Alternative Oscars: 1995

Best Picture

Winner: Forrest Gump
Other Nominees: Four Weddings and a Funeral, Pulp Fiction, Quiz Show, The Shawshank Redemption

Best Choice: Pulp Fiction

Runners-Up: The Shawshank Redemption, Ed Wood, Forrest Gump, The Lion King, Hoop Dreams, Nell, Quiz Show, Immortal Beloved

The 1995 Academy Awards were arguably the most ambitious and jam-packed awards season since 1940 when Victor Fleming's Gone With the Wind conquered the prize over critically acclaimed masterpieces including The Wizard of Oz, Stagecoach, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Of Mice and Men, Wuthering Heights, and Goodbye, Mr. Chips.  Only five films were nominated in 1995 as opposed to ten in 1940, though multiple films beyond even those nominated were worthy of taking home the title of Best Picture, most notably Tim Burton's Ed Wood, an enjoyable, stylistically masterful, portrait of the world's worst director; Disney's The Lion King which reintroduced Hamlet to mass cinematic appeal; and Hoop Dreams, a game-changing documentary following the lives of two Chicago high school youths over the course of four years as they pursue a dream of success in basketball.  The nominees were likewise strong and varied: Robert Redford delivered his best directorial achievement since his Oscar-winning film Ordinary People (1980) in Quiz Show, a dramatic take on corruption in quiz shows of the late 1950s; the British comedy Four Weddings and a Funeral offered a fun and unique look at love and friendship as well as introduced heartthrob Hugh Grant to the American consciousness; The Shawshank Redemption, a two and a half hour masterpiece thriller, humanizing drama, and critique of prison bureaucracy and inmate institutionalization, blew audiences' minds with smart narration and memorable character development; Quentin Tarantino, improving from his work in Reservoir Dogs (1992), shattered the traditional narrative structure once more, this time with much greater reception, in Pulp Fiction.  Like 1940's Gone with the Wind, this year's winner, Forrest Gump, was a grand historical romance-drama with a stellar cast (Academy Award Winner Tom Hanks leading the pack as the film's simple, though likable and remarkably successful, protagonist).  It is hard to argue with the film's impressionability on audiences with its quotable lines, clever (though sometimes ridiculous and campy) historical allusions in the cinematography, powerful cast, and tender heart.  However,  like in 1940 when The Wizard of Oz and its technicolor brilliance lost to slow-burn Gone with the Wind, the Academy once more chose to take the safe road and reward tradition and likability over artistry and nuance of craft.

Pulp Fiction was hands-down the most original, structurally complex, technically savvy, and narratively nuanced film of the year, which is why it deserves the title of Best Picture more so than any of its worthy competitors.  To best examine the film's cinematic mastery, it is necessary to provide a detailed narrative synopsis (if you have not viewed the film, do not read on).  

The drama erupts in a diner where two lovers, Pumpkin (Tim Roth) and Honey Bunny (Amanda Plummer), share a moment of verbal intimacy over coffee before pulling guns in an attempt to rob the place.  A freeze frame on the violent act thrusts the viewers into the opening credits, marking a significant symbolic trend for the entirety of the film as one showcasing the filmmaker's power over character narrative as well as the overwhelming visual influence of violence.  Half-way through the credits, the music ("Misirlou" by Dick Dale and His Del-Tones) abruptly merges to static as though a station is changed on a stereo and "Jungle Boogie" by Kool and The Gang emerges.  A sudden cut brings the viewers from the credits to a car where two gangsters (Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta) discuss the legalities of "hash" in Europe, while "Jungle Boogie" plays on the radio.  The music's merge from non-diegetic to diegetic sound prepares the viewer for a film that blurs the line between what exists in the realm of narrative and what is contrived by filmmaker.  The naturalistic, non-plot-focused dialogue between these two characters further exemplifies director Quentin Tarantino's intent to dazzle the audience without relying entirely on the thickening agent of drama.  Viewers instantly have a taste for who Vincent Vega (Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Jackson) are as characters, their ticks, pleasures, and annoyances through this mostly irrelevant dialogue, providing humor and pertinent background to the many dramas soon to unfold.  After much discussion on topics ranging from "Royale with Cheese" burgers to their employer Marsellus Wallace's (Ving Rhames) beautiful wife Mia (Uma Thurman), her seductive tendencies, as well as her and Vincent's upcoming non-romantic "date," Jules and Vincent arrive at an apartment complex to retrieve unpaid dues from Wallace's former business associates.  While Vincent searches out the suitcase with the necessary cash, Jules charismatically reprimands the two men with both comedic and intimidating force on their poor business practices, finally resulting in him reciting the entirety of the bible passage Ezekiel 25:17 and gunning the men down with furious gusto.

The film fades to black, and a title screen characteristic of early silent films emerges and provides viewers the transition to the second full story of four in the distorted timeline: "Vincent Vega and Marsellus Wallace's Wife."  Viewers are introduced to the infamous Marsellus mentioned in the last scene as well as the stern-faced Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis), a boxer who is told by Wallace to take the fall: "In the fifth, your ass goes down."  As the men talk, Jules and Vincent enter the bar in a stark outfit change, drop off the suitcase to Wallace, and go their separate ways.  From here, the narrative follows Vincent, who purchases drugs before embarking on a night of wild dancing, milkshakes, lust, and drug overdose with Mia Wallace.  The third section, titled "The Gold Watch" begins with a flashback from Butch's childhood where he receives his late father's watch from his father's military companion Captain Koons (Christopher Walken) who "stored the watch up his ass" as Butch's father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had before him to safely carry the family's legacy to the next generation.  The remainder of the section follows Butch as he disobeys Wallace, winning the boxing match, and flees with his girlfriend only to discover that she had forgotten to pack his gold watch.  This mishap forces Butch to return to his apartment and face the wrath of Wallace and his gang, which leads to a rather unfortunate incident of cellar sodomy and samurai swordsmanship.  The fourth and final section, "The Bonnie Situation," returns to Jules and Vincent, who are shot upon multiple times by a man hidden in the backroom of the apartment from earlier in the film, and miraculously survive without a single gunshot wound.  After retrieving the suitcase full of cash, Vincent accidentally kills their inside man from the job and must clean the mess with the help of Jules' friend Jimmie (Quentin Tarantino) and a professional "problem-solver," The Wolf (Harvey Keitel) before Jimmie's wife Bonnie returns home from work.  Afterward, the two gangsters get breakfast, where Jules confides to Vincent that they had both witnessed a miracle from God when they were not shot dead, and he is done with the gangster life.  Vincent leaves for the bathroom, and the film returns to the scene of the introduction as Pumpkin and Honey Bunny demand everyone at the diner to pay up.  Jules, after refusing to hand over the suitcase full of cash, pulls a gun on Pumpkin and, as he is in a "transitional period," seeks to guide Pumpkin to make the right decision.

Pulp Fiction, thus, ends on redemption.  Though the disorderly nature of violence has been the film's primary focus, the film ends with a certain comradery between criminals, salvation orchestrated primarily (in Jules' eyes) through the influences of divine intervention.   Tarantino's non-chronological structure for the story, through this interpretation, provides a medium in which to examine the film through this multi-faceted lens, as well as supports the cinematic comparison of filmmaker as creator, the god-like presence that directs character actions in a film.  Through this comparison, Pulp Fiction emerges as much more than a mere experimentation in narrative style; it blossoms as both an entertainment-driven, gun-rearing gangster-flick and a violent attack on the cinematic method of narrative storytelling, a brilliant post-modern reflection on what it means to make and view film in contemporary times.

