Hollywood paid homage to Bollywood in 2008, and Slumdog Millionaire was rewarded with the Oscar. From a production standpoint, it’s amazing that this film was even made. Director Danny Boyle had to take guerilla film making to a whole new level as much of the filming they did in India was done without permits or permission. The film was based on a book called Q & A by Vikas Swarup, and it follows the story of 18-year-old Jamal Malik, a kid who escaped Mumbai’s slums, as he gets to the final question of India’s version of the show Who Wants to be a Millionaire and is accused of cheating.

If ever there was a film about overcoming adversity, this is it. We watch Jamal from the time he’s a small boy having to swim through the foulest of the foul in order to obtain the autograph of Amitabh Bachchan, his favorite film star, which his older brother Salim will end up selling. We watch Malik overcome nearly impossible hardship to attain a better position in life. Through all of these experiences, Jamal learns about things that will ultimately help him answer the questions that could lead to his fortune or to his ultimate downfall because there’s no way that anyone would believe that someone of Jamal’s background could know everything that he claims to know.

One of the choices that Boyle and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy made was to use flashbacks prominently in the telling of this story. We open with Jamal being interrogated by a police inspector played by Irrfan Khan (Life of Pi), who doesn’t believe that Jamal could possibly know all of the answers without cheating. As Jamal relates the stories of how he knows all of these answers, we see the times in Jamal’s life where the answers were revealed to him, whether it was learning about Benjamin Franklin being on the front of an American $100 bill from a blinded child beggar he used to know, or seeing a vision of the god Rama after witnessing the death of his mother in the Bombay riots.

It is after that event that his life truly changes, for that is when he meets Latika. Jamal was still a young boy at that moment, and he and Salim had climbed aboard a freight train to escape the riots. As they fled the scene, they picked up Latika, a girl about the same age as Jamal, who wanted her to be their third musketeer, since they had been studying that book in school. Salim was hesitant, but Jamal convinced him to let her join in. Not long after that the kids are picked up by a gangster named Maman who trains kids to be beggars. Maman takes a liking to Salim, as Salim seems to be morally pliable. Maman makes the kids believe that he’s running a camp where he teaches the kids to sing, and Jamal brags to Latika that he’s going to be a famous singer one day. It’s Salim’s job to bring the kids to Maman when he’s ready to hear them sing, and he watches in horror as Maman’s assistant puts an ether soaked rag in the kid’s face and then put acid on his eyes because blind kids begging can fetch twice as much money. Maman then tells Salim to bring him Jamal, which he hesitantly does. But before the assistant can knock him out, Salim knocks the acid out of his hands and the kids make a run for it, hopping on a train at a nearby station. Latika has a hard time keeping up and Salim has her hand ready to pull her on, but he lets go, allowing her to be retrieved by Maman and his men.

The brothers then start scamming passengers on the train until they’re ultimately kicked off, but as luck would have it, they get kicked off near the Taj Mahal, and start stealing shoes and scamming tourists. After doing this for quite some time, Jamal receives a $100 bill and happens to bump into one of Maman’s blind boys who tells him the picture is of Benjamin Franklin and that Latika is still with Maman. He then warns him that Maman never forgets and that he’ll be singing at his funeral if he goes after him.

One of the questions that Jamal has to answer is, “Who invented the revolver?” He knows the answer is Colt because they use a Colt .45 to rescue Latika from Maman and Salim ends up shooting Maman so that they can escape. The kids get separated and Jamal can’t find the others. This leads Salim and Latika to get mixed up in the gang of Javed, the most notorious gangster in Mumbai, and Jamal gets a job at a local call center.

Now eighteen, Jamal uses the call center to try and find Salim and Latika. He’s able to find Salim, who is now a high-ranking lieutenant in Javed’s gang. What’s more, Latika is now his main girl, and is akin to a prisoner in Javed’s house. Jamal masquerades as a cook to get in to the house, and sees that Latika fills her days watching TV. He then tries to meet her at the train station to get her to escape with him, but Salim and other members of the gang rush up to her and drag her in to a car before cutting her face with a knife. Hoping to somehow make contact with Latika, Jamal gets on Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

As Jamal makes his way working through the questions, he becomes the darling of the nation. This actually draws the ire of the show’s host, Prem Kumar, who at one point tries to feed Jamal the incorrect answer, but Jamal sees through his attempt and gives the correct one. In fact, it is actually Kumar who suspects Jamal of cheating and calls the police. I’ll not give any spoilers however as you’ll have to see the film to find out if Jamal wins the money and gets the girl.

What I will say is that I enjoyed Slumdog Millionaire, but I also felt that it came up short in a couple of places. First and foremost, I’ve always had a problem with Kumar feeling jealous and being upset by Jamal’s success on the show. Kumar clearly looks down on Jamal from the moment he comes on to the set, making fun of Jamal for working at a call center and disparaging Jamal’s background every chance he gets, if for no other reason than to get a cheap laugh from the audience. It seems to me that in a normal world, Kumar would be ecstatic to have Jamal doing well. A rags to riches story like this would turn in to a ratings bonanza, and make his show the number one show on television. It just doesn’t make any sense to me that he would proactively try to destroy Jamal while Jamal is bringing in a new wave of an audience for his show.

I would have felt better about this storyline if there had been more clarity in Kumar’s motivation. Jamal is a Muslim, so does Kumar have a prejudice against Muslims? There has always been tension between Hindus and Muslims in India, so it wouldn’t be out of the question if Kumar’s character had that type of prejudice. Is Kumar simply so insecure that he can’t have anyone else be responsible for the success of his show? If that’s the case, then again, it needed more clarity. Perhaps Kumar just hates poor people and people who come from the slums because he feels they reflect poorly on his country. Again, that’s a short-sighted attitude to have because this is the type of event that draws people in, and makes the show even more popular.

I’m generally not a fan of flashbacks, and this film uses that technique as a major motif to telling the story. The timeline jumps around quite a bit, and it’s hard for me to care about Jamal as he is in his current state because we’re spending so much time with his younger self, and those are essentially different characters. I had a similar feeling to when Geoffrey Rush won the Best Actor Oscar in 1996 over Ralph Feinnes, even though much of the screen time for Rush’s character was when he was a kid, and Rush was really only in half of the film. I felt a similar feeling with Slumdog Millionaire in that Older Jamal was only in half the film and I think I would have preferred a more linear style to the narrative so that we could have watched Jamal grow up and turn into the young man that he would become.

Otherwise, I think Slumdog Millionaire is a fine film. I wasn’t expecting to feel as emotional as I did at the end, and I think that speaks well of Boyle’s direction. We’ve been following this character since he was a young boy, and Boyle did an outstanding job of making it clear what Jamal wanted and what he needed, so that when the story is resolved, there is a clear and appropriate emotional response. Ultimately that’s all you ever really want from a film. You want it to be dramatic and you want that drama to build towards eliciting and emotional response. In that vein, Slumdog Millionaire was a successful film.

There were some other controversies regarding the film, like its depiction of life in India, as well as what happened to the Indian child actors after the production wrapped. Fortunately the latter situation worked out well as they were initially paid a pittance for their work and sent back to the slums. This caused some backlash and in response trusts were set up for those kids’ educations, and they’re now attending universities and making the most of their opportunities. In terms of the film’s depiction on India, I think it’s important to realize that India is a large country, and no film is going to be able to accurately depict what the entire culture is going to mean to all of the people that live there. Plus, India is so huge and has such a vast and multi-cultured population that no one film could accurately depict all things for all people. Just like any American film that you see that takes place in Los Angeles or New York or Boston or Chicago, Slumdog Millionaire shows a slice of what living in India is like. Is it all good? Of course not. You need bad things to happen in order to create the necessary drama that tells the story. Slumdog Millionaire is not a story about India. It’s a story that takes place in India.

Did the Academy get it right?

I am of the opinion that they did, but 2008 was not a particularly strong year. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was a dramatic and interesting piece about a man who aged backwards. I thought it was a decent film, but it was very long and very depressing. Even though Slumdog Millionaire has a fairly depressing tone to it, there is a lot more of a feel-good vibe in crucial moments. I enjoyed Frost/Nixon very much primarily as a character piece that was comparing and contrasting interviewer David Frost as the playboy, fun-loving celebrity in search of real credibility and respect against Richard Nixon as the disgraced, though not humbled, former president looking for redemption. I thought that those two issues playing against each other created some great drama and a story that was at times intense, even though it was primarily two guys talking to each other. Milk was another very good film that was about social change and the man who was its primary catalyst. It showed Harvey Milk as a flawed hero who wasn’t afraid to ruffle feathers to get what he wanted and he turned out to be the first real champion for gay rights. Finally there was The Reader, which was really two films in one. The first half was a love story dealing with a love that should have been forbidden between a coming-of age teenager and a woman in her 30’s, but was practically life-saving for each person in the relationship. The second half opened up a skeleton-filled closet that took the story in a completely different direction and ended up turning it into a type of court room drama. It was a very good and very compelling film. All of these films were excellent, but I wouldn’t consider any of them to be particularly great. If I had a vote in 2008, I probably would have voted for either Milk or The Reader. However, I don’t necessarily think that either of those films were head and shoulders above Slumdog Millionaire. While I probably wouldn’t have voted for Slumdog Millionaire, I can certainly see why people did and why people loved it. I can’t really complain about it winning Best Picture.

By 2007 the Coen brothers, Ethan and Joel, had directed some of the most recognizable and enduring films of the previous two decades. Films like Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, Fargo, The Big Lebowski among others demonstrated a penchant for dark comedy, snappy and witty dialogue, sometimes graphic violence, and tension-filled storytelling. In No Country for Old Men, the 2007 winner for Best Picture, the Coen brothers combined all of these elements to produce one of their most intense features.

No Country for Old Men is an amazing movie until the third act, which is where it starts to lose me. This would undoubtedly be the Coen brothers’ best film, had the third act even been competent. As it was, everything just kind of stopped. We don’t see any of the action that brings the story to a resolution and we’re kind of left wondering what’s going on. I suppose that’s what the characters were feeling, especially Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones) and his friend Ellis (Barry Corbin) and the El Paso Sheriff. They all lament how the modern world is changing in ways that they don’t understand, and the violence that seems to be accompanying it is something they cannot comprehend. In many ways, this is a pessimistic film that has a pessimistic ending.

One of the thematic elements to this film is the choices that we make, and how sometimes we make the right choices that can save our lives and other times we make the wrong choices that end up destroying us. On the opposite end of that however, the Cohen brothers are also telling us that even when we make the right choice, chance has a lot to do with it.

