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| More fallout from the Oscars | | Date Created: Mar 12, 2005, 09:23 AM |
 OK, the Oscars are over and we should move on. Still, as one of the premier events of US culture (not to mention the ongoing importance of movies in US life), it still gets attention, even in The Weekly Standard. There's also an essay on why Dan Rather didn't just make one mistake at the end of his career in the same issue.
Nice little essay in last weeks edition (March 14, 05) called, A Night at the Oscars -- If you love movies, it's hard to like the Academy Awards. It's by Martha Bayles that I'm not familiar with but I have to agree with most of it. She also gives the first full description of Million Dollar Baby and how it relates to the right-to-live and right-to-die controversy, religion, and the movie that won best foreign film, The Sea Inside.
Herewith some excerpts.
A Night at the Oscars
If you love movies, it's hard to like the Academy Awards.
by Martha Bayles
03/14/2005, Volume 010, Issue 24
...Which returns us to the Oscars. If Diary is typical of what works in Hollywood these days, then Chris Rock was the perfect MC. His opening monologue was painfully convoluted, making sense only as an attempt to offend the right people (notably President Bush) without offending the wrong people (notably the millions who voted for Bush but might also shell out nine bucks to see a Chris Rock movie).
Rock was coherent in the worst way: He could not drop the race shtick, but he could not make it funny, either...
Earth to Chris: It's not about race this year. African Americans have starred in good movies and bad. This is worth taking notice of, but most moviegoers, regardless of color, are preoccupied with other topics, such as war and peace, life and death.
... And the Oscar for Best Foreign Film went to The Sea Inside, a Spanish film that--in the opinion of just about everybody--is similar to Million Dollar Baby in offering a sympathetic depiction of assisted suicide.
Both The Sea Inside and Million Dollar Baby have been roundly attacked by religious conservatives and activists for the disabled. Both movies have been stoutly defended by secular liberals and "death with dignity" activists. Curiously, no one has bothered to judge them on a combination of moral and aesthetic grounds...
One need not be a Catholic to grant that the Church's position on these questions is not only consistent but also philosophically compelling. And that is exactly how the Church is portrayed in Million Dollar Baby, a film that deserves better than to be lumped together with The Sea Inside.
Million Dollar Baby is about Frankie, a burnt-out boxing coach (Eastwood) who reluctantly agrees to train Maggie, a feisty young female boxer (Swank). Frankie is the kind of doubting Catholic who attends mass every day in order to debate the priest, the thoughtful young Father Horvak (Bryan O'Byrne). When Maggie is rendered quadriplegic by a dirty punch, she begs Frankie to disconnect her life support. Frankie consults Father Horvak, who tells him, very sympathetically, not to do it. And Frankie obeys--until Maggie starts biting her own tongue in a desperate attempt to drown in her own blood. At that point, he relents.
But this is not an advertisement for assisted suicide. On the contrary, Frankie acts in full awareness that he is committing a mortal sin. But out of pity and love, he is willing to risk his own soul for that of another. And afterward, he disappears. No one, not even his old friend Scrap (Freeman), knows where he has gone. And the audience is left with a simple question: Will God forgive him?
We can look at the Academy Awards the way the two children in the urban folktale look at the room full of pony manure. Either we can turn away, disgusted by all that you-know-what, or we can start digging, inspired by the idea that there must be a pony in there somewhere. The latter approach is worth keeping, even when faced with an Academy Awards show as dispiriting as this one, because there is still good work in there somewhere. Of course, if The Aviator had won Best Picture, I would have laid down my shovel.
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