The 'Lord' Of the Oscars
February 13, 2002

Tolkien Fantasy Wins 13 Nominations; 'Beautiful Mind,' 'Moulin Rouge' Get 8

By Sharon Waxman

Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, February 13, 2002; Page C01

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 12 -- An epic fantasy film pitting virtuous Hobbits and elves against evil wraiths and monsters took 13 Academy Award nominations today in an eclectic Oscar race that also includes a musical, a murder mystery and a drama about genius.

"The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring," an adaptation of the book by J.R.R. Tolkien, won the most nominations, including best director for Peter Jackson and best supporting actor for Ian McKellen. The film is the first in a series of three, daringly shot all at once last year. (The next installment will be released this year.)

"A Beautiful Mind," starring Russell Crowe as schizophrenic math prodigy John Nash, took eight nominations, including Best Picture and nods for Crowe and supporting actress Jennifer Connelly.

"Moulin Rouge," a joyously outrageous musical about the famed turn-of-the-century Paris nightclub, also received eight nominations, including one for lead actress Nicole Kidman and one for Best Picture but, strangely, none for director Baz Luhrmann, whose movie resurrected the long-dead musical genre.

The other Best Picture nominees were "Gosford Park," a whodunit set among the servants and squires of a British estate, and "In the Bedroom," a quiet drama about a New England family's torment over the loss of a son.

The Oscars will be awarded on March 24 in Hollywood.

The Best Picture nominees seemed to reflect a desire by members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to seek out traditional themes. At its core, "Lord of the Rings" is a story about the compelling power of evil, and the struggle to overcome it. "A Beautiful Mind" is an uplifting story about the triumph of John Nash, who won the Nobel Prize after years of struggling with mental illness. "In the Bedroom" is an intimate story about the complex emotional ties in family and marriage.

Other, darker pictures that won critical and popular favor were mostly overlooked, including "Black Hawk Down," an intense combat film about America's debacle in Somalia, which did receive a Best Director nod for Ridley Scott; and "Memento," a critically adored noir story about a man with no short-term memory seeking a killer. It took best screenplay and editing nominations.

"It's a bit of a relief," said McKellen, speaking from London, of the nominations for "Lord of the Rings." "Basically the Academy is saying these are the sorts of movies that should get made, that they admire the respect, the attitude with which it was made."

"We never set out to make a fantasy film," director Peter Jackson said from his home in New Zealand. "That was not what we had in mind, because it has limitations, it has cliches, baggage we weren't interested in. We set out to make a drama that we wanted to have emotional depth, weight, integrity. It just happened to be set in Middle Earth, with certain fantastical elements."

For the first time in 30 years, three African American actors were chosen in the lead acting categories: Will Smith as the title character in "Ali"; Denzel Washington as a corrupt cop in "Training Day"; and Halle Berry, who played the widow of an executed prisoner in "Monster's Ball." The first time that happened was 1972, when Paul Winfield and Cicely Tyson were in the running for "Sounder" and Diana Ross for "Lady Sings the Blues." (None won.)

"I'm excited to be part of this point in history," said Smith, speaking on CNN. He said when he and wife Jada Pinkett Smith heard the news, she jumped up and hit her head. "We got her some ice, got her some aspirin, settled down and giggled for an hour," he added.

Apart from the conservative mood of the Academy voters -- as is often the case -- their choices also reflected the massive marketing dollars increasingly spent by companies like Miramax, Universal and DreamWorks to bring their films into the orbit of Oscar attention.

Miramax has been running pricey, nonstop television and newspaper ads for "In the Bedroom," which it bought for $1.5 million. Universal has waged a similarly relentless campaign for "A Beautiful Mind," as has DreamWorks for "Shrek," which was nonetheless denied a Best Picture nod.

Meanwhile, other films and performances that won huge critical acclaim were overlooked. "Memento's" meager showing in nominations was almost certainly in part because its studio, New Market, did not have the money to promote it more.

"My one possible disappointment is that Guy Pearce hasn't had as much recognition as he deserved," "Memento" writer-director Chris Nolan said of his leading actor. "I'd like to think the work would speak for itself to some degree, [but] there's clearly a financial element involved at some point."

Similarly, Tilda Swinton gave one of the most critically lauded performances last year in "The Deep End," but her studio, Paramount Classics, did not have the cash for an ambitious Oscar campaign.

