The Oscars: History in the Film-making

Published on Monday 8 March 2010 20:48

'WELL," said Barbara Streisand, as the audience waited with bated breath. "The time has come." At the 82nd annual Oscars on Sunday night, the identity of the winner for Best Director was known as soon as she opened the envelope and said those five words. After more than eight decades it was not a man collecting the award but at last a woman.

Kathryn Bigelow, 58, made history as the first woman to be named Best Director – and watched delightedly as her film, The Hurt Locker, scooped six awards in total, including the coveted Best Picture. If there was any pleasure at snatching the directing award from under the nose of her ex-husband, James Cameron, nominated for Avatar, she certainly didn't show it. While ceremony host Alec Baldwin quipped that when nominated she sent Cameron a gift basket "with a timer", in the interviews afterwards Bigelow batted away such questions and said simply: "I think he is an extraordinary film-maker."

What is extraordinary is that the Best Picture award – which has traditionally gone to either the nominee with the biggest or second biggest box-office takings – went this year to the one with the least. To date The Hurt Locker has earned $16 million (about 10.6m) in its nine-month run worldwide. Avatar, meanwhile, took $11m in a single weekend in Italy. The film's total world-wide gross is approaching a phenomenal $2.5 billion.

It is unlikely, however, that the six Oscars will boost The Hurt Locker's box office by any considerable margin. Summit Entertainment re-released the film in 250 screens last weekend and saw only a modest gross of $450,000.

As film writer Brian Pendreigh said: "In voting for The Hurt Locker, they gave the Best Director award to a woman for the first time. It is long overdue, everyone agrees, but of course no-one points to any specific year or film (in the past] where a woman was actually best.

"But in voting Hurt Locker, the Academy not only snubbed the highest-grossing film of all time, but they did so in favour of a film the public very definitely did not want to see. The Hurt Locker now has the distinction of being the lowest-grossing film ever to win the Best Picture Oscar.

"Basically the Oscar voters are telling the public, 'You got it wrong, but fortunately we know better than you'."

Yet The Hurt Locker appears to have benefited from a change in the Academy's voting system. In 2010, for the first time ten films were nominated, instead of the usual five. And instead of the victor being the one with the most votes, this year, PricewaterhouseCoopers – the accountancy firm which monitors the secret ballots – oversaw a system in which the 5,800 Academy members ranked the nominees from one to ten. This new system ensures that the winner achieves at least 50 per cent of members' votes.

However, Mike Goodridge, editor of Screen International magazine, said: "I don't think the new voting system had anything to do with it winning as, by January, it was a two-horse race. The bigger issue is that the Academy went for Hurt Locker over Avatar. Half the Academy are actors, who want to see brave performances and human stories."

The Hurt Locker was written by Mark Boal, a journalist who had spent time embedded with some of the US bomb disposal squads who operate in Iraq, and follows the fortunes of Sergeant First Class William James, played by James Renner, on his one-year tour of duty. The film has been praised for ignoring the politics of the conflict and focusing instead on the heroism and character of the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) unit and won fans on both sides of the political spectrum.

However, it has not been without controversy. While the film-makers visited US Army EOD units and employed technical advisers, since the film has become celebrated it has been criticised on a number of army blogs for a lack of realism.

"Many of our members around the country have noted the flawed portrayal of EOD," said Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "It is disrespectful."

However, Henry Engelhardt, an adjutant with the National Explosive Ordnance Disposal Association praised the film. "Of course, no film is realistic in all its details, but the important things were done very well," he said.

What is interesting about Bigelow's success as a director is that she has focused on what could be seen as "masculine films" – her backlist includes K19: The Widowmaker, focused on the crew of a Russian nuclear submarine, and crime drama Strange Days.

She has previously said: "I just don't look at filmmaking through a gender lens. I wish there were more women (directors]. But to me, it's like talking about a woman mathematician or a woman astrophysicist."

The irony is that while three women have previously been nominated for Best Director – Italy's Lina Wertmuller for the 1975 film Seven Beauties; Jane Campion in 1994 for The Piano; Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation in 2004 – Bigelow won with such a masculine movie.

In fact, the bonds between men have been the subject of almost all her films including Point Break, about a gang of bankrobbing surfers and K-19: The Widowmaker, in which Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson played rival submarine commanders.

Yet the fact remains women rarely get to sit in the director's chair. According to the Centre for Women in Film at San Diego University, the percentage of top films directed by women has remained static for 25 years at 7-9 per cent. Last year, neither Warner Bros, the world's largest studio, nor Paramount Pictures hired a single female director, while Walt Disney Studios and Universal Studios hired just one each. No woman has been hired to direct an "event" film with a budget of more than $100m.

As to how historic this moment is, former Edinburgh Film Festival director Mark Cousins, who recently made The First Movie, a documentary in Iraq, said: "It is a shift in perception, not a shift in anything more. Some of the best film-makers in the world are women, so it's a nice coincidence, but if the Oscars told the truth it would be a terrible indictment of the film world."

