The Dark Knight Continues to Generate Talk

I’m trying to drop it but others keep bringing it up and if they’re going to bring it up, well, what can do but go back on the offense. Sorry, readers, guilty. David Poland writes this:

One of the blog commenters can’t seem to separate why Slumdog won from why The Dark Knight was not nominated. In response, I found myself explaining my TDK issues ‚Äì which are not nearly as severe as he constantly claims ‚Äì in yet another way‚Ķ so I thought I would share‚Ķ
…The problem with Dark Knight – though it is certainly a beautifully made and strong film – is that it didn’t achieve its own ambitions… not MY ambitions for it… ITS ambitions.

There are two things at issue here that Poland, and everyone else who ever tries to explain why the Academy didn’t nominate the film. The first is their own personal opinion of the film. Okay, fine, so they didn’t like it. The second is to take the Academy’s snubbing of the film as some sort of validation for their own.

By contrast, Andrew O’Hehir takes the same issue on at Salon and really does get the big picture. His point is that he might not have liked it but that doesn’t diminish its importance this year. In other words, no one liked The Reader or Benjamin Button very much either but those still got nominated, and even won a few Oscars. So no one can tell me that their dislike of a film is a good enough reason to ignore a film like The Dark Knight. What O’Hehir said:

If you take the long view, maybe this change is normal and cyclical and in no way new. This tension between arty and commercial cinema, and this tendency to revert away from either extreme toward a mean of mediocrity, has been present in the Academy all along. In 1931, the fourth year Oscars were handed out, best picture went to the western “Cimarron,” while neither “City Lights” nor “Frankenstein” was nominated. Consider this list of non-nominated pictures from 1955 and 1956 alone: “The Night of the Hunter,” “Rebel Without a Cause,” “The Searchers,” “The Seven Samurai,” “Bus Stop,” “Oklahoma!,” “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” “Written on the Wind.” (Winners: “Marty” in ’55, “Around the World in 80 Days” in ’56.) One could go on; look up 1973 if this sort of thing engages you.

Fairly or not, “The Dark Knight” now belongs on that list, while “Slumdog Millionaire,” a nifty little film without much steak beneath its sizzle, is now inscribed on the tablet of what-the-hell-were-they-thinking Oscar champions, alongside “The Life of Emile Zola” and “The Greatest Show on Earth.” And “Dances With Wolves” and “Shakespeare in Love” and “Crash” — and most likely whatever wins a year from now. Still, I can’t wait for the tender, tearful exchange between Judi Dench and Miley Cyrus.