For Hollywood pundits, industry folk and Oscar fans still paying
attention on Monday, a major question remained: How did David slay
Goliath?
For as much as "The Hurt Locker" was the critics' darling, it had three
major strikes against it in its battle against the mighty James
Cameron's "Avatar."
First, the box office was paltry — it's taken in just $14.7 million
domestically, compared to an amazing $720.6 million for "Avatar." That
makes "The Hurt Locker" the lowest-grossing best picture winner since
accurate records have been kept.
Second, it had no big acting names, usually an important factor in Oscar victory.
And third, it was about the Iraq war, a subject moviegoers
traditionally just don't want to deal with. "Iraq is usually the kiss
of death at the Oscars," says Tom O'Neil, blogger for the Los Angeles
Times' Envelope, an awards site.
But even with 10 nominees in the running for this year's best picture
Oscar, the two films — whose directors were once married — were quickly
pitted against each other in the race for Hollywood's highest honor.
How did "The Hurt Locker" win out? Theories abound:
FINALLY A NON-POLITICAL FILM ABOUT IRAQ:
Many films about the Iraq war have fallen into a trap of appearing
preachy or at least having a strong point of view. Viewers may or may
not agree with that view — that still doesn't mean they want to get it
at the movies.
But "The Hurt Locker," a story of three technicians on a bomb-defusing
team in Baghdad, is at heart an action movie — a documentary-style
close-up of the men, their relationships, their missteps and the almost
unbearable tension inherent in their exhausting, terrifying, tedious
work.
"This isn't that kind of muckraking film aiming to show torture or
violation of rules of war," says Robert Sklar, film professor at New
York University. "This is a film about men trying to save lives rather
than take them. It's also a buddy story. It has classic war-movie
themes."
OSCAR LIKES FILMS WITH AN IMPORTANT MESSAGE:
Often the Academy honors big, sweeping films, which "The Hurt Locker"
is certainly not. But it also looks for films with a substantial
message. "Oscar likes films of importance, with a capital I," says film
historian Leonard Maltin. "Often they're big films, but this is a small
film that dealt with a really important subject."
OSCAR VOTERS DON'T CARE ABOUT BOX OFFICE:
Who says Oscar cares about box office? "The Oscars don't pay attention
to that at all, and nor should they," Maltin says. In fact, he adds,
they've often been accused of being too elitist, favoring independent
movies over big films favored by the broader public.
YES, THEY DO!:
Nonsense, says O'Neil, of The Envelope: "The Academy wants their movies
to do well. Then they anoint them." Even last year's "Slumdog
Millionaire," which originally almost went straight to DVD, had made
$40 million before the nominations, then rode to $70 million by the
time of the awards, he says.
IT'S ABOUT THE CAMPAIGNING:
All of "Hurt Locker's" technical merit aside, "it would be naive to
think Oscar campaigning had nothing to do with it," says O'Neil.
He credits Cynthia Swartz, whose public relations firm was given the
Oscar campaigning job by Summit, the film's distributor, which was
looking for industry respect and had plenty of money to fund the
campaign, having already cashed in with the "Twilight" vampire movies.
"It was a very savvy campaign," says O'Neil. "Full force, and highly aggressive."
THE WOMAN FACTOR:
As compelling as her movie was, director Kathryn Bigelow had a
compelling story of her own. This director who specializes not in
female-oriented films but in big action thrillers had a real shot at
becoming the first woman in Oscar history to win the best director
prize, with her film winning best picture, too.
Yet Bigelow tried to downplay that element of her story, saying in
interviews that she just wanted to be seen as a filmmaker, not a female
one.
"Bigelow refused to capitalize on the woman factor, and to her credit,"
says Maltin. Everyone else wanted to make it a story but her. Still,
you can't deny it had some impact."
THE EX FACTOR:
Nor did Bigelow have any desire to capitalize on the "Ex Factor" — in
case you're way behind on your Oscar gossip, she was married to Cameron
from 1989-91. Were there some voters who were secretly rooting for her
to leave him in the dust? No way of knowing, and the two seemed
amicable through the awards season, with him standing and cheering as
she won her Oscar. Still, there's no doubt that the "battle of the
exes" (ok, we're done with the puns) added to the hype.
THE VOTING SYSTEM:
Then there was the new system for choosing best picture, with 10
nominees this year instead of the usual five. In previous years, a
voter would simply make one choice for best picture. But this year's
ballots had a preferential system, meaning voters ranked their choices.
The lowest choices were then eliminated. That meant it was a system
that favored consensus choices, some hypothesized.
"'Avatar' is polarizing," postulated Hendrik Hertzberg in The New Yorker magazine last month.
"So is James Cameron ... these factors could push 'Avatar' to the bottom of a choice-ranked ballot.'"
AND SPEAKING OF "AVATAR"...
Was "Avatar" ever really going to win? Blogger O'Neil doesn't think so,
even though it won the Golden Globe and seemed to be at the top of many
prediction lists.
"I think we pundits convinced ourselves that 'Avatar' might win, but in
reality there's a science-fiction bias in the Academy, and it's pretty
unbudgeable," he says.
We'll never know how close the vote was — the Academy doesn't release
that information and it doesn't do exit polls. But informal exit polls
done privately by industry insiders, and his own conversations, lead
O'Neil to think that Quentin Tarantino's wild "Inglourious Basterds"
was actually the film that almost won, not "Avatar."
HOW ABOUT ... IT'S JUST A REALLY GOOD MOVIE:
"Look at all the awards this film won — screenplay, sound, editing,"
notes Sklar, the NYU film professor and author of "Movie-Made America."
"The sheer quality of the work must have influenced a lot of the
professionals in the industry who were voting. It's just such a
well-made movie from aesthetic and technical point of view, it
overcomes all those other concerns."
And so maybe it's this simple: In the end, good writing, superb acting
and just plain excellent filmmaking do win out in Hollywood.
David Mikael Taclino
Inyu Web Development and Design
Creative Writer