The example of this is after we’ve met Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem in his Best Supporting Actor Oscar winning performance). Chigurh is a professional killer who uses an air compressor and a hose to shoot people with the same lethality as a gunshot, but without the evidence of a bullet or shell casing. We’ve already seen him gleefully kill a sheriff’s deputy and coldly murder a random motorist so that he could steal his car. Now at a filling station he torments the station’s owner nearly to the point of cracking. He asks the owner what is the most he’s ever won in a coin flip and then flips a coin and tells him to call it. The owner wants to know what he’s calling for and Chigurh tells him that he’s calling for everything. The owner calls heads, and it is heads. Chigurh then gives him the coin and tells him not to put it in his pocket because then it will just become another coin, which he says it is.

We also see how making the right choice can be what starts you on the road to ruin when Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is overcome by guilt. The whole story gets moving when Llewelyn is hunting and tracking a deer he’s shot and come across the remains of several dead Mexicans who were all shot in an apparent drug deal that went very bad. Llewelyn finds one survivor who asks him for water, but he has none to give him. Llewelyn then tracks the last man standing and finds his corpse a few miles away under a tree and next to a case with $2 million in it. Taking the case for himself, Llewelyn goes home to his wife Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald), but won’t tell her where he’s been or what he’s been doing. Unable to sleep that night, he fills a jug with water and goes back to the scene, but the man is already dead. He then sees another truck pull up where he parked his truck in the distance. They men puncture his tires and chase after him, managing to shoot Llewelyn in the shoulder. He’s only able to escape by jumping into a river and shooting the pit bull that they’d sicked on him.

That night Chigurh arrives at the scene with a couple of guys in suits who tell him that the case is still missing, but it has a transponder in it and they give him the tracking device he can use to find it, and then Chigurh picks up a pistol from the ground and shoots both of them. Meanwhile, Llewelyn gets home and tells Carla Jean that they’re now retired and she should go to her mother’s house while he waits for the heat to die down.

What follows is a tension-filled second act that had me on the edge of my seat nearly the whole time. One thing that you’ll notice as you watch this film is that there is absolutely no score throughout. There is occasionally music playing off of a radio in the scene, but otherwise there is no score at all, and there are times where the silence makes the scene much more intense than if there was this massive orchestration playing underneath it.

Also, Roger Deakins’ cinematography is second to none. Deakins has been the Coen brothers’ go to director of photography for all of their films, and he is an expert at using light and shadow to compliment and help tell the story. An example of that is when Llewelyn is in the hotel room waiting for Chigurh to arrive. Sitting on his bed with his gun pointing at the door, he looks down to the crack between the bottom of the door and the floor. We see the strip of light and then we see the shadows of two feet appear. After a moment the shadows disappear as the feet walk away. Then after another moment, the light goes out on the other side of the door, signaling that Chigurh has turned off the light. The tension is finally broken by Chigurh firing his weapon through the door and Llewelyn firing back his shotgun with a gun fight and chase ensuing. What I love about this scene is that it’s all told visually. The tension is built through the visuals, and specifically with light. Visually speaking this is as simple a scene to construct as you can imagine. It almost might as well be in black and white, and it harkens back to the height of film noir. It shows that a director of photography or a cinematographer doesn’t need a sweeping panoramic landscape to create a dramatic scene. All he or she needs is a little bit of light and the knowledge and talent to know how to use it effectively, and Deakins and the Coen brothers know how to do that. They allow us as the audience to watch what is going on without the scene being cluttered up by a bunch of dialogue.

This is another strong suit for No Country for Old Men, and that is the paucity of dialogue. This is strictly a guess, but I’d be willing to bet that there’s less dialogue in this film than any other Coen brothers film, and there’s certainly less dialogue than most best picture winners. We are shown this story, we are not told this story. Almost every major story point happens visually, with only the most important exposition given through dialogue. Throughout the first 20 minutes of the film, there’s hardly any dialogue at all, other than some random banter by the deputy sheriff and Chigurh’s menacing threatening of the gas station owner. In fact, a good portion of Chigurh’s dialogue isn’t really saying anything. He’s talking, but he’s talking in a way that reveals character and his psyche more than moving the story forward. Also, as we see Llewelyn approach the area of the doomed drug deal, there’s no one around for him to talk to. He mutters a couple of things under his breath and tries to get information out of the lone survivor, but other than that, we see all of the information that we need to know about how this story is going to go moving forward.

If you’re a screenwriter trying to figure out how to tell important parts of the story without resorting to dialogue, then this is a film that you should reference.

Unfortunately it’s not all good for this film. I don’t know exactly what the deal is, but it sure seems like the Coen brothers weren’t quite sure how they wanted to end the film, and it kind of goes off the rails in the third act. In the interest of not giving away any spoilers, I’ll just point out that it feels very rushed, and there are very important moments in the third act that we don’t see. Those moments are implied, and it’s clear that they did happen, but these are the moments that we’ve been watching the whole film for, and it’s terribly unsatisfying to not be shown the climax. To me it felt like the Coen brothers knew how they wanted the story to be resolved, but they couldn’t realistically get there, so they just kind of made it happen in way that made it necessary for us not to see it. Then, it’s just implied that it happened, but it makes me feel cheated. We’ve been following Llewelyn for the last hour and a half, and we ought to be able to see how his story is resolved.

The other problem that this created was that it left us with 30 minutes of tying up loose ends that really didn’t feel like they had any bearing on the story anymore. The story was over, and yet we still had nearly 30 minutes of movie where again, nothing more was really resolved and everything just kind of stopped. In fact, the last scene of the movie is like that. It doesn’t really end. It just stops.

It’s those last 30 minutes for me that keep this film out of the upper echelon of the Coen brothers’ filmography, even though it’s their only film to win Best Picture. The first two acts are breathlessly paced and the tension throughout is palpable. Then, when it should be reaching its crescendo, it just kind of slowly fades out. There is no climax that we’re allowed to see. There is no resolution that allows us to sympathize with the main character on some emotional level, because we aren’t allowed to see what happened. A great film is nearly ruined by an unspectacular ending.

Did the Academy get it right?

I don’t necessarily think that they got it wrong, but it is not the film that I would have voted for. I must also say that with one exception, we got a lot of depressing, pessimistic movies nominated this year. Atonement is a fine film with Kiera Knightley about a young girl who accuses her sister’s lover of a crime he didn’t commit with World War II in England as a backdrop. It’s a dramatic film made of a series of misunderstandings and misinterpretations with tragic results. It’s good but a real downer. Juno tackled the hilarious issue of teen pregnancy and was the breakout role for Ellen Page. It’s the token indie nomination for 2007, but it’s actually a heartwarming, feel-good film that is witty and super entertaining, but lacks the gravitas of Best Picture. Michael Clayton is another fine film starring George Clooney as a “fixer” who is hired by a law firm to do damage control when one of their lawyers goes off the rails and reveals that the chemical company he’s been representing in a class-action law suit is guilty. It’s actually a riveting film that keeps you guessing about who Michael can trust and who is really out to get him. It’s hard to articulate, but this is basically an excellent film that was just missing that little something extra that could have put it over the top. The film that would have likely received my vote for 2007, however, was There Will Be Blood, which is a bit ironic because it has a lot of the same issues that No Country for Old Men has. It’s a totally different movie and I think that director Paul Thomas Anderson was channeling his inner Stanley Kubrick during the making of it. It’s a deliberately paced drama starring Daniel Day-Lewis as an oil man who puts the finding of oil ahead of everything else in his life, and it eventually costs him his humanity. It’s another dramatic film, but like No Country, it loses a lot of its effectiveness with a lackluster ending, despite the fact that the ending has one of the great movie lines of the decade in “I drink your milkshake!” The ending of There Will Be Blood is much more intense than No Country for Old Men, but it still leaves much unresolved, and leaves a sense of wanting. Similarly to No Country for Old Men, There Will Be Blood stops more than it ends. But No Country for Old Men was the winner and for the first two thirds of it, I would have agreed, but the last act dropped it down in my opinion, and almost ruined what should have been an exceptional film.

After having five of his films nominated for Best Picture since 1976, Martin Scorsese finally broke through and won Best Picture with The Departed, which was a remake of a Hong Kong film called Internal Affairs. Over the previous 30 years, Scorsese deservedly built up a reputation for being one of American cinema’s great directors. He was and is a man who could direct any style of film and direct it well. All you need to do is look at his previous nominees (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellas, Gangs of New York, and The Aviator), not to mention his other amazing films that weren’t nominated (The Age of Innocence, Hugo, Kundun, The Wolf of Wall Street, etc.) to understand the wide variety of material that Scorsese has mastered. Yet even with that wide variety of material, Scorsese has a signature style of filmmaking that is as unique to him as are his fingerprints.

I would say from that perspective that The Departed might be, along with The Age of Innocence and Kundun, one of the most un-Scorsese like films that Scorsese has made. Scorsese has a lot of signature motifs that he often spreads throughout the film at key moments. He quite often will have a long trucking shot that follows a character through a location or a series of locations. He also will change the speed of the film in order to create some point of emphasis within his shots at strategic points throughout his films. Many of his films are also littered with moments of graphic violence.

The Departed lacks the long trucking shots. It does have moments of varying camera speeds, but they’re much more subtle in this film than in others. And while there is certainly a fair amount of graphic violence in The Departed, it doesn’t feel as gratuitous as it does in other Scorsese films. Do I think that The Departed is Scorsese’s best film? I do not, but it does rank very high for me in Scorsese’s pantheon. The Departed is a film that has it all. It’s got brilliant acting, tense and dramatic storytelling and it has a grey and somber look to it that is emblematic of the gray area between the right side of the law and the wrong side.

That last bit, to me, is the strongest aspect of this film. The Departed has a deep and complex set of circumstances. It’s a film that blurs the line between right and wrong and between good and evil. It’s a film that puts its two main characters, Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon) into the camps of the enemy, and each has to discover who the other one is before it’s too late. Billy comes from a rough background with a father who was well known to both the police and the mob. He graduated from the Academy and was immediately given the assignment by Sgt. Dignam (Mark Wahlberg) and Lt. Queenan (Martin Sheen) to get himself arrested and spend the next couple of years in prison so that when he gets out he can infiltrate the gang of Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson), the most notorious gang boss in Boston, and the number one target of the Massachusetts State Police.

Meanwhile Colin has also graduated from the Academy and has unprecedentedly been assigned a plain-clothed position as his first assignment. Since he was a kid, he’s been involved with Costello’s gang, and now Costello has arranged for him to work as an informant from the inside, and Colin does his job well. He’s always able to get word to Costello that the heat is on, allowing Costello to make arrangements that allow him to continue to do his business without getting ensnared in the cops’ net. However, both Costello’s organization and the State Police realize that they have rats in their midst and both Billy and Colin can feel the nooses around their respective necks getting tighter and tighter. As the pressure mounts, Billy and Colin both become more desperate to get out of their respective situations and they also come to realize that their superiors either don’t have their best interests at heart or they’re unable to protect them adequately.

