The Oscars: Keaton and “Boyhood” Snubbed and Self-Seriousness Reigned

Out of my 16 predictions I got 12 right (all of the smaller categories I predicted except Editing) and 4 wrong (Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Editing, and Best Director) but I freely admitted that I was very shaky on Actor, Director, and Original Screenplay and was really more hoping to see Keaton and Linklater take it than I thought they would take it. The only one I got wrong that really floored me was the Academy not picking “Boyhood” for editing because, hello, it had 12 years of footage to sift through, fix continuity errors on, and create a cohesive, compelling narrative out of…the second “Boyhood” lost that one, I knew it wasn’t going to take Best Picture or Director. And it’s a shame that the best film of the year and an instant contender for “Contemporary Classic” status was all but shut-out with only one measly win for Patricia Arquette’s fantastic supporting actress performance.

First Big Trend: The big theme of this year’s Oscars seemed to be self-seriousness and it felt like the windbag factor was running at an all-time high. I felt bad for poor Neil Patrick Harris, whose material wasn’t very good, but the audience he had to tell it in front of was even worse. Usually, the Academy audience laughs no matter how tedious a joke is (just think of Ellen’s shtick  last years) but there were several times Harris’ jokes were met with flat-out stares from the audience, and I kept thinking “tough crowd.”

The self-importance at the Oscars is always evident, but this year it reached eye-rolling proportions as nearly every big winner or presenter had to talk about a “larger issue” in a way that made it seem like their win was fixing that issue. Julianne Moore’s Oscar is for people with Alzheimer’s, CitizenFour’s is for…ummm…I’m guessing something about how government surveillance is bad, Birdman’s director talked about immigration (an admirable topic that, nevertheless, his film has nothing to do with and he’s actually never made a film that deals with that topic), The Imitation Game’s screenwriter said his win was for bullied gay people (too bad his film didn’t make that case clearer), and then Patricia Arquette brought the house to raucous applause for dedicating her Oscar to…all women everywhere? [Pander much?] Eddie Redmayne’s Oscar “is for people” with the Oscar-bait disease he portrayed on film to win an Oscar. But maybe donating his salary to motor-neuron disease research or advocating that people should donate to that cause would do more good than him personally winning an Oscar? Of course, that would have defeated the night’s grand delusion that a personal Oscar victory by itself really does anything to help a societal cause. Much like politics, the election itself only matters to the person who wins, but unlike politics the Oscars have no second stage where they do something like govern.

Second Big Trend: The Oscar wins were entirely predictable in good ways (Simmons and Arquette are extremely deserving, as is the cinematography for “Birdman”) and bad ones (I was hoping against hope “Virunga” would upset “CitizenFour” for documentary or something might trump “Ida” for foreign film). And this patter was true except in three big categories where there was a real horserace (Actor, Director, and Picture) and then they chose wrong in all three of them.

I love “Birdman” more than any other 2014 film not named “Boyhood” (or potentially “Whiplash”) but there’s no question “Boyhood” deserved to win Best Director and/or Best Picture for being a film that is almost entirely shaped by its director—they literally didn’t know where they would wind up when filming started so it easily could have collapsed with a less dedicated auteur running things—and also being one of those films people in film school will be watching years from now. They might very well watch “Birdman” too but “Boyhood” is one of those films that screams “Contemporary Classic.” “Birdman” is one of the absolute best movies of 2014, no question, but “Boyhood” is one of the best movies I’ve seen in the new millennium.

I also hate that Birdman’s win is causing some to cheapen it, saying “Well it’s just more of Hollywood honoring Hollywood” since three of the last four Best Picture wins have been from movies that are about movies: Argo, The Artist, and now Birdman which I think is a much, much better film than the moldy nostalgia bath of “The Artist” or the inexplicably praised “Argo.” Still, for comparison’s sake the 80’s, 90’s, and 00’s didn’t produce a single Best Picture winner that was about the film industry. Sadly, “Birdman” is being labeled as more of the same despite what a bold and interesting movie it really is.

But the “Birdman” wave didn’t extend to Michael Keaton who was so completely deserving of the Best Actor Oscar that I had hoped right up until the end that he would pull it out despite every prognosticator picking the thoroughly overrated Eddie Redmayne for his stale Oscar-Bait performance that mimics Stephen Hawking but never lets us beneath the surface of him. I really don’t think “Birdman” would have worked nearly as well without Keaton (or at least wouldn’t have been half as sly or a third as meta) so here was one award the film absolutely deserved to win and, of course, it was the only one that it didn’t.