Oscar Miss: Revisiting The Painted Veil

In the flurry of last year’s hurried Oscar season, it seemed that The Painted Veil was kind of lost in the shuffle. The film seemed to have been screened too late. Many who saw it absolutely loved it. It took me a while to catch up with the film. Usually if it doesn’t have significant buzz or a motivated publicist it won’t get covered in the race. With so many blogs, so many activists, a publicist who can navigate the web these days is all-important. At any rate, not blaming the publicists for the lack of award attention on The Painted Veil. After watching the film I see now why it was a non-starter.

Well written, well acted and gorgeous to look at, The Painted Veil was a downer. It started out as a downer, was depressing all the way through (what could be more depressing than the cholera epidemic among the poor?) and ended as a major downer. The biggest problem with it, though, were the two leads. Edward Norton was simply too emotionally removed to connect with. He should have made us ache to see his beloved, Naomi Watts, fall back in love with him. Norton was good and all but he failed to provide what the story needed most. Yes, he’s supposed to be a clinical science geek and he is supposed to be someone who wouldn’t be fun to marry. But for the audience’s sake, he should have been someone no woman could resist anyway. Naomi Watts was slightly better than Norton but she too seemed slightly miscast. Had the love story been a smoldering one, this film would have done much better with the Academy. Norton is better at playing bad guys.

I bring this up only to say that all this time I assumed the film didn’t get release date it deserved. Now that I’ve experienced it I can say that even if every voter had seen it on time there is no way they would have responded to it enough.