The Departed is an incredibly layered story. William Monahan won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for penning this script, and he deserved it without a doubt. If you’re a screenwriter working on a crime story or a heist story, this is a script that you should study. The complexity of the story lies in the fact that you have two characters in Billy and Colin who are mirror images of each other and trying to track each other down. Here’s where we get to the theme. The spine of this story is dealing with the gray area between good and bad as well as between right and wrong. The mob and the police operate under similar hierarchies and have similar rules within their organizations. They’re also both ingrained with violence as a means of getting what they want and need. The only difference is that one organization is operating outside the law and the other organization is working on the law’s behalf.

At the center of this conflict are Billy and Colin. They’re two guys with similar backgrounds who join the police force for two different reasons. Colin joined the police specifically to work as an informant on behalf of his boss Costello. He’s the ultimate insider and he uses his position within law enforcement to break the law at the highest levels. Billy, on the other hand, joins the police to put the lawlessness of his family history behind him. Ironically, he’s assigned to infiltrate Costello’s organization by becoming a criminal and diving back into the lifestyle that he wanted to leave behind. He works his way in to the organization as a means of breaking it down from the inside.

Monahan and Scorsese did a marvelous job of building this web of intrigue so that this story is so much more than the violence that fills the plot. This is a violent movie, but unlike Gangs of New York, Casino or even, dare I say Goodfellas, The Departed weaves an intricate and complex story that is not difficult to follow. Anyone can write a script that has a million things going on and anyone can make a film that is complex but also confusing. Monahan wrote and Scorsese directed a film that has a lot going on and is complex in nature, but also is told in a way that is easy to follow so that the audience gets the most out of the dramatic nature of the story.

Not only is this a well-told story, but the acting in it is also sensational. There are a bunch of character actors in this film that give exceptional performances and there are also a lot of big stars who might not be in roles that are the size they’re used to, but nevertheless give outstanding performances. Alec Baldwin is very funny as Captain Ellerby, a gruff Bostonian who’s blunt, no-holds-barred way of interacting ads personality and depth to the whole film. Vera Farmiga is the psychologist who starts dating Colin while also working as Billy’s court-appointed therapist. The fact that these adversaries share the same love interest adds tension and drama that lasts through the story right up to the penultimate scene.

But this is another movie that belongs to Jack. Jack Nicholson joined the select group of actors who’ve starred in three Best Picture winners (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest & Terms of Endearment), joining Clark Gable, Talia Shire, Diane Keaton, John Cazale, Dustin Hoffman, and Morgan Freeman to make up what I affectionately call the 3-Timers’ Club. And with 21 years between his first Best Picture winner and his third, his films spanned the longest amount of times between wins. It’s fitting to me that Jack joins this group, as he is one of the most popular and most iconic actors in the history of cinema, and Frank Costello is a role that he was born to play. It should be up there with Jake Gittes, R.P. MacMurphy, Col. Nathan Jessup, and Jack Torrance as his signature roles. Jack can bring depth to a character unlike most other actors. As I mentioned when discussing R.P. MacMurphy, Jack brings panache to roles that a lot of other actors can’t pull off. That panache makes what should be unlikable characters into likable ones and turns anti-heroes into folk heroes. We shouldn’t like Frank Costello. He’s a murderous gangster who appears to be ready to sell out his own country to make a few extra bucks. He’s ruthless and lethal and doesn’t care how much pain he inflicts on his enemies. However he’s loyal to those that show him loyalty and he has a devil-may-care attitude that humanizes him and brings depth to the story.

Some people have suggested that Costello is also loosely based on the character of Whitey Bulger, a notorious Boston mobster from the 1980’s, and that makes sense. Over the course of his career, Scorsese has done an excellent job in films like Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Gangs of New York, and The Wolf of Wall Street into making New York City into one of the film’s characters. The attitude and grit of New York City comes out in those films and helps drive the story and develop the characters the way few cities outside of Los Angeles have done in movie history. In The Departed, Scorsese was able to do the same thing with Boston, much the same way his star Matt Damon did nearly a decade earlier in Good Will Hunting. Boston is an interesting city. It’s the heart of higher education and medical research in this country, but it has a sarcastic edge to it as well as a blue-collar grit that can rival any city. Like New York and like Los Angeles, Boston is an attitude just as much as it is a place, and Scorsese brought that attitude out in his characters and in the story so the fact that the film took place in Boston is as integral a part to this story as any of the other components. The Departed would have been a completely different movie in any other setting.

Did the Academy get it right?

I believe they did, although there were some fine films nominated against it. I would not consider Babel to be one of those films. It’s decent enough, but similar to the previous year’s Crash, it’s an ensemble piece with several different seemingly unrelated stories coming together with a common spine at the end. The difference is that these stories are taking place simultaneously all around the world, but the nature of it is the same. I enjoyed Letters From Iwo Jima, and I especially liked the fact that it was told from the Japanese perspective, as it’s not often that we get that point of view. Little Miss Sunshine took home the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, and it’s a wonderful film in an indie film kind of way. It’s a feel-good film about family and what people will do to perpetuate the image that their lives and families are stable when in actuality they’re completely falling apart. From a recognition standpoint, getting nominated was as good as win for Little Miss Sunshine, but it wasn’t the best film of the year. The Queen is the type of sophisticated English film that might have won had it come out about five years later, and it’s a very good film in its own right. I remember being somewhat skeptical going into it, but then being pleasantly surprised at the end. It’s an emotional and thoughtful film that re-introduced American audiences to Helen Mirren, and gave a look to Queen Elizabeth II that was deeply and unexpectedly personal. This is a film that could have won, and I would have had no complaint. But it was The Departed that took home the Academy’s top award that night, and with its deep and complex story, the captivating and riveting performances by its actors and the thoughtful and well-crafted thematic elements that went into it, The Departed was the Best Picture of 2006.

A year after being nominated for the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for the film that won Best Picture (Million Dollar Baby), Paul Haggis tried his hand at writing as well as directing Crash and this time would take home the Best Picture Oscar for himself, along with the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. This was the last Best Picture winner that I had never seen, and I won’t necessarily say that I was looking forward to it. The reviews that I’d heard from friends and peers were mixed at best, and few people that I spoke with thought that this film was particularly exceptional. I was also not particularly looking forward to it because it had an ensemble cast and it’s one of those films that has seemingly unrelated characters all come together near the end around a single theme. This style of film making was popular around the first decade or so of the 21st Century, particularly with romantic comedies like Love Actually (2003), He’s Just Not That Into You (2009), Valentine’s Day (2010) and New Year’s Eve (2011). In fact, Crash is the only film that I can think of other then 2006 Best Picture nominee Babel that’s told in this style of film making that isn’t a romantic comedy.

So perhaps it was my low expectations due to the mixed reviews and not being a fan of that type of storytelling, but I was tremendously and pleasantly surprised by Crash. I thought it was a dramatic and intense film, and I was affected by the characters and their emotional journeys. To be sure, this is not a film without flaws, as there are plenty. Ironically I think that a lot of the flaws have to do with the script, and Haggis, who is primarily knows as a screenwriter actually directed this film much better than he wrote it. Just to get the flaws out of the way, I felt like the racism angle was way too on the nose. I understand that racism and racial tensions are the spine of the film, but there were times where the characters’ dialogue about it was just too in our collective faces. To a degree, I felt like I was being talked down to on the subject, like it was an elementary subject that Haggis didn’t think we could understand. That’s unfortunate because there are actually some examples spread over the course of the film where Haggis is able to make his point in more subtle, yet equally powerful ways.

For example, there is a scene where Police Detective Graham Waters (Don Cheadle) is having sex with his partner Ria (Jennifer Esposito), who happens to be half white and half Mexican. As they’re making love the phone rings and Ria tells Waters not to answer it, but he feels obligated to. Sure enough, it’s his mother (who is mentally disabled in some ambiguous way), and he speaks with her for a couple of uncomfortable moments before telling her that he can’t talk now because he’s having sex with a white woman. This offends Ria as well because she’s half Mexican, but he tells her that he said it to make his mother angry. It’s a very subtle way to get the point across, but it works very well.

Another strong example happens in two, well actually three parts. Officer John Ryan (Matt Dillon) is a racist police officer, and along with his more enlightened partner Officer Tom Hansen (Ryan Phillipe) pull over an SUV being driven by black film director Cameron Thayer (Terrance Howard) when it looks as though his wife Christine (Thandie Newton), who is a little drunk, is going down on him while he’s driving. Ryan harasses Thayer mercilessly and frisks Christine to the point of molesting her. Recognizing that he has no power in this situation, Thayer apologizes to Ryan for any wrong-doing he might have done and Ryan lets them go. This precipitates an argument between Thayer and Christine when they get home with her ashamed of him for not protecting her and him mad at her for not recognizing that there was nothing he could have done. The next time we see Thayer he’s on the set, directing an African American actor. Satisfied with the take, Thayer calls lunch until the producer (Tony Danza) approaches him with concerns that the actor didn’t sound “black enough”. Sensing again that he’s powerless in this relationship, Thayer calls everyone back from lunch to re-shoot the scene. Christine shows up during the lunch break to try and talk about what happened the previous night, but now Thayer is feeling doubly frustrated as well as emasculated. He yells at her and sends her away.

On his way home later that day, Thayer is the target of an attempted carjacking by Anthony (Ludacris) and Peter (Larenz Tate), but this time Thayer is not taking it lying down. Anthony and Peter pull their guns as Thayer fights back, and suddenly there are cops on the scene. Anthony gets in the car to try and get away, but Thayer gets in after him, and shoves him over and starts driving with the police in pursuit. They finally stop in a cul-de-sac and Thayer hides Anthony’s gun in his pocket. One of the cops happens to be Hansen and he recognizes Thayer. After a tense confrontation where it looks like Thayer is destined to be gunned down by the cops, Hansen diffuses the situation and gets the other cops to stand down while sending Thayer home. Thayer drives Anthony, who had been hiding in the front, to a street corner and gives him his gun and lets him out. He then tells Anthony that he’s embarrassed by him and that Anthony is also embarrassing himself.

Meanwhile Christina has been in a terrible car accident and Ryan happens to be one of the first cops on the scene. Christine’s car is upside down and she’s barely conscious. Ryan recognizes her almost immediately and she recognizes him as well. She starts screaming at him that she doesn’t want him to be the one who rescues her, but he’s the only one there and her car is leaking gasoline close to another car that’s on fire. After a mighty struggle Ryan manages to pull Christine out of the car just before it explodes. He wraps her in a blanket and helps her to safety, and there is an uncomfortable peace between them.

During all of these scenes we are shown the issues of race and racism, as well as black on black crime and its affects on both the perpetrator and the victim. What’s interesting about the whole film as well is that the racial tensions don’t just reside between blacks and whites. There are story lines in the film involving tensions between Hispanics and blacks, Asians and blacks, Hispanics and whites, and even Hispanics and Persians. It is this last conflict that brought out one of the most intense and emotionally disturbing scenes in the film. It was also one of the best written and best set up scenes in the film, and it involves Daniel the locksmith (Michael Pena), his 6-year old daughter and Farhad, the Persian shop owner. I’m not going to tell you what happens, but it literally made me cry out, “Oh my god!” before the scene had a very emotional conclusion.

