If I Were the Academy

By Sydney Moyer

With the Academy Awards less than a month away, film circles are buzzing with talk of this year’s nominees and whether or not anyone can beat out Meryl Streep for the Best Actress trophy. As for me, I’m a bit of a dreamer, and my dreams lately have consisted of what I would do if I were the Academy. If I had every single vote to my name, this is how it would go:

 

BEST PICTURE

The Artist

Michael Hazanavicious’ homage to Old Hollywood and the days of silent film served as this year’s reminder of why we love going to the movies. The Artist is simplicity at its most perfect. With a stellar cast, fantastic art direction and a wonderfully nostalgic storyline, not to mention an adorable canine companion, it’s hard to leave the theater without a smile.

The Skin I Live In (win)

Acclaimed foreign director Pedro Almodóvar, after a career spanning almost three decades, has finally made his magnum opus: a twisted and darkly funny tale about a crazed plastic surgeon and his plot for revenge. Everything Almodóvar has ever created was simply prelude to this masterpiece of a film. Almodóvar’s exquisite meditation on identity and human relationships transcends entertainment or shock value; quite simply, it is a perfect piece of cinema that the director himself will be hard-pressed to top.

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

After a rough opening weekend and murmurs of disapproval for Americanizing the perfectly adequate Swedish version of the film, David Fincher’s adaptation of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo beat all odds and expectations, remaining true to Stieg Larsson’s original novel while adding an undeniably Fincher-esque style to the screen. Coupled with a riveting performance from leading lady Rooney Mara, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is the Dark Horse of the Academy Awards, in both circumstance and demeanor.

Midnight in Paris

If one doesn’t already suffer from Golden Age thinking and nostalgia, one undoubtedly will after watching Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris. Allen invites audiences into the magical world of 1920s Parisian art world with a bow and a tip of the hat, escorting them through the wonders of the Lost Generation with an irresistible playfulness.Midnight in Paris allows us to walk with Owen Wilson on his way to see Ernest Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald through cobblestone streets soaked in Paris’s evening rain. Who could say no to that?

The Help

With strong performances from Viola Davis, Emma Stone and Octavia Spencer and a heartrending storyline about the hardships of being an African American hired hand in 1960s Mississippi, The Help is a beautifully told tale about overcoming obstacles in the face of a monstrous adversity, making it difficult to make it to the opening credits with dry eyes or a classically cinematic sense of catharsis.

A Separation

Iran’s official entry for this year’s best foreign film is nothing short of screenwriting gold, weaving in subtlety after subtlety about the country’s judicial system without delving into political grandiosity. A Separation focuses on a family turned upside down by the sudden separation of a married couple and the subsequent complications that follow, making its message heard loud and clear while remaining grounded and completely relatable.

 

ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE

Jean Dujardin, The Artist (win)

Jean Dujardin once commented that he used to be told that his face was “too expressive” for acting. Lucky for moviegoers this year, he stuck with the profession and used his powers of expression to sketch an incredibly vibrant character without ever speaking a single word.

Michael Fassbender, Shame

In Steve McQueen’s Shame, Michael Fassbender gives a subtle, gut-wrenching performance that takes us to the depths of his despair and the emptiness of his existence, sometimes with only a glance.

Brad Pitt, Moneyball

As we already know, Brad Pitt can slip into the skin of character and seem as though he’s been playing the role all his life. In Moneyball, Pitts excels in the role of washed-up ballplayer-turned general manager Billy Beane, a man who led Major League Baseball into the future with his belief in a different style of team-building when no one else believed in him.

George Clooney, The Descendants

It’s evident from Alexander Payne’s The Descendants that George Clooney has mastered his look of brooding despondency, as his character is just hit by disaster after disaster in the middle of tropical Hawaii. Clooney’s character finds himself wrapped up in a web of family drama following his wife’s serious injury in a boating accident, and good ol’ George plays the part to a T.

 

ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE

Let me preface this category by saying that every single actress named here absolutely deserves a trophy of her own, but my own limitations of upholding Academy restrictions prevent me from doing this.

Rooney Mara, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Rooney Mara’s Lisbeth Salander is built around a visceral stare that embodies both toughness and vulnerability, two traits that encompass the identity of the character in the original book. Mara had the difficult job of living up to a literary heroine while remodeling a part played by Swedish actress Noomi Rapace not three years earlier, and she did so with incredible grace and precision.

Viola Davis, The Help

Viola Davis is nothing short of perfection in the feel-good drama of the year, The Help. As Aibileen Clark, a maid battling the societal strictures of a prejudiced 1960s Mississippi. Davis delivers a heartfelt performance and shows her true colors as a Hollywood leading lady with every line, captivating audiences across the country.

Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady (win)

It more or less goes without saying that Meryl Streep lived up to her own name in a transcendent performance as Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady. Even without prosthetics or an off-kilter accent, Streep glows in Thatcher’s shoes, conveying the same quiet power and determination that Thatcher herself embodied in her political career.

Charlize Theron, Young Adult

In Young Adult, Charlize Theron has accomplished the incredibly rare and undeniably ballsy in Hollywood: to portray a completely unlikeable character with unyielding tenacity. Too often actresses glamorize their roles or fill roles that are written to gain sympathy from the audience; Theron seizes onto her character of a washed-up ex-prom queen and doesn’t let go, ruthlessly portraying the worst of her character and causing the audience to, however reluctantly, examine their own shortcomings.

Kirsten Dunst, Melancholia

Say what you will about Lars Von Trier’s left-field art-house drama, Melancholia, but this film belongs to Kirsten Dunst. Dunst guides viewers through a journey to the deepest corners of her character’s depression as the apocalypse grows ever nearer, and all art-house schticks aside, Melancholia, at its heart, is a character study on depression – a study that Dunst formed to perfection.

 

DIRECTING

Michael Hazanavicious, The Artist

David Fincher, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Pedro Almodóvar, The Skin I Live In

Alexander Payne, The Descendants

Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris (win)

Like this award could go to anyone else.

 

ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Christopher Plummer, Beginners (win)

John Hawkes, Martha Marcy May Marlene

Albert Brooks, Drive

Patton Oswalt, Young Adult

 

ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE

Bérénice Bejo, The Artist

Octavia Spencer, The Help

Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids (win)

Carey Mulligan, Shame

 

CINEMATOGRAPHY

Martha Marcy May Marlene (win)

The Artist

The Skin I Live In

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Shame

Melancholia

 

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Midnight in Paris (win)

A Separation

The Artist

Bridesmaids

 

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

The Descendants

Moneyball

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (win)

The Ides of March

The Help