On Oscar Bait, in August
After a recent screening of “Lee Daniels’ The Butler,” based on the true story of a black butler who served every United States president in the White House from Eisenhower to Reagan, a friend asked me what I thought of the film.
My first instinct was to respond: “It’s good. But it’s total Oscar bait.” And then I stopped and wondered why those two notions had to be at such odds with each other.
A quick glance on Rotten Tomatoes at early positive reviews for the film, which opens Friday, revealed I’m not the only critic to regard the star-studded historical epic in such terms. Far from it: Several other critics have used the phrase “Oscar bait,” or suggested that key moments of Daniels’ sprawling drama were being submitted “for your consideration” come awards season.
It does boast an impressive cast, led by Oscar-winner Forest Whitaker as the dignified and inspiring title character and Queen of Everything Oprah Winfrey as his loyal but lonely wife. (You forget that before she was a one-named multimedia phenomenon, Oprah could act. She gets to be a little trashy and show great range here — the kind of performance that earns an Oscar nomination. There’s that mentality again.) Key supporting work comes from David Oyelowo as the couple’s Black Panther son, Vanessa Redgrave as the plantation owner of the butler’s youth, Robin Williams as Dwight D. Eisenhower, John Cusack as Richard Nixon, Alan Rickman as Ronald Reagan and — most amusingly of all — Jane Fonda as Nancy Reagan.
Daniels has a provocative, tawdry streak in him, though; witness Nicole Kidman urinating on Zac Efron in the Southern-fried melodrama “The Paperboy.” But his “Precious: Based on the Novel `Push’ by Sapphire” earned him Academy Award nominations for best picture and director, and it won for Mo’Nique’s supporting-actress performance and for its adapted screenplay.
Oh — and this is crucial — “The Butler” comes from The Weinstein Co., led by Harvey Weinstein, who mastered the not-so-delicate art of campaigning for Movies That Matter in the 1990s as co-founder of Miramax Films.
The chicken-and-egg dynamic at work here is fascinating to me. Are certain movies simply excellent, and so they inevitably end up rising above the hundreds of films released each year as awards season arrives? Or are films made with Academy Awards ambitions in mind, and they end up being excellent by virtue of the production values and prestigious names attached to them?
More fundamentally: Why does this bother us? If a film is good, it’s good – and that’s such a rare, satisfying experience whether you see a handful or a hundred films a year. Shouldn’t we just allow ourselves to be swept up in the high-mindedness or artistic grandeur of it all — to lose ourselves in the dark, which theoretically is the reason we fell in love with this profession in the first place?
Many of us, I suspect, view such prestige pictures with cynicism, coming clustered as they do each October, November and December, just before the voting for major awards and critics groups’ accolades. (“Lee Daniels’ The Butler” is opening in the same mid-August slot occupied two years ago by the Oscar-winning “The Help,” which similarly addressed themes of racial strife and civil rights in glossy fashion). The blatant manipulation that seems to be at work is galling, and our inherent skepticism causes us to sniff it out and balk at it.
There’s almost a formula you can detect, such as playing a real person during a key moment in history, or a character suffering from some sort of physical or psychological ailment. When you can combine both of those forces at the same time — the 2011 best-picture winner “The King’s Speech” comes to mind, as well as “Shine” and “My Left Foot” — then you’re a shoo-in.
My good friend Glenn Whipp, who’s seen both sides of this topic as both a former film critic for the Los Angeles Daily News and now an awards expert for the Los Angeles Times, thinks the phrase “Oscar bait” is just a lazy pejorative, and one that’s not always accurate.
“Take `The King’s Speech,’ a movie that, on its surface, seemed like the ultimate Oscar-bait movie — monarchy, historical drama, lead character overcoming a disability, British accents, Harvey Weinstein,” Whipp said. “But it’s not like people were lining up to finance a movie about two middle-aged men — an unknown and a king with no charisma — sitting around and talking for two hours. It was anything but a surefire success. But audiences loved it at Telluride and Toronto, which gave it a momentum for its theatrical release.”
USA Today film critic Claudia Puig, also a good friend who attended the same screening of “The Butler” as I did, acknowledged that the “Oscar-bait” notion popped into her head as she was watching it.
“The reason that can feel like a bad thing, or at least something to be wary of, is that it places more emphasis on business and promotion over artistic concerns,” Puig said. “Most of us would prefer to think that marketing plays a much less important role than art. But that’s in an ideal world.”
Ah, so that’s what’s really bothering us: We’re seeking the sensation of authenticity in an inherently artificial world. Maybe we’re idealists after all.
In my head I’m comparing the Oscar talk (promotion) between THE BUTLER and Woody Allen’s BLUE JASMINE (word-of-mouth). If a movie is good surely it’ll rise to the top because people will pay to see it. Then there’s THE ARTIST . . . the movie no one saw, but it won an Oscar anyway. So, maybe self-promotion and word-of-mouth don’t seal the deal . . . but whom impresses the Oscar voters, whomever they may be.
There’s certainly some overlap between movies that are labeled as “Oscar bait” and movies that are genuinely good. And I definitely don’t think that all “Oscar bait” films were crafted for the express purpose of winning Oscars. But there’s a certain *kind* of film that tends to get drooled over around Oscar time, and it’s often a film that looks pretty and has solid performances but doesn’t take any real risks or try anything new. Or falls into a genre that Oscar loves (biopic, story of person with mental / physical disabilities, lavish historical epic). It’s annoying when the same kinds of “safe” films repeatedly get Oscar attention (and are thus labeled the best films of the year in most public conversations), while the riskier and more compelling ones get ignored.
Though the films from the fall festival season have mostly not made it to my vicinity, overall it has been a weak year for films IMHO. Easily the most weekends in the last five years where we could not come up with a film we were willing to pay the price to see in front of the screen. The best (by a mile) so far have been “Mud”, “The Spectacular Now” (which should be required viewing for all teenagers), and the Danish film “The Hunt”. Will attend a film festival this fall and hope the year is redeemed. Very disappointing thus far.
I loved “Mud” and “The Spectacular Now.” Those are great choices. Both are definitely top-10-list material. I still need to catch up with “The Hunt.”
Had to catch up myself on The Intouchables, which is technically a last year pick, but really thought it notable as well, though perhaps a notch below the three listed above.
Have attended the Savannah Film Festival for the last 8 years, which has been fairly reliable like other festivals in inviting Oscar caliber films every year. On their list, really looking forward to Nebraska, Hank and Asha, The Book Thief, The Past, The Invisible Woman and Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. Hoping the Wednesday “Director’s Choice” is 12 Years a Slave, and considering that night is selling faster than any other such choice in recent memory, something is definitely up. Still time to redeem the year…
Curious about your reaction to Nebraska & Hank and Asha. Thought the former was worth seeing but somewhat overrated. Thought the latter stands up well to the best this year with strong performances.