Taking the Oscar Race Right to the Finish Line

Part of the appeal of the Academy Awards is that they are colorful, lively and interesting but pleasantly untroubling and unimportant unless, of course, you are in the motion-picture business.

This year’s awards may well be the most interesting in recent years because most of the contending films have had unusually high visibility. All five nominations for best picture have been hard to escape unless you were cruising beneath the icecap in a submarine. All have been widely seen by the 4,000-plus Academy voters (which is not invariably the case) and by the public.

The voters always deliver a few surprises. This year the surprises included the ignoring of Barbra Streisand and “Nuts,” the lack of any but technical nominations for Steven Spielberg’s “Empire of the Sun,” the admiration of “Broadcast News” that embraced almost everything but a nomination for its director James Brooks, the bypassing of any number of senior performances that were admired both objectively and sentimentally (e.g., Bette Davis, Lillian Gish, Joanne Woodward).

There is no reason to think the surprises will stop with the nominations. The unpredictability of this year’s awards is a large part of their interest. Cher, for example, would seem to be short-odds for best actress, yet all four of the acting categories are wide open. The hand quivers and hesitates as you start to draw a dismissing line through any one of the 20 names.

Nicholson and Streep? Both were greatly admired, but in a film too darkly downbeat and austere to be broadly popular or enjoyed in any hedonistic sense.

Agatha Christie should have posed so many sub-mysteries in one event.

Whatever the outcome of the awards, they will be food for speculation on some perennial questions about the patterns of voting. Are thrillers like “Fatal Attraction” abandoned at the altar? Are comedies, even as knowing a comedy about family life as “Moonstruck” or as sharp a contemporary satire as “Broadcast News,” passed over for soberer fare?

In an academy which, by definition, is composed of high and proven craftsmen, is craft at its most meticulous, elegant and sizable the element most looked for? (That would favor “The Last Emperor.”)

In the weighing of form and content, how much does the humanistic input count, the feeling that the film maker is speaking personally? (That would favor John Boorman’s well-crafted wartime memoir, “Hope and Glory.”)

It is a good year to stay tuned.

The other evening I discussed the Oscars at a charity event sponsored by the L’Ermitage Foundation, which helps children. The 85 supporters of the charity who attended were self-defined as film enthusiasts. Most, by a show of hands, had seen most or all of the nominated films.

Because the poll-taking impulse now lurks in all of us, by osmosis if no other way, I asked the audience to vote, by more showings of hands, on their choices for best picture.

“The Last Emperor” won, narrowly, with about a third of the votes. “Hope and Glory” came second, no more than a half-dozen votes behind. “Moonstruck” and “Broadcast News” were next, close together but a fair distance after the top two, and “Fatal Attraction” was a distant last.

It was about as scientific as a wet finger in the wind. Yet what the crowd said confirmed my own hunch that, within the Academy, “The Last Emperor” is probably the front-runner, although hotly pursued by “Hope and Glory” and the widely enjoyed “Moonstruck.”

The fifth-place finish of “Fatal Attraction” appears surprising. It has been beyond question the most-talked-about, written-about, argued-over and controversial film of the year.

It evidently struck a national nerve. Its three central performances (Michael Douglas, Glenn Close and Anne Archer) could hardly be improved upon and as a piece of suspense-engendering narrative, it creates a fine Hitchcockian chill.

It may be that the thriller element, based on a woman gone mad, too quickly obscured the basic exploration of infidelity (the theme which was the raw national nerve). Or it may simply be that the film inadvertently chose a far too powerful engine to drive what was always intended to be a sleek, beguiling thriller.

Either way, as I suspect the voters were saying the other night, the thriller won, and there was a lingering disappointment that the figures in the triangle had not been more deeply seen.

The Oscars are late this year--April 11, in the cruellest month, which it might be.