A Critic, by Any Other Name, Can Sell Just the Same

We don’t have our own branch in the academy, we don’t get invited to power brunches in Malibu, we’re usually at our typewriters or parked in front of television screens on the big night. But if you’re looking for the driving force behind this year’s Oscar nominations, it was us. That’s right, critics rule.

No, not this particular critic, in fact not any one critic at all. But when a vocal majority of the country’s film reviewers get behind a film, they create enough initial impetus that even Oscar voters have to sit up and take notice. If not for critical insistence, it’s questionable that all of the four independently produced films nominated for best picture would’ve had enough momentum to make it to the finals.

In Hollywood, where everyone is more comfortable seeing things in simple terms, there are said to be two kinds of films. One is the audience picture, prized because moviegoers will flood theaters even if Siskel and Ebert send their thumbs down on a journey to the center of the Earth. Due to either subject matter (“Independence Day”) or star power (“Phenomenon”), these films are impervious to critical disdain. Of the five best picture nominees, only “Jerry Maguire” (which, ironically, got some of the best reviews of the year) fits that category.

Then there are the critics’ films, those poor orphans of the storm that don’t have a chance to reach any kind of substantial audience unless the media get behind them. Of course, all four of the critics’ films that became best picture nominees (“The English Patient,” “Fargo,” “Secrets & Lies” and “Shine”) were supported by companies willing to spend large sums of money on advertising and Oscar campaigns.

But without critics to point the way, that money might as well be tossed into the wind. Clint Eastwood acknowledged this four years ago, setting a new standard for graciousness when he thanked the critics after winning the best picture Oscar for “Unforgiven” for unreservedly embracing his film early on. It remains to be seen if any of this year’s nominees will be as generous.

Though it has reached a critical mass this year, with Miramax’s 20 nominations dwarfing the totals amassed by some nominally major studios, the trend toward independent films gaining the lion’s share of Oscar nominations is also a development that’s been evident for four or five years.

When the nominations were announced in 1993, it was written here that the studio system was becoming so incapable of making quality mass entertainment that it brought to mind the proprietors of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard,” who knew there used to be a recipe for making jam out of all those cherries but couldn’t quite remember what it is.

“Despite,” it was written then, “all the money it spends, all the deals it cuts, all the egos it feeds and all the testing it indulges in, the studio system is losing the knack of making the kind of superb mass entertainment that should be its bread and butter.”

The only thing that should be added from the vantage point of today is that it’s more than the knack that’s been lost, it’s also the will, as the bottom-line-oriented conglomerates that own many of the studios are focusing more and more on the surest bets to make money worldwide, with quality very much of an afterthought.

Still, Hollywood’s split personality remains a fascinating phenomenon, as movie industry types continue to spend most of their time working on the kinds of films they have no intention of voting for. It must be a frustrating way to make a living.

What with having its pulse taken more often than Franco did in his final days as Spain’s ruler, the academy not surprisingly did not offer any great shocks in its choices. In fact, it was almost comforting to recognize how many ways the membership followed form in what it smiled on and what it ignored. For instance

* The writers branch, as always, had the most adventurous selections. Kudos for recognizing the quality in John Sayles’ script for “Lone Star” and John Hodge’s work on “Trainspotting.”

* The directors branch, as predicted, proved too cantankerous to nominate perceived young whippersnapper Cameron Crowe for his excellent work in “Jerry Maguire.”

* Surprised at Diane Keaton’s best actress nomination for “Marvin’s Room”? Remember that the academy loves to hand out honors when actors play people with fatal diseases.

* Once again, the academy shied away from anything resembling controversy by giving only two nominations to what at one time looked like a hot number, “The People vs. Larry Flynt.” Gloria Steinem’s attack on the film in the New York Times and its reprinting as a full-page ad in Daily Variety turned what might have been a discussion about aesthetic merits into a no-win referendum on Larry Flynt’s character, a battle that voters fled from faster than the residents of Dante’s Peak avoided volcanic activity.

The Flynt backlash, as well as generic resentment against interlopers from the music business, led to the academy’s worst omission, its denial of an acting nomination to Courtney Love. True, the best actress field was perhaps the most crowded of the competition, but space should have been made for her.

And though Cuba Gooding Jr. was nominated for “Jerry Maguire” and Marianne Jean-Baptist for “Secrets & Lies,” it was not a good year for actors of color. It was a given that Irma P. Hall would be neglected for “A Family Thing” (not one ad for her appeared in the trade press), but it’s a shame that both Denzel Washington (“Courage Under Fire”) and Samuel L. Jackson (“A Time to Kill”) were passed over.

Shaping up as an interesting battle is the foreign language film category, where nominees include “Ridicule,” which just won the Cesar for best French film, Russia’s Cannes prize-winning “Prisoner of the Mountains” and Republic of Georgia’s “A Chef in Love,” recently picked up by Sony Classics. The Norwegian “The Other Side of Sunday” is an unknown quantity, but the favorite remains the Czech Republic’s “Kolya,” anointed as the film to beat from the day it debuted at Cannes last May.

As far as the best picture race goes, the early favorite has to be “The English Patient,” whose 12 nominations show it has strength extending across almost every branch. If you’re looking for a dark horse, remember “Jerry Maguire.” As the only audience picture in the bunch, and one with a popular star in the lead role, it could monopolize the meat-and-potatoes vote and walk off with the trophy. It happened with “Braveheart” and it could happen again.