Because the blogosphere needs more Oscar predictions, I'm doing my bloggerish duties and throwing mine in the ring.
This week I was starting to get the nagging feeling that Juno was going to sweep it. Best picture, best original screenplay. What an upset! A little movie with a big heart (and no stars!), killing There Will Be Blood, pummeling No Country For Old Men. There would be a TWBB blacklash (well-deserved) and rumination over whether we even liked NCFOM. Noirish movies about evil, step aside. After a long, depressing Hollywood Writers strike, audiences want to like Hollywood again. They want to laugh. And what's funnier than teen pregnancy? Certainly not Javier Bardem stalking the American Southwest in a bowl cut.
Now I'm changing my mind. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that No Country For Old Men will take top honors. Best picture, best director(s). And not just because the Coen Brothers deserve a break. But this spectacular meditation on evil in America is the perfect way to usher out the Bush years. Really. Joel and Ethan, I salute you for bringing this muscular tribute to a decade of depraved villainy in this country (yes, ten years - because of the absurdist spectacle of the Clinton impeachment) to the screen at exactly the right time.
My theory is that Javier Bardem's character (Anton Chigurh) is Laura Bush. Think about it: Reticent. Mexican. Black hair blown into a flyaway sort of Hamel Camel. How can I not support this movie for best picture? But what really chills me is that in the movie, Laura Bush would not die. And so it has been with the Bush Administration. Two heinous terms of boundless corruption, preposterous greed, and unmitigated disregard for human life. These eight years have felt like twenty-five. It's so hard to believe that it's actually going to happen, that this time of great calamity is drawing to a close. I'm exhausted and full of rage. But I digress. This post is supposed to be about the Oscars, Hollywood's happiest night!
No offense, then, to Juno, which I have not seen. I know it's supposed to make people feel good. But maybe feel-good endings are not what we're supposed to get right now. Maybe we're supposed to be reminded how grueling these years have been. So that in our blinding Obamania we don't forget how much it has sucked and still sucks because it ain't over yet. And because Obama may be a "change", but he's not exactly Dennis Kucinich. Maybe now is the time for those meditations on evil in America. We can always laugh at pregnant fifteen year olds.
Before I close, let me say that my favorite movie this year, hands down, was Into The Wild. I am passionate about it, as are many people I know. Its absence from the Oscar ballot only confirms that the "Academy" (does that make its members Academics?) probably won't do what's right. Probably, they'll ignore the existential stuff (like they did last year by voting for Inconvenient Truth instead of any of the docs about Iraq) and go for Juno. Which it's kind of supposed to, right? It is Hollywood, after all.
