It's been about 3 and half hours since Crash unexpectedly defeated Brokeback Mountain for the Best Picture crown. Nikki Finke, on her LA Weekly blog, gives us a big "told ya so"! She wrote an article a month ago about the Brokeback backlash, that is the whispers that homophobic male Academy members refused to see Mr. Ledger and Mr. Gyllenhaal rought it up. As a result, she predicted that less-controversial (and certainly not gay) Crash would end up with the Academy's top prize. She was right, but she was also wrong. Around the same time as Finke's article, Larry Gross wrote about how Brokeback wasn't really all that gay in the first place. (The old: I'm gayer than you. Sorta like: I'm blacker than you.) But authencity aside, Gross made some good points. Most of the people involved in Brokeback tried to sell it as a love story that transcends its gay roots. It may be that they had little personal stake in the film; none of the filmmakers or actors are gay. I tend to think that Brokeback comes up short, both in its gay rights campaign and in its aesthetic virtues. It has a highly effective score (honored tonight), some solid performances, but it's essentially a closet story and a slow one at that. And, for a gay rights, hearing "I ain't no queer" doesn't really help in any context.
So Brokeback wasn't that gay and it lost. No, I am not trying to prove any cause-and-effect, but I wouldn't dare say that its defeat is purely a result a homophobia in the Academy, though this could have partially contributed. It lost because it was slow and because it wasn't the best film of the year. Crash may not have been either, but it was set in L.A. Plus, it featured everyone's favorite black actor of the moment Don Cheadle (deserving so I must say) and a dozen other sigificant actors. What's not to love? If this film came out in Decemeber, no one would question it's ascendence. Another side story is the campaign launched by Lions Gate. While Universal put forward expensive mini-books in the trades, Lions Gate responded by showcasing the film itself to every member of nearly every significant guild. If memory serves, about 20,000 copies. That's one sizable campaign. And they were helped by the fact that so many of those people, and the Academy members specifically, live in Los Angeles. What Crash does is provide a touchstone for Angelenos? They applaud their own understanding of the situation. (Yeah, I know about this racism, I LIVE HERE!) If the Oscars are a self-congraduating affair (they are), then Crash is the ultimate self-congraduating film---celebrating their star city, a diverse colleciton of film stars, and everyone's favorite million dollar baby Paul Haggis, not to mention social issues and, lest I forget, Don Cheadle.
Sure, tonight's Oscars were about George Clooney; no one's name was dropped more --- even the 3-6 Mafia got in on the action. But Crash was part of the side story, of course. It won the biggest prize and upset the most-joked-about film of year. Hopefully, those will now go by the wayside. Hollywood has selected a pretty good film for its showcase and one that has the potential to connect with a mass audience if people seek it out. Brokeback doesn't have that (business in the deep south, for example), nor does Capote, Good Night, and Good Luck, and Munich. All of the latter films are either too slight or obscure. Crash has the greatest universal relevance and it comes as no surprise then that it's the least subtle. No film this year pulls the strings greater than Crash, a quality which is both laudable and detestable. I do really appeciate the film, but I find it's stab at social issues to be more duh! than revelation. And it makes us feel good at any right. We're all racist--and maybe that's okay. The only problem is that it's not.
