Oscar pundits are a little bit like that weird kid from high school with the encyclopedic knowledge of rare viral infections, or the AutoZone guy who can't wait to hold forth on the types of catastrophic accidents caused by neglecting to replace your windshield wiper blades in a timely fashion: though we admire the depth of their knowledge, we still wish they'd drop it elsewhere.
What common mortal requires a second-by-second update of the current front-runners in the Oscar race? Incredibly, these talking heads have been hashing out favorites, possible upsets, campaign strategies and the like for the better part of a year now. The best late-stage trick, of course, is to unveil a new X-factor that's sure to make a particular film/actor/director appealing to the Academy, a group of people characterized by said pundits as the most facile, suggestible collection of doddering old folks to ever successfully stick a DVD in a player and press "Play."
"Gretchen, turn up the volume! That funny piano player from 'Shine' is waving his arms around again!"
A tentative dip into the rushing waters of Oscar analysis, though, does have the effect of forcing the average onlooker to appreciate just how high the stakes run on Oscar night. When you consider the careful positioning, the strategizing, the debates on this or that flanking maneuver, the enormous splash of press and surge of bloviating that's sparked by inconsequential promotional events or off-the-cuff remarks, you understand that this is the Hollywood version of Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, an expensive and largely wasteful way to inject a little fun into the lull between taking meetings with awful people.
Just a glance at Melissa Leo's "Consider Me" glossy ad reveals volumes about the fickle whims of Oscar season and its breathless participants. Some have characterized Leo's self-financed pre-emptive campaign as a valiant strike against the sexism and ageism of Hollywood, while others have nudged us to consider the unvarnished facts: Leo paid for advertising in the hopes of winning an award. Behold the tackiness, people!
What both sides refuse to acknowledge is that Leo's strategery falls nicely in line with the desperate ambition that characterizes the whole Oscar enchilada, in all of its greasy, gut-rumbling glory. When you consider the months of lavish events and carefully calculated stumping by actors, studio heads and countless industry pawns, when you take into account the enormous tomes of detailed analysis that have been penned about a single award thus far, when you ponder the Academy's transition from hokey glad-handing gala to multimillion-dollar juggernaut, something interesting about our cultural moment is unveiled: There is no longer any discernible taint to blind ambition. We are free to aggressively pursue glory, symbolic or otherwise, by whatever means suit our needs at the time.
Look no further than the themes of many of the Best Picture nominations for confirmation of this. In almost every nominated film, we find an extreme, almost frantic ambition in play. In "Black Swan," Natalie Portman's ballerina forsakes her mother, her friends, her health, her sanity, her entire fate, in pursuit of perfection. In "The Social Network," Jesse Eisenberg's affectless nerd casts aside his Harvard education, his best friend and his principles to found a media colossus. In "The Fighter," Mark Wahlberg's character is forced to draw firm boundaries between himself and his family for the sake of victory. In "127 Hours," a passionate adventurer cuts off his own arm with a blunt pocket tool to survive and achieve his dreams.
But this ambition is also reflected in the alarming originality and expansive vision of the films themselves. So many of this year's directors pulled off films with a harrowing degree of difficulty. Danny Boyle created a vivid, dynamic film about a kid lodged in the same place for over five days, and Boyle did it without resorting to a single rescue — movie cliché. David O. Russell took on a working-class boxer and his family, and served up an unpredictable emotional rollercoaster ride with humor, realism, and compassion (three elements that are nearly impossible to blend into a single movie). Tom Hooper made us not only care about a stodgy, stuttering royal with almost zero charisma, but he let that funny piano player from 'Shine' (See also: one of the most charismatic actors in the business) wave his arms around again. Lee Unkrich transformed an animated threequel into a taut, delightful charmer with more memorable moments than the first two "Toy Story" movies. Darren Aronofsky made us feel so strongly for his ballerina heroine that we crawled inside her skin and ached for her fantasy of the perfect, brilliant performance that might redeem a lifetime of sacrifices. David Fincher not only rendered Aaron Sorkin's rapid-fire dialogue more transfixing and natural than it's ever been on the small screen, but he crafted a wildly funny, vibrant and thoroughly modern portrait of the dorky mogul as a young man.
The kinetic drive, the originality, the soul of the nominated films this year really speaks volumes about how far our best filmmakers have come through sheer force of will and determination. While it would be easy enough for a Fincher or an Aronofsky or a Boyle or for any of the other nominated directors to rest on their laurels, dutifully churning out rote suspense thrillers and rom-coms, they chose to set the bar dizzyingly high for themselves instead. When you watch a film as vivid and as stubbornly odd as "The Social Network," when you're pulled so deeply into a story as simple as "The King's Speech," when you have to scrape yourself off the theater floor in the wake of "127 Hours" or "Black Swan" or "The Fighter," that means you just witnessed the work of a true artist — not just that, a collaboration between several artists, bleeding the stone to touch something divine.
This is the part that the Oscar pundits, in their endless odds game, can't help but trivialize. With a group of films this transcendent, the audience itself tends to wish that nominations mattered a little more and winners mattered a little less. To slice and dice the fact that "The Social Network" is too mean to win, or that the old folks of the Academy will embrace "The King's Speech" simply because they're old and they love those silly royals, amounts to a lamentable distraction from both films' remarkable contributions.
Maybe it's true that most nominees would cut off their own arms with a blunt pocket tool to win an Oscar. Maybe they'd even sell out their best friends, slap their mothers in the face, allow commoners to call them "Bertie," murder their rivals, sleep with their pervy mentors, and let their crazy ex-con brothers back into their lives. But it wasn't the fervent pursuit of an Oscar that put them into the running, it was the passionate pursuit of their art. On Oscar night, with one of the most impressive selections of Best Picture nominees ever in play, we have the chance to honor that pursuit and celebrate the extreme ambition of this year's filmmakers.