I just relayed a couple of the diverse story lines in this film. There are more than a half-dozen separate story lines that start out seemingly unrelated but intersect like a spider web over the course of the film. For the most part I feel like Haggis did a good job of bringing them all together at the end in a way that was relatively seamless, although there were a couple of things that felt tacked on, and there were a couple of story lines that were left unresolved. Ryan has spent the film trying to get a competent doctor to look at his father, who seems to be having prostate problems, but the last time we see the two of them, his father is on the toilet and merely shakes his head no. We also never see Christina again after her accident. We don’t know what happened to her or to Thayer, but at least Thayer gets some redemption at the end of his story. There is another story line involving Jean Cabot (Sandra Bullock) and her husband Rick (Brendan Fraser), who happens to be District Attorney. They were the first victims of Anthony and Peter, and it seems to confirm some deep seeded racism within Jean. She battles it the entire story, but we never get any real resolution for her either.

Perhaps the lack of resolution for many of these characters was a conscious choice by Haggis. There is, after all, on real resolution in real life. You just keep on living until the end, and you get the sense for a lot of the characters in this film, that even though they’ve had these potentially life-changing events happen to them, they’re still going to continue to live the same lives they’ve been living. All of these characters are on a sad carousel that spins in one direction and none of them are ever going to get off.

I’ve spoke a few times about endings and how a film’s ending can completely change your impression of it. A strong ending can sometimes save a weak film and likewise a weak ending can ruin an otherwise fine movie. The ending of Crash was for the most part depressing and a downer. As mentioned, there isn’t a ton of resolution, and I can only think of one story line that has a happy ending. The rest are ambiguous at best and tragic at worst. I think that lack of resolution and the general feeling of malaise at the end of the picture, sours peoples’ view on it, and that is too bad because this is a fine film. This is a film that is intense and dramatic and has wonderful performances by all of the actors. It’s not a perfect film, but it is a film that is worthy of your time.

Did the Academy get it right?

I’m inclined to say that they did, but only because it was such a weak year. This film doesn’t win Best Picture in any other year, and certainly in any year five years either side of it. Going into the ceremony, I recall that most people were predicting Brokeback Mountain would be the winner, and Ang Lee did take home the Oscar for Best Director. It’s a beautiful film to look at, and it portrayed a homosexual relationship in a way that hadn’t been seen before in mainstream American cinema. Socially it was a very important film, but I found the story to be slow moving and to be perfectly honest, I find Brokeback Mountain to be rather self-indulgent. Capote was another good film nominated that year and featured a stunning performance by the late Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Truman Copote during the time in his life when he was writing and researching his masterpiece In Cold Blood. It’s a good film that is layered and complex, and one of the better bio-pics that I’ve seen. I certainly would have considered voting for it in 2005. Good Night and Good Luck was a film about the journalist Edward R. Murrow and the stance that he took against Senator McCarthy that ultimately brought down the senator and put an end to the communist witch hunting that was going on in the 1950’s. It was an interesting film, shot in black and white with no music. It was like watching a news report or a documentary. I applaud the film for approaching the story in a different style, but it wasn’t good enough to be Best Picture. Finally, there was Munich, a film directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Eric Bana as an Israeli Special Forces operative tasked with assassinating all of the people involved in killing the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympic Games. This is an action film that is intriguing and filled with tension as Bana’s character doesn’t know if he needs to be more afraid of the Palestinians he’s supposed to kill or the Israelis who’ve charged him with the task. It’s another one that I might have voted for, but I think my lack of decisiveness is more a reflection on the lack of any of these films standing apart from the others rather than consistent greatness among them. Crash was a deserving winner, but it was a weak winner in a weak year.

Million Dollar Baby scored Clint Eastwood his second Best Picture winning film as a director, and he walked away with the Best Director Oscar as well, in what was a very good night for this film that is at once funny and light, and later tragic and dark. Other than Boogie Nights, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a film that takes as sharp and as extreme a turn in mood after one shocking moment as this film does. It’s really quite an amazing bit of storytelling as in one cruel moment the characters go from the top of the mountain to the depths of a valley, out from which they’ll never be able to climb.

Over the past several years I have become a big fan of Clint Eastwood, the director. I’ve always been a fan of his as an actor, but it wasn’t until my adult years that I really began to appreciate him as a film maker. Between 1971 and 2014 Eastwood directed 37 films with Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby taking home the Oscar to go with Best Picture nominees Mystic River, Letters From Iwo Jima and American Sniper. Suring that time he’s directed westerns (Pale Rider, The Outlaw Josie Wales, Unforgiven,) military dramas (Heartbreak Ridge, Flags of Our Fathers, Letters From Iwo Jima, American Sniper), cop dramas and mysteries (Sudden Impact, A Perfect World, Mystic River, Changeling), romances (The Bridges of Madison County), and just straight on high concept drama (Million Dollar Baby, Gran Torino).

I don’t think that it’s hyperbolic to say that over the last 45 years, Clint Eastwood has proven himself to be one of the top film makers in the history of Hollywood cinema, and he’s created some of the most recognizable films with some of the most recognizable characters in the history of the medium. These are quite often films about tortured people trying to overcome demons from their pasts and try to find their proper places either in a world that has passed them by or in world that they don’t understand. These types of elements create deep characters and dramatic stories that are difficult to look away from, and he has a good mix of characters that reach the Promised Land and others who come up tantalizingly and sometimes tragically short.

In 2004 Eastwood added Million Dollar Baby to the list and it is one of the best films that he’s made. It’s a film that you have to think about to really get the true meaning of it, and yet it’s a film that is dramatic, emotional and dare I say sublime. This is a film about persistence, and we see that thematic element brought forth in many ways. Early on we see Frankie Dunn (Eastwood) in his Ordinary World as a boxing manager/trainer who is overly cautious with his fighters due to the fact that he let Eddie “Scrap-Iron” Dupree (Morgan Freeman) take a shot at the title before he was ready, and it ruined his career. Scrappy, for his part, holds no ill-will as he’s just glad he got his shot (more on that later). Dunn has a great fighter now, but holds back on a title shot, and he loses the fighter to another manager and the fighter ends up winning the title a short time later. Dunn also goes to church every single day and bugs the priest after mass with very elementary questions regarding the catholic faith. Father Horvak puts up with it, but even the most patient man has his limits, and Dunn seems to get a sadistic pleasure out of tormenting this young priest. We also learn through their exchanges that Dunn writes to his daughter every day. We then see him return home to find several unopened letters marked “return to sender” waiting for him.

Meanwhile at Dunn’s gym, Maggie Fitzgerald (Hillary Swank) has started working out, and clearly doesn’t know what she’s doing as she pounds the bag with the grace and form of a brawler. She provides Dunn with his Call to Adventure by asking him to train her. He Refuses the Call by telling her that he doesn’t train girls and that she’s too old anyway. But she keeps showing up. She keeps asking him, and he keeps telling her no. Then one night as Scrappy is turning out the lights, he hears someone still there working out and it’s Maggie. Feeling sorry for her, Scrappy becomes her Mentor, and starts giving her pointers in improving her form. In mythology the Mentor typically gives the Hero some magical gift, and in typical Mentor fashion, Scrappy gives Maggie a small punching bag for her to practice on. Seeing her using his bag later, Dunn approaches her and tells her once again that he doesn’t train girls, and she finally rants at him that her life has been nothing and is going nowhere, but she’s determined to make something of herself. This gets Dunn to Cross the First Threshold and finally agrees to be her manager.

The first act of this film is textbook screenwriting that any aspiring screenwriter should study. All of the story’s issues are laid bare before us, as are all of the characters’ inner needs, outer goals and inner weaknesses, flaws and wounds. Take Dunn for example. We learn that he’s estranged from his daughter, but we don’t know why. We further learn that he’s trying very hard to reconnect with her, but she clearly has no interest in reconnecting with him. Dunn also goes to mass every single day and engages with the priest in some fairly witty banter, but it’s clear that Dunn is looking for something that he cannot find. We also learn that he’s hesitant. His best fighter is ready for a title shot, but past failures prevent Dunn from being able to pull the trigger on booking the fight. He tells his fighter that he’ll be ready in after a couple of more fights when in fact it’s Dunn that isn’t ready to commit his fighter to the potential dangers. He’s become a man who needs to play it safe, and is not interested in taking chances. That helps make it believable when he initially turns Maggie down when she asks him to manage her, as well as when he remains so persistent about it. This is a man who is set in his ways, and can’t see that whatever he’s been doing, he’s been doing wrong. He might be playing it safe, but he’s never going to be happy. More to the point, all of this is shown to us through the progression of the story and not told to us through some mundane dialogue.

There is an interesting exchange during all of this between Dunn and Scrappy when Dunn confronts him about giving lessons to Maggie. Scrappy has a fake eye because he took such a beating in his last fight that his cornea broke loose. Now he’s an old man and the only thing he can do is work in the gym, cleaning up after the fighters. But he doesn’t have any regrets. He lost that eye in a fight for the title, and if he hadn’t gotten that fight he would have spent the rest of his life asking “what if?” Sure it sucks that he lost his eye, but living with regret would have sucked a whole lot more. That is the spine of this story and the ultimate lesson that it teaches us through its tragedy.

Warning! Spoilers coming!

Maggie Fitzgerald is a terrific character and ought to be considered to be one of the great female characters in the history of cinema. Again, I’m not trying to be hyperbolic, but she has depth that makes her feel like a real human being. She has a backstory that makes the audience sympathize with her and root hard for her as she appears to be leaving that past behind her. She’s likable without being soft. There are a couple of great examples when she confronts her mother after her mother has treated her like trash and she tells her mother in no uncertain terms that she will not be treated that way, even when she’s lying paralyzed in a hospital bed with a machine breathing for her. Again, if you’re an aspiring screenwriter, watch this film. Study the script, and learn how screenwriter Paul Haggis deftly developed these characters with layers of traits that made them people rather than caricatures.

Much like Scrappy, Maggie wants a shot at the title, which she ultimately gets and which ultimately leads to her demise. Throughout the whole second act Dunn has been playing it safe with her. He hasn’t put her in situations where she could fail, but the time comes where she has nothing else to do and nowhere else to go except up against the champ, who is a German brawler and a cheap shot artist. She’s also younger faster and stronger than Maggie, but Maggie has heart and she shows it in the third round when she knocks the German down, and looks like she could actually win the fight. But the German takes a cheap shot and hits Maggie after the bell, knocking her into the bench, and breaking her neck.

