The 2009 Academy Awards: Triumph to fantasy, atrocities and our darkest hour
Whether seeking an artistic experience or an evening of entertainment, movies are a universal and traditional pastime for audiences worldwide. For 2008, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences took notice of the year’s unique projects. Awarding Oscars to movies exhibiting captivating performances, dramatic screenplays, cinematography and musical scores, this year's selections were anything but common.
Sweeping the field , the movie of the year, Slumdog Millionaire, won Best Picture and also earned several nominations, including one for Best Director for Danny Boyle. The movie is a story of personal triumph in love and life, painted in visual and aural landscapes depicting the bustling, suffocating and cacophonous slums of Mumbai. We follow the life of a young 18-year-old protagonist along his road to survival and adolescence. When he falls into being selected to participate in "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," and competes for the 10 million rupee prize, his life comes full circle and his childhood love reenters his life. Slumdog also won for the best: Adapted Screenplay, Original Score, Original Song, Cinematography, Film Editing, and Sound Mixing.
The range of nominees for Best Film with Adapted Screenplays, included the enigmatic story of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button told in a series of flashbacks. Brad Pitt plays a character afflicted with a mysterious condition, which caused him to age in reverse. At the end of World War I, we find him born in the body of an old man and the plot-line takes him back in time through his life experiences full of relationships as he engages the world. This film won Oscars for Best Makeup, Art Direction, and Visual Effects.
The Reader revealed the war-crime atrocities of a Nazi Secret Service Guard, portrayed by Kate Winslet, who won the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role. Her SS responsibilities were to make selections of women to be exterminated at Auschwitz. Viewed through a series of flashbacks, the film opens couched in her erotic affair with a 15-year-old German boy. The startling events of their relationship and the revelation of her complicity in the World War II crimes unfold in the flashbacks experienced by the boy, who is now a mature attorney.
Ron Howard, nominated for Best Director, reminded us of the histrionics of Watergate, which have been burned into the minds of those of us whom lived through this national trauma in Frost/Nixon. Frank Langella portrayed a Richard Nixon who is indelibly etched into our national psyche. The utter power and intensity of his performance is compelling and earned him a nomination for Best Actor.
Finally, Milk won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Set in the 1970s, it stars Sean Penn who earned the Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role. As Harvey Milk, he is a San Francisco camera store owner from New York who campaigns for a post on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and wins the election to become the first openly gay politician elected to a public office.
Of particular note was the posthumous award of the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor to Heath Ledger for The Dark Knight. Penelope Cruz won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in Vicky Cristina Barcelona. The Best Animated Feature Film went to Wall-E; Best Documentary Feature went to Man on Wire; Best Documentary – Short Subject went to Smile Pink! The Duchess won Best Costume Design,and Best Live Action Short Film honors went to Spielzeugland (Toyland). The Best Animated Short Film of 2008 was La Maison de Petits Cubes.
