Awards
Oscar 2013 Winner Predictions: Documentary
It almost seems like AMPAS is trying to pull one over on usâor, at the very least, sneak one past us while weâre not looking.
It almost seems like the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is trying to pull one over on usâor, at the very least, sneak one past us while weâre not looking. After years of taking heat for the screwy nominations and screwier winners in categories such as this, all sorts of quality controls were initiated for face-saving purposes, from committees whoâd govern over those wishing to vote in these categories to members needing to validate that theyâve seen all the nominees at screenings before casting their ballots. Then, one day after this yearâs Oscar nominations were announced, while the world was still reeling from a litany of jaw-dropping snubs (Kathryn Bigelow, Ben Affleck, Jafar Panahi, etc.), AMPAS president Hawk Koch announces that all Oscar voters will be invited to pick the winners in the documentary feature and live-action and animated short categories after being sent screeners of all the nominated films, and all on the Academyâs dime. Which begs all sorts of questions: Why not the documentary short category as well? Hell, why not every Oscar category? Who gets to explain to Eli Wallach what a screener is? If 5 Broken Cameras lands first in Vanessa Redgraveâs DVD player, will she care to see any other nominated film in this category? If a tree fallsâŚ
The Invisible War, Kirby Dickâs documentary about sexual assaults in the U.S. military, certainly doesnât lack for import, yet itâs almost soberingly objective to a faultâso insufficiently incensed that it even caused one of our own to check out while watching it. The finest film in this lot by a country mile, 5 Broken Cameras is an enraged, metaphoric, ballsily crafted document of Israeli aggression toward Palestiniansâand yet, in a bizarre, almost perverse move, some might even say telling, the Israeli government and media over the past month has tried to co-opt the film as their own. If Emad Burnat and Guy Davidiâs film is insufficiently pro-Jewish to score a victory here, so, too, is Dror Morehâs The Gatekeepers, a disquieting overview of the Shin Betâs activities since the Six-Day War featuring a few too many acknowledgements from former operatives of the security agency that Israel has gone too far over the years in its attempts to defend the state. If Bigelowâs snub in the director category even remotely signals that the Academy is suffering from torture fatigue, both documentaries may face an uphill battle.
David Franceâs How to Survive a Plague, one of our top 25 films of last year, is a stirring, poignant, intelligently edited document of AIDS activism in this country. This highly subjective film, which isnât without its lapses in taste, still feels as if itâs been designed largely as a history lesson for those who arenât intimately familiar with the nuances of ACT UPâs heroic struggle to raise AIDS awareness over the years while fighting political inaction in the halls of our American government. Of course, the filmâs power is unmistakable, so powerful in fact that we donât even think voters will care that Franceâs triumph was realized almost entirely inside the editing room, where he distilled over 700 hours of stock footage from the âplague yearsâ down to two. But is it powerful enough to stave off one of the most crowd-pleasing documentaries, Malik Bendjellouâs Searching for Sugar Man, ever nominated in this category?
Confession: Two weeks ago we werenât ready to call this just yet for Bendjellouâs irritatingly money-obsessed documentary about the search for musician Sixto Rodriguez following a long-ago rumored suicide. The film touches on a cornucopia of themes, such as fan worship, and does so in a way that, to quote our own Eric Henderson, âobfuscates so as to build to a heartening finale.â Itâs a popular tactic, sometimes used for less enlivening purposes, that hasnât done docs like Anvil! The Story of Anvil and The Imposter any favors when itâs come to getting the Academyâs attention. Also, it doesnât seem to help that Rodriguez, unlike Philippe Petit or Argo, doesnât exactly want for Hollywood validation. But the film, whose ostensible pleasures I continue to be immune to after two viewings, has been heralded far and wide as an intelligently crafted, audience-involving mystery, and one with an unmistakably happy endingânot to mention an irresistible soundtrack. Our hearts arenât with the film, but given that Searching for Sugar Man has triumphed with awards groups with particularly Oscar-y instincts (namely the National Board of Review and the PGA), to bet against it wouldnât make us very savvy betting men.
Will Win: Searching for Sugar Man
Could Win: How to Survive a Plague
Should Win: 5 Broken Cameras
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