From the WSJ Opinion Archives
REVIEW & OUTLOOK
And the Money Goes to . . .
The Academy loves "message" movies. Audiences are less enthusiastic.
Some of the buzz about the Academy Awards nominations, announced this week, is refreshingly spontaneous. It didn't take press releases or spinners to make the results seem interesting: All of the best-picture nominees are positioned as socially conscious films, most with a strong political theme and a relatively low budget. Big studio hits didn't get much respect in any major category this year.
The '60s and '70s are back! comes the cry from many quarters. After decades of blockbusters and fluff, we're told, Americans will now be challenged once more by movies that make them think and question the status quo.
Maybe so, maybe not. The famous flowering of anti-establishment films such as "Easy Rider," "Midnight Cowboy" and "Coming Home" petered out in a shower of cocaine, inflated egos and expensive flops. Of course, drugs may not be such a spoiler in the current cycle of art-film making. And now, as in the Vietnam era, there is a war on, producing a level of public anxiety that moviemakers with a message seek to tap into. All the same, it may be too early to celebrate a new age of the provoc-auteur.
The main reason, as always, is audiences. Their taste in entertainment, much lamented among the socially conscious, now runs to big, spangly movies full of wonder or to stories with a minimum of ideology and a maximum of happy endings. This helps explain why this year's best-film nominees, with their somber themes, did not attract notably large crowds compared with many other, less ambitious films. The combined U.S. box-office revenues of all five nominees, "Brokeback Mountain," "Crash," "Munich," "Capote" and "Good Night, and Good Luck," added up to some $185 million in 2005. "Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" made twice that. "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," which opened only in November, has pulled in about $285 million.
Revenue figures will now change--partly because nominations, like wins, draw folks to theaters. The question is whether the current crop of cinematic button-pushers, many with independent financiers behind them, can score again and again.
The "controversial" label won't stick forever. In fact, few of the hot topics in movies mentioned in any award category this year are truly original or daring. Racism in America; big, bad government and corporations; sexual harassment; the death penalty; McCarthyism--any of that is news? "Brokeback Mountain" startled some moviegoers with its theme of repressed homosexual love. But that artistically acclaimed film will be a hard act to follow.
At any rate, if this is indeed the dawn of another age of rock-the-boat movies, we say, Bring it on: Put those messages out there, no matter how tendentious; and if the story is a good one, we'll probably pay to watch it. Until, that is, we grow tired again of feeling sad or scared or manipulated and return once more to the realm of unencumbered cinematic joy.
