As Academy Awards Approach, a Nod to Cate Blanchett

In 2018, the A.V. Club, the pop-culture arm of the satirical website the Onion, published, “Do The Wrong Thing: 90 years, 90 Movies That Should Have Been Nominated for Best Picture,” an article enumerating just how consistently the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has been off in its bestowal of honors. For cineastes who watch the Oscars with a modicum of skepticism, a degree of curiosity, and a potent libation or two, an accounting of the Academy’s missteps can prompt some righteous indignation.Time, being a merciless arbiter of quality, allows for that luxury. Still, the array of non-awarded films is sobering. “City Lights,” “To Be Or Not To Be,” “Singin’ in the Rain,” “Vertigo,” “Seven Samurai,” “Rio Bravo,” “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” “A Separation” — in more instances than not, the Academy hasn’t just missed the boat; it’s fallen off the pier.Quality has increasingly been superseded by controversy at the Oscars. Oh, for the days of naked men sprinting past a nonplussed David Niven. Politics have been nagging at the Oscars since Sacheen Littlefeather accepted the award for Marlon Brando as Best Actor in 1973. Internet culture has only exacerbated the tendency. In the last few years, the award ceremony and its sundry peregrinations have been a mine-field of ideological posturing — and then there was the slap heard around the world ….Let’s see how well the Hollywood aristocracy minds its Ps and Qs this time around, and how dexterous Jimmy Kimmel proves in hosting the show. As for the nominations, let me admit that I haven’t seen every film up for an award. “Women Talking,” “Avatar: The Way of Water,” “Living,” and “All Quiet on the Western Front” are on my radar, but they’re placed down toward the bottom of my to-do list. The reasons for that have as much to do with opportunity as inclination. We, here in the early 21st century, are inundated with entertainment options. There ain’t, in so many words, enough time in the day. And, of course, there’s personal taste. The CGI in “Avatar: The Way of Water” or “Wakanda Forever” may be state-of-the-art, but, you know, a stellar run of Buster Keaton films from the 1920s is currently up-and-running on the Criterion Channel. Life is short; priorities must be made.As it is, this year’s nominees are a ragbag of repurposed product (“Top-Gun: Maverick,” “Avatar,” “Wakanda Forever”), beautiful people pretending to be otherwise (Brendan Fraser, Andrea Riseborough), old pros getting their licks in (Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Lee Curtis, Angela Bassett, and Judd Hirsch), the stray pseudo-indie (“The Banshees of Inshirin”), and a highfalutin exegesis on The World Today (“Triangle of Sadness”). Oh, and Steven Spielberg at his most maudlin.Let me put my druthers in, however, for Cate Blanchett in “Tár,” a film that seems to have raised hackles on all sides of the ideological spectrum. If anything, the disputes surrounding the picture are a point in favor of both Ms. Blanchett and writer/director Todd Field: Any movie that irks that many people is a testament to its potency. As someone wary of how politics can diminish art, I applaud the scene, now famous, in which Lydia Tár dresses down a student for his p.c. bonafides. But wariness has nothing to do with the bravura manner in which Ms. Blanchett carries the scene and, in fact, the entire film. To the extent to which a gold statuette means anything, she deserves one. Otherwise, cross your fingers that “The Quiet Girl” gets the nod as Best International Feature over “EO,” Jerzy Sokomoliski’s execrable reimagining of Robert Bresson’s “Au Hasard Balthazar” (1966). Similarly, “My Year of Dicks” deserves to win over “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse” as Best Animated Short Film. Better a touching, if unlikely and definitely lubricious, coming-of-age story than a saccharine and shameless rip on Winnie the Pooh any day of the week.

As Academy Awards Approach, a Nod to Cate Blanchett

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