Will Brokeback Mountain Finish First?

The cowboy romance may be the obvious choice for the Best Picture Oscar, but hold your horses. Other films are more deserving

It's award season in Hollywood. Every set of initials in town -- SAG, the DGA, the PGA (that's the Producers Guild of America, not the Professional Golfers Assn.) is issuing its list of nominations for best film of 2005. Of course, these are just the preliminaries for the big Kahuna, the Oscars.

And every one of the groups seems to be saying the same thing: Brokeback Mountain, Ang Lee's beautifully shot and socially significant story of love between a pair of cowboys, has all but got the Oscar for Best Picture locked up.

SOCIAL CORRECTNESS. I say, slow down folks. Frankly, Brokeback Mountain, which has been hyped aplenty by just about every movie critic in the business, is simply not this year's best picture. Please understand: I don't dispute for one minute the importance of the film's message: that love should be celebrated, not hidden, and that every person should be free to love whomever they want.

But just because a film contains a crucial social message, it's not axiomatic that the message has been delivered by a great film. Academy voters should sit back, take stock of their craft, and not get carried away by the undertow of social correctness.

Still, those cowboys at Focus Films, which produced Brokeback, could ride off into the sunset with the Best Picture award on Mar. 5, for no other reason than Hollywood delivered more than its share of stinkers and underachievers last year. At least one presumed Best Picture contender, Sony's (SNE ) Memoirs of a Geisha, was a major-league disappointment. It was a beautifully shot film that also happened to be crushingly boring. And Steven Spielberg's Munich is mired in controversy over a message that some in Hollywood see as anti-Israel and others see as murky.

UNFULFILLED POTENTIAL. Alas, that could open the door for Brokeback Mountain, which has captured the attention of the filmmaking community mostly for Ang Lee's daring in tackling the subject matter. But this movie is no Philadelphia, the 1993 film that wasn't even nominated for a Best Picture Oscar despite a brilliant performance from Tom Hanks and a mesmerizing if downbeat story of an AIDS victim.

Brokeback Mountain lead Heath Ledger probably deserves his own award for his portrayal of a stoic Wyoming cowboy who struggles with his feelings for a fellow sheep-herder. But the film itself never matches his tremendous performance. Supporting actor Jake Gyllenhaal, who never measures up to Ledger, is a mostly moping presence throughout the film.

Moreover, Brokeback Mountain takes a great premise -- the charged attraction between two men who must hide their true feelings behind conventional marriages -- but does little to develop either man's torment. We see the two of them in a secret embrace, the crumbling of Ledger's marriage, and Gyllenhaal's inability to settle into the life of a tractor salesman. But the film never delivers on its initial premise and at times appears slow, with meetings between the two in their later years a series of solemn speeches and dog-eyed stares.

"Though it's sad and sobering, it's still a rough draft of a great movie," wrote New York Post critic Kyle Smith. That sums it up pretty well.

CINDERELLA STORY? What are better films? Crash, for starters. Director Paul Haggis delivers on the premise of racial divisiveness with a stream of moving, sometimes unnerving vignettes that leave an enduring impression long after you leave the theater. For me, Crash does what a great film should do.

Not that anyone is asking, but my favorite film from last year is Cinderella Man. It's a complete film: a beautifully made period piece about a depressed nation that rallies behind a hero who restores his own career and self-image. It has great performances from just about everyone -- Russell Crowe as boxer Jim Braddock, Renee Zellweger as his wife, Mae, and Paul Giamatti as his manager, Joe Gould.

Alas, Ron Howard's masterpiece was done in by Universal's decision to release it in June, where it was lost amid summer blockbusters. Although it has been hustled back into some theaters, it's considered a loser in many voters' minds with a less-than-heroic $61.6 million box office. (Got your own favorite film? Nominate it below in the Reader Comments.)

PREDICTABLE ENDING. So which films will get the other nominations? If you believe history -- which says no film has ever won a Best Picture Oscar unless it was also nominated for top awards first by both the PGA and the Writers Guild of America -- three others will be Crash, Capote, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, and George Clooney's Edward R. Morrow biopic, Good Night and Good Luck.

All three were among those nominated in the last few days by both groups, whose members make up large numbers of Academy voters as well.

And it doesn't hurt if you're also nominated by the Screen Actors' Guild, whose 2,100 members make up roughly one-third Academy voters. On the SAG list: Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Crash, Good Night and Good Luck, and Hustle and Flow, a movie about a pimp-turned-rapper that stars Terrence Howard.

LOOKING BACK. Films that get the early Oscar buzz may not necessarily be the year's best picture, and the Academy has a history of bending to the winds of the hot film. Remember when Miramax stoked the press and voters and maneuvered its film Shakespeare in Love to the 1998 Best Picture Oscar, beating out the much more worthy Saving Private Ryan?

If the Academy wants to do the right thing, it will sit back, stick in a couple of more DVDs and take a look at Cinderella Man, Crash, and a few others before casting ballots by the Jan. 21 deadline.

READER COMMENTS

Grover is Los Angeles bureau chief for BusinessWeek
Edited by Patricia O'Connell

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