Best Actor

Winner: Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump)
Other Nominees: Morgan Freeman (The Shawshank Redemption), Nigel Hawthorne (The Madness of King George), Paul Newman (Nobody's Fool), John Travolta (Pulp Fiction)

Best Choice: Gary Oldman (Immortal Beloved)

Runners-Up: Morgan Freeman (The Shawshank Redemption), Tommy Lee Jones (Cobb), Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump), Tim Robbins (The Shawshank Redemption), Johnny Depp (Ed Wood), Nigel Hawthorne (The Madness of King George)

The obvious front-runner for Best Actor was once again last year's winner Tom Hanks for his touching performance as the lovably quotable Forrest Gump.  Both the performance and the film captured the hearts of audiences and fostered the belief that one can overcome any challenge if one puts their best self forward no matter how "smart" one appears to be.  Tom Hanks definitely gives one of his finest performances, remaining realistically engrossed in the circumstances of every scene without overdoing Forrest's quirks.  His Southern drawl is engaging and his uniquely delayed reactions to various events in the film adds much needed humor and sympathy to a character easily capable of falling into stereotype.  Hanks also develops a heated agency for Forrest as he pursues his "Jenny" and dream of discovering his destiny in life.  This ambitious drive and Hanks' simple and direct actions throughout the film allow audiences to easily follow and empathize with Forrest's goals as he reacts to whatever "chocolates" life throws at him.

Tom Hanks was not the only actor to give one of the best performances of his career.  Tommy Lee Jones masterfully revealed the ugliness, pride, and fiery tongue of the infamous baseball player Ty Cobb.  Both Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins were also breathtaking in The Shawshank Redemption; however, most impressive is Freeman's Ellis Boyd Redding, or simply "Red," who acted as both the film's omniscient narrator and moral conscious.  His characteristically reflective and impassioned voice-over would have been enough to merit a nomination, but even more astounding is how effectively Freeman plays the cool nonchalance and pleasant friendliness of a man confined to life in prison for murder.  Given that "Red" was originally written in the novel by Stephen King as Irish, Freeman's take on the character is especially remarkable.  Despite these powerful performances, however, the year's most ponderous and complex acting was given by Gary Oldman for his brilliantly mad and romantically tortured take on the legendary composer Ludwig van Beethoven in Immortal Beloved.   

This year marked an important moment for Oldman, who made two of his arguably greatest performances (neither of which were nominated) since his role as the psychopathic Irish gangster Jackie Flannery in State of Grace (1990).   In Léon: The Professional, Oldman is terrifying as a murderous, corrupt police chief determined to exterminate the assassin who outsmarts him at every turn (oddly and coincidentally enough, his character is obsessed with Beethoven).  It is Immortal Beloved, however, where Oldman demonstrates his true talents as an actor through his poignant depth and furiously passionate depiction of one of the world's most intense composers who is crippled by deafness, the challenge of constant musical artistry, and unobtainable love.  Often, it is difficult for an actor to transport themself into the mind of a genius with the mastery of performative choice exemplified by Oldman in this role, which required him to practice playing the piano for six weeks, six hours per day, in order to appear to have mastered the instrument.  Though the final cut of the film includes music played by professional musicians, Oldman plays the same songs depicted in every scene to near-mirror visual likeness.  Most remarkable, though perhaps unnoticed by the typical viewer, is Oldman's unique take on Beethoven's crippling deafness, which often provides the crux of the drama in the film.  Rather than over-accentuating vowels and other hard-to-pronounce words to make obvious his audio affliction, Oldman offers a distinct non-aloof approach to dialogue, often choosing to simply ignore actions around him except for those created by his character.  This direct approach to deafness is a brilliant move on Oldman's part as it seeks to conceal his character's condition rather than accentuating it, adding a level of pride to Beethoven's already complex personality.  This move is especially relevant to Beethoven's situation at the start of the film when he refuses to play in front of audiences due to his fear of ridicule, which ultimately results in the rejection of his wife-to-be for spying on him.

In addition to these performative nuances, Oldman is most impressive in his conceptualization of love and desire as more than just long glances and embraces.  Love is beautiful as it is terrible.  Oldman exhibits Beethoven's love in many forms throughout the film: his insane, tortured love for music (which originated with his father's brutal, physically abusive, direction), his over-protective and jealous love for his younger brothers' attention, his tenderhearted though often hard love for his "nephew" Karl, compulsive love for various women in his life, and finally his rage-fueled love/hate for his "immortal beloved" for whom the film is named.  One notable love-related scene occurs after Karl attempts suicide after Beethoven's unrelenting pressure for him to be a masterful musician, and, surviving the ordeal, writes "I never want to see your face again."  Instead of resorting to sadness, Oldman performs this loss as one of total defeat, his eyes clouded and directionless in their stare, face drooping, shoulders slumped, feet and knees drawn up into his person like a vagabond accepting finally his plunge into eternal ostracization.  This is an acting master at work, an artist who infuses his every motion and body position with the mind's losses, dreams, and shattered desires to conjure a living, feeling human being from the bones of long-dead history.

Best Actress

Winner: Jessica Lange (Blue Sky)
Other Nominees: Jodie Foster (Nell), Miranda Richardson (Tom & Viv), Winona Ryder (Little Women), Susan Sarandon (The Client)

Best Choice: Jodie Foster (Nell)

Runners-Up: Jaime Lee Curtis (True Lies), Meg Ryan (When a Man Loves a Woman), Jessica Lange (Blue Sky), Meryl Streep (The River Wild)

 

Jessica Lange has been on the Academy's radar for Best Actress since her Best Supporting Actress win in Tootsie (1982) over a decade previously.  Having offered strong performances in past films including Frances (1982), Country (1985), Sweet Dreams (1986), and Music Box (1990), all of which were nominated, Lange was finally due for her Oscar win.  Her performance in Blue Sky of a free-spirited wife with a mental illness, though accented beautifully in the Southern drawl, flamboyantly free-spirited, sexy, and piercingly raw at times, failed to stand out significantly from previous roles of stereotypical housewives reeling against an unjust patriarchal system.  Her most notable moment is driving recklessly through a parade and erratically demanding justice for her husband (Tommy Lee Jones), who has been imprisoned and psychologically tormented for his rejection of the Blue Sky atmospheric nuclear testing decision.  Other strong moments involve her sometimes volatile, sometimes heartwarming relationship with her husband in the film, which underscore the effects of mental illness on career, child-rearing, and common pressures between sexes in the contract of marriage.  Regardless of a relatively strong performance, her acting was dramatically overshadowed by another seasoned actress.

Long-time Oscar juggernaut Jodie Foster, best known for her two previous Best Actress wins for The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and The Accused (1988) once more gave the year's best performance for her role as a hermit woman who has never before made contact with contemporary American society.  Foster, who won her first Screen Actors Guild Award for Nell and claims it as her personal favorite performance to date, brilliantly paints the mind and spiritual soul of a woman who has lived a lifetime without societal expectation in the woods of North Carolina.  The role required Foster to invent body expressions and words to accommodate a language born more or less from Nell's late mother, the sounds of the natural world, and childhood interactions with her twin sister.

