FILM
No Place For Old Men at the Oscars 2008
/ Benjamin Strong
02.25.08
No Country for Old Men not only won Best Picture at the 80th Academy Awards last night, it also proved conclusively the theorem of its embittered title. Early in the broadcast, as isn’t-he-so-handsome Javier Bardem was on stage accepting the Best Supporting Actor trophy for a pancake thin performance in the film, the camera cut for a moment to his elder and cratered co-star Tommy Lee Jones. He was fussing with his tuxedo cuffs.
You can’t blame Jones for feeling cheated. Although he gave the deeper performance (he was the only actor in No Country for Old Men not preoccupied with faking his Texan accent), Jones was instead nominated for work in an inferior picture (In the Valley of Elah), and he must have known that he wasn’t even losing to a younger, hipper colleague so much as the little punk’s kitschy haircut.
And not that anyone was counting, but Michael Clayton’s Tom Wilkinson was also a whole lot better in the same category, not coincidentally as a widower experiencing a midlife crisis. For that matter, what moviegoer at home would have complained if the little gold man had been awarded to Hal Holbrook for his subpar turn as an aged fountain of wisdom in Into the Wild? The Academy is, after all, notorious for its sentimental, after-the-fact handouts. But the odds in 2008 were with youth and beauty, not experience––or haven’t you been following the race for president? Like all the other losers in the Kodak Theater, I’m guessing Hillary Clinton could relate.
“I love the movies. They entertain us. They offer us hope...,” said Jack Nicholson, invoking a favorite word of Hollywood’s preferred Democratic candidate. But Nicholson was disconcertingly—even chillingly—subdued. Maybe the three-time winner thought he deserved a nod for his senior-baiting role in The Bucket List, or maybe someone at home had phoned him and told him that, inexplicably, he was receiving about as much screen time as the cast of the In Memoriam montage––which this year kicked off, inauspiciously for him, with his Shining co-star Barry Nelson.
You can’t blame Jones for feeling cheated. Although he gave the deeper performance (he was the only actor in No Country for Old Men not preoccupied with faking his Texan accent), Jones was instead nominated for work in an inferior picture (In the Valley of Elah), and he must have known that he wasn’t even losing to a younger, hipper colleague so much as the little punk’s kitschy haircut.
And not that anyone was counting, but Michael Clayton’s Tom Wilkinson was also a whole lot better in the same category, not coincidentally as a widower experiencing a midlife crisis. For that matter, what moviegoer at home would have complained if the little gold man had been awarded to Hal Holbrook for his subpar turn as an aged fountain of wisdom in Into the Wild? The Academy is, after all, notorious for its sentimental, after-the-fact handouts. But the odds in 2008 were with youth and beauty, not experience––or haven’t you been following the race for president? Like all the other losers in the Kodak Theater, I’m guessing Hillary Clinton could relate.
“I love the movies. They entertain us. They offer us hope...,” said Jack Nicholson, invoking a favorite word of Hollywood’s preferred Democratic candidate. But Nicholson was disconcertingly—even chillingly—subdued. Maybe the three-time winner thought he deserved a nod for his senior-baiting role in The Bucket List, or maybe someone at home had phoned him and told him that, inexplicably, he was receiving about as much screen time as the cast of the In Memoriam montage––which this year kicked off, inauspiciously for him, with his Shining co-star Barry Nelson.