters can't be talked into liking it, and surely an Oscar win or seven will not sway them either. I suspect there are going to be more who are in tune with it among the voting body of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences than among the professional critics or the public at large. It is a big, sweeping, dreamlike epic and even though it isn't exactly "light" it is old fashioned Disney compared to the darkness of recent winners
No Country for Old Men, The Departed, Crash and
Million Dollar Baby. If the voting body wants a return to something more hopeful and romantic among the role of Best Pictures,
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button may be just the antidote.
Of course if they want to go
much happier, you can't beat the feeling you get walking out of the theatre from
Slumdog Millionaire, which with all of its dark moments coming from the dirtiest and bleakest beginnings has a throughline of a romantic fantasy with a very happy ending, even with a triumphant dance number under the end credits.
Slumdog is surely the most emotionally engaging and ultimately "fun" of the five nominees. But is that going to translate into it being namd Best Picture?
If there's one main obstacle in the way of
Slumdog's path to the biggest of Oscar gold it may be that its that it isn't an "American" production. Remember, the Oscar voters are made chiefly of all the guilds of the American movie business. So the question becomes is
Slumdog so good that the electricians and front office personnel and third assistant directors and visual effects supervisors and such who don't have any friends on the
Slumdog crew nor even know their names, are they going to vote for a Picture made by strangers rather than one of the homegrown pics like
MILK or
Button where they know virtually everybody and see them at guild meetings and whatnot? Some of the financing and distribution for
Slumdog is U.S, dollars, but this was a U.K. production shot mostly with an Indian crew and without one single American of any note in the cast.
So you have to look back at Oscar history. What "non-American" movies have won in the past few decades?
Shakespeare in Love and
The English Patient, but both were being pimped heavily by Harvey Weinstein back when Miramax was still Miramax. Bertolucci's
The Last Emperor, but that was an old style David Lean-type historical bio-epic. I think
Chariots of Fire may be the best corollary. Not because it was as moving as
Slumdog, but it was an entirely British production. It was also one of the biggest Oscar upsets ever, beating out Beatty's epic
Reds, the sentimental favorite
On Golden Pond (which won Best Actor and Actress for its aging stars) and the Spielberg/Lucas popcorn masterpiece
Raiders of the Lost Ark.
So is
Slumdog, as enjoyable as it is, going to break into those ranks? I don't think so. It's going to get plenty of votes, to be sure, but I don't see it rising to the top. So I think it comes down to
MILK or
Benjamin Button, and even with the recent loss of
Brokeback Mountain a few Oscars back, I think this time
MILK will be named Best Picture. But it's one of the closer races in recent years.
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