Oscar Flashback – The Year of Living Dangerously

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsBOxDM_Vek[/youtube]

Somehow, inexplicably, The Year of Living Dangerously, which played tonight on TCM, slipped through the cracks at Oscar time and received one nomination and one win for Linda Hunt. It is such a good film, with a beautiful script and novel by CJ Koch, directed by Peter Weir (not yet a star) and Mel Gibson (on the cusp of stardom) and Sigourney Weaver, hot off the heels of Alien. If released today, this would be a top Oscar contender because it is of such a quality you rarely see anymore.

TCM presented it along with All the Presidents Men as a film about journalism and journalists, again, something that doesn’t hold the same prestige today. On with Robert Osborne was John Dean talking about how little real investigtive journalism goes on today (though the blogs do it). What I love about the Year of Living Dangerously is the relationships between the three main characters and how, in the end, the reporter is willing to do anything to get his story. That makes him a good reporter but a bad human being.

Terms of Endearment won that year. It was nominated along with The Big Chill, The Dresser, The Right Stuff, and Tender Mercies. All in all, not a bad year for Best Pic nominees, though none of them particularly political. Today, The Year of Living Dangerously would be among the five, Tender Mercies, as good as it was, probably wouldn’t.