True Grit

One way of explaining what happened last night is that the Oscar producers tried to tack young and hip, just as academy voters tried to tack mass and mainstream, correcting for several years of more audacious indie-style winners like “The Hurt Locker,” “Slumdog Millionaire” and “No Country for Old Men.” The result was a great big middle-of-the-road splat, presided over by a monumentally uncomfortable pair of stars, the miffed-looking James Franco and the perky-like-a-little-coffeepot Anne Hathaway.

While the show galumphingly tried to incorporate bits of the Twitterverse snark that surrounds it (and has all but superseded it), the biggest prize of the evening went to a dignified, achingly sincere Masterpiece Theatre-style film about the suffering of the Queen of England’s late papa. I have no particular problem with “The King’s Speech”; in fact, I enjoyed it. But my colleague Matt Zoller Seitz was correct to note, last week, that it might be the fifth- or sixth-best of this year’s nominated films (after “Black Swan,” “True Grit,” “The Social Network,” “The Fighter” and “Winter’s Bone,” at the very least). Awarding “King’s Speech” the best-picture prize was at least predictable; giving Tom Hooper the directing award, in a category that included Darren Aronofsky, the Coen brothers, David Fincher and David O. Russell, feels more like criminal pandering. (If I had a video clip of Sen. Paul Tsongas and his “Pander Bear” from the 1992 presidential campaign I would stick it in right now. Anybody? No? Well, let’s just move on then.)

It wasn’t simply that Franco was baked or bored, or that his idiosyncratic blend of sincerity and authenticity are precisely out of sync with the combo demanded by the Bob Hope-Billy Crystal-Whoopi Goldberg Chair of American Toastmastership, although those are all plausible hypotheses. Franco was pissed. On a night when he could have been building a multimedia installation or running lines for “General Hospital” or getting busy with an NYU sophomore or working on a paper about Sir John Suckling, Franco had to hang out on a cold night in L.A. with all these dorks, presiding over a pseudo-event so miscellaneous it couldn’t be rescued through meta-ness or reframing or any other kind of mental gamesmanship.Was this “performance art” like your GH gig, Jimmy? No, it wasn’t, was it? It was just lame.

Oscar’s leaden attempt to rebrand its trademark telecast as young and hip and social media-savvy (just consider all those terms surrounded with scare quotes, in celebration of your/my/our/James Franco’s sense of detachment and superiority) was as awkward as such things generally are. Justin Timberlake pretending to use an iPhone app to change the bewildering background projections — ho ho ho! Nobody in the entire world thought that was funny. Not you, not me, not the people watching in India or equatorial Africa. Not Kirk Douglas and Melissa Leo. (Why the negativity, people? At least they seemed like human beings.) Not my mother-in-law who doesn’t know what an app is or my 6-year-old son (who does). Not the person who wrote it, and definitely not James Franco. That was more and different pandering, of the sort that makes everybody unhappy, like the time your grandfather gave you a quarter but all you can remember about it is the terrifying tuft of hair sticking out of his nose. (More Paul Tsongas video, please. I just want to keep typing that name: Paul Tsongas!)

Speaking of the 1990s, let’s talk about that set, shall we? A few puff pieces last week dutifully described the use of digital projections as a “radical departure” from Oscar tradition and even invoked the term “virtual reality,” a sure sign that whatever you’re talking about will resemble a sales conference hosted by a mid-level Fortune 500 corporation. I spent much of the evening trying to figure out what those illuminated hoops looked and felt like. A briefly hot Las Vegas resort hotel, now teetering on the edge of bankruptcy? The inside of a vintage Wurlitzer jukebox? A rejected design template for “TRON: Legacy”? Then, when we saw a black-and-white clip of Bob Hope cracking wise on the first Oscar telecast — and when Bob Hope is much, much funnier than your current hosts, your show is in trouble — I grasped that the set was sort of, halfway supposed to evoke the classic interior of the Pantages Theater, not far away on Hollywood Boulevard, where the ceremony was held in the ’50s. But evoke it for whom, and why? To make Kirk Douglas feel less confused? (I’m kidding; he did fine.) To give younger viewers and participants some vague, disembodied sense of being connected to history? Wait, yes, that’s it exactly.

