A Personal History of Oscar Watching: 2010

Kathryn Bigelow accepts the Oscar for Best Director at the 2010 Academy Awards ceremony.

The 82nd Academy Awards

Ceremony date: March 7, 2010

Best Picture: The Hurt Locker

Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker

Best Actor: Jeff Bridges for Crazy Heart

Best Actress: Sandra Bullock for The Blind Side

There are two things that must be talked about when we talk about this year’s ceremony: Kathryn Bigelow becomes the first (and to date, only) woman to win Best Director, and The Hurt Locker triumphs in the 10-film Best Picture lineup.

Bigelow’s place in history is well deserved, and her film remains as pulse-pounding and psychologically complex as it felt a decade ago. The story of an elite bomb squad unit fighting in the Iraq War remains the best film made about that conflict, and that is due to Bigelow’s gripping storytelling and powerful direction. Having Barbara Streisand present the award to Bigelow was a touch similar to having Coppola, Lucas, and Spielberg give the same award to Scorsese in 2007. The Academy knew it had a special moment on its hands and played it for all it was worth.

I still recall Streisand’s earnest: “It’s about time.” There were definitely folks pulling for James Cameron to win for Avatar. I would not have minded Quentin Tarantino for Inglourious Basterds. But Bigelow was the right person at the right time with the right film to make history. It is shameful she remains the only woman to win the award. Among those overlooked in the ensuing years: Ava DuVernay for Selma, Greta Gerwig for Little Women, Chloé Zhao for The Rider, Deniz Gamze Ergüven for Mustang, and Dee Rees for Mudbound. None of them nominated. Any would have made a fine winner. For now, Bigelow stands alone.

I remember I was home from school for the summer when I saw The Hurt Locker in theaters. I drove down to San Jose to the CinéArts at Santana Row, which had become my go-to indie theater for summer and winter breaks. I loved the Embarcadero in San Francisco (a theater we will talk about in the next installment of this series), but San Jose was an easier drive. I caught the late-night showing in a mostly empty theater, and it was apparent right away The Hurt Locker was top-notch filmmaking.

That mostly empty theater turned out to be sadly prophetic as the film became the lowest-grossing Best Picture winner of the past 40 years. This brings us to the Academy’s expanded Best Picture lineup. I have talked before about the misguided belief that popular, box-office successes in contention translate to increased viewership. The numbers simply do not bear this out. That has not stopped the Academy and the ceremony’s producers from trying anything and everything to keep viewers tuned in to the show.

Despite eight nominations and two wins the year before, blockbuster superhero film The Dark Knight failed to score either a Best Picture nod or a Best Director nomination for Christopher Nolan. By the same token, Pixar smash Wall-E garnered six nominations, tying Beauty and the Beast for most ever for an animated film, but it could not break into the top categories. The loudest voices decried this as a stain on the Academy, particularly in light of a rather milquetoast group of Best Picture nominees that included Milk, Frost/Nixon, and The Reader.

The solution: 10 nominees. The hope was for more populist, crowdpleasing films to get in the mix. The Academy wanted voters to think big. Did it work? Yes and no. Avatar, still the second-biggest movie of all time, got in, but it is likely it would have been among the five anyway. Pixar adventure tale Up did manage to break in, becoming just the second animated Best Picture nominee after Beauty and the Beast, as did feel-good football drama and surprise box-office hit The Blind Side.

Avatar is an inarguable artistic achievement, and Up remains, for me, Pixar’s high-water mark, but I think it would be difficult to find anyone who thinks a Best Picture nomination for The Blind Side has been good for the long-term health of the Academy. The complaints about a watered-down Best Picture lineup will only grow louder next year, and the Academy will be forced once again to change.

The expanded lineup also had the unintended effect of making voters more adventurous and ushering in several of the kind of little-seen independent films from which the Academy was trying to distance itself. Among them this year were the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man – the best film of the year in my estimation – and Lone Scherfig’s An Education. In the years since, the Academy has moved even more in this direction, choosing interesting, difficult indies over middle-of-the-road blockbusters (the odd Bohemian Rhapsody, which I actually think is fine, notwithstanding).

With all of this going on, this year happened to be my last year watching the Oscars at school, as I was set to graduate in fall 2010. The pandemic has ensured that I will not be forced to make the difficult decision not to attend my 10-year reunion. Pity. Once again, I relied on the cable connection of another to watch the show, but this time, I supplied the food and drinks.

I cobbled together the money to buy some alcohol, some frozen appetizers, and a Stouffer’s lasagna – not yet ready to try my cooking skills – and held my first informal Oscars party at my friend Ryan’s house. There were maybe eight or nine of us there for the show, many of them the same people who attended my wedding eight years later, which if nothing else, suggests a certain loyalty among my friends.

We ate, drank, laughed, and rather enjoyed ourselves. I remember being pleased I got to enjoy the show with good friends. The lasagna came out of the oven right about the time Michael Giacchino won Best Original Score for his work on Up. He paid tribute to artists and those who dare to dream big, and sitting there among my friends, those I played music with and made art with, it could not help but feel like he was talking to us.

Quick notes: This was the dreaded Adam Shankman-as-producer year, when the So You Think You Can Dance judge thought it would be a good idea to replace the Best Original Song performances with a series of interpretive dances set to the Best Original Score nominees. It was embarrassing for everyone. … I have always thought it a shame that Tarantino’s best film – give or take a Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood – came away with just one win from eight nominations. Still, that one win gave us Christoph Waltz, the gift who keeps on giving.

