MY OSCAR PREDICTIONS - 2011

Let’s keep it honest. I’ve watched about three-quarters of the nominees, I’ve soaked in the buzz, I suppose. About a day to go and this is when I thought I’d get word out on my own. An urge, the thought of having had a say, of having said something before it doesn’t matter anymore. Everyone wants to talk about the Oscars, good or bad. I’ve had my opinions, and I took the month to validate them. Some changed, some diversified. Some things just got unclear, too personal to have a say.

I’m only going to be discussing those sections where I have enough to corroborate. As for the rest, I shall humbly recline from saying anything. In all, the nominations, in my opinion, have been fair enough. I mean, they could’ve been worse, so it’s typical Oscars. Could’ve been worse, but just about managed to keep its dignity intact. Still, no ‘Shame’, no ‘Drive’, no ‘Martha Marcy May Marlene.’ No ‘Melancholia’, for the depression buffs, even though for me it’s a good thing.

Without ado, let me get on with my opinions on the nominees as well as predictions on who I think would win, and who I want/wanted to. The pattern would be self-explanatory, I guess I wouldn’t have to walk you through it. Let me let you enjoy your walk by yourself.

Best Picture

I know ‘the Artist’ won everything else, but all roads point to ‘Hugo,’ I think. The sad part is I haven’t watched it to have a clear opinion. ‘the Help’ had won Screen Actors’ Guild, ‘the Descendants’ had a Golden Globe win too. ‘A Separation’ would have been a major threat and has conveniently been excluded. I really don’t have a preference for Best Film, but I hope they don’t go ahead and honour Artists for the Filmmaker category, that sounds strangely sacrilegious.

Best Direction

Alexander Payne. ‘the Descendants’ is not going to win anything else, it’s not half as loaded as his brilliantly-written ‘Sideways’ to win the Screenwriters’ prize. Besides, face it – this is the single most impressive film that’s almost entirely a director’s credit as the Actor supports. Payne is one of America’s finest filmmakers of this generation; he deserves it more than anyone else. It would have been a different story had Nicolas Winding Refn (of ‘Drive’) been nominated. I’d still vouch for Payne. For ‘the Descendants,’ to me, has been the single most delightful movie event of the year.

Best Actor

One of the most substantial set of nominees in any award category this year. Michael Fassbender (for ‘Shame’) replaces Brad Pitt’s formality, and I think it’d be THE perfect set. Joseph Gordon-Levitt (in ‘50/50’) played an important role as well. Anyway, I think it’s between Gary Oldman (for ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’) and George Clooney (for ‘the Descendants’). Clooney carried an entire film on his shoulders and well while Oldman played it simple and played it smart at that. Demian Bichir (for ‘A Better Life’) could be the buffer – the Surprise package. I vouch for Clooney but something tells me Oldman would bag it. He’s the virgin. Please no Dujardin. I need a break.

Best Actress

The Weinsteins make reservations – one for the money and one for the time – displacing two of the defining performances of the year. Elizabeth Olsen for ‘Martha Marcy May Marlene’, who gets my personal Oscar, and Kirsten Dunst for ‘Melancholia’, which, easily, was a career-best. Rooney Mara is the wrong young girl and it doesn’t make sense to nominate Meryl Streep anymore. Glenn Close was refreshingly subtle in ‘Albert Nobbs,’ although I think it’s a toss-in between Viola Davis (for ‘the Help’) and Michelle Williams for nailing her version of Marilyn Monroe in ‘my Week with Marilyn.’ Intuition points at Ms. Davis while my heart goes out for Michelle. She should have won it last time. She should win it this time too. Or so I think.

Best Supporting Actor

I haven’t watched enough movies to take a stand.

Best Supporting Actress

Hailee Steinfeld (for ‘True Grit’) was shifted from ‘Best Actress’ to ‘Best Supporting Actress’ last time so that she’d stand a chance – something she didn’t have against Ms. Portman sweeping the floors everywhere. Berenice Bejo (for ‘the Artist’) looks like this year’s version. It's a Weinstein move. Anyway, Octavia Spencer (for ‘the Help’) seems a universal favourite in a Dreamworks sweep. No Carey Mulligan (for ‘Shame’ and ‘Drive’). No Charlotte Gainsbourg (for ‘Melancholia’). Jessica Chastain for the wrong movie. I was impressed with Janet McTeer’s performance in the offbeat ‘Albert Nobbs.’ She gets my personal vote. Chastain gets my heart. And I go with Ms. Spencer as most probable, safely said.

Best Original Screenplay

‘A Separation’ in its only big nomination (aside from ‘Foreign Language Feature’) in a bunch of the inconsequential and the lacklustre. ‘Midnight in Paris’ is second best. This ought to be the most unoriginal year in the history of the Oscars; the year of adaptations and second-takes. ‘Win Win,' the American feel-good film of the year, hasn't been counted in. Or ‘50/50,’ the autobiography of a cancer-survivor who still hasn’t lost it in life. Disappointing. I’m glad the Iranian sneaked in. Otherwise, we’d have nothing to show.

