Oscar Flashback 1997

It is with excitement that I turn back to 1997 to look at the year when Titanic won all. Avatar has launched. It is bigger and better than anyone could have possibly imagined. All that’s left to be determined is the money. The money and the Na’vi have been two of the biggest concerns these past few months. The Na’vi are unbelievably cool, seamlessly real. The money, well let’s see if Cameron’s gigantic sci-fi epic can pull people out of their funk and bring them back into theaters. Ebert gives Avatar a four star review, writing:

“Avatar” is not simply a sensational entertainment, although it is that. It’s a technical breakthrough. It has a flat-out Green and anti-war message. It is predestined to launch a cult. It contains such visual detailing that it would reward repeating viewings. It invents a new language, Na’vi, as “Lord of the Rings” did, although mercifully I doubt this one can be spoken by humans, even teenage humans. It creates new movie stars. It is an Event, one of those films you feel you must see to keep up with the conversation.

And at the end of his review, he writes:

It takes a hell of a lot of nerve for a man to stand up at the Oscarcast and proclaim himself King of the World. James Cameron just got re-elected.

This made me want to revisit that great year because I was sort of on the Oscar watch even then, although I hadn’t quite launched my site yet. At some point it became clear that Titanic was the movie to beat, but because Cameron had a reputation for being a blockbuster guy, a sci-fi guy, an action guy – most were skeptical. It was all about LA Confidential, which was winning everything. It was also about James Brooks’ As Good as it Gets, with a leading male role not unlike George Clooney’s, to a degree – unfeeling adult male who hasn’t grown up. LA Confidential is a little more like The Hurt Locker only the two have had very different rollouts. Different movies, though one was noirish and one was heartbreaking but neither was Titanic.

Titanic took a while to build up its base, but like a heavy object rolling down a hill it kept gathering mass and speed and power. The thing that drew people to the theaters was to see that ship go down. What they weren’t expecting was the stunningly moving experience the movie afforded. I wasn’t one of those moved, particularly, as the script was half terrible and half superb. But Titanic had what no other movie had that year, and certainly no other movie has had since.

One could argue that the Lord of the Rings series falls into that category. But there is a difference between what Cameron does and what Jackson did. For one thing Cameron had created an entire world, a religion, a language all from his own head. Sure, he’s had the luxury of spending a decade or so working on the story, tinkering with it, thinking about it, ruminating on it.¬† But still, this is entirely his own creation. His perfectionism made sure every tiny thread of the film was intact. Your eye will scan for something that looks fake but you will never find it, and just when you think he can’t possibly top himself, he tops himself.

How can one not think about 1997, a time when there wasn’t the internet as it’s used today. I was online, trading emails about films and the Oscars back then on a listserv called Cinema-l. In January, 1998 I wrote the following post on Cinema-l, Google has archived our activity on Google Groups — (five months later I would give birth to my daughter, the following year I would launch Oscarwatch.com):

Isn’t it odd how Titanic stays with you long after you’ve laughed at it
for three and a half hours?  Laughed and gasped?  When I think back on the
movie I don’t remember the dumb scenes or the dumb dialogue or the
spitting scene or anything else.  I remember the mood of it in the last
hour, the panic, the unthinkable unsinkable ship taking its grand and
final plunge to the bottom of that freezing ocean.

To that end, I am surprised to find that I have sort of fallen in love
with the film. Not because of any kind of formula, not because the story
is even good. ¬†It’s something I cannot readily explain. ¬†Like love, it
seems to take hold of you in the oddest way.

Perhaps it’s a bit like obsessing on the death of Marilyn and Princess Di,
or James Dean.  Maybe it is loving the lost beauty, the lost hope, the
grand failure, the absurd and pointless end.

The obsession begins (for me) with the ship itself, the true story of the
great ship, how it sits rotting at the bottom of the ocean.  The poor
people who didn’t rate a life boat, the rich men who wanted to die
gentlemen, those who were afraid of getting in the lifeboats because maybe
the ship wouldn’t sink. ¬†Everything about that doomed voyage is
fascinating. That it would be taken down so easily, so carelessly, so
quickly is a thing we cannot forget.

So Cameron brings this fascination alive, creating his own mesmerizing
ship of dreams, a movie so grand and expensive, filled with all the
excess and build-up of the original ship.  Everyone thought his ship would
sink.  The opposite of the Titanic herself.  Nobody thought his film would
even break even. A three and a half hour movie grossing over three hundred
mil? ¬†Impossible. ¬†Now, of course, we’ve seen ballsy arrogance rewarded
instead of punished.  Could it be we as a mass audience are changing?  Or
are we?

Is TITANIC yet another nineties movie where special effects replace story
and character? ¬†Like TWISTER or ID4? ¬†I’d say so except that the first two
hours of the film is simply the love story. ¬†I’d say so except that I, who
came out of the film with a headache, hating Jim Cameron, have since seen
a better movie in my memory.  Those silly characters Jack and Rose have
planted themselves in my mind along with, mostly with, the ship itself.
It is her story, I think, and Cameron’s treatment of her, that makes the
film so memorable.

Maybe it is not a happy ending we seek anymore. Maybe it is a need to
revisit those parts of our past that still eat away at us. How could there
not have been enough lifeboats? How could they presume they’d built an
unsinkable ship?  Is the ship a symbol for the end of the Industrial Age?
Or is it a symbol for our ongoing arrogance, our need to push the ship
faster through untested waters, to not look ahead at what might be lurking
underneath, to not recognize the power of nature over the power of Man.
Are we really just fearful of the changing Millennium and the unknown that
awaits us there?

Or, in the final analysis, are we simply craving a big and grand movie
like LAWRENCE OF ARABIA or GONE WITH THE WIND? Titanic does not have a
story strong enough to equal either of those films.  But it does have the
scope. ¬†It is entirely massive and spectacular. ¬†And I can’t seem to get
it off my mind.

I guess what’s most frightening about that above passage is how little my writing has changed. Zoy my gots. At any rate, on December 15, 1997 I predicted the following films to be nominated:

LA CONFIDENTIAL (which I think will win)
AS GOOD AS IT GETS
TITANIC (possibly)
AMISTAD
THE SWEET HEREAFTER (yeah, in my dreams)
JACKIE BROWN (slim possibility)
THE EDGE (in my dreams)

So there was Tarantino, there was Spielberg with a bomb. Three of these were nominated — left off was The Full Monty and Good Will Hunting (the crowd I hung with thought that movie was too dumb to be nominated) but it’s funny to see that there is a (possibly) next to Titanic. At least with Avatar I have been predicting it all along. The point is, Cameron has twice now come into the scene greatly underestimated, which appears to be just the way he likes it.

In the end, Titanic won 11 out of 14 Oscars, losing Actress (to Helen Hunt), Supporting Actress (to Kim Basinger), and Makeup (to Men in Black, FAIL). It wasn’t nominated for Screenplay, though I suspect Cameron will be a strong screenplay contender for Avatar.

We must then think about the possibility of Avatar pulling a Titanic and cleaning up at the Oscars. Four very strong films threaten — Invictus, Precious, The Hurt Locker and most notably Up in the Air. If there were five nominees, those would probably be the four, and Avatar would be the fifth. With five, Avatar would loom large. With ten, will it? Will Star Trek also be in play, as Iron Man was when the Dark Knight was a contender, thus dulling its ferocious edge? The thing about Avatar, though, is what will bring people back is the same thing that brought people back to Titanic – the emotional sucker-punch. It is so deeply moving in ways you can’t possibly imagine let alone predict.