The ordinary becomes extraordinary in Nell's eyes as her life following her mother's death is infiltrated by anthropologists, cruel men from town, and media outlets hungry for an original story at any cost.  Initially, Nell is deemed mentally handicapped by the people of North Carolina early in the film as they are unable to understand her seemingly incoherent jumble of meaningless phrases.  Besides her inability to communicate in English, she is shocked into hysterical screaming when flash-photographed by a news photographer, terrified of the image of men, and bathes naked and unashamed in plain sight.  Only when Jerome Lovell (Liam Neeson) and Paula Olsen (Natasha Richardson), two anthropologists from the city, are called to investigate the situation are Nell's mental capabilities determined sane and her seemingly incoherent jargon understood as a whole logical language in itself.  Foster is most successful in performing a complex mental state of social naivete and hidden intelligence through beautifully contrived naturalism in her body movements, facial expressions, and incredible ability to suggest meaning to viewers through an otherwise meaningless sequence of noises.  Her chemistry with Liam Neeson's character in the film matches the initial fear, curiosity, and slow-building friendship expected of two individuals from vastly different languages, cultures, life perspectives, and social upbringings, providing a solid foundation for viewers to believe the incredible circumstances of Nell's secluded existence.  Most awe-inspiring is Foster's genuine warmth and passion in every phrase and movement she employs.  In one early scene, Neeson's anthropologist, Jerome, having grown closer to Nell, speaks to her in her cabin in an attempt to better understand and communicate in her language.  While he speaks, Foster walks around the cabin, arm outstretched, fingers flexed, head-tilted and eyes closed in a trance-like state.  In a change of tactics, Jerome reenacts a scene from his childhood where he watches a marching band, showing how his heart was beating "bumbum bumbum... the marching band: Bam Bam Bambam Bambam Bam Bam."  With tears in her eyes and mouth open in awe, Foster and Nell become one person reacting to the given circumstances of the scene, communicating without words her joy at Jerome's ability to connect with her through sound.  She embraces him then, tearfully, all smiles and joy bursting from her lips with the words "Reckon" and "Gah handts!"  Through Foster's impressionable reactionary realism and passionate, mindful action, the viewer is swept up with the realization that Nell is much more than an aimless, thoughtless wild woman.  Her humanizing performance is mesmerizing and communicates brilliantly to viewers that acting is meant to be more a thought-provoking experience than an easily understood salute to the norm.

Best Supporting Actor

Winner: Martin Landau (Ed Wood)

Other Nominees: Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction), Chazz Palminteri (Bullets Over Broadway), Paul Scofield (Quiz Show), Gary Sinese (Forrest Gump)

Best Choice: Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction)

Runners-Up: Gary Oldman (Léon: The Professional), John Travolta (Pulp Fiction), Martin Landau (Ed Wood), Gary Sinese (Forrest Gump), Bob Gunton (The Shawshank Redemption), Vincent D'Onofrio (Ed Wood)

As in previous categories, the candidates for Best Supporting Actor this year were drawn from strong and varied characters.  Leading the pack of spiritual and creative gangsters, war-ravaged veteran, and intellectual New England patriarch, was Bela Lugosi, the legendary Dracula acting star, whose portrayal by Martin Landau was as near historical perfection as any supporting performance of the decade.  Most impressive was Landau's accent, which, he admitted in an interview, was created with an emphasis to mask the Hungarian origin rather than accentuate it (apparently the accent placed major casting restrictions on Lugosi's acting career, thus was something that filled him with pride as well as contention later in life).  Though Landau's performance is inspiring, offering viewers incredible depth into the late horror icon as well as belly-roaring one-liners sure to crack a smile on the face of even the sternest critic, the portrayal falls a bit into the realm of imitation.  Lugosi was already an over-accentuated character actor and entertaining personality in his own life, so much of the Landau's mental work for the role was in many ways already presented to him.  For this reason, Landau deserved a nomination, but his win was too generous especially for such a competitive selection of performances.

Other worthy non-nominated performances included Gary Oldman's previously discussed role in Léon: The Professional, Bob Gunton as the harsh warden in The Shawshank Redemption, and Vincent D'Onofrio's brief mirror-image portrayal of Orson Welles in Ed Wood.  John Travolta was nominated for Best Actor for his work in Pulp Fiction, but his role is more fitting in the Supporting category as the film is not focused on any one character's narrative.  Regardless, Travolta's performance is mostly overshadowed by his co-star, my choice for Best Supporting Actor, Samuel L. Jackson.

In Pulp Fiction, Jackson gives the performance of a lifetime, one that will continue to mold all of his performances to date as well as secure his status as one of America's greatest acting personalities.  What is so great about Jules Winnfield's character is not that he is funny, cruel, deep, or that he pushes viewers to think outside the box (though he is all of these and does just this to audiences), but that his lines are delivered with such memorable and powerful gusto that they are ingrained eternally into the viewer's psyche.  Who can forget Jackson's intensity in the first full scene of the film where he verbally barrages a man with wit, humor, cursing, and lengthy religious reiteration?  With vulgar lines like "English, Motherf**ker, do you speak it?!" and entire bible passages under his belt, Jackson may well have given the most verbally active supporting performance in recent memory.  His intense facial expressions in the first section of the film are equally mesmerizing, adding intimidation to his already terrifying bombardment of words.  Jackson is also successful in showing Jules' tender side through his spirituality and tough guidance of two thugs attempting to rob him in the film's final scene.  Such a character arch from ruthless gangster at the start to sympathetic "shepherd" by the end is difficult to pull off, and Jackson achieves this seamlessly through genuine dialogue with co-star John Travolta and supreme attention to diction.  Every word, swear or part of psalm, of his hundreds are perfectly placed, perfectly accentuated to paint a gangster at the end of his career.  It is no wonder that Jackson's performance stands as one of cinema's most memorable and marks a true apex in character acting on film.

Best Supporting Actress

Winner: Dianne Wiest (Bullets Over Broadway)
Other Nominees: Rosemary Harris (Tom & Viv), Helen Mirren (The Madness of King George), Uma Thurman (Pulp Fiction), Jennifer Tilly (Bullets Over Broadway)

Best Choice: Natalie Portman (Léon: The Professional)
Runners-Up: Sally Field (Forrest Gump), Dianne Wiest (Bullets Over Broadway), Uma Thurman (Pulp Fiction), Helen Mirren (The Madness of King George), Robin Wright (Forrest Gump)



Dianne Wiest's performance of the overly dramatic stage star, Helen Sinclair, in Woody Allen's hilarious contemplation on the art of screenwriting won the Academy with its classic alluring flamboyancy and precise mastery of diction.  The performance was definitely worthy of praise, with memorably executed lines: "Don't talk!  Don't talk!" and overall simple and specific execution without distracting viewers too drastically from the narrative.  Wiest's chemistry with star John Cusak is effectively intriguing, especially given the large age difference between the actors; their romantic moments in the film are tender, oddly and hysterically so, but satisfying nonetheless.  Still, given the large array of strong supporting performances, Wiest stands out more for her classical approach to the craft than for the value of her performance alone.  While she succeeded in entertaining audiences and contributed to the backstage comedic tones of the film as a whole, Wiest's performance lacks depth and urgency in comparison to other memorable acts this year.

Two performances in particular stand out as likely candidates for an alternative Best Supporting Actress win.  The first is Sally Field's tender and tear-invoking role as Forrest's aging mother in Forrest Gump.  With minimal screen time, Field still plays a crucial part in the viewer's opinion of the film through her caring and influential relationship with her developmentally challenged son.  Second, and my choice for the award, is Natalie Portman as she rises to stardom in her first widely-recognized performance as Lolita-like Mathilda in Léon: The Professional.  Strongly reminiscent of Jodie Foster's controversial role as a child prostitute in Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976), Portman's involvement in the film at all is highly contested due to its unrelenting violence and lewd content; however, from an acting standpoint, one would have never guessed that Portman's quick-witted, embarrassingly intimate, and overwhelmingly heart-wrenching performance was given by a girl no older than thirteen years.  Most impressive, and highly uncomfortable, is perhaps the dress-up scene where Portman dances provocatively in front of her savior, the assassin Léon (Jean Reno), suggesting a possible romantic inclining between she and the man three times her age.  Where Portman secures her win over her more experienced and renowned competition is her ability as a young actress to forge, from a mostly inexperienced and innocent perspective, an urgent sense of fear, determined anger, and incredible resilience in the face of sorrow and violence.  She learns how to dismantle and clean a pistol, practices aiming with a sniper rifle, reacts with brilliant and brutal honesty to the murder of her family, and showcases acute sense of self-preservation while psychologically tormented at the ruthless hands of a psychopathic police chief (Oldman).  Her genuine reaction to Gary Oldman's terrifying presence in the one scene she shares with him alone in a bathroom is on par with a tenured actress.  In this scene, Portman's face reveals the terror and dread of one hopelessly trapped, yet her voice is calm as it carefully resumes an air of attempted confidence.  Such a moment of acting within acting is challenging to achieve so gracefully, especially when a child is thrust into a scene of such psychological trauma.  One could argue that this is merely a child reacting to the circumstances of the scene, yet Portman's poise and adaptability in each of her scenes projects her performance beyond such a simple categorization.  Portman inspires the viewer to feel her reactions, to cry with her unfortunate circumstances, and, most importantly, to reflect on the very meaning and method of effective acting.  For these reasons, Portman, though least known to critics at the time, was most worthy of the prize.

