The 73rd Academy Awards

By David N. Butterworth

Last Sunday night, from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences held, for the 73^rd time, its annual ceremony honoring outstanding achievements in motion pictures.

Hyped to the max for the past several weeks on ABC, this year’s star-studded spectacular was hosted for the first time by comedian Steve Martin, and the former Saturday Night Live star handled himself admirably. His brand of humor–dry and very cutting, especially when taking potshots at the hapless nominees–was perfect for the occasion, and only Gladiator’s Russell Crowe failed to crack a smile (following a particularly risqué link to Best Actress nominee, Ellen Burstyn). In fact, Crowe sported a very serious look throughout the entire proceedings … until his name was called, that is, as Best Actor. Only then did the stuffy Australian buckle, looking genuinely surprised by the decision. In contrast to his stiff, outwardly appearance, his acceptance speech was one of the most gracious of the evening.

Gladiator also took the main prize–Best Picture–but with a total of five wins, it didn’t exactly sweep the awards (and after a relatively short 3 hours and 25 minutes, we didn’t have to wait up past midnight to learn it). That was one of the best things about this year’s Oscar® telecast: there were a lot of fine films up for awards (except Chocolat), and almost all of them walked away with some kind of recognition. Gladiator also won awards for sound, costume, and visual effects. Sounds about right to me.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon which, after Gladiator, had entered the fray with the second most nominations to its name, also had a nice showing with four wins. Since none of the film’s fine performers were nominated, Ang Lee’s breathtakingly beautiful action/romance had to settle for Best Foreign-Language Film (winning Best Film in addition would have been unprecedented, and highly unlikely), Best Original Score (a gorgeous collaboration between composer Tan Dun and cellist Yo-Yo Ma), art direction, and cinematography.

Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, an in-your-face, two-and-a-half-hour, cinema-verité docudrama about America’s war on drugs, also picked up four Academy Awards (it was nominated for five). These included adapted screenplay, editing, supporting actor (Benicio Del Toro, one of the few “givens” of the night), and director (Soderbergh). This last win was one of the few surprises of the evening, since virtually everyone assumed that Soderbergh’s vote would be split between his Best Director nods for Traffic and Erin Brockovich. They were wrong! The other surprise of an otherwise true-to-form evening was in the Best Supporting Actress department. Many, myself included, assumed the Oscar would go to Kate Hudson for Almost Famous; instead, it was awarded to Marcia Gay Harden for her emotionally-draining work as the long-suffering wife of Jackson Pollock in Ed Harris’ well-received Pollock.

Heading into the ceremony, perennial favorite Julia Roberts was said to be a shoe-in for the Best Actress trophy for her role as the eponymous, Wonder Bra-sporting legal assist in Erin Brockovich. This time they were right: Robert’s moment of glory was as delightful as the actress (previously nominated for Pretty Woman and Steel Magnolias) was delighted. Now I haven’t seen Erin Brockovich, for shame, but I can tell you that Ms. Roberts was sensational–and Oscar-worthy (in my opinion)–in Notting Hill.

Best Song was another foregone conclusion: Things Have Changed (from Wonder Boys), written by Bob Dylan. Dylan and his band performed the song live from Down Under minutes before the announcement. and the bleary-eyed musician looked like he’d been up all night! This wasn’t the best of the five nominated songs as it happens. That honor should have gone to Björk’s I’ve Seen It All (from Dancer in the Dark). The Icelandic pop ingénue performed the song draped in what appeared to be a dead swan, the closest the Oscars have probably ever come to Art!

Closing out the categories, writer/director Cameron Crowe won Best Original Screenplay for his slightly-sanitized but absolutely fabulous Almost Famous, Rick Baker won his sixth Oscar (is anyone counting; this guy could give Edith Head a run for her money!) for his painstaking makeup effects (with Gail Ryan) on Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and Mark Jonathan Harris and Deborah Oppenheimer took the Best Documentary Feature award with their film Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport. In addition, there were lots of silly little best animated short feature types of awards and Irving G. Thalberg-styled honorariums but I certainly won’t go into those here!

All in all it was a good do: an excellent em cee (look for Martin again next year), no annoying fluff (OK, so I didn’t need to see Gladiator director Ridley Scott looking so pained every five minutes), and an across-the-board distribution of awards to (mostly) deserving candidates. Even the running time was down by 45 minutes! And with work (at least for most of us) the next day, you can’t beat that.