Now all of Dunn’s fears have come true. He initially blames Scrappy for putting the idea into her head in the beginning that she could fight. He really blames himself, though, because he knew he shouldn’t have taken a chance with her, and if he didn’t, she wouldn’t be in this predicament. Here is where they change places, though, and Maggie becomes a mentor to Dunn. We learn along with Dunn through her that, yes, she would have stayed healthy and she would have lived longer had she not gotten in to boxing, but it would have been a long and miserable life. Maggie had nothing and she was going nowhere. She would have never had anything on which to hang her hat or anything for which she could have been proud. But getting in to boxing allowed her to get a shot at the title and that is more than she ever could have dreamed of. That was more than anyone, including and especially her own mother would have expected of her. It made her as happy as she could be, and there was no room for regret. What’s more, she never would have experienced any of that without Dunn. She got to the top of the mountain and he was the one who guided her there. Then when it was time, it was Dunn that eased her passing and allowed that to happen as well.

On the surface, this looks like a tragic story, and indeed it is to a degree. That’s also the way it had to be, not because of some pessimistic or fatalistic world view, but for an optimistic and hopeful ideal. Could this film have ended with Maggie winning the title and jumping around arms raised in a shower of confetti as she yells to a satisfied looking Dunn, “We did it, Boss! We did it!”, a la The Karate Kid? Sure it could have, and it would have been the feel-good movie of the year, but it sure as hell wouldn’t have been Best Picture. At its core, Million Dollar Baby is about getting your shot and taking it with everything that you have. The film asks the audience, “are you getting the most out of your life?” It tells us that Maggie did. Even though her life was cut short, she squeezed everything she could out of it. She would have had nothing otherwise, and that life would have been more tragic than this death. The letters that Dunn writes to his estranged daughter are also a metaphor for that idea. He’s not giving up. He’s still trying to reconnect with her, and he’s giving it everything he has.

There is one other thing to acknowledge about this film and that is Morgan Freeman joining Clark Gable, Dustin Hoffman, Talia Shire, John Cazale, Diane Keaton as members of the 3-Timers club, actors who stared in three Best Picture winners. Freeman also starred in Driving Miss Daisy (1989) and Unforgiven (1992), also with Eastwood helming. Like Gable and Hoffman, Freeman was an integral component in all three films in which he starred that won Oscar’s top prize, which they likely would not have won without his stellar performances.

Thematically, Million Dollar Baby is one of the strongest films I’ve ever seen. It’s magnificently written, meticulously directed, and beautifully acted. Million Dollar Baby is a film fan’s film.

Did the Academy get it right?

I’m sure you’ve guessed by now that I think they did, although there was some stiff competition from 2004. Finding Neverland is a heartwarming story of J. M. Barrie and the relationship he built with a family who inspired him to write Peter Pan. It’s an emotionally powerful story with terrific performances by Johnny Depp, Kate Winslett and a young Freddie Highmore. It may not have been the best film of the year, but if you watch this film and don’t at least have a giant lump in your throat, then you are a heartless person indeed. Ray was a bio-pic on the life of Ray Charles, and it won Jamie Foxx an Oscar for Best Actor for his performance in the title role. Again, it’s a very good film, but wasn’t the best film of the year. Sideways was a quirky indie film about two guys going wine tasting before one of them gets married and the other is trying to get over his divorce. I like this film a lot, am glad it got recognized by being nominated, but it wasn’t good enough to win. The other film nominated that year was The Aviator, Martin Scorsese’s epic bio-pic of Howard Hughes starring Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role. This was an outstanding film, but too long-winded for me. It was a terrific character study of a great man who also had inner demons that tortured him deeply. Watching him slowly succumb to them, and then ultimately triumph over them (to a degree) made for a great film, but The Aviator lacked the depth and thematic qualities that were found in Million Dollar Baby. The latter was a much more complete film and took the viewers on a much more emotional and dramatic journey. It was a better story that was better told and rightly won the Oscar as the Best Picture of 2004.

In what was likely a coronation (no pun intended) as well as an acknowledgement to the entire series, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King tied a record by winning eleven Oscars, including Best Picture, and joining Titanic and Ben-Hur as the only 11-time Oscar winners. The previous films in the series had fairly limited Oscar success with The Fellowship of the Ring winning only four Oscars (Cinematography, Makeup, Original Score, Visual Effects) out of thirteen nominations and The Two Towers only receiving two wins (Sound Editing and Visual Effects) on a paltry six nominations. It certainly seems like the Academy was trying to correct those errors by bestowing on The Return of the King one of the most dominant nights in Oscar history. History was also made when it became the second sequel to win Best Picture (The Godfather Part II) but the first to win when its predecessor(s) did not. It also marked the third time in ten years that an action film won Best Picture, joining Braveheart (1995) and Gladiator (2000), which is unprecedented in Oscar history.

Ironically, I feel like The Return of the King was the least worthy winner of the trilogy. My personal favorite in the series is The Two Towers followed closely by The Fellowship of the Ring with The Return of the King a distant third. I remember being disappointed in the third film when it came out because you could practically see them looking at their watches. They’d been working on this project for several years, and The Return of the King just feels rushed, like they’re just trying to get through with it and be done with it. I felt doubly disappointed because The Return of the King is actually my favorite of the books, and on its own is one of my favorite books of all time.

I understand that they were rushed in the film because they followed a more linear timeline in the films that J.R.R. Tolkien did in the books. For example, in the books the sequence with Shelob the spider takes place at the end of The Two Towers. In fact, the book ends with a bit of a cliffhanger after Sam has killed Shelob, but is unable to prevent Frodo from being taken by orcs. The last line of the book is, “Frodo was alive but taken by the enemy.” In the films that sequence actually happens about halfway through The Return of the King. I must say also that it’s one of the most riveting and most tense sequences in the entire series. Director Peter Jackson had prior experience in the horror genre and used those tools to great effect in this sequence. As Frodo is being simultaneously pursued by Shelob as well as Gollum, the tension mounts to almost unbearable levels, even on subsequent viewings. The payoff is also fabulous, as we think that Frodo has escaped them both only to see Shelob creep out of a cave and sneak up behind him. The cinematography in this scene is amazing as we see the giant spider creep up behind Frodo getting ready to pounce, and Frodo turning suddenly, but the spider is gone. Then Frodo turns right into Shelob and she stings him and wraps him in her web. The editing is spectacular here as well as the cuts do a marvelous job of deceiving the audience into thinking the spider is one place and then startling us when we see the spider is somewhere else. In fact, Best Editing was one of the eleven Oscars Return of the King would win that night. This particular sequence is textbook film making when it comes to building tension and then paying that tension off within the scene.

In the theatrical version, that was the one scene that Jackson seemed to really take the time to make right, and didn’t feel rushed. Well, that scene and the scene where Frodo cannot throw the ring into the fire. That scene is also filled with tension, although it’s a tension of a different kind, and it’s also wonderful storytelling. Frodo has spent nearly the entire story trying to get to Mount Doom so that he can destroy the ring. For its part, the ring has been trying to destroy Frodo because it wants to be returned to its master. Now at the end, Frodo has overcome every obstacle in his path. With the help of Sam, he’s made it to his destination despite the danger and despite odds that seemed insurmountable.

Now at the end all he has to do is throw the ring in the fire, but he can’t do it. Jackson and co-screenwriters Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens (in their Oscar-winning screenplay), like Tolkien before them, successfully pulled off the most important thing to do when you’re trying to build drama which is to always give your hero obstacles. Jackson et al did that for all three films where Frodo was concerned. Whether it was Pippin creating the commotion in the Mines of Moria that alert the orcs to their presence, or Farimir catching them and threatening to take them back to Gondor so that he can present the ring to his father, or even after escaping Shelob and disguising themselves as orcs, Frodo and Sam end up getting entangled with a battalion of orcs marching for battle. Each time Frodo had to use his wits, or Sam’s wits to get out of the problem, and each problem seemed that much more insurmountable. Then we come to the end, and it’s now the ring itself that is keeping Frodo from accomplishing his mission. Only at the very end has the burden become too much for Frodo to take, and he fails at the crucial moment. This is where the screenwriting technique of dramatic irony sets in as Gollum comes out of nowhere and attacks Frodo, biting off his finger and taking back “the precious.” Enraged, Frodo attacks Gollum as Gollum celebrates, knocking him over the ledge and into the fiery lava below, thus destroying the ring.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King is an excellent screenplay for aspiring writers to look at in terms of how it dealt with Frodo and Sam’s relationship, as well as their portion of the adventure. There are many elements of the Hero’s Journey implemented in their story, and the ring’s destruction of Frodo’s mind allows for depth to be created in the relationship, like when Gollum deceives Frodo into believing that Sam will betray him, and Frodo sends Sam away. They then come full circle when Sam discovers that it was Gollum who had been deceiving Frodo all along and he comes to his rescue yet again. Any aspiring screenwriter should watch this film closely, particularly the portion of the storyline that follows Frodo and Sam, and they’ll learn a lot about character depth, depth in relationships, dramatic irony, building drama and building tension. I like to say that conflict is the mother of drama, and there is plenty of conflict in this story.

The other main driver of the story of this film has to do with Aragorn and his reluctant ascent to the throne of Gondor. We’ve learned from the previous films that Aragorn is a ranger from the north and that he has disavowed his lineage, for it was his ancestor, Isildur who was unable to destroy the ring generations ago that led to the dark times of today. The reluctant hero is a wonderful archetype and Aragorn suits it perfectly. He knows that he as a duty that he must fulfill, but his weakness is that he fears making the same mistakes as his ancestor. The same blood runs in his veins, he tells Arwen in The Fellowship of the Ring. The same weakness, he continues. It is that fear that drives Aragorn’s fear for the entire series until The Return of the King, when he finally embraces his duty, realizing that it might be the only thing that prevents the destruction of man.

It is this part of the storyline that I felt Jackson rushed through. Again, there is so much story to get through, that the theatrical version just can’t get to all of the nuance and thematic elements that make the story so strong. The extended edition, however, does accomplish that. The extended edition comes in at around four hours, so it’s very long, but it still feels like it flows better than the theatrical version. The extended versions of these films are a mixed bag for me. I prefer the extended versions of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Return of the King, however I enjoyed the theatrical version of The Two Towers over the extended version. The extended version material in The Two Towers feels tacked on to me, and never felt integral to the story. However, the opposite was the case with The Fellowship of the Ring and The Return of the King. Even though it’s much longer, watching the extended version of The Return of the King presents a story that flows much better and doesn’t feel rushed. It allows you to savor what is going on in the story and gives the filmmakers time to give you as much as possible to make the story complete. It’s a much greater time commitment, but allows you to see a much more satisfying film.