Best Adapted Screenplay

Why do I think ‘Moneyball’ doesn’t deserve a single place in the Oscars this time? Because I haven’t watched it, perhaps. Nevertheless, Aaron Sorkin, who wasn’t rewarded last time when he stretched a one-liner story to film’s length with ‘the Social Network’ needed mention, I suppose. ‘the Help,’ I thought, was tidy. Like ‘the Ides of March’ or ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’ – Tidy. That’s about it. Both my ignorance and precedence points at John Logan and his ‘Hugo.’ Alexander Payne needs the bigger prize. Pals Nat Faxon and Jim Rash better excuse him for that.

Best Animated Feature

A complete DreamWorks sweep, and I wonder why ‘the Adventures of Tintin’ hasn’t been counted in. Maybe a clause violation, I wouldn’t know. ‘Cars 2’ is the best. Any list without it doesn’t get my attention in any denomination. I think that’s enough said.

As for the rest, I think ‘A Separation’ deserves both the awards it has been nominated for, but that’s only because I think it deserves more. Ludovico Bource for ‘the Artist’ was succinct with his music score, but then Alexandre Desplat (for ‘A Better Life’, ‘my Week with Marilyn’ and on a darker note, ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II’) has not been nominated. Or Michael Giacchino for ‘Cars 2’, two of the most important musicians of the decade. Too bad ‘Midnight in Paris’ can’t fall under Original Score. Or ‘the Descendants’, for that matter. There’s too little to decide between for ‘Best Original Song,’ there hasn’t been a worthy musical this year. I’d pick ‘Rio’ over ‘the Muppets,’ even though I love Jason Segel. A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.

‘Transformers: Dark of the Moon’ gets multiple nominations for mixing and editing machine noises in a ‘Linkin Park’ soundtrack? Ridiculous. ‘Drive’ needs its consolation prize. So does the unnecessary effort behind ‘the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’, I think. For the first time, we saw Hogwarts broken with so much fire, so convincing it touches your heart. The ‘Harry Potter’ franchise needs its recognition from the Muggle world. Nominations just don’t work anymore. ‘the Tree of Life’ can get the Photography prize, although I thought ‘A Better Life’ needed nomination. As well as Darius Khondji for ‘Midnight in Paris.’

Every critic has his Oscar dream – pre-nomination, post-nomination. Dreams, grievances; the little elation at seeing your horse win. I’ve taken my time to voice mine. Now I feel relieved. Relieved that I’ve shared, that I’ve spoken before it’s too late. And I hope you don’t sit with a clipboard and grade me on how much I’ve got it right. After all, I’m just another who waits for Wikipedia to tell me who has won.

BUT WHY?

DIRECTED BY ASGHAR FARHADI

STARRING: PEYMAN MOAADI, LEILA HATAMI, SHAHAB HOSSEINI, SAREH BAYAT, SARINA FARHADI, ALI-ASGHAR SHAHBAZI, SHAHIN YAZDANBAKSH, KIMIA HOSSEINI and MERILA ZAREI

Derek Cianfrance, who made the chilling ‘Blue Valentine’ last year, once said in an interview that his worst fear as a child was the thought of his parents separating. Isn’t that universal? Death is a finality that can force acceptance. Divorce is beyond that. One moment you see them getting along. Another, you see them wanting not to. You don’t know what happened in between. The worst feeling in a human being, let alone a child, is that of having not contributed, be it for better or for worse. It’s like being most affected in a Civil war that you didn’t have anything to do with.

The ballad that it was, ‘Blue Valentine’ never really brought it down to the child’s perspective. It couldn’t have, it never tried to. It had a baby girl who was frightened by sight and by sound but didn’t know why it rained. Asghar Farhadi’s ‘A Separation’, in that aspect, works a little stronger. By that I mean it’s more devastating. It burdens its child with knowledge, destroys her further with the strain of understanding. But she doesn’t break. She does something worse. She accepts her fate. I thought of prostitution. I thought of slavery. What she goes through is just as bad.

‘A Separation’ is titled ‘the Separation of Nader from Simin’ in Persian. Which means there is no deuce. I know I didn’t watch a film about a divorce that could also have implied the separation of Mother from Child or of Father from Child. The film does not suggest it. In fact, it resists that notion. The child does not lose just one parent to the separation, she loses both. She knows that. And, not to mention, the watertight security that comes with a family that’s inseparable and as thick as thieves.

I remembered Miles Raymond in Alexander Payne’s ‘Sideways’ where he throws a passing remark on Marriage and Divorce. “Last year, it was all divorces”, he says. “This year it’s Weddings. It’s cyclical, I guess.” We’re witnessing a society that hasn’t gotten to that point yet. Nader (Peyman Moaadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami) might take matters to court, the godless people they are. Razieh (Sareh Bayat) would consider it a sin to conspire against her husband Houjat (Shahab Hosseini) like that. She wouldn’t fake-swear on the Quran to get some money they desperately need. Nader, on his part, would do it just so he doesn’t lose his little girl Termeh’s (Sarina Farhadi) respect. No doubt they’re both honorable people. But their codes don’t match.

