The Academy Gets It Right (For a Change)

Posted 25 February, 2008 in Film |

2007 was a good year for literary adaptations at the Oscars, Hollywood’s annual narcissistic stroke-fest, with Joel & Ethan Coen’s terrific film of Cormac McCarthy’s novel No Country for Old Men, Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, based on Upton Sinclair’s unfortunately titled Oil! (note to writers: exclamation points in titles are never a good idea — I’m looking at you, Dave Eggers), and Joe Wright’s adaptation of Ian McEwan’s sombre World War II novel Atonement all being nominated for best picture. In addition, Canadian Sarah Polley was nominated in the best adapted screenplay category for Away from Her, an adaptation of Alice Munro’s story “The Bear Came Over the Mountain.”

In the end, the Coens’ film came home the big winner, taking four major awards: best picture, best director(s), best adapted screenplay, and best supporting actor (Javier Bardem). I’ll admit that I didn’t think the Academy would go for No Country, it being too subversive and nihilistic for their usual sensibilities. My money was on the historical epic Atonement, which, despite its Masterpiece Theatre feel and its interminable middle third, is the kind of romantic costume drama that Oscar usually rewards.

It may be indicative of the dark mood that has befallen not just the Hollywood establishment, but the entire United States of America that resulted in No Country’s Oscar win. Regardless, it’s nice to see the best picture in the Oscar slate get awarded with the title for a change. Looking back at the myriad goofs that Oscar has made in this category in years past (awarding Ordinary People over Raging Bull, Forrest Gump over Pulp Fiction, ignoring Citizen Kane, The Third Man, and Psycho), the 80th Annual Academy Awards will at least be remembered as one of the years the Academy got it right.

3 comments to “The Academy Gets It Right (For a Change)”

DW., February 25th, 2008 at 3:10 pm:

• “Masterpiece Theatre” is bang-on re Atonement. To me it felt art-directed to death. Take the scene where the Keira Knightley character meets her fate (whoops, spoiler) — she’s hiding in a subway tunnel during a bombing raid in the middle of the night, and she STILL looks like she just spent four hours with the hair, makeup, and wardrobe departments! The whole movie had a similar phony patina.

  That said, I must admit I was impressed with how nimbly the script managed the logistics of the adaptation, really only falling down in the coda.

Steven W. Beattie, February 25th, 2008 at 3:31 pm:

• It did the best it could with the coda, given McEwan’s quintessentially literary conceit. And it had that spectacular, six-minute tracking shot on the beach at Dunkirk. But, other than that, I found it to be a great big snooze.

Zachariah Wells, February 25th, 2008 at 4:27 pm:

• Hey, does that exclamation rule apply to children’s picture books, too? Better not!

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