Alternative Oscars: 1994

Best Picture

Winner: Schindler's List
Other Nominees: The Fugitive, In the Name of the Father, The Piano, The Remains of the Day

Best Choice: Schindler's List
Runners-Up: The Piano, Naked

The 66th Academy Awards marked a dramatic close to a phenomenal year of films.  Political and courtroom thrillers like The Fugitive, Philadelphia, In the Name of the Father, and In the Line of Fire rocked the box office, comedies like What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Groundhog Day, and Mrs. Doubtfire brought viewers both to tears and belly-roaring laughter, and high-brow period pieces like The Remains of the Day and The Age of Innocence once again dazzled critics with fine performances and elegant production design.  The year also offered a profound rise in main-stream art films, Mike Leigh's examination of missed human experiences in Naked and most notably Jane Campion's contemplative romance The Piano, for which she become the second woman nominated for Best Director after Lina Wurtmuller for Seven Beauties (1976).  The Piano went on to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and remains one of the most memorable romance dramas of the decade.  The year was also brilliant for its biopics, most remarkably Brian Gibson's powerful examination of singer Tina Turner in What's Love Got to Do With It and Steven Spielberg's harrowing and groundbreaking Holocaust drama Schindler's List filmed through the perspective of Nazi businessman Oskar Schindler.

Though a competitive year, no films matched the heart-wrenching horror and stomach-turning sadness of Schindler's List.  The film won nine Academy Awards including Oscars for Best Picture, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, and Original Score, and rightfully so.  John Williams' winning score, a sorrowful violin wailing against the overwhelming force of silence, provides a backdrop for the trauma of the Jewish genocide as it unfolds before the eyes of viewers.  As the film is centered on the choices of protagonist Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), viewers see the Holocaust not from the perspective of the Jewish victim, but through the eyes of a rich Nazi factory owner as he transforms from greedy businessman who uses the war and Jewish situation as a means to grow incredibly wealthy into selfless Moses-like activist for Jewish survival.  Liam Neeson's performance is remarkable in its ability to garner both perspective for the role of a Nazi party-member as well as growing disgust for the injustices performed against the Jewish people.  Most remarkable is the relationship between the justice-striving Schindler and the film's sinister, murder-happy Nazi work camp Commandant, Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes).  The characters are friends in the film, offering fascinating layers of human interaction and intensity rarely seen in cinema as one would not expect such incredible good to grow so close to such vile evil.  Even more fascinating is that this relationship involves an instance where the film's villain admires and continuously shows love and support for the film's hero.

Spielberg's directing is masterful and marks a true apex in his career.  His choice to shoot primarily in black and white triumphs in its ability to transport viewers into the time of WWII documentaries and Nazi propaganda, while offering heavy symbolic weight painting a period of grayness and grief sans light for Jewish people.  The opening shot underscores this very motif as candles are lit by a Jewish family at prayer and are slowly burned down.  As the candles grow shorter, the Jewish family disappears, and the color drains from the film until only a brilliant purple blaze survives in the meager wax surrounded by gray.  Finally, the flame and color are extinguished, leaving a solemn trail of smoke rising much like the smoke from the concentration camp in later scenes.  From here, the film changes setting dramatically to a Nazi party where Oskar Schindler showcases his charm, intelligence, and powerful charisma as he secures his business by coming on good terms with Nazi officers.  Initially, Schindler is depicted as a man strictly with money and women on the mind.  He is a womanizer, seducing multiple German girls at various points throughout the film, and initially sees the war and relocation of the Jewish people as a financial opportunity.  He immediately sets out to acquire the best accountant and financial adviser for his company at the least cost, scouring the ghettos for intelligent, loyal Jews.  He employs Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) who becomes his personal assistant and then close friend as the Nazis further restrict Jewish rights.

Halfway through the film, Oskar Schindler witnesses a girl wearing a brilliant red dress (the only instance of color since the opening shot) in the ghetto, possibly suggesting the innocence and hopeful rejuvenation of youth among the depressed state of Jewish affairs.  Later, Schindler sees the same dress lying in a pile of clothing beside a burning pier of Jewish bodies, and all hope and innocence, along with color, are finally extinguished.  After this event and a slew of others including a scene where he listens to a story of Amon's brutal murder of multiple Jews, Schindler realizes the evils in Jewish persecution and does everything in his power to employ as many work camp Jews as possible.  This act, though at first a means of saving money by employing Jews for a fraction of the cost, soon becomes a personal mission of salvation for Schindler, and he creates a list of Jews to save with help from Itzhak.  In one of the film's most haunting scenes, his handpicked workers are accidentally sent by train to Auschwitz for extermination.  Devastated, Schindler goes to great lengths to save them, finally selling all his valuables and illegally bargaining with Nazi officers for their lives.  At the end of the film the war has ended, and Schindler breaks down in tears for all the lives he failed to save.  His Jewish workers praise him for his supreme goodness and offer him a ring of gratitude and a list of signatures pardoning him from potential war crimes.  Schindler flees, as he is still a member of the Nazi party, and the Jewish workers march toward any land that will take them.  Color is restored to the film as the living Schindler Jews offer tribute to Schindler's grave in the present day.

Though criticized for its overemphasis on the power of the ruling class to make change, Schindler's List offers a powerful salute to a man who had every reason to do evil but chose goodness.  What makes the film worthy of Best Picture is its ability to paint a picture of the Holocaust through the eyes of a Nazi party-member, while simultaneously revealing in graphic detail the atrocities committed against the Jewish people by the Nazis.  The film remains one of the greatest films about the Holocaust ever made, with the exception of Claude Lanzmann's Shoah (1985), and will undoubtedly move audiences to tears for many years to come.


Best Actor

Winner: Tom Hanks (Philadelphia)
Other Nominees: Daniel Day-Lewis (In the Name of the Father), Lawrence Fishbourne (What's Love Got to Do With It), Anthony Hopkins (The Remains of the Day), Liam Neeson (Schindler's List)

Best Choice: David Thewlis (Naked)
Runners-Up: Robin Williams (Mrs. Doubtfire), Jeff Bridges (Fearless), Liam Neeson (Schindler's List), Lawrence Fishburne (What's Love Got to Do With It), Anthony Hopkins (The Remains of the Day), Daniel Day-Lewis (In the Name of the Father)



Tom Hanks' win for playing a gay lawyer with AIDS in Philadelphia was more a political stance against the injustices of contemporary American culture than a performance-informed award.  Undoubtedly, Hanks worked hard in the role, losing weight and performing with strained, sickly body stances and facial expressions to appear realistic to his character Andrew Beckett's condition.  Most effective was the famously known "opera scene" where Beckett describes to his lawyer Joe Miller (Denzel Washington) the musicality of a beautiful opera song as it plays in the background.  In the scene, Hanks is absorbed in thought, purely in tune with the music.  As he describes the scene, he grows aware of how his observations in the song match his current condition as he struggles with his disease and with his battle for rights as a lawyer with AIDS.  Though initially mesmerizing, the performance is a little too forceful, too self-conscious, and too rigid for the desired realism of the scene.  Denzel Washington, though not nominated, offers a far superior performance simply sitting and listening, taking the act into his thoughts and naturally becoming affected by it.  Whereas Washington dominates the scene with near-nonchalance, Hanks is trying too hard; thus, his performance is reduced to an act rather than a living, breathing experience.