There is one other point I’d like to make about The Return of the King, and The Lord of the Rings series as a whole. Most people know that the book was written by J.R.R. Tolkien as an allegory for what he experienced as a soldier during World War I and his subsequent return to England. In his book The Writer’s Journey Christopher Vogler writes about the final section of the Hero’s Journey, which he called The Return with the Elixir. The Hero returns home from the adventure a changed person. In one form or another, the hero has experienced death, and now the home that the hero once considered to be his whole world is now a mundane and banal place. The hero has grown beyond the trappings of home, and now no longer feels like he belongs. In the best examples of this type of storytelling, not only has the hero changed, but so has home. A similar example can be found in the 1978 Best Picture winner, The Deer Hunter, although in that film Michael Vronsky returns home from the Vietnam War in the second act, he is clearly a changed man, and the town is different as well. The differences are subtle, like his friend Stan now has long hair and a mustache, but they’re there. It’s also clear that Michael is uncomfortable and feels he no longer belongs there.

In the book version of The Return of the King, the hobbits return to the shire to discover that Saruman has beaten them there, enslaved the other hobbits and built factories and an industrial complex. That is a more similar depiction of the pastoral England that Tolkien left before the war and the industrialized England to which he returned. There is just a brief nod to that part of the story in Frodo’s dream sequence in Fellowship but without nearly the detail that Tolkien gave it in the book, and when they return to the shire it is exactly the same as when they left. The hobbits, especially Frodo, have changed however. We see it as they sit in a pub and all of the other hobbits carouse and carry on, but the four friends, having experienced death and adventure beyond what any of these other hobbits could imagine, can only sit quietly in a reality that only they understand. That is until Sam musters up the courage to go and talk to Rosie, a girl he had been too bashful to speak to before.

That is ultimately what The Lord of the Rings is about, thematically speaking. This is a story about courage, and not necessarily just courage in battle, although that is a big part of it. This story is also about the courage to do what’s right when the easy thing would be to not get involved. It’s about having the courage to look at yourself honestly and know that you still have value even if you’re not the bravest or the strongest. It’s about having the courage to ignore the pre-conceived notions of what others think you are and demonstrate that you’re really so much more. Just as Aragorn tells the hobbits at the end, “My friends, you bow to no one.”

The Lord of the Rings is an epic story, and perhaps one of the biggest, most grandiose stories ever conceived. But at its core, it’s a very simple story about being true to yourself.

Did the Academy get it right?

I am inclined to say that they did, although as I mentioned earlier, this film (at least the theatrical version) is the least worthy of any of the films in the series to win Best Picture. I am willing to say that it deserved to win as homage to the other two films in the series. Also in looking at the three films as one epic story, if this film’s win counts for all three films, then yes, it deserved to win. However there were some very good films nominated against it for 2003. Lost in Translation was a quirky film that helped Bill Murray continue reinventing himself and introduced many of us to Scarlett Johansson. It also helped Sofia Coppola express her own vision and make a name for herself beyond the shadow of her famous father. It’s a nice film and entertaining enough, but it doesn’t have the gravitas of a Best Picture winner. One of my favorite films that year was Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, another action/adventure film starring Russell Crowe about an English sea captain obsessively pursuing French privateers into the Pacific in the early 1800’s. It’s actually a film with a lot of depth, and has some great story-telling. Had it come out a year later, it might have had a better chance to win. Mystic River is another film from this very strong year that I absolutely love about three friends who can’t seem to overcome a shared childhood tragedy and one of them suspects another of killing his teenaged daughter. It’s a heartbreaking and tragic story about redemption that never arrives, and is another one that might have had better luck winning in a different year. Finally, Seabiscuit is an underdog story about an underappreciated horse and his underappreciated jockey. It’s one of those movies that makes you stand up and cheer, and was certainly worthy of the nomination that it received. However, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, especially when combined with the other films in the series, is a cinematic achievement that has rarely been matched in terms of its use of visual effects, character development and overall story arc. It’s a special story and a special series of films and the final film in the series winning Best Picture is a worthy acknowledgement of that.

There is one more thing I need to say about this story overall, and that is to tell you to read the books. If you have not read The Lord of the Rings, you need to do yourself a favor and get a copy and start reading it right away. It takes a little while for the story to get going and is a little slow in the beginning. However, once the adventure starts and the story gains momentum, it’s almost impossible to put down. Also, read it for the prose. If you are a writer of any kind, you need to read this book simply for the beauty, majesty and poetic prose that Tolkien wrote. He had a command of the English language that most people could only dream of and he was an amazing storyteller. It is an amazing book or series of books and deserves to be read.

For the first time since Oliver! took home the statue for Best Picture for 1968 the Academy bestowed its highest honor on a musical with Chicago. Other Musicals had been nominated in the 34 years between wins, like the previous year’s Moulin Rouge!, Cabaret in 1972, Nashville in 1975, and All That Jazz in 1979, but this once dominant genre had been slumbering from the Academy’s point of view for more than three decades. There are a lot of reasons that the musical fell out of favor with the studios and with the American public. From the studios’ point of view, musicals are often expensive showcases that rarely see a return on their investment, no matter how good the film is. From the public’s standpoint, a more jaded clientele was less likely to buy into the caricatured world where people break into song and dance as though it were a normal, everyday occurrence.

The musical could still work in animated features, but that’s because animation offers up an entirely caricatured world that is rarely reality based. Audience members’ minds are already open and prepared for the unusual, so it doesn’t feel odd or unusual for a character to just break into song. However as audiences became more sophisticate and/or jaded as we moved into the late 60’s and early 70’s, the musical underwent a massive transformation. No longer would characters just break into song. A musical now involved characters who were putting on a concert or worked in a theater or had some other real-world need to sing.

Chicago, on the other hand, was a film that harkened back to musicals of an earlier time where characters did break into song. In fact, most of this film’s story is told through song, and in that sense it’s much more like a Broadway show than a film. With that in mind, the songs in Chicago do exactly what you want songs to do in a musical. That is to say that the songs progress the story in a meaningful way. They aren’t just there for the sake of having them. Director Rob Marshall and screenwriter Bill Condon took the book of the musical play written by Bob Fosse and Fred Egg and used those songs drive the story, develop the characters and made them become an integral piece of the film.

Chicago is also a spectacle that rivals the big Musicals of the 50’s and 60’s, and even farther back. In fact, Chicago reminded me a little bit of The Great Ziegfeld with its bigger than life sets and its pure ostentatious point of view. As a musical, it also reminded me somewhat of West Side Story due to the serious nature of its content. As ostentatious as this film may be, it’s no whimsical farce, a la Gigi or My Fair Lady. This is actually a story about murder and lust and betrayal. It’s a story about doing whatever it takes to save your own skin and to get ahead in the world, even if that means lying, cheating, stealing and killing. Like West Side Story, there is a lot of fun in the music, but there are some very serious undertones to the story.

Overall, I liked Chicago but I didn’t love it. There was a lot to like about it, but it seemed like for every positive attribute the film has, there is one of equal negativity.

The songs are terrific, and so is the music. The numbers are filmed to show a ton of style and panache. Chicago is a movie that is self-aware, much like many of Fosse’s movies. This is a movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously and is like the party that everyone wants to be invited to. It’s fun. It’s irreverent. It’s sexy. Most importantly of all, Chicago is an entertaining film with laughs, drama and tension. Also, the Art Decoration/Set Design and Costume Design are spectacular and worthy of the Oscars that they won as well. I enjoyed the performances of Renee Zellweger (Best Actress nominee) and Catherine Zeta-Jones (Best Supporting Actress winner), although it took me a little while to determine whether or not I liked Zeta-Jones’ singing voice. I ultimately determined that I did, and I was surprised at how well she and Zellweger handled the musical numbers. They’re both fine actresses, but I had never seen them perform in Musicals before and their singing and dancing were both very good. Indeed, the performances of both Zellweger and Zeta-Jones went a long way towards making this movie as good as it was, and the chemistry that they had was terrific. I only wish they shared the screen more often in this picture.

However, I’m usually a fan of people learning something in a story, or suffering consequences when they don’t. There is a scene about half way through the film when Roxie Hart (Zellweger), who is relying on the dashing lawyer Billy Flynn (Richard Gere) to help her beat a murder rap. Over the course of his defense of her in the hearts and minds of the public, she becomes the star and celebrity that she always wanted to be but was never able to become on stage. She starts to become a little too big for her britches until Billy thinks that he has a more attractive client available, and he leaves her behind like an old glove. Then when one of the cell mates is taken to the gallows after all of her appeals have been exhausted, Roxie realizes the error of her ways, and rediscovers her humility. That humble lifestyle is short-lived, however, once the rap is beaten, and she ends up in an act with Velma Kelly (Zeta-Jones), herself having beaten not only a murder charge, but possible perjury as well. They both got away with murder and became big stars because of it. There really were no consequences to their actions at all.

That leads me to a larger point about the story and that is that this is a film filled with unlikable characters. Roxy starts out the film as fairly sympathetic, but not particularly likable. The first thing we see Velma do is wash the blood off of her hands which we deduce is from her sister whom she probably just killed. Both of these characters exude a smugness over the course of the story that isn’t admirable at all. It’s really just off putting. These are also characters that appear to be doing everything they can to make sure that they screw over the other characters in the story before they themselves are screwed over. These are back-stabbing, conniving people who live in a world that is a pessimistic place. Indeed, the one (presumably) innocent person in this story ends up on the gallows. I found myself not caring for any of these characters in any meaningful way.

That leads me to the story. It doesn’t matter how good or how dramatic your story is. If the audience doesn’t like, or even worse, doesn’t care about your characters, then the story will not succeed. That’s what I found to be the case with Chicago. I really didn’t care about the characters, so the story ultimately ended up just being tedious, and it lost all of its drama by the end. I didn’t care, and I left the story unsatisfied.

Overall, I found Chicago to be entertaining, which at the bottom line is what you want from any movie experience. However, I felt that they left a lot on the table, and had they done something to make either Roxy or Velma to be more sympathetic, not even necessarily likable, but at least sympathetic, then I might have been able to engage with the story more than I did. While it was entertaining and had some great musical and dance numbers, this was ultimately an unsatisfying movie because they didn’t do enough to get me engaged with the characters and that caused me to lose interest in the story. All of the music and dancing created a great show, but there was nothing underneath it to make it truly special. Chicago is a wide but shallow film.

Did the Academy get it right?

