Of Course

I’ve said many times that “The Dark Knight” is a special movie; for me, for all of us, and no amount of awards has any effect on that. But I am human, Dear Reader, and when I read that this wonderful film had been completely snubbed in the Directing, Adapted Screenplay, and Picture categories for Oscar nominations, I couldn’t help but allow it to get to me. Of course, “The Dark Knight” is nominated for every technical award in the book, which is their way of saying that the film is just a pretty face with no substance behind it.

Stay in your corner, the Academy says, because the really good movies cannot include something as distasteful as a comic book character. No, what would the world be coming to? We’ve got to keep nominating every drama featuring minorities or disabled people, anything where British actors stare at each other and smoke cigarettes for three and a half hours. Those are the real movies. We think it’s just adorable when you people want us to take the cinema you bleed and sweat for seriously, but can’t you see that anything Sean Penn does is just…better? It’s of a higher order, by definition. If Sean Penn starred in a movie, then the director must have done a better job, and the screenplay must have been more adult, and the acting must have been more noteworthy. The man could pull down his pants and do the Macarena until the closing credits, and I’d be weeping in the theater, gushing about the powerful subtext.

What’s that, you say? You say that every single Best Picture nominee was a drama released within the last two months? Well, winter is when the real movies come out. Summer is for the dumb, mindless fare that everyone actually enjoys, but hot damn do I love the winter. That’s when we get our beloved audience-punishing, nihilistic, sex-ridden art house dramas, and normally we just hand those guys Oscars right away. This year, there were too many uplifting, life-affirming movies like “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Milk,” so we had to break even and just nominate whatever came out most recently, because we couldn’t remember the other stuff. It was hard for us to hand nominations to movies that an average person might enjoy, but better that than acknowledge some…other genre or something; ugh, I shiver at the thought. Comedies are inferior. Action films are inferior. I am here to tell you that it’s not physically possible for a movie with a few car chases in it to also have rich character development…unless Scorsese did it. If he did it, I’m sure it’s all…you know…some kind of commentary on…uh…Iraq, or something. Man, I love that guy. I’d like to lick the mud off of his boots and say “thank you sir, may I have another?”

Yes, yes, I know we were forced into giving “Titanic” and “Return of the King” Best Picture. Don’t remind me, it wasn’t pleasant, but too many people liked those movies, and I’m a gigantic coward. The most sensible solution there was just to smatter both of them with so many awards they all lost their meaning, and make everybody stop caring. Those exceptions aside, I don’t see anything keeping us from rolling merrily along, ignoring the people who deserve recognition. If you think I’m kidding, recall the time I gave Judi Dench an Oscar for a ten-second cameo and left Haley Joel Osment in the cold for carrying “The Sixth Sense” on his shoulders before he even hit puberty. Yet again, my point is demonstrated: people in commercial films aren’t as good as we are. If they wanted an Oscar, why didn’t they star in something about a genocide or whatever? There are rules here, people!

I wouldn’t feel too bad for “The Dark Knight.” It’s entering a proud pantheon of deep, meaningful films that had real cultural impact which we have worked very hard to ignore: “Star Wars,” “E.T,” “Taxi Driver,” “Saving Private Ryan,” “Brokeback Mountain,” “The Maltese Falcon,” “The Ten Commandments,” “Jaws,” “Apocalypse Now,”…I think you get the point.

Go look it up. You’re going to find that about eight times out of ten that whatever movie did get the Oscar that year is nowhere near as relevant or talked about today. That’s our proudest accomplishment: we’ve managed to successfully stifle a wide and impressive array of films that have since become cultural landmarks.

Stepping out of character here, let me also say this: “Raging Bull,” which is beloved to this day, was actually pronounced inferior to “Ordinary People,” which I can safely say I have not heard mentioned in a decade. And does anyone sincerely believe that “The Sting” was a more important film than “The Exorcist”? Do we remember “Driving Miss Daisy” anywhere near as much as we cherish “Field of Dreams”? Was some crap film called “The Best Years of Our Lives” really better than “It’s A Wonderful Life”? Which one have you watched more recently? Huh? Tell me!

…

Sorry.

I’m calming down.

Really, I am. You’ll excuse everything above as a deliberate hyperbole designed to make a point, don’t take it too much to heart.

Truth be told, the…grumble..the Academy has also made many wise choices, their track record is not a gigantic failure. But it is spotty, Dear Reader, and as long as this is the case, I must insist that they not be given this high horse we seat them on every year while we scoff at the Golden Globes unfairly. Why is this the award we so cherish? I want to see some decentralization, I want some other awards to begin carrying real weight around this town. Maybe when that happens, this nightmarish power trip will end and we can see some justice.

Honest to goodness, I could cry at the injustice. Mark my words: ten years from now, “The Dark Knight” will be talked about, remember, and most importantly watched. “The Reader” will not. I promise you.

P.s: Despite what I said above, we have many nominations to be extremely proud about. Chris Corbould, Wally Pfister, Nathan Crowley, and Heath Ledger are all being recognized for their work, and deservedly so. Pfister was nominated for his lensing of “Batman Begins” too, so here’s hoping they finally give him the recognition he deserves.