One of the year's greatest overlooked performances was David Thewlis in Mike Leigh's philosophically-charged commentary on human interaction, Naked.  Thewlis plays Johnny, a thoughtful, energetic, and neurotic drifter who flees to the flat of his ex-girlfriend Louise (Lesley Sharp) in London after raping a woman.  Johnny is cynical, dirty, vulgar, yet somehow incredibly funny and charming as he flirts shamelessly with every woman he meets, seducing Louise's housemate Sophie (Katrin Cartlidge) while stirring up emotions from his own past with Louise.  Unable to deal with the love he and Louise once shared, Johnny flees the apartment to the city, beating the dark, dirty streets seeking comfort, connection, and meaning in life through people he meets along the way.  Throughout the film, he falls passionately into dialogue with an array of characters including street dwellers, a night watchman, a depressed woman, a cafe girl, and an ad painter on subjects ranging from religion, the end of the world, human biology, psychology, sex, the mundane, the absurd, and most of all his cynical belief that life is nothing but dirt and pestilence.  Eventually, Johnny returns to Louise's flat, beat-up and psychologically disturbed.  Sophie has been raped by a sadistic upper-class man, Jeremy (Gregg Crutwell), who refuses to leave the flat, and Johnny, in an uncontrollable fit of near-psychosis, reaches out to him as though he has finally found his long-lost brother.  The man finally leaves, and Johnny is nursed tenderly back to health by Louise and her second house-mate, Sandra (Claire Skinner), who is also a nurse.  Sophie, unable to bare the weight of her recent rape and final rejection from Johnny, whom she has come to love, flees the apartment.  A moment of love is shared between Johnny and Louise, where the two agree once more to travel together to Manchester to start a new life.  Louise kisses Johnny goodbye as she leaves for work, telling him they will leave when she returns.  Once she leaves, Johnny gathers what money he can and limps out of the flat and down the road, choosing a life of nomadic solitude.

The brilliance of Thewlis' performance is his ability to both blend into the dark, depressing atmosphere of London and dominate every scene with his supreme naturalistic presence.  Every twitch, flick of cigarette, and scrunch of face breathes meaning, and every long-winded expression of existential despair or sex-craved depravity is delivered with acute understanding of Johnny's thoughts and history.  Thewlis' performance is so engrossing that viewers are able to sympathize with Johnny even with knowledge of his sometimes violent tendencies and rape of a woman at the start of the film.  His careless demeanor and clever, subtle mocking of characters throughout the film, forces viewers to laughter, while his emotional complexity in scenes such as when he is lost in psychological turmoil after returning to Louise's flat bring tears to the eyes.  No other performance this year so masterfully envelops space and language as naturally as Thewlis' Johnny, who almost seems to embody the very beating heart and depraved mind of the city of London itself.


Best Actress

Winner: Holly Hunter (The Piano)
Other Nominees: Angela Bassett (What's Love Got to Do With It), Stockard Channing (Six Degrees of Separation), Emma Thompson (The Remains of the Day), Debra Winger (Shadowlands)

Best Choice: Angela Bassett (What's Love Got to Do With It)
Runners-Up: Holly Hunter (The Piano), Michelle Pfieffer (The Age of Innocence), Emma Thompson (The Remains of the Day)



A year of powerful lead female performances concluded with Holly Hunter winning the Oscar for her stern and silent, yet incredibly passionate, performance as a mute piano player, Ada, in the midst of a love triangle.  Subtle, specific, and terrifyingly poignant, Hunter's performance blew critics away.  It was refreshing to finally witness acting that used the body to translate vast depths of meaning to viewers, especially within the context of a film that ponders and pushes the boundaries of the roles women have played throughout the history of Western civilization.  Even more compelling was Hunter's behind-the-scenes work, which involved inventing a unique form of sign language (formal sign language was not yet put to practice at the period in the film) and learning to play the piano.

There is not much to criticize in Hunter's performance, and she was deserving of the Oscar; however, Angela Bassett's portrayal of singer Tina Turner in What's Love Got to Do With It is equally mesmerizing and, arguably, a more challenging role to perform for reasons pertaining to emotional and aesthetic accuracy as well as physical demands.  For this reason, she is my choice for Best Actress.  The difficulty in this decision stems mostly from the similarities of both the characters of Ada in The Piano and Anna Mae (Tina Turner) in What's Love Got to Do With It.  Both are musicians, one a piano player, one a singer who love music and find spiritual sanctuary in it.  Both deal with abusive, controlling men.  Both seek enlightenment of some kind: Ada in true love from George (Harvey Keitel), Tina in Buddhism and finally musical stardom independent from her controlling husband Ike (Lawrence Fishburne).  Even minute details of production are similar: in the film Ada's fingers are chopped off by her husband Alisdair (Sam Neill) and Angela Bassett's hand is literally broken when filming a fight scene with Lawrence Fishburne.  It is here, in the minute details, where Bassett's superior power in her performance are illuminated.  To acquire Tina Turner's muscular physique, Bassett performed intense daily workouts prior to filming.  She also worked steadily to reach Tina's vocal range in singing; though many scenes in the film are set to actual recordings by Tina Turner, Bassett still attempted to sing her vocal range as a means to fit aesthetically into the raw, overwhelming power of her voice.  The effect of this technique are scenes where Bassett dissolves entirely into the rhythm of Tina Turner's awesome stage presence, displaying the complex emotions of a singer both in love with the spirit of music as well as broken by physical and verbal abuse.  In no part of the film do viewers suspect lip-syncing has occurred, nor do viewers question the pain and tenderness behind Bassett's performance of Tina offstage as she is repeatedly knocked down physically and emotionally by her husband.  Her fragility at one moment and strong-bodied power at another push Bassett's performance over the competition as the year's best.


Best Supporting Actor

Winner: Tommy Lee Jones (The Fugitive)
Other Nominees: Leonardo DiCaprio (What's Eating Gilbert Grape), Ralph Fiennes (Schindler's List), John Malkovich (In the Line of Fire), Pete Postlethwaite (In the Name of the Father)

Best Choice: Ralph Fiennes (Schindler's List)
Runners-up: Leonardo DiCaprio (What's Eating Gilbert Grape), Denzel Washington (Philadelphia), Sean Penn (Carlito's Way), John Malkovich (In the Line of Fire), Gary Oldman (True Romance)



Tommy Lee Jones' win for essentially playing himself in The Fugitive has remained one of the largest outrages in Academy history.  Though entertaining and likable as the curt, no-nonsense U.S. marshal, Jones was most definitely the least worthy actor this year and should not have won the Oscar (or have been nominated) on any grounds (unless of course the Academy took place on a dam, and spouting "I don't care" became an instant requirement for good acting).  In a year full of promising supporting actor performances, it was a sin to grant Jones the top honor.  Leonardo DiCaprio's touchingly genuine role as a mentally disabled child in What's Eating Gilbert Grape, Denzel Washington's sympathetic lawyer in Philadelphia, Sean Penn's goofy, yet terrifying, gangster lawyer in Carlito's Way, John Malkovich's disturbing assassin in In the Line of Fire, and even Gary Oldman's ten minutes of screen time for playing a drug-induced pimp in True Romance were all more deserving of the honor.

The best performance, however, was given by Ralph Fiennes for playing the psychopathic Nazi Commandant Amon Goeth in Schindler's List.  What marks the brilliance of Fiennes' performance is not so much the brutality of how he executes the various Jewish victims throughout the film, but his calm, almost serene every-day-way of attending to the task of murder.  In one scene, Fiennes rises from bed after just recently sleeping with a woman and strolls to his balcony.  There, he causally lifts a rifle, aims and shoots dead a random Jewish worker in the camp.  He then, just as simply, places the rifle down and goes to the bathroom.  Simple routine.  Fiennes' performance of Amon is one equally conscious of the power dynamic that exists between his character and Oscar Schindler.  Schindler is Amon's idol, and Fiennes brilliantly portrays his simultaneous admiration and fascination with Schindler through subtleties in dialogue inflections throughout the film.  In one crucial scene, Amon is drunk and stammering on to Schindler about how he watches him, that he knows he isn't a "drunk," and that that is power.  Schindler uses this to his advantage, and persuades Amon to consider that power comes most of all through a leader's ability "to pardon" those who have offended him.  Fiennes' responds with a "I think you are drunk," then a thoughtful glance off-camera and a fully-bodied laugh.  Though subtle, the acting in this scene paints Amon's thought-process as reflective, though susceptible to the overwhelming attraction of power.  Fiennes' steady dedication to this specific character goal throughout the film marks a truly invigorating performance, one that delves deeper than mere imitation by accent or aesthetics into the very human psyche.