Awards? Yes, they gave awards and I haven’t mentioned them, because except for Melissa Leo’s unhinged F-bomb outburst and the outrageous, even shameful selection of Hooper as best director, it all went according to plan. Natalie Portman and Colin Firth had been practicing their lines, and delivered them nicely. (Yes, Annette Bening deserved to win, but Portman became the ass-backward representative of “Black Swan,” which deserved to win all kinds of other awards but didn’t.) Christian Bale looked more like The Dude than Jeff Bridges did, and gave every impression of being intensely weird. Lots of people we’d never heard of before mentioned their parents and grandparents and children, which is always irresistible. That Carrot Top-Yahoo Serious looking guy who won the live-action short prize was hilarious (although his movie isn’t that great). Accepting an inevitable and thoroughly deserved screenwriting prize for “The Social Network,” Aaron Sorkin went on and on and on — shocker! — and ended with the words “guinea pig.”

We were all the guinea pigs last night, Aaron, and the experiment didn’t go well. After that prepackaged opening riff when Franco and Hathaway inserted themselves into the nominated films — which was silly but fun and actually involved their talents as, y’know, actors, instead of their limited ability for shtick — the whole evening felt more and more like a bad idea gone wrong. (Sen. Tsongas, please!) I’d compare it to, like, taking your aunt to the prom, except that James Franco would handle that situation with awesome suavity. Anyway, if he’s got an aunt I bet she’s hot. And I bet she’d rather see “Black Swan” than “The King’s Speech.”

That’s one side of the story. The other side is that 2010 looks in the rear-view mirror like a terrific year for moviemaking, at least if you’re using a Venn diagram that extends from high-middlebrow Hollywood fare like “King’s Speech” and “Social Network” out to the indie-film fringes. Attendance was down a tick for the biggest “tentpole” productions last year (revenues increased a little, almost entirely because of the larger ticket prices for 3-D releases), but there was a smorgasbord of interesting mid-budget and low-budget films aimed at a blue-state, metropolitan audience. This year’s Oscar nominees are light on huge, expensive spectacles (“Inception” and “Toy Story 3″) but rich with provocative and engaging pop entertainments, from the marriage melodrama of “The Kids Are All Right” to the cinematic showboating of “Black Swan” and “127 Hours” to the wrenching, hardscrabble Americana of “Winter’s Bone” and “Blue Valentine.”

The 2011 Oscar race so far offers further evidence of how far the Academy’s collective opinion has drifted away from that of the mass audience. Film critics have traditionally approached the Oscars as a bear-baiting ritual that allowed them to deride the stodgy tastes of Academy members (often visualized as a pack of cranky Jewish retirees in golf pants). But given how closely the two groups mirror each other these days, it’s time to retire that one.

Sure, “Inception” and “Toy Story 3″ were both nominated for best picture and are two of the year’s top box-office films. But both got significant love from critics — and furthermore, if you think either has a shot at the big prize, you simply haven’t been paying attention. Those made the list, arguably, to balance out the Academy’s evident preference for more indie-flavored fare like fellow best-picture nominees “The Kids Are All Right,” “Black Swan,” “127 Hours” and “Winter’s Bone.” As I note below, Ben Affleck’s “The Town,” a mainstream hit touted as an Oscar contender in some quarters, was pretty well ignored. “Secretariat,” a horsey nostalgia exercise that performed well in Middle America but did no business in cities, was perhaps envisioned by its studio as this year’s answer to “The Blind Side,” but garnered no major nominations.

It’s not as if “Social Network” or “King’s Speech” are art-house obscurities or anything; the first has grossed almost $100 million and the second is at $50 million and counting. That makes them look like “Gone With the Wind” compared to, say, “The Hurt Locker,” whose domestic returns of $12.6 million almost certainly made it the lowest-grossing Oscar winner in history, even if you adjust for inflation or process it through a time machine. But like almost every recent Oscar winner, they’re pictures that have played strongest with college-educated audiences on the coasts and in big cities, and have made relatively little impression in the multiplex heartland. They’re movies made by and for a certain class of people, a difficult concept to conjure with in a nation where we pretend social class does not exist. They’re Oscar movies — and the more that category seems to change, the more it stays the same.

Here are today’s major winners and losers, as I see them.

WINNERS

“The King’s Speech” — With 12 nominations, including best picture, best director for Tom Hooper and acting nominations for its three featured performers (Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter), this appealing yarn about George VI, aka Bertie, and his Aussie speech therapist will now be seen as Oscar co-favorite. I’m not buying it, at least not yet. I foresee a split ticket, with “Social Network” winning best picture and best director, but “King’s Speech” potentially winning two or even all three of the acting awards.

“True Grit” — The surprise chick flick of the season — and if you think I’m cracking a joke, you haven’t seen it — piled up a bunch of nominations, but most likely won’t win in any major category. In the upside-down star-system logic of Hollywood, Jeff Bridges was nominated for best actor in what is clearly a supporting role, while youthful star Hailee Steinfeld, who’s probably on-screen for 80 percent of the film’s running time, won a supporting-actress nod.

