The results of the 82nd Academy Awards ceremony showed that patriotic cinema is more valued in the U.S. today than innovative cinema, even innovative cinema that is much more successful at the box office.
The Academy showered Kathryn Bigelow's film The Hurt Locker with six Oscars, including Best Writing (Original Screenplay), Best Achievement in Directing and Best Motion Picture of the Year. The latter two were awarded personally to her.
The intrigue of who would come out on top - Bigelow or her ex-husband James Cameron, who shot Avatar, the most financially successful film in history - started as early as a month before the awards ceremony. The Director's Guild added fuel to the fire by naming Bigelow Best Director last year. It is curious that in its entire existence, the Guild has been wrong in its forecasts only a handful of times. It was right again this year.
This tough war drama about a U.S. Army bomb squad in Iraq, shot by Bigelow in a deliberately documentary style on a low budget, was more interesting to Academy members than Cameron's 3D sci-fi epic Avatar, which had grossed more than $2 billion worldwide as of March 1. Avatar received only three Oscars: Best Achievement in Cinematography, Best Achievement in Visual Effects and Best Achievement in Art Direction.
The situation was somewhat suggestive of the sexist politics of American cinema, where in conflicts between men and women the woman usually wins out. Something similar happened at this year's Oscars.
In my view, there was another reason. Bigelow's war film was more focused, having found the sore spot of the American public, which is seriously preoccupied with the war in Iraq. The war, as you may remember, started seven years ago under the contrived pretext of removing the threat of weapons of mass destruction, which were never found. Deploying troops to this Middle Eastern country turned out to be fairly easy, but withdrawing them is proving to be extremely difficult - at least without losing face.
It may be no accident that in the first days of the dubious venture, the 75th Oscar ceremony in March 2003 served in many ways as a forum for the anti-war statements of well-known U.S. filmmakers. This brings to mind the indignation of the American public in the 1960s over the senseless war in Vietnam.
It should be noted that American cinema has come to grips with defeat in Vietnam War, having given the world such impressive films as Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter, Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, Oliver Stone's Platoon and other films, where the heroes are simple soldiers caught up in the meat grinder of senseless combat.
The world has changed much since 2003. The Bush era and its saber rattling has ended and a time of sobriety has come. It is no coincidence that most people in the U.S. chose the technocrat Obama over the almost legendary Vietnam War hero John McCain in the presidential elections. Obama is perceived as a person capable of bringing society out of a state of "great distress."
In the U.K. Gordon Brown replaced Bush's partner in the anti-Iraq coalition, Tony Blair, as prime minister. Nevertheless, British troops remain in Iraq, where the Brits and the Yanks (who are shouldering most of the burden) are suffering heavy losses. In other words, Britain also has a "sore spot."
It is also not a coincidence that earlier, in late February 2010, The Hurt Locker reaped a record crop of prizes at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards, with six awards including best film. In London and Los Angeles, Cameron was left with mere "scraps" from the royal table. In the case of the BAFTA Awards - two second-tier prizes for special effects and art direction.
It turned out that empathizing with several ordinary guys with the rank of sergeant who risk their lives every minute of the day in a war is more topical and patriotic than identifying with blue people with long tails, for all of their color and drama, which at times are highly evocative of the characters in a children's video game.
Cameron (as distinct from Bigelow) has, if not revolutionized cinema, at the very minimum has made a giant evolutionary step forward, enabling his peers to recreate the surrounding world on screen in a new way. Flying mountains with waterfalls from their peaks steaming into the abyss are impressive. After all, Steven Spielberg called Avatar the most evocative and amazing science-fiction movie since Star Wars.
But the aftertaste is different. In The Hurt Locker, characters sacrifice themselves in a foreign war for a distant and abstract homeland. In Avatar, the main character turns his back on the human race to save an exotic alien tribe that is threatened with extinction, ultimately becoming one of them. This difference also captivated the jury, which gave preference to the more socially relevant film.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Sergei Varshavchik)
