Oscar Flashback: The Braveheart Year

It’s funny that the last time Mel Gibson was nominated for Best Director and Best Picture he became the first and only to win without winning the DGA or the SAG. Things were different then, of course. There was the public reaction and that mattered. There was time for the reaction to settle in. A film could grow in esteem in the months between release and the Oscars, which were held in March. Imagine, right about now people would just be starting to think about what might get a nomination.

Now, here we are, exactly 20 years later and another film looks like it will be winning Best Picture without the SAG ensemble nomination, and that’s La La Land.

1996 was actually a great year for films and the Oscar race. Braveheart was not considered a frontrunner in any way, shape or form when the season began. Two movies were really dominating the race – Ron Howard’s astronaut movie, Apollo 13, and Ang Lee’s exceptional film Sense and Sensibility. While Sense and Sensibility won the Golden Globe, beating Apollo 13 (Babe took comedy). But Apollo 13 was the Oscar juggernaut that year. Anyone who lived through it remembers. It starred Tom Hanks, it was ambitious and epic-like and about an American hero.

Whatever happened with Apollo 13, Ron Howard was surprisingly shut out of the Best Director race. So was, as it turned out, Ang Lee. Only three Best Picture contenders had a corresponding Best Director nomination: Babe, Il Postino and Braveheart.

The other directors were Mike Figgis for Leaving Las Vegas (Best Actor winner), and Tim Robbins for Dead Man Walking.

In order for Apollo 13 to have won, it would have had to “Argo” its way to a win. But that just didn’t  happen back then. Picture and Director were mostly aligned. Apollo 13 won SAG/DGA/PGA but lost the Oscar. Braveheart literally only won Best Director at the Globes before taking the top prize. It was considered a big surprise at the time and is one of the outliers we tend to pull out when trying to figure out a complicated year.

Braveheart was and is a cultural phenomenon. It is still beloved by many. That  thing that made Braveheart great is present in Hacksaw Ridge. It’s just jaw-dropping in places, those war scenes are brilliantly composed. It’s made thoughtfully, with a harrowing performance by Andrew Garfield at its center. But what probably makes Hacksaw Ridge an interesting bookend to Braveheart is that the former is a pitch for violence, while the latter is an argument against it.

When the season began, the question lingered: Mel Gibson made this great movie. Will the Academy “forgive” him? We live in an era where past crimes and/or mistakes are dredged up for public shaming. It’s a very bizarre practice, kind of like a daily stoning – to purge the village of sinners to keep it pure and righteous. That purity mostly comes from the left. The right have their own version. But the bottom line was simply this: Mel Gibson made a movie good enough. The bottom line wasn’t that they were going to be doing him any favors. It was that they genuinely liked the film.

Someone on Twitter told me he was a “holocaust denier” and that I should not like his film because of that. First of all, I don’t believe he believes that. He thought and said and did some insane things while blitzed out  on drugs and alcohol. Much of which, including homophobic comments while high as a kite, he has apologized for and made amends. That’s better than most people do. It’s not my job to defend him. Not my place to judge him. What I can do is judge his work and in this case, it’s worthy.  You’ll have to decide for yourself whether art is the place for character assessments.

Hacksaw Ridge taps into the kind of conflict that’s coursing through our democracy, weirdly enough. It seems we’re on the brink of some kind of war and under the thumb of a true mad man, someone who has been helped along by the much smarter Putin but who has an itchy trigger finger. We’re also currently involved in the war in Afghanistan. Whatever Mel Gibson’s politics, they don’t really come through this film, not the way Clint Eastwood’s seep through his work. This film is more about resisting in the face of carnage.

Braveheart’s win was considered a shock the night it won. Even if he might have taken Best Director as he did at the Globes, Apollo 13 was still being predicted to win. Gibson produced, directed and starred in the film which would win five Oscars out of 10 nominations. Hacksaw Ridge has six nominations, including both sound categories.

It’s La La Land’s to lose, however. At least that’s what it looks like right now.