“The Fighter” — Yes, Mark Wahlberg’s quiet starring role as small-town palooka Micky Ward was passed over, which is kind of too bad. But with a best-picture nomination and supporting nods for Christian Bale, Melissa Leo and Amy Adams — all of whom were fantastic — this richly enjoyable yarn of downscale ’90s America may get a second look from viewers who stayed away the first time around. Bale and Leo are seen by many as favorites, but the “King’s Speech” upsurge may swamp them.

“Winter’s Bone” — Debra Granik’s devastating crime saga set in the Ozarks came out early in the year and did modest business. But critics didn’t forget it, and neither did the Academy, which delivered a best-picture nomination, an acting nod for young star Jennifer Lawrence, and a supporting-actor nomination for the menacing John Hawkes.

“Gasland” — Oscar’s documentary category often tracks closely with rising social and political issues, and this relatively obscure work from activist filmmaker Josh Fox explores “hydrofracking,” a controversial and destructive method of natural-gas extraction that has rapidly become a hot environmental cause in the Northeast.

“Exit Through the Gift Shop” — Is the debut film from shadowy British artist Banksy a genuine documentary or an artfully constructed fraud? I’ve never thought it was an interesting question — since the movie is hilarious, and poses the same philosophical questions about art and commerce, either way — and in delivering an Oscar nomination, I guess the Academy agrees.

“Dogtooth” — This dark and disturbing allegory from Greek filmmaker Giorgios Lanthimos looked like the longest of long shots for foreign-Oscar consideration. But persistent critical adoration put it on the map, and here it is. (I’m not the biggest fan — but I’ll deal with the intriguing list of foreign-film nominees in due course.)

LOSERS

“The Social Network” — Don’t get me wrong; I still think this is the best-picture favorite, and that David Fincher will also go home with the best-director statuette. But it received fewer nominations than either “King’s Speech” or “True Grit.” Jesse Eisenberg won’t win, and neither Andrew Garfield nor Justin Timberlake were nominated for their outstanding supporting performances.

“Inception”–  Despite a world-conquering box-office take of $823 million and the adulation of countless fans, Christopher Nolan again finds himself a bit player in the Oscar race. “Inception’s” nods for best picture and original screenplay are basically affirmative action for commercial cinema. I don’t think it will win in either category, and Nolan himself was passed over in the directing category. Various commentators are acting like a surprise — at this point, it’s more like a ritual.

“Blue Valentine” — Maybe that NC-17 controversy really did hurt. Michelle Williams was nominated for best actress, but costar Ryan Gosling was passed over, and Derek Cianfrance’s gritty marriage drama, despite all the critical raves, was otherwise ignored.

“127 Hours” — Sure, both Danny Boyle’s film and star James Franco were nominated. But a muddled critical reception, mediocre box office and the general sense that Franco is an overexposed hipster avatar have rendered this brutal, effects-driven freakout an Oscar-race afterthought.

“The Town” — Ben Affleck’s Boston bank-heist thriller was well reviewed early in the fall, but all along it was just a dumbass pop film that was slightly better crafted than others of its ilk. Jeremy Renner’s supporting-actor nomination is richly deserved, but Oscar otherwise gave the cold shoulder to this forgettable vanity project.

“The Tillman Story” — Amir Bar-Lev’s fascinating documentary about Army Ranger Pat Tillman, the former football star killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan — an idiosyncratic individual from an amazing American family — seemed like an obvious contender. I guess Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger’s “Restrepo,” a powerful you-are-there doc, filled Oscar’s war-movie quota.

But it’s silly to suggest that the Coens’ entire career has consisted of snark and nihilistic bloodletting; these are also the guys who made “The Hudsucker Proxy,” “Raising Arizona” and “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” (all comedies, rated PG or PG-13) along with the classic L.A. shaggy-dog farce “The Big Lebowski.” (If your family doesn’t enjoy spending some holiday time with Jeff Bridges as The Dude, I suggest you get a different family.) Far more to the point, the Coens are formalists first and foremost; I sometimes wonder whether film historians of the future will decide that’s the only thing they are. With each new movie, they dive into a specific conception of genre and go all-out, striving to make it their own without violating its terms and conventions. If “A Serious Man” was a knotty, fatalistic Jewish fable, “Burn After Reading” was a spy farce and “No Country” was a dark-hearted, ’70s-style neo-noir, then “True Grit” is a western in the John Ford style, informed by the ideology of Manifest Destiny and American Protestant conceptions of morality and justice.

