Seems like every year, there are a few great movies that despite
good reviews, initial studio support, technical excellence, and
immediate and permanent insinuation into our brainpans, don't get much
respect come awards time. You know what we mean. For us, the prime
example will always be Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,
which blew our minds in 2004 but opened way out of awards season -- and despite the efforts of all involved was way too committed to being a sci-fi/head movie/freakout to ever really have a shot at more than its single Oscar win, for Original Screenplay. (And that was in a movie year that strikes us today as pretty darn boring.)
So
behold, in honor of Eternal Sunshine and movies like it, we present the
Lacuna
List: our way of saying "Good show!" to movies that we're pretty sure
will slip through the cracks come Oscar time. We got a few of
nominations for 2007 -- maybe y'all got some too? Have a look and let
us know what you think.
PS: Anyone know how to make a photo look like an award? We are *so* bad at Photoshop.
Right now, our list consists of two rapturous and bloody historical epics that, despite genre
conventions, thrived on revealing the gnawing, uncathartic nature of
violence and its aftereffects -- which puts them both at a disadvantage to the similarly-themed, far more Oscar bait-y No Country for Old Men. And something should be said of this, because as much as we love the Coens, nearly everything about No Country...
does scream "Give the Coens some Oscars!" From the rejiggering
of their credits to shared director and producer billing, to the "Best of the
Coens" quality that characterizes much of the narrative ("here's the
roadside murder, here's a hick behind a counter, here's the mangled
language..."), it's a movie that from top to
bottom seems crafted to win awards based as much on an
accumulated respect for the filmmakers as the film itself. And God bless
Joel and Ethan, 'cause they are totally due -- but that ain't what
we're talking about here, is it?
What we're talking about here is a movie like the Dutch WWII thriller Black Book, which had the
temerity to depict war without making it colorless or austere and the the gaul to suggest that sexual pleasure was not only possible but an essential part
of survival in a world gone mad and determined to stay there -- not exactly what the Academy likes hearing these days. Oh, how Black Book's smashing star, Carice van Houten, commands the screen here, popping in and out of fabulous
dresses and various beds as she schemes to undermine the foundering
German occupation. (We
are dreading seeing van Houten play Nazi-Tom Cruise's wife in Valkyrie,
since we couldn't think of a less sensual, more thankless role for a total hottie if we tried.) And how nimbly director Paul Verhoeven capitalizes
on both van Houten's luscious gams and considerable acting chops to carry his audience along through this dark, amoral story.
This movie
seemed like it might make the leap from the Foreign Film category to
the majors when it came out, but in the midst of so many other serious and violent works,
we're guessing Academy voters won't favor its rich, naughty pleasures
over, say, the noble restraint longing* of Atonement. But for us, Black Book's subtle and trenchant depiction of armed conflict as a neverending state -- with everyone potentially a lusty, scheming refugee -- makes it the war movie of the year.
In a somewhat similar vein, Zodiac was a movie whose gravity grew as its scope expanded. The string of California murders which lay at its core were only the initial tragedies in this frightening and mournful tale. Equally senseless: the steadily dimming lights in the eyes of Jake Gyllenhaal and Robert Downey Jr. as their involvement with the case consumed their lives. Actually, we're still not sure whether director David
Fincher intended to expand and reinvent the serial killer genre he invented
single-handedly with Se7en or, like an angry father of mythology, strangle it before it destroyed him, but whatever the case, Zodiac had what Unforgiven
had in spades -- the slow, magesterial burn of a master builder setting
his own house on fire. And yeah, it also manages to turn Donovan's
"Hurdy Gurdy Man" on its hippie-dippie ear. (We'll not spoil that for
any of y'all who haven't seen it yet, but if you want a sense of it, someone has laid the song over footage of Resident Evil 4 to similarly looming effect.)
Of course, horror and slasher flicks are always a long shot when it comes to awards, but Silence of the Lambs
managed to transcend both its genre and a Valentine's Day opening to
win every major Oscar it was nominated for, and we remember Aliens (which we've always thought of as a haunted house movie grafted onto a war movie) getting some nomination love too. When we saw Zodiac this spring we thought
that it might have similar momentum. But it seems pretty unlikely now,
particularly owing to those thematic and structural similarities to No Country....
(Also a possibility: Sweeney Todd's got the serial killer slot this year.) Maybe we'll see some techical noms? We'd be happy if just the CGI team alone gets
their painstaking, atmospheric work recognized; it'd be a real shame if
their creepy and mournful evocation of post-Aquarian San Francisco was so seamless that it went unrewarded.
Got a nomination of your own? Send it on in, we'd love to hear it! Heck, if we get enough of them, maybe we'll have a poll or something!
* I changed that "restraint" to "longing" because "restraint" sounds like it's a commentary on the filmmaking, when in fact there's nothing terribly "restrained" about the gore in the war sequence, and certainly nothing restraining Keira Knightley in that green dress.