Farhadi discusses his country in this bourgeoisie-versus-the-common battle. The matchup is uneven, just like it always is. The battle takes place on two grounds. Nader chooses his Father, a victim of deep-set Alzheimer’s, over Simin’s adamant stand on leaving the country, with or without him. She accuses him of neglecting his daughter. He blames her for not trusting him with both. Whose side do we take? Nader is plenty devoted to his Father and he loves his daughter to groom. Termeh, on her part, loves him and is happy to help. She is eleven years of age and is at that point where we know she needs her Mother, or she would real soon. But she cannot side with the aggressor for simple fear of capsizing what might otherwise just about make it to shore.

One of them needs to give up. It’s that kind of issue where neither is prepared to cope with the other’s solution. Simin picks emigration for her daughter’s sake. She’s red-haired under the shawl and we see a fleeting image of her smoking on the verandah. We place her almost immediately. She’s like Marjane Satrapi’s liberal girl-friends in ‘Persepolis’ where, as the confused post-adolescent learns, abandoning ship is a survival skill. She’s practical, yes. She eyes the future with Nader caught in the past as it appears, but for what good is this seamlessness? Nader isn’t the pinnacle of subtlety either. He shoves Razieh, his Father’s nurse, out the door, hurting her both physically and sentimentally. Razieh, we know since before, is pregnant. She’s taken to hospital the same night, where she has a miscarriage. At fifth month, the law says, abortion is manslaughter. That’s the second battle.

The accusations go in a circle with everything coming back to Nader, one way or another. Consequences mount. Settlement might imply resolution, but Nader refuses. He takes the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ stand. His daughter asks him if he really didn’t know the woman was pregnant. He responds saying he didn’t at the moment. He saw a woman who had tied his Father to his bed, locked him inside and gone on a joyride. Man turns monster as emotions blind. Termeh shows just as much hostility to Razieh at that point. In her defence, she stood by her Father. Trust is a strong-room that keeps emotions secure. But she finds hers broken in and unforgivably violated as she uncovers the truth, layer by layer.

The parents show poorly in front of their child in a see-saw routine. Termeh, initially by her Father, rolls out closer to the other pole as she deals with him by herself, eventually ending up, I believe, somewhere right in the middle. She pities her Dad in all his helplessness and hates her Mom for having brought it upon him. Then she finds him to be as inertial and misshapen as her Mother pegs him to be. She lies under oath to stop him from going to jail and fights him for having turned down her Mother’s open-arm invitation to reconcile.

In the end, she’s asked to pick a side. She says she has decided. Her choice is, tactfully and rightly so, never revealed. We know it doesn’t matter. Nader has a momentum shift against him, which Simin had caused in the first place. One is as bad as the other, where the two of them have invented dysfunction in what seemed to work previously. Now they’re just vultures pecking on their daughter who stands beside this corpse called dignity that seems to have died with their relationship.

‘A Separation’ has been universally branded the film of the year. From what I’ve watched of the Oscar haul, I would say it comes close in contest against mine – ‘the Descendants.’ Both films deal with eventuality and the show of man’s ugly side in his efforts to resist it. While ‘the Descendants,’ in this quest, served to romanticize his defeat, glorifying its hero as a man who has come to terms with his demons, ‘A Separation’ shows it unadulterated.

Cinema, as I see it, is a hypnotic medium that, to put it simply, renders us vulnerable and easy to inspire; to influence. Farhadi recognizes that in his cautious stance to not give Termeh’s decision away. The separation, on the other hand, is narrated as it is – Man and Woman with blood on their hands, awaiting verdict to tell victory from defeat. I couldn’t cherish the disappointment I felt, even though I could appreciate it. Robbie Weaver in ‘Crazy, Stupid, Love’ asks his Father to get his Mom back to inspire his own love-life decisions. I cried the same to Farhadi. Our film experience can be crushing, hostile and almost entirely defeated, but on any day, I’d vouch for hope. ‘Death and the Maiden’ was hope at its forgiving best. ‘Crazy, Stupid, Love’ was hope although it’s best not to compare. ‘Blue Valentine’, like ‘the Descendants’, was a tale of glorious defeat.

Imagine this. Thirty years later, Termeh sits down with her daughter as the film unfolds in a recollection. She tells her everything up until the point where she had to decide. Would her husband have a similar story? I don’t know. The child would have a similar decision, perpetrating the cycle of being narrator and spectator of her own story, from Eleven to Forty. There’s an even younger girl (of Razieh and Houjat) whose story begins much earlier, right from the age of four. She witnesses a miscarriage, countersuits, and is made to believe that her Father killed her unborn Brother.

‘A Separation’ leaves us to a fate as pitiful as that of either of these children, helpless to do anything but ask ‘Why?’ That’s as much as my Eleven-year-old self could do. The twenty-year-old still refuses to show. I don’t think he ever would. For when it comes to such a thing as our parents’ separation, I don’t think any of us would grow up to be anything more than eleven years old.