Instead, perennial Academy favorites were nominated, including Judi Dench and Kate Winslet (as Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, respectively) for playing writer Iris Murdoch (old and young) in "Iris." This tiny Miramax film, by the end of January, had made less than $200,000 at the U.S. box office. Likewise, Sean Penn was selected for playing a mentally disabled father in "I Am Sam," a film that has received decidedly mixed reviews.

Another surprise: Renee Zellweger was nominated for "Bridget Jones's Diary" in the Best Actress category, which rarely recognizes comic performances.

With "In the Bedroom," first-time director and co-writer Todd Field, 37, said he tried to pay homage to his parents' generation, portraying an era when not every emotion was spoken aloud.

"I was trying to tell a story about a marriage, about a generation that will be no longer, soon. It's about my parents' generation, the way they relate to each other or don't relate to each other. Their sense of what they don't say to each other," he said. "People my age . . . everyone is Chatty Cathy, nobody shuts up anymore. In one way it's healthy, but in another way it's indulgent; everyone talks about their feelings. Some things are implicit in life, they never need to be spoken."

British actor Tom Wilkinson was nominated for his leading performance in the film, as were Sissy Spacek and Marisa Tomei, for leading and supporting actress, respectively.

Director Luhrmann said he battled for five years to bring his ambitious musical "Moulin Rouge" to the screen, but that his real agenda was to make the genre viable again.

"Not since 1979 has a musical been nominated. I believe the Best Picture [nomination] is ratification that the musical is legitimate again," Luhrmann said of a movie loved by some and criticized by others for sensory overload and a surfeit of kitsch. "I had no idea how much fear that would cause, how much negativity that would cause. It does upset a lot of people."

In addition to Best Picture, "Gosford Park" garnered acting and directing nominations. The movie sprang from conversations between director Robert Altman and actor-producer Bob Balaban about reinventing an Agatha Christie-style mystery.

The idea was fleshed out by novice screenwriter and former actor Julian Fellowes, who happened to know a lot about upper-class British society because he was part of it.

"I stayed in great houses, I shot [hunted] in great houses, I went out with their daughters; they hoped they wouldn't marry me because I was an actor. I did see that world," he said by phone from England.

But the idea was not just to make an upstairs-downstairs murder mystery. Balaban and Altman "thought it would be fun to do a whodunit that wasn't really, that really would be an examination of the English class system," said Fellowes. "In this world, everyone was complicit in the class system. It was not just one class standing on the other. The pecking order among the servants was quite as fierce as anything going on upstairs. There was a ladder; they could become great butlers and housekeepers. They did play the game."

The game mostly ended with World War II, Fellowes said, when those in service jobs had to join the war effort. For Altman, the film had to get the details right.

"What drove the heart of the screenplay is what really goes on inside a British house in 1932," said Balaban, "how did they serve breakfast, what was the laundry room like."

Said Fellowes: "Bob [Altman] thought it wouldn't work if it wasn't accurate. So I was allowed to be on set, running around saying, 'Get the gloves off the butler.' "

"Beautiful Mind" director Ron Howard was in Germany and not available by phone but issued a statement saying he was "proud on a personal and professional level" to be recognized by the Academy -- his first nomination in a successful directorial career stretching back two decades. Crowe, nominated for the third year in a row (he won last year), also issued a statement thanking the Academy for recognizing "a very special collaboration."

Director Ridley Scott was on a plane to Australia when a flight attendant woke him up rather loudly, holding a piece of paper from the cockpit. "I knew immediately what it was," said Scott, whose film "Gladiator" took home several Oscar statues last year. Passengers in the cabin stood up and started congratulating him.

Scott said he was a bit disappointed to have missed a best picture nomination, but said he had resisted drawing clear conclusions on war or the price of heroism.

"I didn't want to come out with any answers in the end, because I didn't have any," he said. "Does it make sense to go to war? The biggest question is about intervention. Should we ever? And how? I have my own opinions, but I didn't want to have them in the film."

There were three nominees for a brand-new category, best animated feature: "Shrek," "Monsters, Inc." and "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius." The first two were big-budget, blockbuster hits, practically guaranteed to be nominated. The latter was drawn on desktop computers using off-the-shelf software by a group of Dallas animators discovered by Hollywood veteran Steve Oedekirk.

"This is recognition that you can be little and mean and use animation software on a computer and make an Oscar-nominated movie with the right creativity and right characters and right story," said Albie Hecht, the film's executive producer and head of Nickelodeon.

Finally, some Oscar trivia: with two nominations today, composer John Williams became the most nominated person alive, with a total of 41 to his credit. This year he was nominated for the scores of "A.I." and "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."

Source: Washington Post