Or more accurately, they walk onto the red carpet at the 2009 Academy Awards. After all, these were just a few of the major players at this year’s Oscar ceremony (embodied by Meryl Streep, Dev Patel, Sean Penn, Mickey Rourke, and Brad Pitt, respectively).
By now, everyone is aware that Best Picture ended up going to the sleeper darling Slumdog Millionaire, which was nominated along with Milk, Frost/Nixon, The Reader and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. This is an interesting assortment of movies when one considers them in terms of what they have in common.
The International Nominees
For instance, this year’s ceremony has been heralded as one of the most “international” Oscar shows of all time. Surely part of the reason for this is that two of the five films nominated for Best Picture take place entirely outside of the U.S. – Slumdog Millionaire takes place in India, and The Reader takes place in Germany. And while Slumdog was not even produced by an American studio (which some thought might hurt its Best Picture chances), it went on to win a total of eight awards.
The All-American Nominees
On the other hand, many of the other front-running films are quintessentially American; Milk and Frost/Nixon are both about famous American political figures. And The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is part romance, part tall tale, and part loving tribute to the slow-moving Old South of decades past. Films like The Wrestler, which deals with a washed-up wrestling star and an affectionate stripper, and Revolutionary Road, which depicts the ennui of 1950s suburbia, also seem to embody the very essence of America, albeit two very different versions of America. In fact, when taken as a whole, the Academy’s picks seem to reflect the U.S.’s increasingly schizophrenic nature: ever more globalized, yet obsessively introspective.
The Best Picture Noms Feature Unusual Events, Characters and Settings
Another interesting thing about the Best Picture noms in particular is that they feature characters and situations that many audiences would find difficult to relate to. Think about Benjamin Button, which tells the story of a man whose love life is inevitably doomed because he ages backwards. Or The Reader, about a young man who finds out that his much-older lover was a Nazi guard at a concentration camp. And how many people can really relate to the trials and tribulations of a post-Watergate Richard Nixon? Not too many. Then there’s Slumdog, which tells the story of an impoverished young orphan growing up in an Indian city. The protagonist's plight may not be unusual per se (surely it is all too real to many young people growing up in India), but it goes without saying that many Americans might feel a bit out of their element while watching this film.
In the end, this year’s Oscar Night was the lowest-rated of all time – the 2008 ceremony garnered that little honor – but its audience of approximately 36 million people was somewhat underwhelming. And some might add that this year’s rather maudlin assortment of nominees was generally underwhelming as well.
