The issue today, my friends, is Oscar Justice. In the Telegraph, Tom Chivers offers his list of the 10 Worst Injustices in Oscar History. He hits several of the standards right on the head – the classic case of How Green Was My Valley winning over Citizen Kane, the baffling wins of Rocky over Taxi Driver, Ordinary People over Raging Bull, Dances With Wolves over GoodFellas (comprising the Academy’s astounding “Scorsese Got Screwed” Trifecta), and Forrest Gump over Pulp Fiction. He makes only passing mention of the utterly unforgivable triumph of Crash over Brokeback Mountain.
I will disagree with him on a couple of points, however. First off, I’ve never seen Kramer vs. Kramer, but I am of the opinion (and I know that I’m a lonely dissenting voice on this) that Apocalypse Now is an overrated, overwrought movie that’s reasonably good up until the third act, when it completely goes off the rails.
And the real heart of the matter here: I will defend to my dying day the choice of Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan as the Best Picture of 1998.
I’m not saying that Saving Private Ryan is bad by any means. The Normandy invasion sequence and the battle at the end are both terrific scenes; bold, fearless filmmaking that deserves to be remembered as two of the best scenes of their kind ever shot. What comes in between, though, is essentially an A-List “Group of WWII GIs sent on a suicide mission behind enemy lines” picture. It’s very well-done, probably the very best example of its genre, but it’s essentially a very well-done version of The Guns of Navarone or The Heroes of Telemark. And then there’s the framing sequence. Oh, my God, the awful, awful, awful awfulness of the ham-fisted and pointless “I’m going to fool you into needlessly believing that this is Old Tom Hanks when it’s actually Old Matt Damon” framing sequence nearly derails the entire enterprise.
Shakespeare in Love, by contrast, is something unique. The only other movie I can think of that so merrily makes use of anachronism for comic and/or dramatic effect is the underrated A Knight’s Tale (which has the awfulness of Shannyn Sossamon hanging around its neck like an anchor, one of many factors that prevent its reaching the dizzying heights of Shakespeare in Love, but I digress). You must admit that a movie set in Elizabethan England which features a waiter in a tavern telling customers, “Our special today is a pig’s foot marinated in juniper berry vinegar, served on a buckwheat pancake…” and has Shakespeare visiting a therapist and telling him, “My quill is broken” was made with a certain gutsiness that deserves reward. That gutsiness allows the movie to present us with the almost heretical idea of William Shakespeare, the Bard of Avon, the bedrock foundation of English-language literature, being a hack churning out “Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate’s Daughter” (“Good title!”) until he encounters his muse. It may be near-heresy, but it works, and the idea is so appealing, so utterly delightful, that we come away almost imagining that this is how it must actually have happened, even though we know better.
Is Shakespeare in Love dead-serious and dramatic and made in honor of those who fought and died for our freedoms? Certainly not. Is it bright and witty and beautiful to behold? Absolutely. Does it feature indelible performances, memorable lines and engaging characters? Definitely. Does it stick in your mind as something special, something unique, something worth remembering and watching again? Well, I can’t speak for you, but for me? Most certainly.