Best Supporting Actress

Winner: Anna Paquin (The Piano)
Other Nominees: Holly Hunter (The Firm), Rosie Perez (Fearless), Winona Ryder (The Age of Innocence), Emma Thompson (In the Name of the Father)

Best Choice: Rosie Perez (Fearless)
Runners-up: Darlene Cates (What's Eating Gilbert Grape), Leslie Sharp (Naked), Katrin Cartlidge (Naked), Gong Li (Farewell My Concubine)



By far the year's weakest category of nominations, the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress was awarded to the young Anna Paquin for her work as Ada's unruly, high-strung daughter in The Piano.  Her performance was good, with an intensity and dedication rare for children (she was the second youngest to win the honor), and her nominated competition was slim, the only deserving performance given by Rosie Perez, which contributed to her win.  Regardless of Paquin's spunk and wonderful collaboration with Holly Hunter, it is hard to give the award to an actress who was not allowed to see over half of the film due to its R-rated content.  And even if this wasn't the case, there were much stronger performances given by non-nominated actresses including Leslie Sharp and Katrin Cartlidge's raw naturalistic acting in Naked, Darlene Cates' emotional tour de force as a caring, obese mother to a boy with mental disabilities in What's Eating Gilbert Grape, and Gong Li's intensity in Farewell My Concubine, which earned her a New York Film Critics Circle prize for Best Supporting Actress.

Rosie Perez is fearless in Peter Weir's Fearless, where she plays a once-mother, Carla Roderigo, who is grieving the death of her two-year-old son after a plane crash takes him from her.  From the start of the film, Perez demonstrates her mastery of the fear, sadness, and hysteria of a mother who has just watched her child die in her arms.  Her exasperated screams and tears instantly strike the hearts of viewers and linger in the mind for many scenes afterward.  Her acting then transitions to one of a dull, emotionless stupor as her character Carla lays comatosed in bed waiting for God to take her life.  It is only with the help of her guardian angel, the "hero" Max (Jeff Bridges), that she slowly emerges from her grief and accepts death as a natural part of life.  Perez and Bridges' chemistry is electric, and Perez further demonstrates her ability to change from sad to angry to laughing out loud in mere moments.  Arguably her best scene involves Carla and Max driving back from the mall after shopping for their dead loved ones where Carla reveals her fault in her baby's death.  In this scene, Perez effectively demonstrates the guilt and shame behind Carla's grief, the overwhelming sadness of her baby's death, and her fear of going to Hell for lying about what occurred during the crash.  Where a lesser actor would easily fall into sappy melodrama, Perez allows the intensity of her character's feelings to emerge realistically through reaction to Bridges' comments and reassurances.  Her deliverance of lines and movements of body interact perfectly to create a unique and impressionable portrait of grief.

The Revenant: Almost a Masterpiece

Imagine The Revenant as a knight in shining armor, brilliant, beautiful armor made from the finest iron mined in the wilderness of the North and honed in the finest forge.  Behind that shiny brilliance, picture the face of Leonardo DiCaprio, ruggedly honest, earnest, and determined to avenge his son.  So detailed and realistic is the armor and so natural DiCaprio's performance, that viewers have no choice but to tumble head-long into the rapids of this overwhelmingly brutal, yet beautiful struggle for survival.

But, just as one is willing to dedicate themselves fully to witnessing this knight in combat, the subtle flaws in the armor's design reveal themselves.  The seems are just wide enough for an observant critic to shoot a kill-shot into the spleen of Alejandro González Iñárritu's acclaimed classic, bleeding the film's unacceptable flaws for all to see onto the white snow.

Take one: As evident in the picture above, the narrative is loosely based on true events.  By stating this, the film is already defining itself through the standards of realism.  In addition to marketing, realism is further enhanced by the production design of the film itself.  Cinematographer Emmanuel Lebezki took great lengths to shoot the film using primarily natural lighting to produce what friend and fellow cinematographer Roger Deakins has described as a "moving camera hand-held... Terry Malick kind of look," a purely "naturalistic style of lighting" similar to his work in Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life (2011) (Variety).  Supposedly, the only instance of artificial lighting in the whole film occurred while filming a campfire in a particular scene to elevate the shadows around the flames.  With such attention to detail and tenderness for the photography, the cinematography in The Revenant is beautiful and presents the elegant armor for González Iñárritu's direction.  In performance, Leonardo DiCaprio likewise focused immensely on attaining a supreme form of realism through an elevated method-acting beyond which has been experienced in popular cinema.  Most notably, he has supposedly eaten raw bison liver, slept inside a dead animal, learned pieces of the First Nation language, and endured stages of grueling conditions including hypothermia.

Emmanuel Lebezki shooting a scene from The Revenant

Take two:  The bear scene.  With such emphasis on realism, it is hard to believe that Leo's character is able to survive the attack by the standards in which it was shot.  Hugh Glass (DiCaprio) is mauled by the bear multiple times.  Not only is this unfeasible, but it is stupid.  What would the motivation be behind a bear leaving Glass alive after the first mauling?  In most bear attacks, the victim is killed outright (Grizzly bears, like the one depicted in the film, have been observed killing wolves and mountain lions with a single swipe of the paw); however, there are of course survivors depending on the ferocity of the bear, situation, etc.   González Iñárritu's directing, however, makes the claim that Glass is able to survive three rounds of attacks, and from a mother bear protecting her cubs at that.  Yes, the actual Hugh Glass survived an attack, but it was likely an attack that ended with Glass' quick killing of the bear.  The likelihood of survival from such an attack is pretty much impossible, and already the film's quest for realism begins to falter.

Hugh Glass being brutally mauled by the bear

Take three: Glass' wounds.  The bear attack did not bother me outright.  Hyperbole is expected and encouraged in cinema; however, after the attack, special attention is given to Glass' wounds.  He has apparently been bitten through the neck, has broken or heavily damaged his leg so that he cannot walk, and has received deep lacerations along his back and sides.  Regardless of the fact he would have bled out within minutes of receiving such a neck wound, the fact remains that such terrible wounds would become infected and kill a human through blood poisoning within a day or two.  Later in the film, not two days after the attack, Glass has not only miraculously healed without infection (I guess his Indigenous friend's concoction of spit and grass did the trick better than most modern medicines), but he is also now able to walk, swim, fight, run at times, and fall off of cliffs seemingly without further harm.  Under the confines of realism set at the start of the film, these elements are laughably moronic to the point of sheer directorial stupidity.  Unless Glass has become Superman, he would have frozen to death in the snow beside his son, unable to physically make the journey required to survive.

Take four: The frozen river.  After temporarily healing his neck wound with fire (again the plausibility of not bleeding out from such a wound is highly questionable), Glass is surrounded by the same native war-party that attacked his team at the start of the film.  To escape, he slips into the river and careens down rapids and waterfalls beside floating ice drifts, dodging arrows and rocks while swimming toward some stable ground.  Not only would he have died from hypothermia within minutes, he would have drowned due to the swiftness of the river, the overwhelming weight of the bear pelt on his body, and the fact that his leg had just recently been maimed by the bear.

Take five: Eating raw meat when a fire is at hand.  Yes, Glass was starving, but so starving that he had to immediately eat raw fish and bison without cooking it on the fire right in front of him?

