And the Decade-Old Winner Is...

As I rolled over in bed and hit the snooze button to shut off the announcement of Academy Award nominations that was rudely waking me up, I muttered my annual slew of bitter remarks: “Stupid awards ... as if you could call one film the best ... it’s supposed to be art after all....”

Then, as I withdrew my groggy hand from the radio, it struck me. As long as we’ve already got the Oscars, the Golden Globes, the People’s Choice Awards, the MTV Movie Awards, the AFI awards and others lined up for this season, we should add one more: Awards for Films Released 10 Years Ago That Got Trampled Under Ephemeral Mainstream Hype. It could trump them all.

What would I call it? The Decade Displacement Honors? The Offset Oscars? No, I’ve got it: The Hindsight Awards.

I can see it now: the Hindsight--a miniature statue of an unclothed male looking hurriedly over his shoulder, his expression resembling my cat’s surprise every time the vet takes her temperature. It’s handed to the weary filmmaker, finally vindicated after an endless decade of hope, perspective and cultural re-contextualization.

The applications are obvious. After all, is “Titanic” truly more impressive through a glass darkly than “The Sweet Hereafter” from our advanced vantage point of 2002? Does “Platoon” seriously outgun “Full Metal Jacket” after all the smoke has cleared? Is the interminable travelogue “Around the World in 80 Days” really deserving of ... anything?

Of course, everyone’s answers to these questions will be different--but I’ll bet five buckets of $7 popcorn that with each passing year, opinions on what film was “most notable” tend to unify as what is “truly memorable” is borne out through a process of natural artistic digestion.

As the world turns, the number and character of titles that remain in the public and critical consciousness are necessarily refined by the sheer volume of ever-increasing product squeezed through the colander of time and video shelf space. In the long run, the essential cannot help but remain. The cream, by natural selection, rises to the top.

For example, a quick list of “best pictures” for the last 10 years--”The Silence of the Lambs,” “Unforgiven,” “Schindler’s List,” “Forrest Gump,” “Braveheart,” “The English Patient,” “Titanic,” “Shakespeare in Love,” “American Beauty” and “Gladiator”--yields only one masterpiece. You be the judge. The rest are mostly bloated, self-important footnotes to film history, and in most cases, footnotes in the careers of their own makers.

On the other hand, a competing list of “Un-Awarded Films Most Likely to be Relevant to Cinema Theory and History” reveals this sampling: “Three Colors: Red,” “Heavenly Creatures,” “Babe,” “Lone Star,” “The Sweet Hereafter,” “The Celebration,” “Election” and “Dancer in the Dark,” to name only a few.

As anyone wise beyond their years from early exposure to PBS can tell you: “One of these lists is not like the other.” And here is where the Hindsight comes in.

The key feature of the concept is the “Hindsight Interval.” Essentially a cooling-off period, the interval would allow the chaff to fall away and reveal which films actually stand up as masterpieces, which movie was truly influential, and which of the “instant classics” was able to somehow become a genuine classic over time.

Consider how many serious disciplines award achievements as important and groundbreaking as the contenders profess themselves to be on such a frenzied, yearly schedule, before their full import can truly be assessed. Not many. In this regard, handing best picture to “Braveheart” may be comparable to bestowing the Nobel Prize on “cold fusion” the week it was discovered. How ironic to so quickly laud a film that purports to celebrate John Nash’s lifelong wait for recognition. The impact of his real-life work was slowly and surely determined by specialists across the globe. And whoever heard of Nobel aspirants holding back all their best discoveries until a week before the Nobel deadline?

Now, I don’t want you to worry that my suspiciously “arty” bias means the Hindsight Awards ceremony would be bland or suffer from a lack of entertainment value. We’d be as fun as any other awards show: a huge crowd, red carpet, attractive (though, by necessity, aging) stars and the usual slate of impressive-sounding categories: Best 10-Year-Old Film, Best Looking Effects for Their Time, Best Topical Film That Remained Topical for More Than Six Months and so on.

Of course, there’d be those special Hindsights, the categories unique to my august vision: the Embodiment Award for the film that came closest to its own hyperbole of 10 years before. Was it really an enduring triumph? Time will tell us.

The Reapy, on the other hand (short for Re-Appraisal Award, the statuette crafted to depict Orpheus peeking back at the underworld), would go to those Oscar movies that failed to live up to their elevated caliber after a big win.

Last but not least would be the Lifetime Apology Address given by a filmmaker who spent his life squandering time and materiel on a grand scale in the mass production of anemic dross. His remarks would be immediately followed by forced acceptance of the “Look Back in Anger” bust, carved in the likeness of Orson Welles.

So come join us! Oh, I know it will be a lot of hard work, but in just a few years we’ll acquire the mantles of tradition and dignity.

On the other hand, perhaps it is better to get all this award stuff over as soon as possible each winter. The recognition of films that stand the test of time is a natural process, and maybe it’s best to keep it under wraps so only secret cinematheques and film scholars will know what’s really going on. After all, without Oscar season, where would the film industry dump its worst releases? Who wants those spread out through the whole year?

I guess I can always go to my fallback idea for social reform: not inaugurating chief executives until 10 years after the presidential campaign.

*

William Lorton is a freelance filmmaker living in Los Angeles.