They certainly did not. There was a lot of stiff competition for 2002, and I can only imagine that the votes split and were thinly spread among all of the nominees. There’s also another factor to remember and that is that the country was very divided with the run-up to the Iraq War, and it’s entirely possible that the fun and entertainment value of Chicago, when compared to the very serious nature of the other nominated films, struck a chord with the voters in the same way that films like Going My Way and Oliver! beat out superior films during very serious times. For example, Gangs of New York was a highly publicized film by Martin Scorsese that had a sublime performance by Daniel Day-Lewis and adequate performances from Cameron Diaz and Leonardo DiCaprio, although both DiCaprio’s and Diaz’s inability to maintain their Irish accents drove me a little crazy. This is a violent and intense film and those components may have ultimately turned off some voters. It’s a good film, but not close to Scorsese’s best, and that fact might have kept it from overcoming the amount of violence, unlike a future Scorsese winner will do, and I’ll get to that in a few weeks. The Hours was an interesting film using the works of Virginia Woolf, as well as her suicide as the driving force behind three concurrent stories. It’s a fine, but depressing film and Nicole Kidman’s performance as Virginia Woolf would earn her a win for Best Actress. I honestly can’t believe that The Pianist didn’t win Best Picture that year. It’s a bit like Schindler’s List-Light, but it’s a heavy film and Adrien Brody’s masterful performance as the Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Warsaw Jew who eluded the Nazis for years earned him Best Actor honors. This is an intense film that almost any other year should have won, and I’m shocked that it didn’t. That said, my favorite film of the year was The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, which is my favorite film in the series. It was better in every way than Chicago. It was more dramatic, was a bigger and more complex production that was executed better. It was more cutting edge from a technological standpoint and it had a more compelling story with more sympathetic characters being performed by better actors. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers should have been your Best Picture winner for 2002.

In my humble opinion, one of the most average Oscar winners in history is 2001’s winner, A Beautiful Mind. It has some wonderful acting performances by Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly (who won Best Supporting Actress for her performance), Ed Harris, and Christopher Plummer. It has a well-written and Oscar-winning script, and Ron Howard (who won Best Director for his work on this film) did a fine job of manipulating the story so that for long stretches, we’re uncertain if this is all real or just playing out in the mind of John Nash (Crowe). There are some very dramatic and very intense scenes in this film that are riveting and entertaining. Unfortunately there are even longer stretches where nothing happens and the film becomes boring.

Don’t get me wrong. This is not a bad film. In fact, there is a lot to like about it. One of my favorite aspects of this film is the fact that the main character is significantly flawed, and each half of the film is about him trying to overcome his two main character flaws. The film has an interesting structure. While it simultaneously has a strong 3-Act structure and a compelling Hero’s Journey, it’s basically a story told in two parts. The first part is Nash prior to his diagnosis of schizophrenia and the second part is Nash’s story post-diagnosis. The film opens with Nash arriving at Princeton, and although it isn’t officially diagnosed, he certainly seems to be either somewhere on the Autism spectrum or already schizophrenic, but neither condition is diagnosed. He has a hard time making friends and the other students who are his peers love to belittle him every chance they get because he carries himself with a rather pompous attitude and they misinterpret his reluctance to be social as aloofness. The only person who shows him any kindness or respect is his roommate Charles, and he actually becomes a close confidant.

Nash doesn’t see the value in going to class. He’s trying to come up with a completely original mathematical theory, but he’s having a hard time coming up with one to the point where the faculty is reluctant to recommend him for any top assignments post grad. Then one night when his classmates are trying to determine which girl to hit on in a bar, it inspires him to come up with a completely new theory on governing dynamics, a cornerstone of mathematical economics.

This impresses the faculty and he is offered a prestigious job at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and he’s later brought to the Pentagon to decipher a Russian code, and he cracks the entire code completely in his head. Meanwhile, the mysterious Agent Parcher (Harris) watches from above. Back at MIT Nash reluctantly teaches calculus to his students, and offers them an unsolvable problem. One of the students, Alicia (Connelly) comes to his office to ask for extra help, and she sort of manipulates him into asking her out on a date, and the two eventually fall in love and get married.

Meanwhile, Parcher approaches Nash and tells him that Russian Agents are sending messages using codes in magazines, and are threatening to detonate a bomb somewhere on US soil. He has Nash injected with a transponder that gives him necessary codes, and Nash spends hours cracking the code and drops a sealed envelope off at a local well-to-do mansion in their mailbox, using the code that the transponder flashes on his arm to gain access to the property. After a close call where Parcher picks Nash up in his car and they barely escape Russian Agents in a hail of gunfire, Nash starts to become paranoid.

Nash then gets invited to speak at Harvard and he happens to bump into Charles, who is now caring for his niece, Marcee due to the fact that his sister was killed in a car accident. His paranoia is setting in fully now, and men who look like government agents start entering the room in which he’s speaking. In a panic he runs away, but is eventually tackled and sedated as Charles and Marcee look on. He is then brought to a mental institution where Dr. Rosen (Plummer) advises him that there is no such person as Parcher, there was no record of him ever having a roommate at Princeton, so that means Charles and Marcee don’t exist either. He refuses to believe it and when Alicia comes to visit him he spouts out his delusions to her as well. Only when he cuts open his own arm and can’t find the transponder does Nash ultimately realize he’s been hallucinating.

He then accepts the fact that he’s schizophrenic and starts on the drug therapy, however he can no longer work, and he has difficulty taking care of his infant son. Not only that, but the drugs he has to take have eliminated his sexual desires, so he can’t perform on that level for Alicia. It’s that issue that tempts him to stop taking the drugs, and when he does, his hallucinations come back again, and he nearly allows his son to drown in the bathtub. Alicia threatens to leave him, and he vows to get control of his hallucinations without getting back on the medication.

He gets an old classmate to allow him to work at Princeton, and even though he has occasional bouts with Parcher or Marcee or Charles reappearing, he eventually gains control. They continue to appear, but he gets used to them and is able to ignore them. Earlier in the film he was hesitant to teach students, and going back even farther he never wanted to go to class when we was a student. Ironically now being in the academic setting allows Nash to re-enter his work and start coming up with new mathematical theories, resulting in him receiving a Nobel Prize for economics, and allowing him to teach again.

One of the challenges that even veteran screenwriters have is creating flawed characters that are still likable. Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman, along with Director Ron Howard were able to create in A Beautiful Mind a character that was deeply flawed and had many different flaws afflicting him, and they were still able to create a likable and sympathetic character. Of course, Nash’s flaws stemmed from mental illness, but just because a character deserves our sympathy, that doesn’t mean they’ll be likable. The filmmakers were able to do both in this film by giving Nash a subtle wit to go along with his brutal honesty, and they made sure that his arrogance stemmed from insecurity.

However none of that would have come off if not for the performance of Russell Crowe. A few weeks ago I criticized the Academy for not awarding Best Actor to Ralph Feinnes the year that The English Patient won Best Picture because it couldn’t have possibly won if Feinnes hadn’t given the great performance that he did. I believe that the same holds true for A Beautiful Mind. I now that Denzel Washington was great in Training Day, and even though Washington had previously won Best Supporting Actor for Glory, he had never won Best Actor before, and he is a fine actor and I don’t begrudge him for winning it. However, A Beautiful Mind wouldn’t have even been in the running for Best Picture had Crowe given any less of a performance than he did. His performance carried this film and nothing that Howard or Goldsman or any of the other filmmakers did added nearly as much to this film as Russell Crowe’s performance.

I need to digress for a moment as well. Having starred in the previous year’s Best Picture winner in Gladiator, Russell Crowe joined Clark Gable, Walter Pidgeon and Meryl Streep as the only actors to star in leading roles in Best Picture winners in back-to-back years. Gable did it with It Happened One Night (1934) and Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) before starring in a third Best Picture winner four years later in Gone With the Wind.  Pidgeon did it with the less spectacular How Green Was My Valley (1941) and Mrs. Miniver (1942). Streep had supporting roles in The Deer Hunter (1978) and Kramer vs. Kramer (1979). Russell Crowe’s run might be even better and more impressive given that between 1997 and 2003 he starred in five films that were nominated for Best Picture. Along with the two winners Russell Crowe starred in L.A. Confidential (1997), The Insider (1999) and Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003). That is quite a seven year run that I don’t believe has been matched by any actor in the Academy’s history other than John Cazale who was in five Best Picture nominees (and three winners) between 1972 and 1978. And not to take anything away from John Cazale, but he was in supporting roles for all of those pictures, and Russell Crowe was the lead or co-lead in all of his.

The other thing to consider with Crowe in regards to these films is the variety in the style of role. He starts out the run as a detective weeding out corruption, then moves to a scientist who works for big tobacco companies before blowing the whistle on their corruption. He then played a Roman general turned gladiator, which was followed by the schizophrenic mathematician, and then the run was rounded out with a 19^th-Century sea captain trying to balance between his military needs and the scientific curiosity of his friend. This is a wide variety and displays the range that Crowe has as an actor. Yes, he was terribly miscast a few years later in his sixth Best Picture nominee Les Miserables, but I think we can all agree that Russell Crowe is one of the great actors of this era.

Jennifer Connelly was also very good in this film, and her performance garnered her the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Goldsman and Howard also won individual awards for their work on the film, and overall it is a very fine film in stretches, but to me it is an incomplete film. The sequences that are tense and dramatic are very tense and very dramatic and quite often had me on the edge of my seat. However there were long stretches of time in this film where little to nothing was happening and he had a hard time remaining interested. I enjoyed the film but felt like I should have enjoyed it more.

Did the Academy get it right?

No they did not, but they were close. I enjoyed A Beautiful Mind more than Gosford Park, which was a murder mystery/who-done-it, but the problem with it was that the murder didn’t happen until an hour and a half into the film. The last 45 minutes of the film were great, but that first hour and a half was very slow sailing, indeed. In the Bedroom was an indie film about a murder in a small town in Maine and the parents of the victim (Sissy Spacek and Tom Wilkenson) trying to put their lives back together after the tragedy. It was a good film, and I could understand why it would do well at a festival like Sundance or South by Southwest, but I’m not sure why it was nominated for Best Picture, especially over a film like Training Day or Blackhawk Down. Moulin Rouge is a film that I love from the production design and art direction to the music and choreography to the actors and their performances. It was an over the top spectacle that was entertaining and beautiful, but it wasn’t deserving of taking home the statue for Best Picture. That honor should have gone to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Peter Jackson’s first installment in the Lord of the Rings series was an action-packed dramatic film with magnificent acting, splendid writing, marvelous direction, and cutting edge visual effects. It was the most complete story and the most complete film released that year, and in my opinion it was the Best Picture of the year.

I am going to start right off by stating that I’ve always been a fan of this film. I saw it in the theater when it first came out and I was a big fan of it then, and I’ve continued to like this movie very much over the years. Gladiator is a terrific blend of outstanding action, very good acting, strong thematic elements, and an intricately woven story. The action sequences in the Colosseum and other arenas are tense and bloody without being gratuitous. They actually showed the brutality that passed as entertainment in those days, and we see that these were actual human beings that were forced in to the carnage.

