Why We Respond The Way We Do

AD reader Vincent writes in the comments section:

Vincent, I agree with you that it’s weird and, after all of these years, the only thing I can come up with is that it’s a popularity contest. Whose story is the best story is the one who gets most of the attention. ¬† It has always seemed weird to me why a certain performance is better than any other – it all comes down to one’s own personal experience, where they’ve been that year, where they are the day they see that movie and that performance, what it recalls for them, and what it does to them physically.¬† Ideally, the critics are there to offer objectivity — but even that seems to be fairly unreliable because critics are just people who react to films subjectively; after all, how can art really be judged objectively?

Rev Road is most definitely a film that needs stuff brought to it – either a love of the novel, or personal experience with feeling trapped in a relationship.¬† It isn’t a movie like Slumdog Millionaire that you can sit down anyone from any country at any age and they will get it, if not love it (this usually defines your Best Picture winner).

What is interesting to me is how directors and actors, sometimes cinematographers and composers, become stars for the season. And it entirely depends on who is the flavor of the month – and I mean that literally. In a parallel universe, Ed Zwick’s Defiance would be the big film of the season.¬† But for some reason that movie has been exiled into the land of the forgotten and badly reviewed.

In a parallel universe Clint Eastwood would be ruling this season with two Best Picture nominees in Changeling and Gran Torino but there is a sense that critics and maybe voters are all out of love for Eastwood; perhaps it doesn’t even have anything to do with the actual film but the subjective experience in watching it and in aligning oneself with it.

I have always felt that we project who we are by the films and the music we like. Writing out a top ten list, for instance, defines who you are, and perhaps your place in “the tribe.” If you are a mainstreamer you’re going to have all of the Oscar frontrunners on your list. But if you are someone who wants to be unique your list will not look like anyone else’s. I have always felt this is an aspect of human nature that we really can’t help. Thus, it always must be factored in when awards watching; we know it isn’t always about the best of the year but about the best of the moment, a snapshot of us right here, right now. This is why often the Oscars don’t have much lasting value beyond someone being able to put a gold statue on their shelf.