Now, it’s also true that the Coens are coming at this classic western yarn from a 21st-century perspective that might misleadingly be called “ironic,” but it’s better not to get hung up on that. Let’s put it this way: Like most Coen films, “True Grit” works on multiple levels and will reward repeat viewings. It’s an impressive widescreen spectacle set on the 19th-century American frontier and built around a memorably ferocious performance by 13-year-old Hailee Steinfeld. For reasons having to do with posters and contracts and award nominations, Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon and Josh Brolin are listed as the movie’s stars. But as indomitable orphan Mattie Ross, determined to forge into lawless Indian territory in search of Tom Chaney (Brolin), the drifter who murdered her father, Steinfeld is the movie’s everything: narrator, conscience, moral and visual center, driving force.

Whatever the opposite of “waif” is, that’s Mattie. Following her father’s death she travels to the dusty frontier town of Fort Smith, Ark. (in those post-Civil War days, that was still the “West”), in search of a man with “true grit” to help her hunt down the perfidious Chaney. In general, Mattie finds the adult male of the species disappointing (and the adult female virtually useless). In Portis’ novel and both film versions, it’s perfectly clear whom the title is meant to describe. At least at first, she holds out hope for Rooster Cogburn (Bridges), a drunken, one-eyed United States marshal with a reputation for shooting first and worrying about the legal niceties later. Bridges is great, of course — but he’s really and truly not the star of the movie, and Cogburn is such a growly, crotchety Jeff Bridges type that it’s hard to tell whether he’s doing any acting.

Perhaps the best thing about “True Grit” (other than watching Mattie stare down the mercantile population of Fort Smith, I mean) is the comic-horrifying way it captures the collision between brutality and civilization in this flyspeck outpost of the American social order. Mattie isn’t cowed by witnessing a grotesque hanging in the public square — one during which an Indian convict is publicly humiliated — but we may well be. I don’t need to tell any student of the Coens that they’re masters of idiomatic dialogue, and they rise to the challenge of dense but slangy 19th-century American speech with vigor. When Mattie asks an old woman to point out the sheriff, the lady replies, “Him — with the mustaches,” and it’s both hilarious and absolutely right. When Mattie tries to roust Cogburn from a mid-afternoon session in the outhouse, he informs her, “The jakes is occupied. Will be for some time.” This may tell us more about the character’s digestive well-being and overall health than we want to know, but the 19th century, one suspects, was often a realm of Too Much Information.

For reasons both venal and understandable, Cogburn doesn’t want to take a teenage girl into the Choctaw Nation, where he suspects Chaney is hiding out with a band of known ruffians. He forges an uneasy alliance with a cocksure Texas Ranger named LaBoeuf — it’s Matt Damon, very funny with an overcooked gentlemanly demeanor and a set of bristling mustaches — who is also after Chaney, and the two of them aim to ditch the girl, catch the scalawag and split the reward money. Needless to say, getting rid of Mattie isn’t that easy. Hell, it’s impossible, and of course as they travel into this mythic landscape beyond the bounds of law, the true grit of all three of these misfits will be tested. Cinematographer Roger Deakins, a longtime Coen collaborator, begins to back away from the characters as they become figures in a bleached-out, majestic landscape.

On balance, I think “True Grit” is much better in its first half, when the focus is most strongly on Mattie’s fearlessness and forcefulness, than in its second half, which describes an archetypal and almost spiritual odyssey into the wilderness and back again, with a requisite number of battles and adventures along the way. Without giving away anything significant, let me suggest that Mattie’s homeward journey back to Fort Smith, after her fateful meeting with Chaney and his band, is perhaps the most beautiful and heartbreaking passage in any Coen film, and should put to rest any notion that they’re incapable of sentiment or lyricism. (This is lyricism demanded by the form, of course. If the Coens made a children’s movie … hey! I wish they would already!)

For now, I’m going to suggest that “True Grit” is a winning western with just a few dark eddies beneath the surface, one that features a star-making lead performance and some spectacular photography, but falls just short of being great. But I’ve been down this road before with Coen movies, so let me attach an asterisk to that verdict. (Here’s what I wrote after my first viewing of “No Country for Old Men,” and mea maxima culpa on that one.) No one can tell you whether to like or dislike a film, of course, but I think grasping what the Coens are up to, in “True Grit” or anything else they’ve ever made, almost always requires multiple viewings. Form is content and meaning for them, which is why they resist talking about those things in isolation. To suggest that “True Grit” is a commentary about race and the social role of women and the relationship between self-reliance and community in American history is essentially to insult the Coens’ intelligence, and yours. It’s a western movie, which is a shorter way of saying all that stuff.