The acting is also great in this film, if somewhat over the top. Russell Crowe is the hero and does a great job of combining Maximus’ military integrity and intensity with the dry  wit of someone who has seen it all. But there are also some very good performances from Joaquin Phoenix as the usurper of the throne, Commodus; Connie Nielsen as Lucilla, Commodus’ sister and a former lover of Maximus; Oliver Reed (Sikes from Oliver!) as Proximo, the former gladiator and now slave trader who serves as Maximus’ Mentor in the arena; and finally Richard Harris played Marcus Aurelius, the emperor who would not willingly pass  the crown to his son. All of these performances, as well as those of the more minor roles, displayed characters with depth, emotion and real human frailty.

Actually, and perhaps ironically, my biggest criticism with Gladiator is in the characters of General Maximus Decimus Meridius, as well as Commodus. I was taught, and I’ve written in this space, that when composing your heroes and villains that it’s important to give them depth. You always want to give your hero some flaw, especially an inner flaw that he or she needs to overcome in order to achieve real growth as a character. Barring that, at least some sort of personality flaw that allows them to remain relatable to the average movie-going audience member. You want your main character to be a hero, but not necessarily a superhero. On the opposite side of that coin is the villain, who should be a carbon reflection of your hero. Everything that your hero is, your villain is not. Likewise, everything that your villain is, is what you’re hero could become if he makes the wrong choices. But the main thing is that you want to give your villain some sort of quality that makes him feel human. Ultimately your villain needs to be a human being who feels like he’s the hero of his own story, but he has to have something, be it wit or charm or humor or intelligence that makes him more than merely a monster. They were really close with Commodus. He clearly feels like he’s the hero of his own story, but I never get the sense that he feels what he’s doing is best for Rome. He’s selfish and spoiled and vain and wants to have sex with his sister. Yes, he is kind to his young nephew, Lucius, but that kindness is merely a veil for him to disguise his true intentions. There are two things that director Ridley Scott and Screenwriters David Franzoni, William Nicholson and John Logan failed to do. One of those things was to give Commodus some sort of human quality that kept him from being merely a monster.

The other thing they failed to do was to give Maximus any kind of character flaw. Even his name, for crying out loud, is MAXIMUS! For the most part, Maximus is a great character. He’s likable, he’s admired by his men, and he’s a natural leader. Even his fellow gladiators quickly fall in line because he earns their respect and admiration in the arena. He plans their battles so that they can survive, so naturally they’d follow him anywhere, including the climactic battle against Roman Centurions. Rather than giving him a character flaw, per se, Scott, Franzoni, Nicholson, and Logan humanized Maximus by making him grieve for his wife and child who were murdered at the hands of Commodus. While that is certainly something that anyone could relate to, it’s kind of an easy way to do it. Killing off a close family member is how any amateur storyteller can  get an emotional response from an audience, and it’s as cliche as any storytelling motif that there is. It’s not a great way to add character depth. Avenging their deaths is Maximus’ main motivating factor, and we can argue over the virtues of that, but I personally do not consider that to be a negative character trait. In fact, one of the most powerful moments in the film is when Maximus first reveals himself in the arena to Commodus, and after stating his real name and position, he says, “Father to a murdered son. Husband to a murdered wife. And I will have my vengeance, in this life or the next.” He comes off there as nothing but heroic and defiant towards an evil man and he forces that evil man to spare him in order to maintain his power. So even in attempting vengeance, Maximus appears heroic, just like in pretty much every other point in the film. He’s a likable character, and I enjoyed going on this journey with him, but I wish that he had been given more depth by the filmmakers.

The signature of this film is obviously the action sequences. Gladiator joined the ranks of Braveheart, Patton, Ben-Hur and Bridge on the River Kwai as action epics that won Best Picture. Ridley Scott, known previously for such films as Alien, Thelma and Louise and Blade Runner, and was certainly not afraid to use graphic violence graphic violence to tell his story, took the graphic nature that we had seen in Braveheart up a notch for Gladiator. This is a graphically violent film, but not at all in a gratuitous way. This is a film about a violent time in human history and the people who had to live through a particularly violent period in it. It’s also worth noting that this violent lifestyle was forced upon them by the whims of others. Whether Maximus is an honored general fighting at the behest of Emperor Marcus Aurelius for the glory of Rome, or an enslaved gladiator fighting to save his own life for the entertainment of Commodus and the Roman citizenry, he is still fighting and killing other men at the pleasure of his superior/masters. That made the violence necessary in order to tell the story, and showing the violent and graphic manner in which these people died exposed the irony in “the glory of Rome”, which was one of the central themes of the film. Rome was the center of the known world in those days and represented the height of technology, education and governance. And yet, 50,000 people would crowd into the Coliseum to watch men slaughter each other for sport.

Aside from the violent nature of the action, the choreography of it and its cinematography are spectacular. They also did an excellent job of increasing the intensity of each action sequence, as well as the suspense as they progress throughout the film. The first action sequence is the final battle of the Roman campaign in Germania. While the action is intense,  there isn’t a lot of suspense, as the Romans are seasoned and battle-hardened soldiers going up against what are essentially barbarians. The next big action sequences involve the arena in Zucchabar, a desolate Roman province in the North of Africa where Maximus is first exposed to the brutality of the arena. The fighting is frenetic and brutal, but Maximus’ training allows him and his new compatriots to survive. Maximus, now known as The Spaniard, becomes a famous gladiator, and he and the other gladiators that Proximo owns are taken to Rome where Commodus is staging 150 days of games in the Colosseum. This is like the Major Leagues, and Maximus and the others have to step up their games in order to survive. These battles are more choreographed, involving more professional gladiators, chariots, riders on horseback, and even chained tigers. These action sequences are intense and dramatic, and each one of them in their own way help to drive the story. Gladiator is one of those rare action films where the action is in the film as a means to telling the story, rather than the story just being the bridge between action sequences.

For example, Maximus’ penultimate battle in the arena is against a retired gladiator who was unbeaten before gaining his freedom. This battle is set up by Commodus as a means to kill Maximus without him having to do it since Maximus has grown to such popularity. Commodus also rigs the game with chained tigers, making it nearly impossible for either gladiator to survive. Yet, Maximus emerges from the hand to hand combat victorious, standing with sword in hand over his vanquished foe with 50,000 Romans chanting, “Kill! Kill! Kill!” Commodus give the thumbs-down signal, ordering Maximus to kill the gladiator, but Maximus throws down his sword and walks away in open defiance of the emperor. Someone from the crowd exclaims, “Maximus the merciful!”, thus making Commodus’ hold on the crown that much more tenuous. There is a clear set up to this action sequence and there are clear consequences due to its outcome. That makes the sequence an integral part of the story as well as a vehicle for the story’s progression.

That leads me to the story itself, and it’s a very good one. Gladiator is a story that is told in four acts. Act I, which is Maximus’ Ordinary World takes place on the battlefield. Maximus is a general who longs to be done fighting so that he can tend his farm, be a husband to his wife and a father to his son. However he is very talented on the battlefield, both at leading his troops and killing his enemies. In fact he is a master motivator, and it’s clear that his soldiers would go to the ends of the earth for him. He is also in the good graces of Caesar Marcus Aurelius, who views him almost as an adopted son and provides Maximus with his Call to Adventure. Marcus asks Maximus to serve as the Steward of Rome until the Senate can take over and Rome can become a Republic again. Maximus initially Refuses the Call, but remains loyal to Marcus and seems as though he’ll ultimately acquiesce to Marcus’ wishes. However Marcus’ decision is not acceptable to his actual son Commodus, who murders his father in a fit of passionate rage. Assuming the title of Caesar, Commodus then orders Maximus and his family to be killed.

Maximus Crosses the First Threshold into Act II and the Special World of the Adventure by killing his would-be assassins and then racing home only to discover that he’s too late, and his wife and son have been crucified and burned alive. Despondent and wounded from fighting, Maximus loses consciousness and is picked up by slave traders who take him to Zucchabar and sell him to Proximo so that he can be trained as a gladiator. In Zucchabar Maximus, again known only as The Spaniard) excels in the arena, and he and his allies are sent to Rome to compete in the Colosseum. It is here that Proximo turns into a Mentor to Maximus. Proximo tells Maximus that he’s a good gladiator, but that he could be great, and that greatness could ultimately buy him his freedom. He also tells him that he’ll get an opportunity to perform before the emperor, and that truly does get Maximus’ attention.

The third act of Gladiator has Maximus and the others arriving in Rome, and Maximus reveals himself to Commodus, as well as Lucilla who eventually tries to reach out to Maximus telling him that his defiance of Commodus could eventually lead to Commodus’ downfall. Maximus continues to prove his worth in the arena, defeating all comers and gaining popularity and notoriety that starts to exceed even that of Commodus. He also continues to gain the trust of his comrades and the attention of the Senate. In fact, Lucilla tries to arrange a meeting between Maximus and Senator Gracchus, but Maximus doesn’t see how it can help, and he again refuses the call. Then Maximus sees his old servant Cicero, who tells him that his armies will follow his command if he can somehow return them, and that sparks in Maximus an idea.

The Fourth Act begins the conspiracy. Cicero finds Lucilla and tells her that Maximus will meet with the Senator. Lucilla arranges the meeting and Maximus tells the Senator of Marcus’ final wish, and that he will bring his army into Rome, and kill Commodus and then leave Rome under the control of the Senate. The plan never gets put into place, however, as Commodus finds out about it from Lucilla’s unwitting son. Senator Gracchus is arrested, Proximo is killed, as is Cicero, and Maximus is captured. The climax of the film pits Commodus fighting Maximus in the Colosseum after mortally wounding him when no one was looking. You’ll have to watch the movie to find out how it ends.

That’s the story in four acts. One other thing I would like to mention is the depth of this story. Scott, Franzoni, Logan, and Nicholson did an excellent job of creating a dramatic story, especially in the fourth act. We see what Maximus and the rest have to gain, and conversely what they have to lose. That is the lifeblood of drama, and if you’re an aspiring screenwriter or filmmaker, that is what you should be searching for in your own stories. That is where drama is born and nurtured. This story is also strong thematically. The Glory of Rome is always the backdrop, and yet we’re constantly shown the contradiction in that belief. The glory of Rome is an idea that either never existed or had been forgotten about, so that all that was left was some archaic belief. It was that type of depth in the story and in its ideas that ultimately won Gladiator Best Picture.

Did the Academy Get it Right?

I believe they did. Chocolat was a nice movie, but not really one that should have been nominated for Best Picture. I’m still puzzled how it was nominated over a movie like Cast Away. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a Chinese martial arts film that used some great acrobatics and camera work that hadn’t been seen before. The fight scenes were very entertaining, but I found the film to be too long and much of it tedious. The strongest competition probably came from Erin Brockovich and Traffic, the former being a David and Goliath story about a woman taking on giant chemical companies on behalf of the reluctant lawyer for whom she works and the latter being about the drug trafficking between Mexico and the United States. Both movies had excellent casts and terrific stories, but I’d probably give a slight edge to Erin Brockovich as the best of the non-winners for the year 2000. However none of them were as good as Gladiator, which was clearly the Best Picture of the year.