History is lousy judgment plus time.
Mistakes get made, hubris gets shown, weight gets thrown around and ignorance gets celebrated as truth. Then years pass, memories dissolve, some pleasant things happen every now and again. And the cycle repeats.
What I am talking about, naturally, is the Academy Awards. In particular, what I have in mind is the best actress category for this year’s Academy Awards: Barring unforeseen circumstances, history will record Sunday night that Julianne Moore was the best actress of 2014, having been rewarded for her heartbreaking performance as a linguistics professor suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s disease in the otherwise maudlin and mostly forgettable melodrama “Still Alice.” Even though the movie has not been seen widely, even though reviews for the film seem decidedly chilly, few prognosticators will have a problem with her win.
Moore is beloved, accomplished and a recipient of four previous Oscar nominations and zero Oscars.
She is due.
So she wins.
Yet when she wins, Moore will join a vast club of Oscar winners who deserved an Oscar, just not right this minute (and, please, not for this film). Or as Katharine Hepburn — recipient of four Oscars, for performances both early in her career (1933’s “Morning Glory”) and late (1967’s “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” 1968’s “The Lion in Winter,” 1981’s “On Golden Pond”) but never anything definitive (“The Philadelphia Story,” “Bringing Up Baby”) — put it with characteristic bite: “The right actors win Oscars, but for the wrong roles.”
Which is the unspoken subtext of so many Oscar nights that grateful recipients keep their heads in the sand. Breaches of decorum are rare. The most awkward happened Oscar night 1991, when Jeremy Irons, receiving his best actor award for Barbet Schroeder’s “Reversal of Fortune,” thanked David Cronenberg, then explained to the audience: “Some of you may understand why.” The why was that Cronenberg directed Irons in the 1988 critical darling “Dead Ringers.” Irons played twin gynecologists and was lavishly praised, then ignored at Oscar time; in 1988 twin gynecologists was a queasy no when you had a cozier yes in Dustin Hoffman’s “Rain Man.” Irons was acknowledging that he could not have won if he hadn’t already been robbed.
He was noting the secret history of the Academy Awards.
Or as I call it, the Oscar Theory of Relativity, which states:
Relatively, you deserve this. Just not for this.
There are, of course, years when quality and character and history line up, and the right people are enshrined by the Academy Awards for roles from which they become inseparable. Marlon Brando winning (yet refusing) the award for playing Vito Corleone in “The Godfather.” Anthony Hopkins winning for Hannibal Lecter. Jack Nicholson winning for “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Joan Crawford winning for “Mildred Pierce.” It’s a little early to call this, perhaps, but Jennifer Lawrence’s win for “Silver Linings Playbook” cemented in our heads an image of Lawrence we already had: casually blunt, vulnerable, funny and not willing to suffer fools. Likewise, Natalie Portman, if she never does anything worthwhile again, received her Oscar (for 2010’s “Black Swan”) for a role that confirmed a very Portman-like presence: graceful, intelligent, but uncertain behind those dark eyes.
Also, Daniel Day-Lewis wins Oscars for the right, iconic turns: intense, immersive, physically demanding.
But those are exceptions.
Everyone else — perhaps this a wild overstatement — has been subject to the Oscar Theory of Relativity.
Gary Cooper won his first Oscar for the now-milquetoast “Sergeant York,” a film released in 1941 at the height of World War II, and only after losing for the film that he should have won for years earlier, “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town” (released in 1936). Jeff Bridges won for “Crazy Heart” after being passed over at Oscar time for many roles, both nominated (“The Last Picture Show”) and shoulda-been (“The Big Lebowski”). So when he was nominated again the year after his win, for the much better “True Grit,” he had no chance: He had already won. And that win for “Crazy Heart” meant that the more-deserving Colin Firth lost for “A Single Man”; thus, the following year Firth became a sure thing (and won) for his far less compelling role in “The King’s Speech.”
I could go all day.
Jack Lemmon did his best work with a light touch in Billy Wilder films (“The Apartment,” “Some Like It Hot”), but his best actor Oscar is a reminder of the less lighthearted, more forgettable “Save the Tiger.” Ingrid Bergman, a staple of Oscar night reels for “Casablanca” and “Notorious,” won three Oscars, once for a characteristic role (“Gaslight”) but twice for pure meh (“Anastasia,” “Murder on the Orient Express”). When you think of Sidney Poitier, do you think of “Lilies of the Field,” his Oscar winner? Or “In the Heat of the Night,” for which he wasn’t nominated? Kate Winslet, iconic in “Titanic,” perfect in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” nominated five times, passed over five times, held her nose to accept best actress for shamelessly pandering in “The Reader.” You might even argue that Tom Hanks, who won back-to-back Oscars for “Philadelphia” and “Forrest Gump,” was far more deserving and more iconic in “Saving Private Ryan” several years later, but by then he had won twice, so now we have to live with best actor Roberto Benigni.