Alejandro González Iñárritu directing in The Revenant

With all of these takes of super-hyperbole beyond realistic standards, it is simply poor directing to rely so heavily on realism as the mode of telling Glass' story.  The better directing choice would have been to go with magical realism (a narrative device González Iñárritu often employs in his film-making, most prominently in recent Best Picture winner Birdman) than relying on the restrictions of realism.  Some directing alternatives could have included blurring the line between Glass' life and death, further accentuating the meaning behind the film's title as well as the symbolic connotations of such a depiction.  Another choice would be to include more developed and more frequent dream sequences to suggest Glass' connection with the spirit world and his dead wife.  Both of these choices would have pushed the philosophical and cinematic innovation of this film and improved its overall effect on audiences.

Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)

Disappointingly, like the dragon Smoug in Tolkien's The Hobbit, The Revenant, though majestic, is slain by a chink in the scales, by a lack of minute details in realism in which it has maintained its cinematic foundation.  Essentially, the film fails to accept the laws of its own universe, thus falling short from The Tree of Life-like masterpiece it could have been.

Alternative Oscars: 1993

Best Picture

Winner: Unforgiven
Other Nominees: The Crying Game, A Few Good Men, Howards End, Scent of a Woman

Best Choice: Howards End
Runners-Up: Malcolm X, The Last of the Mohicans, Reservoir Dogs

The 1993 Oscar for Best Picture was awarded to Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, in which Eastwood also nabbed the award for Best Director.  The win acted as a farewell to Eastwood's long career in the Western genre, and to this day marks a significant turn toward his renown brisk, bare-bone style of filmmaking.  Though an entertaining work with great political and artistic value, the film reveals more of a director in turmoil with his own ego and the hesitant abandonment of tradition than the duel riveting action shooter and thought provoking farewell to arms originally intended for the screen.  With the ongoing motif of "leaving the guns behind," it seems ironic that in the final scene, the hero, William Munny uses violence to attain justice.  Remnicient of Sergio Leone's  A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and For a Few Dollars More (1965), Unforgiven, though attempting to comment on the end of the Western genre and the emergence of a new generation of film-making, relies on the same visual and narrative techniques of tradition, undermining its own cinematic message.


Howards End, directed by James Ivory and based on the book by E.M. Forster, is a film breathing tradition, yet boldly pushing the envelope of viewer expectation.  The film welcomes viewers into the world of post-colonial England where the rich and the poor exist at either ends of society.  The film begins with a woman, Ruth Wilcox (Vanessa Redgrave), wandering the beautiful property of Howards End, the homestead at the center of the drama.  She is nearing death and is in the process of securing her will and determining who will take ownership of the summer homestead in her wake.  Her husband, Henry J. Wilcox (Anthony Hopkins), is an up-kept gentleman who appears to be the prime benefactor for the property, that is until Ruth forms an unlikely friendship with a woman in the city, her less-well-to-do neighbor Margaret Schlegel (Emma Thompson).  Ruth's son Charles (James Wilby) was once set to marry Margaret's sister Helen (Helena Bonham Carter), which first brought the two families tumbling together.  Thompson's portrayal of Margaret is compassionate and kind, supremely likable and subtly joyous, acting as both friend and emotional support to Ruth.  Unlike Henry's aloof, almost indifferent response to Ruth's current condition, Margaret clearly cares for Ruth, gaining her an invitation to Howards End, though she never visits while Ruth is alive, and later title of primary beneficiary of the estate.

From here, the drama erupts.  After Ruth's death and it is revealed who will inherit Howards End, Henry burns the will, claiming the house and property for his own.  Margaret, who is now a good friend of the family, is unaware of her rightful claim and continues to visit the property by Henry's request, as he has grown infatuated with her.  Soon, much to his children's disdain, Henry proposes to Margaret, and they are married.  It is thus, through an ironic twist of fate, that Margaret becomes co-owner of an estate that is rightfully hers.  While Margaret grows more involved in upper-class life, her sister Helen grows infatuated with a sensitive young academic married man from the lower class.  They become lovers, and she is eventually impregnated by him.  Later, he seeks Helen to discuss his love for her regardless of their class differences, and he is killed by Charles in a quarrel as a result of a weak heart.  Charles is charged with murder and Margaret, disgusted with Henry and his severe hatred of the poor, decides to leave Howards End for Germany with Helen.  In the film's final scene, Henry reveals to Margaret Ruth's wish for her to inherit the estate, though he states she most likely did so as a result of her "not being herself."  The film, thus, ends on a sad, ironic note; the viewer is left distraught over the supreme injustice performed by the rich, both in the murder of a thoughtful poor man and the thievery of Howards End from Margaret, its rightful owner.

The film is most effective in its mastery of narrative, winning the Oscar for best screenplay for Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's poignant dialogue and effective dramatization of E.M Forster's brilliant novel of the same name.  The cinematography is equally brilliant, allowing viewers to connect with characters through specific visual clues.  This is most apparent with the young intellectual man's journey through the lilacs, symbolizing both his awakening to love and fragility of body.  Emotionally stirring and intense, Howards End is a film that marks both powerful narrative ability and vast cinematic value.  Viewers will be brought to tears, their insides twisted in anguish while simultaneously struck by awe at the film's immense narrative and cinematic beauty.


Best Actor

Winner: Al Pacino (Scent of a Woman)
Other Nominees: Robert Downey Jr. (Chaplin), Clint Eastwood (Unforgiven), Stephen Rea (The Crying Game), Denzel Washington (Malcolm X)

Best Choice: Denzel Washington (Malcolm X)
Runners-Up: Robert Downey Jr. (Chaplin), Daniel Day-Lewis (The Last of the Mohicans), Al Pacino (Scent of a Woman)



Al Pacino finally earned his long-coming Oscar win for playing a blind army lieutenant.  The year marked a perfect opportunity for his win as he also proved especially riveting in his role in David Mamet's screen version of the play Glengarry Glen Ross, also earning him a nomination in the supporting category.  Though no doubt a fine performance, the win was more a salute to Pacino himself for his inspirational career since his role as Michael Corleone in The Godfather (1972), making amends for past Oscar snubs for brilliant performances in Serpico (1973), The Godfather: Part II (1974), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), and Scarface (1983).

The undeniably best performance was given by Denzel Washington in Spike Lee's biopic of the late African American civil rights leader, Malcolm X.  So realistic and empowering was Washington's performance, coupled with his visual likeness to X, that audiences today still mistake him for the actual civil rights leader.  Washington's poise and supreme concentration reveal both a revolutionary and evolutionary Malcolm, one who grows from unstable criminal to collected civil rights advocate, calmly defying the unjust laws laid down by white men through concentrated resistance.  The emotional exasperation of Washington in Malcolm's younger years, especially notable in the pseudo-Russian roulette scene, contrasted with the cool prowess of his later years is evidence of an actor living and breathing in his element.  The raw power and intellectual backdrop that drives Washington's every movement in the film marks this performance as one of the decade's greatest.


Best Actress

Winner: Emma Thompson (Howards End)
Other Nominees: Catherine Deneuve (Indochine), Mary McDonnell (Passion Fish), Michelle Pfeiffer (Love Field), Susan Sarandon (Lorenzo's Oil)

Best Choice: Michelle Pfeiffer (Batman Returns)
Runners-Up: Emma Thompson (Howards End)



Emma Thompson's performance as Margaret Schelgel in Howards End is modest, sweet, and incredibly effective in subtly garnering love from both her fellow characters and viewers.  Though Thompson was deserving of the award, her character was overshadowed by the brilliance of Vanessa Redgrave's portrayal of Ruth Wilcox, and at times appeared to be more of a strong supporting character than the ultimate protagonist of the film.