'The moment of a lifetime,' says Bigelow

KATHRYN Bigelow has become the first woman to win the best directing Oscar, as her Iraq war drama The Hurt Locker took six prizes, including best film.

"It's the moment of a lifetime," said Bigelow. She praised her fellow nominees "who have inspired me for decades", and paid tribute to those serving in the military.

Jeff Bridges and Sandra Bullock won the top acting Oscars for their roles in Crazy Heart and The Blind Side respectively. Bridges, 60, who plays a hard-living country singer in the film, said: "Thank you mom and dad for turning me on to such a groovy profession. This is honouring them as much as it is me."

An emotional Bullock, 45, picked up the best actress award just a day after winning the Razzie for worst actress, for her role in All About Steve. "Did I really earn this, or did I wear you all down?" she joked.

She praised her fellow nominees – including British newcomer Carey Mulligan, Dame Helen Mirren and the multiple nominee Meryl Streep – "who inspire me and who blaze trails for us all".

Honoured for her role as real-life Southern matriarch Leigh Anne Tuohy, she dedicated the award "to the moms who take care of the babies and children no matter where they come from," before paying tearful tribute to her own mother: "To that trailblazer… I thank you so much for this opportunity that I share with these extraordinary women."

Christoph Waltz and Mo'Nique were the winners of the supporting acting awards, categories they were both widely tipped to win. Waltz won for his role as a diabolical SS officer in Inglourious Basterds, while Mo'Nique triumphed for her role in Precious.

The Hurt Locker's screenwriter Mark Boal heralded the film's first success of the night, winning best original screenplay. Technical awards followed in film editing, sound editing and sound mixing.

Armando Iannuci, the Scots writer who was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for In The Loop, lost out to Geoffrey Fletcher, the screenwriter of Precious.

Costume designer Sandy Powell proved a rare British winner of the night, taking home her third Oscar for her work on The Young Victoria.

A previous winner for The Aviator and Shakespeare in Love, Powell paid tribute to those costume designers whose work on contemporary films is often overlooked at awards ceremonies, but added the Oscar was "coming home with me".

Actors Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin hosted the ceremony – the first dual hosts in 23 years – in another effort to shake up the ceremony and drive up audience figures after Oscar television ratings fell to an all-time low two years ago.

Sense wins out over sensation in the voting

THE cinematic drama is over for another year, but at least this year's Oscar haul for The Hurt Locker ensured that the awards season drew to a close with sense triumphing over sensation on Sunday night.

Though its victory is probably destined to be remembered as the moment David slew Goliath, in beating James Cameron's Avatar to win the Best Picture and Best Director awards (not to mention taking prizes in a number of technical categories that Cameron's sci-fi epic Avatar was expected to dominate), Katherine Bigelow's stripped-down, tightly wound Iraq war drama was really a small triumph for grown-up film-making over juvenile join-the-dots storytelling.

Of course, this is unlikely to have much impact on Hollywood current love affair with 3D (you can't argue against Avatar's box-office takings – and believe me, I've tried), but The Hurt Locker's win should hopefully remind the film industry that there's still a place for intensely thrilling, serious film-making that doesn't rely on gimmicks to suck us into the story.

Aside from The Hurt Locker's landslide, the awards ran pretty much to script. Christoph Waltz took the Best Supporting Actor award for his quietly chilling, linguistically dextrous turn as the Nazi "Jew-hunter" in Quentin Tarantino's deliriously entertaining Inglourious Basterds; Mo'Nique snagged a well-deserved Best Supporting Actress prize as an abusive mother in Precious, and Jeff Bridges won Best Actor for his role as a washed-up country singer seeking redemption in Crazy Heart.

All are the kinds of roles that regularly catch the eye of Academy voters, though only Crazy Heart felt conventional. Thanks to Bridges's status as one of the most casually brilliant actors around, however, only a churl would deny him his win. The same can't really be said for Sandra Bullock.

Her Best Actress victory for her heart-tugging, emotive performance as a white, no-nonsense Republican "soccer mom" who adopts a deprived African-American child in The Blind Side may well become one of those "what were they thinking?" moments. Set against the backdrop of American football, The Blind Side's huge success in the United States, together with Bullock's status as America's top female box-office draw, may have played a part in her victory, something she seemed acutely aware of when – having won a Razzie just a day earlier for dismal rom-com All About Steve – she asked: "Did I really deserve this, or did I just wear you down?"

Still, if that shameless sop to populism was necessary to balance out The Hurt Locker's victory and prove that Academy voters are still at least a little bit in touch with the movie-going masses, then so be it.

The Hurt Locker might not have earned much at the box office, but Katherine Bigelow shouldn't have any trouble getting her next film off the ground – and that can only be a good thing.