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And the award goes to…

ALL EYES ON THE OSCAR: Will one of these come to India this year?

As with any election year, 2008 in the U.S. was mostly steeped in rhetoric: an appeal for change, some assurances of non-conformism by an ageing maverick, a couple of glass ceilings shattered, and lipsticks on livestock. Three of the films nominated for Best Picture in the Academy Awards this year are also rather heavy on message. The other two, “The Curious Tale of Benjamin Button” and “Slumdog Millionaire” are unapologetic fairy tales. Also in keeping with the Academy’s fondness for auteur-driven cinema, the nominations for Best Picture and Best Director are an exact match.

“The Reader” is a coming of age story set against the backdrop of the Jewish extermination camps in Auschwitz. Michael (David Kross /Ralph Fiennes) and Hanna (Kate Winslet) meet in Berlin to share the sort of brief tender affair bibliophiles fantasise about — bouts of athletic sex punctuated by readings from Homer and Mark Twain. Stephen Daldry, nominated for Best Director, cuts back and forth between war trials, the romance in Berlin and Hanna’s incarceration for war crimes. Kate Winslet, fresh from her Golden Globe (Best supporting actress), Screen Actors’ Guild and Critic’s Choice victories, is a strong contender for the Best Actress statuette. If she wins, the audience can count on a fourth reprise of her breathless acceptance speech — a pitch perfect orchestration of utter surprise, English charm and teary humility. Director Gus van Sant’s “Milk” which traces the political trajectory and tragic death of Harvey Milk (Sean Penn), California’s first openly gay elected official, opened in theatres soon after California overturned equal marriage rights. For a plot this sensational, van Sant and Penn show remarkable evenness and restraint in dealing with the subject and are strong contenders for the Oscars for Best Director and Best Actor respectively. Moreover, with a Screen Actors Guild award for Best Picture, “Milk” is perhaps the only serious competition to “Slumdog Millionaire” for the Best Picture statuette.

In the first act of “Frost/Nixon”, based on Peter Morgan’s dramatisation of the 1977 Frost/Nixon interviews, Frank Langella, who seems to inhabit Nixon’s alpha-gorilla aura effortlessly, ridicules Peter Frost’s (Michael Sheen) Italian loafers as effeminate. While Frost is determined to give Nixon the trial he never got, Nixon is burdened by the need to explain and restore his legacy. After several rounds of personal and professional pugilism, the film closes with a defeated Nixon presenting a pair of Italian loafers to his adversary. Langella, who was cast in the original Broadway play as well, is tied in a three-way struggle with Sean Penn (“Milk”) and Mickey Rourke (“The Wrestler”) for Best Actor.

For all its nominations in the Golden Globes and Critic’s Choice awards, “Benjamin Button” is yet to score a major win. Author F. Scott Fitzgerald had intended his short story to be read as an allegory of the rigid social norms governing appropriate behaviour for Southern gentlefolk in turn of the century American society, and its conflict with the protagonist’s individual will. However, Ron Howard’s sepia-drenched interpretation is consumed by the special effects involved in producing a Button (Brad Pitt) who evolves scene-by-scene from shrivelled dotage to virile youth. With 13 nominations for the Academy Awards as well, “Benjamin Button” may yet come away without any big wins.

The most original aspect of Vikas Swarup’s debut novel Q&A was the delightfully implausible narrative scheme — a trivia contest with escalating stakes, interleaved with the protagonist’s struggle for survival and love. In adapting the novel to “Slumdog Millionaire”, screenwriter Simon Beaufoy and director Danny Boyle retain the overall outline while updating the particulars to create Birmingham’s version of Bombay’s version of Rio in “City of God”. A.R. Rahman’s multilayered score, which beats in resonance to the rhythms of India’s largest, wealthiest and densest metropolis, is a sure winner. “Slumdog”, which took the Best Picture, Director, Screenplay and Score awards at both the Critic’s Choice Awards and the Golden Globes, is the frontrunner at the Academy Awards as well. The real bets are elsewhere: What will Anil Kapoor do? Will he guffaw? Will he simper? Will he wear a Gauri Khan sequined cravat/necktie below his shirt?

“Doubt”, propelled by strong, nuanced performances, has topped many critics’ lists this past year. Meryl Streep, who won both the Golden Globes and Screen Actors’ Guild awards for Best Actress, is widely expected to upset Kate Winslet at the Oscars as well. Amy Adams and Viola Davis with brief memorable performances in “Doubt” are both likely candidates for Best Supporting Actress.

Photos: AP

Contenders all: Sean Penn, Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett in “Benjamin Button” and Kate Winslet and David Kross in “The Reader”;

However, supporting actor nominee Philip Seymour Hoffman, who was nominated in the same category last year as well, will probably end up taking a back seat to Heath Ledger’s dark and disturbing interpretation of the Joker in “The Dark Knight”. Josh Brolin, who plays Harvey Milk’s murderer Dan White in “Milk” is also nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Though, arguably, Brolin benefits more from Best Screenwriter nominee Dustin Lance Black’s tragically human portrayal of White’s emotional conflict between his conservative politics and admiration for Milk’s winning personality.

The other nominee for Best Screenwriter, Andrew Stanton, has penned the script for Disney and Pixar co-produced “Wall-E” which raises the bar of creative vision. The script, written out in short haiku-style stage directions and restricted to the limited economy of robotic squeaks, beeps and console lighting, presents an animated ballet about a dystopic future. Sweeping panoramas of scrap metal and Thomas Newman’s music (nominated) underscore the isolation and monotony of Wall-E’s existence; the film is a shoo-in for the Academy award for Best Animated Picture.

Among the foreign films this year, the competition will be between two autobiographical reflections, “The Class” and “Entre Les Murs” from France and “Waltz with Bashir” from Israel.

The story of “The Class”, which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes last summer, is drawn from François Bégaudeau’s experiences in teaching literature to high schoolers in one of Paris’ poorer suburbs. Bégaudeau wrote the novel, shaped it into a screenplay and acted as himself in the film. Whereas in “To Sir with Love”, Sidney Poitier is a black teacher in a predominantly white school in England, here it is Bégaudeau who is white in a predominantly ethnic school. Last year, France and much of the Continent woke up to the very real complexity of diverse racial and national identities as young, unemployed ethnic French men rioted in the very suburbs that the film is set in. The students in Bégaudeau’s class are rebellious, not merely against a teacher they perceive as out of date, but also against his race and the mainstream French culture he represents that they do not think is their own.

“Waltz with Bashir” is an animated documentary about author/producer/director Ari Folman’s quest to recapture lost memories as member of the Israeli Defence Forces which stood by while rebel groups murdered Palestinian refugees in two refugee camps (Sabra and Shatila) in Lebanon. “Waltz” is not a political film in the sense that it resolves issues or justifies human action. It is about Folman and his compatriots in the war, and their shared memory of this injustice which they have each blocked out as they go about with their lives. Folman is aware that he runs the risk of over-intellectualising a very real massacre. The film opens with a heavily stylised nightmare sequence but as it unfolds, it would seem that Folman’s choice of animation over live filming is to spare the audience from the visceral gruesomeness of war and focus on the guilt and psychological aspects of its aftermath. As if to prove his point with the contrasting alternate, “Waltz” closes with archival footage of Palestinian women mourning the loss of their murdered kin. “Waltz with Bashir” won the Best Foreign Language award at both the Critics Choice Awards and the Golden Globes and is widely expected to win the Academy Awards as well.

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