In other words, you are not winning just for your performance. You are winning because a butterfly flapped its wings on Oscar night years earlier. And so now here we are, trapped in this uncomfortable loop.
Consider Julianne Moore and Those Four Other People in the Best Actress Category Perfecting Their Expressions of Excitement for Julianne Moore. Talent and performance aside, they arrived here through cascading happenstance: The two first-timers, Felicity Jones (“The Theory of Everything”) and Rosamund Pike (“Gone Girl”), are here because they were terrific, but also, if I may speculate: Amy Adams was nominated the year before, and her “Big Eyes” was a nonstarter, which freed up the one spot that tends to go to future Oscar winners. Meanwhile, Pike’s nomination is a solitary nod to ticket buyers, a reminder there are Oscar films that people have seen. Marion Cotillard (“Two Days, One Night”) cannot win because she won in 2008 for 2007’s “La Vie en Rose”; that year she defeated Cate Blanchett, who had five nominations and no wins, setting up Blanchett to win in 2014 for “Blue Jasmine,” defeating Adams. See how this works? Reese Witherspoon should have been nominated for 1999’s “Election” but won in 2005 for “Walk the Line,” so she can’t win in 2015, though she should. Which leaves Moore, who was nominated for 1999’s “The End of the Affair” and should have won. And should have won in 1998 for “Boogie Nights.” And in 2003 for “Far From Heaven” (but Nicole Kidman won for “The Hours” because she lost in 2002 for “Moulin Rouge.”)
Translation: Moore wins. (And Adams, five nomination, no wins, gets her Oscar in the near future.)
The important thing about this subtext, humming beneath the surface of every acceptance speech, is it reminds you of how many ducks have to line up for a win — ducks that have nothing to do with box office or Oscar campaigns or talent. Aging counts; a naked eagerness to be taken seriously counts; guilt and mistakes do matter. The best thing to come out of the omission of David Oyelowo, who should have been nominated for “Selma,” is that it positions him nicely to win an Oscar someday. And when that happens, the moment Oyelowo stands at the podium, regardless of how deserving he may be, the process will be stripped bare. We will be reminded, paradoxically, how awards cloud the very thing that awards celebrate:
Quality.
Probably the most famous example of the Oscar Theory of Relativity is Al Pacino’s best actor win in 1993 for “Scent of a Woman.” The man was due, but to get there he had to be nominated and passed up for two “Godfather” movies, “Dog Day Afternoon,” “Serpico” and three other roles. That kind of neglect of a legend could not stand. So he went big — “HOO-ah!” — and became a parody of Al Pacino (while also playing a blind man). The consequences were not small: Denzel Washington lost that year for “Malcolm X”; he should have won. Nominated again in 2000 for “The Hurricane,” he lost to Kevin Spacey. Russell Crowe should have won that year for “The Insider.” So then Crowe won in 2001 for “Gladiator.” Which meant he couldn’t win for “A Beautiful Mind” in 2002, clearing the way for Washington to win for the comparably slight “Training Day.”
Minor as this subject may seem, the perception at the core of all this is not at all frivolous, but rather a confirmation that we tend to reward artists when they are trying to win awards, not when they are just good.
Every year the acting categories at the Oscars are full of artists who, on any given day, are just good. And so exceptionalism gets equated with naked ambition and rarely for what it is: a product of ambition. Which means the casually exceptional Julianne Moores of the world are at a disadvantage, having to grow old, go big or just lose a lot. If Michael Keaton, charming for decades playing fast, chattery and confident, loses to Eddie Redmayne (a newcomer, but in a red-meat, Oscar kind of performance as quadriplegic genius Stephen Hawking), it will be because he had not transcended sufficiently his own effortless consistency. He had not screamed for attention any louder than he usually does; he just happened to do it in a better movie.
Bill Murray would understand.
He couldn’t win for 2003’s “Lost in Translation” because Sean Penn, previously nominated three times and never one to ratchet back, had to win for “Mystic River.” Murray’s face that night was legendary, a look of profound disappointment coupled with a recognition: He is Bill Murray, and he will never win for being himself.
Right Oscar, wrong movie
Paul Newman
Known for: “Cool Hand Luke,” “The Verdict,” “The Hustler”
Won for: “The Color of Money”
Kate Winslet
Known for: “Titanic,” “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “Revolutionary Road”
Won for: “The Reader”
Sidney Poitier
Known for: “In the Heat of the Night,” “Raisin in the Sun”
Won for: “Lilies of the Field”
Martin Scorsese
Known for: “Taxi Driver,” “Mean Streets,” “Raging Bull,” “Goodfellas”
Won for: “The Departed”
Bette Davis
Known for: “All About Eve,” “Dark Victory,” “Now, Voyager”
Won for: “Dangerous,” “Jezebel”
