As It Turns Out, Voters Live in the Real World

When Hilary Swank said, “We have come a long way” in her acceptance speech Sunday night, she was referring to the odyssey of her own film, “Boys Don’t Cry.” But she might just as well have been talking about the journey the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has made as well.

Frequently derided as terminally stodgy, the academy showed this year that it was willing to embrace quality films no matter where it found them, even those whose subject matter might have kept them from being made, let alone nominated and elected, in the recent past. If the staging of the awards show featured Oscars in what very much looked like cages, the academy went a long way toward breaking through those bars.

Yes, it was still possible to wish that the nominating branches had given the members wider choices, that room could have been found for David O. Russell’s excellent “Three Kings” or that “Election” could have managed more than a screenplay nod.

And it didn’t seem quite fair that films as good as “The Insider” and “The Sixth Sense” came away empty-handed.

But overall this does seem like a glass-half-full occasion, when the academy chose not to be put off by edgy, uncomfortable material. And given that critics often justifiably complain about the offal we have to experience as a result of the greater freedom to push boundaries that today’s filmmakers have, it’s especially gratifying to see the positive side of that latitude rewarded.

Here was Swank getting the best actress award for achingly playing someone with the kind of gender confusion Hollywood used to go to great lengths to pretend didn’t even exist. Here was “American Beauty,” which one of its producers described as about “sex and drugs, blackmail, homophobia and suburban dysfunction,” winning an evening-high five Oscars.

Brilliantly marketed by DreamWorks, “American Beauty” touched a chord in an industry, and a nation, that has perhaps been made uneasy by record prosperity, that is in a mood to look at the darkness below the glittering surface that affluence provides. And still come away with a positive feeling.

Four Oscars for Technological Bravura

And, on a different but related level, it was exhilarating to see four below-the-line Oscars (more than any film except “American Beauty”) go to the cutting-edge visual pyrotechnics of “The Matrix.” In years past, it would have been a given that the appeal of this technically brilliant film skewered too young to make much of an impression on the academy, but clearly that is no longer the case.

It was also good to see the academy do what it’s supposed to do, but doesn’t always manage, which is go for picture quality over popularity. In makeup, for instance, the little-seen but exceptionally well-done “Topsy-Turvy” won over a membership that couldn’t see itself giving an Oscar to “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.”

In the documentary feature category, voters picked the potent “One Day in September” despite knowing that “Buena Vista Social Club” was the understandable popular favorite. And the big question in the original score department was whether enough members would take the time to look at the deserving “The Red Violin.” They did, and John Corigliano took home the Oscar.

As an event, this year’s Oscars also showed why the evening always belongs to the actors. It’s the human, emotional moments that make this awards show the occasion it is, and actors, with their feelings close to the surface and readily available, are always going to dominate in that arena.

Each of the four performance winners left a strong and distinct impression, from Swank’s emotional self-possession to Angelina Jolie’s grateful jitters to Spacey’s almost defiant defense of bringing his mother to award shows.

Most memorable of all was Michael Caine, a model of graceful generosity, who devoted most of his speech to thought-out praise of the people he bested. To see Caine at the podium was, frankly, to see a key reason why he was triumphant. Caine is well-liked in the industry because he is the kind of person everyone saw, and that was a definite force.

As for the show itself, though its modern, streamlined feeling was welcome, it did run for about four hours, so inevitably long that Billy Crystal made four jokes about its length before a single award was given. Though it may be unreasonable to ask the Oscars, as unwieldy as a giant container ship, to turn on a dime, it would have been nice if the show had jettisoned excess baggage like the medley of favorite songs from the past. And is it really necessary to withhold all the major awards (except for the supporting acting ones) until the show is 3 1/2 hours long?

As for Crystal, he and his team of writers, including Bruce Vilanch, were, as always, the event’s most reliable source of pleasure. With some jokes just for local consumption (like finding the missing Oscars in a bag of oranges bought on a freeway off-ramp) and a strong sense of film history (his opening “I am so not Spartacus” montage of clips, all co-starring himself, was the evening’s best), Crystal seems to be embracing his destiny as the nonpareil Oscar host for our time.

If there was anyone in the Shrine who did not look happy to be there it was Denzel Washington, and if there was one sad thing about this year’s proceedings it was the feeling that Washington, nominated for “The Hurricane,” entered the best actor contest with one hand tied behind his back.

It takes nothing away from Spacey’s exceptional and very deserving performance to say that Washington’s equally strong one was, through no fault of his own, hindered by the overly legalistic controversy over how accurate “The Hurricane” was to the facts of the Rubin Carter case. That tiff undoubtedly cost that film, aesthetically flawed though it was, some nominations and support, and though the academy showed itself able to break some barriers on Sunday, its tendency to shy away from controversy remains unchanged.

OSCAR: THE MORNING AFTER

Oscar parties all over town brought down

the curtain on the big night. F12

After the awards, there remained unanswered questions, like where was Whitney Houston? F4

Online sites experienced more restrictions, but many still produced playful Oscar coverage. F6