Millennial Texts

You remember the Dawn of the Third Millennium, don't you? Planes fell out of the sky, cats gave birth to snakes, the Daleks invaded...no? Well, it made a change from the Eugenics Wars of the 1990s, and talking to psychopathic computers in 2001. Anyway, taking us into the 21st Century were a frightfully contemporary film, and a film set soon after our dating system begins.

In other news, many of you have probably already heard that that Disney bought Marvel the other day. Since Disney seems to have forgotten how to make things for anyone other than tweens, get ready for Slightly Angsty But Not Too Frightening Wolverine Goes to High School. Spider-man on Broadway (that one’s already happening). Hulk might actually work as a Pixar film.

And we still don't have hoverboards.

American Beauty

Hey, a movie with layers! Alright, the more subtle of the '00s BPWs (that's No Country for Old Men, The Departed, and Million Dollar Baby in case you haven't been paying attention) are just as multi-faceted, but the others seem a bit like one-level, song-and-dances about issues - literally in the case of Chicago, figuratively in the case of Crash or A Beautiful Mind. That's how I feel, but I know that other people find American Beauty as heavy-handed as Crash, so perhaps it's just taste, in which case I must say that this is one of my favourite movies and seeing it again only reinforced that.

In a parallel universe American Beauty is a mediocre Jim Carrey or Robin Williams movie with a happy ending, or it's an unrelenting, hard-hitting family drama. These films are a dime a dozen, but American Beauty is a tragedy written with a comic structure. It's written by a sitcom writer, Alan Ball, who would go on to make tragicomedy his thing in Six Feet Under. It starts with the premise of "What if a middle-aged man decides to do whatever he wants?", then hilarity and complications ensue, all of which come to a head as everyone converges on a single location...but instead of everything very neatly coming together and being resolved, all the elements just miss each other, and the result is tragic. Imagine what would have happened at the end of Twelfth Night if Sebastian hadn't appeared in the nick of time.

Another reason American Beauty is better than its imitators: most of the latter fall into the trap of presenting throwing one's office papers into the air and abusing the boss to be the solution to all the protagonist's problems. Lester may be happier, but his new approach to life is selfish and ends up hurting those around him, as well as being inspired by his desire to sleep with an underage girl. His daughter still hates him at the end, and out of spite he prevents his wife from being happy. Ultimately Lester fails to help anyone, makes everyone's lives worse, and dies. Yet this is hidden behind comedy, and our sympathy for all of the characters, including Lester. Look at the climactic scene between Kevin Spacey and Mira Sorvino. Is this his lowest point, or his highest point? American Beauty is not heavy-handed in my opinion, because it treats everything with ambiguity (and beauty).

Then we have the iPhone ringtone incidental music, which oozes some sort of "day in the life" documentary. This, combined with Lester's "from the grave" voice-over, allows the film to remain cheerfully nihilistic, or at least poignantly understated, about everything.

Dreamworks, UIP, 1999. Directed by Sam Mendes. Written by Alan Ball.

Gladiator

The ‘00s kicking off with an action movie should have signalled that the kinds of movies chosen for Best Picture were changing. However, until I watch previous decades of BPs, I can’t say how, or indeed whether, there was actually a big change. It just…sort of looks like it might have judging from the list. Yay, thank you, internet, for allowing me to publish unfounded statements. Also this: a Chaser sketch/fake trailer for a film called Oscar Bait. Before I started this project, a group of people asked me what I expected to find when I watched all the BPs in series, and I said that I hoped to be wrong but expected a lot of Oscar bait. And they didn’t even have to ask what Oscar bait was; all I had to do was mention that The Chaser had done this fake trailer, and THEY started correctly guessing all the elements in it. But really the only stereotypically Oscar bait movie nominated in the ‘00s was The Pianist, and that didn’t win.

Okay, Gladiator is kind of Oscar Bait because it’s supposedly an “epic”…except that it’s not. Yes, it’s set in Roman times, but most of the film takes place over the course of a few days, or even if it is meant to represent Commodus’ entire reign, it might as well have happened in a few days. Doctor Who’s 1965 story “The Romans” is more epic than Gladiator, partly because Gladiator is far more interested in doing the sort of fight scenes they just couldn’t do in Kirk Douglas’ time than it is in lengthily chronicling the passage of time and the lives of our protagonists. This isn’t a criticism; my point is that Gladiator is an action movie that happens to have a Roman setting. It doesn’t even try to fit in with actual historical events, and it’s one of the shortest films up for discussion this week.

But the biggest departure from traditional Oscar material? You are welcome to disagree, but I don’t think Gladiator is trying to win an Oscar. It’s trying to pay homage to the classic Roman films, while also modernising the sub-genre. It’s trying to be an exciting and moving action film, and in 2000 action films did not win Best Picture. If you don’t believe me, look at the other films I watched this week. The only other action film is Braveheart, which is basically the same film but with more crying (without the crying it wouldn’t have won). Blockbusters don’t have to win Oscars, because critical acclaim is not the measure of their success. But it’s nice when they do, because it gives diversity to the BPW canon, it discourages Oscar-baiting, and it shows that films that a lot of people liked have a chance of winning. This is why, after all, for the first time since Casablanca won, there will be ten nominations this year for BP rather than five. The five spots are always going to small, independent films, and the ratings for the Oscar ceremonies suffer as a result. I hope small, independent films keep finding success, but there being more opportunity for blockbusters to be nominated and occasionally win will benefit everyone. Also, I hope District 9 gets nominated, though I wonder if it qualifies as a foreign language film given that half of it’s in prawn-language.

Dreamworks, Universal, 2000. Directed by Ridley Scott. Written by David Franzoni, John Logan, William Nicholson.

Episode 3

Jamal, upon reaching Mordor, is captured and forced to fight CGI tigers for the entertainment of unhappy suburban Americans.