A more fitting, though unexpected, choice would be Michelle Pfeiffer for her role in Tim Burton's Batman Returns.  Pfeiffer was nominated for her performance in Love Field as a Southern housewife aiding a black man and his daughter through difficulties on the road to Washington.  Though emotionally wrought and effective in her delivery, her performance for the most part played it safe - she was the typical wife seeking something more and using her feminine intuition to offer aid for a man and his daughter's well-being.  Her portrayal of Selina Kyle (aka Catwoman) in Batman Returns, however, is both comic and dark, touching and literally hair-raising.  This is a performance where Pfeiffer takes risks and succeeds dramatically in them.  Selina Kyle is the modest secretary to Max Shreck, an evil business man seeking total control of Gotham city.  Once Selina learns of Max's plans, Max throws her from a window.  Miraculously, Selina survives after being revived by cats, and takes on a villainous alter-ego as Catwoman.  Pfeiffer brilliantly portrays a woman merging from cloistered dismissal to unrestricted madness, flaunting her individuality and manipulative sexual/physical power over all the men she encounters.  Most brilliant is the scene where she first merges into her feline form.  After being thrown from the window, Selina arrives at her apartment.  Already she appears mad, both rigid as though dead and unpredictable in her thrashing movements through the apartment.  To the viewer, it appears as though an inner demon is merging into Selina's consciousness.  Pfeiffer is at first in a daze, and then in a furry, letting the cat out of the bag as she destroys everything from her character's previous life and evolves fully into her role as villainous hysteric.


Best Supporting Actor

Winner: Gene Hackman (Unforgiven)
Other Nominees: Jaye Davidson (The Crying Game), Jack Nicholson (A Few Good Men), Al Pacino (Glengarry Glen Ross), David Paymor (Mr. Saturday Night)

Best Choice: Tim Roth (Reservoir Dogs)
Runners-Up: Al Pacino (Glengarry Glen Ross), Wes Studi (The Last of the Mohicans), Steve Buscemi (Reservoir Dogs)



Gene Hackman won his second Oscar for once again playing a brutal enforcer of the law.  Like his previous performance as NYC narcotics detective Jimmy Doyle in The French Connection (1971), Hackman's portrayal of Little Bill Daggett in Unforgiven was ruthless, cold, and just psychotic enough to push Academy voters to action.  Though effective in his raw power in the film, Hackman offered nothing really new to his performance of the villain.  He was strictly, unapologetically cruel, offering no perspective to his means for his actions.  The audience hated him, but simply because he was the typical woman-beating, Morgan Freeman-whipping, symbol of police brutality and government control.  His performance was just as the viewer expected and nothing more.

There were a few promising non-nominated performances given this year.  Wes Studi gave a horrifying, passionately cold performance as the villainous Huron leader, Magua, in The Last of the Mohicans.  Quentin Tarantino's first critically acclaimed film Reservoir Dogs especially offered a slew of powerful supporting performances, most significantly the wild, swear-aholic Steve Buscemi and my choice, Tim Roth.  Roth's performance of Mr. Orange could easily be argued as overdrawn.  His acting seems awkward, out-of-place, even staged, that is until it is revealed that Roth's character is a double agent, secretly leading the police directly to those in charge of the heist.  Essentially, Roth is acting as a police officer acting as a criminal to such precision that even the audience is initially deceived.  Even as he lies dying on the ground of the warehouse, Roth performs a character struggling with what it means to be a good actor within the circumstances of the scene of his criminal ego's death.  Though bleeding out in the car with Mr. White (Harvey Keitel), Roth performs a complex Mr. Orange, one who thrashes both with the pain of gunshot wound and with the realization that if he cannot contain his identity with how a criminal would act in this situation of dying, he would surely be killed immediately by Mr. White.  Roth also displays this self-reflective nod to the art of acting during his monologue scene when he first warms up to the criminal gang.  He memorizes a monologue in the film to allow the other members of the bank heist to trust him.  Soon, he is able to improvise lines (both as the character and in the performance of the character), providing a performance quite unique to film, one that breaks the fourth wall while simultaneously effectively intensifying the narrative.


Best Supporting Actress

Winner: Marisa Tomei (My Cousin Vinny)
Other Nominees: Judy Davis (Husbands and Wives), Joan Plowright (Enchanted April), Vanessa Redgrave (Howards End), Miranda Richardson (Damage)

Best Choice: Vanessa Redgrave (Howards End)
Runners-Up: Marisa Tomei (My Cousin Vinny)



Marisa Tomei gave a funny and powerful performance as the boisterous, mechanically-inclined wife to Vinny, Mona Lisa Vito in My Cousin Vinny.  It's hard to compete with her quirky, sassy vibes and dominance in every scene; however, at times she appears more so as the stereotypical whiny, nagging Italian girlfriend than a character with individual, complex desires, thus fulfilling more the role of expectation than originality.

The better choice is Vanessa Redgrave in Howards End.  Here is a performance at the complete opposite spectrum of Tomei's.  Redgrave is subtle, complex, and deep in thought throughout her debut as Ruth Wilcox in the first third of the film.  Ruth is a gentle, seemingly compliant, and highly secretive woman on her deathbed seeking the proper benefactor for her estate of Howards End.  Her thoughts are never explicitly stated, so though it appears she is happy in her marriage with Henry (Anthony Hopkins) and that he will inherit the property, her increasing attachment to Emma Thompson's Margaret Schlegel reveals an alternative motive.  Redgrave and Thompson's acting compatibility is electric in the film, so much so that their characters' emotional relationship is unmatched by even Margaret and her sister Helen.  One can even argue Redgrave's subtle, thoughtful performance of Ruth's longing for Margaret is one of lesbian desire, further fueling the flames for her gifting the property to her dear friend.  Dreamy and complex in her almost hopeful descent to death, Redgrave's performance is one working heavily and heartily behind the scenes, every movement of lips and linger of eye a clue to the puzzle of Ruth's unique choices in the film.

Alternative Oscars

Alternate Oscars (1993) is a book written by film critic Danny Peary citing instances in Oscar history where the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences wrongly selected award winners in the categories of Best Picture, Actor, and Actress.  The book examines each year within the Academy Awards' existence: righting the wrongs of Oscar choices from the loss of "Sunrise" to "Wings" in 1927-28 to the loss of "An Angel at My Table" to "The Silence of the Lambs" in 1992.  Often, Danny Peary provides an argument for the underdog, the films and performances with supreme value that have been snubbed by the more popular, often better-funded and marketed features that won on the grounds of franchise rather than talent.  By referencing film and acting technique, individuality, as well as each feature's influence over time, Peary works to give dedicated movie-goers points of departure for further discussion and debate on what makes films worthy of the esteemed Academy Awards, and why the best choice is often not the loudest or most popular.

Film has many purposes.  The obvious is entertainment; however, the entertaining factor of a film or performance should not be the only catalyst for winning awards.  It is a film's ability to inspire, to educate and enlighten the viewer through artistic mastery and the powerful intellectual and emotional collaboration of story, performance, visual artistry, and sound.  The best films also take risks, push audiences to the edge of their seats, to tears, or toward a new worldview, all the while redefining the definition of cinema and what it means to be human.

My goal is to offer current film lovers a point of dialogue for more recent films.  I will start where Peary left off with the Academy Awards of 1993, also the year of my birth, and continue up until present day.  The films, actors, and actresses I choose for the categories of Best Picture, Actor, Actress, and Supporting will be decided based on technique, influence, originality, and risk as well as consider matters of representation and how wins should not depend on honorary entitlement or presence alone.

My views are not endorsed by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, nor do they represent sentiments of Danny Peary.  Although many critical reviews and perspectives were researched and evaluated as influences for my decisions, my choices rely entirely on my opinion of these films and performances from the past 22 years.  I cannot claim to have watched every film from every year; however, I have watched, reviewed, and analyzed many as well as performed massive research of various online and text criticisms of these films and performances to inform a coherent, professional argument for each alternative win.  I will post my choices for each year leading up to the 2016 Academy Awards.  Please comment with suggestions and points of conflict.