Next time: I move to the mountains and get lost in San Francisco. Find out what any of that has to do with the Oscars.

New movie review: American Sniper

Bradley Cooper plays Chris Kyle in Clint Eastwood's new film American Sniper.

Without fail, the best war films are made after the war being depicted has ended – usually well after. All Quiet on the Western Front (World War I); Saving Private Ryan and Letters from Iwo Jima (World War II); M*A*S*H (Korean War); Apocalypse Now and Platoon (Vietnam War) – the reasons are pretty clear. Time lends clarity, and distance lends perspective. Removed from the jingoism stirred by the presence of an immediate threat, we are free to think critically about our past and to explore the gray area between good and bad, right and wrong, and nationalism and imperialism. Enter the Iraq War.

History will remember Iraq as a quagmire, an unnecessary jump into the politics of the Middle East that has marred two presidencies and will likely define a third, but we are not there yet. Because the war in Iraq has been deemed the War on Terror, there are no easy victories or clear ends in sight. So, when we see images of the recent attacks in Paris or of any violence in the Middle East, we are subject to swells of patriotic pride and a sense of duty to kill the terrorists. This is true today, and it will be true tomorrow and for the foreseeable future. So, how to address this on film without time, clarity, or perspective?

Clint Eastwood’s newly Best Picture-nominated American Sniper disregards clarity or perspective by tackling the war from the point of view of one man, Chris Kyle. Based on a true story, Kyle is considered the deadliest sniper in American history, credited with more than 160 confirmed kills. Throughout four tours in Iraq, he will gain the nickname “Legend,” and his fellow soldiers will call him a hero and thank him for saving their lives.

That he saved many American lives is indisputable, and his legend among U.S. troops and enemy combatants is incontrovertible. His status as a hero, however, is murkier, and until its disastrously contrived final minutes, Eastwood seems to be willing to ask tough questions about heroism, machismo, and misplaced male aggression in our society. Though told entirely from Kyle’s perspective, the film is not lacking in characters who question his desire to kill or his need to participate in war.

Common among films addressing the War on Terror such as The Hurt Locker or Zero Dark Thirty, part of the message seems to be that war simply gets in the blood and becomes an addiction. Played with energy and commitment to spare by Bradley Cooper, Kyle is a rootin’, tootin’ all-American cowboy from the start. We see glimpses of his youth spent hunting, fighting, and receiving chest-thumping pep talks from an aggressive, authoritarian father. This is a man born in blood and raised on violence. His attraction to war is not surprising.

One place where Eastwood’s film steps wrong, then, is in its action sequences, which are too exciting, if you will allow me to explain. People such as Kyle and many other soldiers sign up to kill bad guys. Yes, there is patriotism and protecting the American way of life and freedom and all that, but make no mistake, they want to kill some bad guys, too. Here, they are provided ample opportunity. With one exception, the violence plays out like a video game as soldiers march through crumbling towns, clearing room after room in home after home. It all looks like so much fun.

The exception comes during Kyle’s final tour of duty, when a sandstorm hits amid a raging firefight. It is like a descent into hell and the first time in the film the war seems to take on any metaphysical meaning. His obsession, his selfishness, his lust for war, his need to win – it all comes crashing down at once on one Iraqi rooftop. It is a bravura sequence, displaying the kind of technical mastery we have come to expect from an Eastwood film, as well as from his collaborators, editors Joel Cox and Gary Roach and cinematographer Tom Stern.

This dichotomy plays out on every level of the film – one step forward, two steps back. The problem exists at the script level. Every time Jason Hall’s screenplay, based on the book by Kyle, Scott McEwen, and James DeFelice, digs at the myth of military heroism, it pulls back and reaffirms Kyle’s personal heroism. Hall seems afraid to out Kyle as a complex individual who saved a lot of American lives but who killed a lot people and neglected his family for years out of a misplaced sense of pride and duty.

Here is the thing: Nobody wants another situation such as after the Vietnam War, when returning soldiers were spat upon and abandoned by the country that sent them to fight. Respect is certainly due to the men and women in uniform regardless of the justness of the war being fought. However, no one is automatically a hero for signing up to kill another person. As with anyone else, soldiers are flawed, complicated people with conflicting emotions and contradictory motivations. At every turn, American Sniper avoids confronting this reality head on.

When Kyle is stateside with his family – wife Taya, played by Sienna Miller, and two small children – we finally get a glimpse at the depths of feeling and emotion churning in Kyle. Cooper is excellent at portraying the unease Kyle feels with the stillness of life outside of war. Each shrill sound or sudden movement is cause for alarm. It is clear he is not a healthy man, either physically or mentally.

Amid the blood and guts of the battlefield, the movie’s most chilling moment comes when Kyle is simply watching television at home during a birthday party. We see him staring at the screen, and we hear the sounds of battle. Then, it is revealed the television is off, and the war is playing only his mind but constantly. He is not necessarily excited anymore by the fighting, but he cannot turn it off. It is a part of him.

At its close, American Sniper makes overtures to the need for increased veterans care, a position it would be difficult to argue against, though history proves prevention trumps treatment every time. Veterans deserve respect, and they certainly deserve better care when they return from war than they are often afforded. They deserve these things not because they are heroes but because they are human. American Sniper is a good film, but one wishes it had been more interested in telling the story of a man rather than that of a legend.

See it? Yes.