While talking to a friend who was on the fence about seeing “Contagion,” I threw out the following selling point without really even thinking: “It’s a Steven Soderbergh movie.” Then I recoiled for a second and actually thought about what that meant. Granted, I haven’t seen his watershed indie “Sex, Lies & Videotape,” but when I look back at his filmography, I wouldn’t label many of them directorial triumphs. “The Informant!” succeeds mostly because of Matt Damon, “Erin Brockovich” is 100% Julia Roberts, and the slickness of the “Ocean’s” series is what made them popular. “Traffic” is, I suppose, although I don’t think I would recommend that.
So a Soderbergh movie with a cast of eight Oscar nominees (so many that two didn’t even make the poster) had no shot at being a director’s movie … or so I thought. Surprisingly, this is a movie where Steven Soderbergh is the biggest and most brightly shining of all the stars. He’s in total control of this vehicle, setting the mood from the first frame and then keeping it an even-keeled movie even when Scott Z. Burns’ script goes a little haywire.
In a time where hyperlink cinema has become a hackneyed plot device, Soderbergh, one of the pioneers of the style with “Traffic,” reminds us why it’s even around in the first place. These stories can be linked across countries because technology and globalization has made us linked into a common destiny. Yet in the decade since “Traffic,” several events have linked us as well: 9/11 and various disease threats, such as SARS and the swine flu scare. A thin thread of paranoia connects us all, and Soderbergh gently reveals to us that this link exists in the opening stages of the film. And then he proceeds to vibrate that thread at pulse-pounding frequencies with his unflinching realism to then make sure we feel that uncomfortable pit in our stomach every single second of the film.
While on the path to triumphant Oscar glory last year, Aaron Sorkin made the wise observation that no matter what movie he chose to do next, it would always be seen as “the movie after ‘
Politically, the year started with such promise as we looked to put an end to inflammatory and hateful dialogue in the wake of the horrific shooting in Tuscon that nearly took the life of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. In a horrifyingly ironic twist, Sarah Palin had put her district on a map with a shotgun sight on it a few months earlier, drawing attention to the overuse of words like murder and kill in the vernacular. The tragedy shamed us all, although apparently not nearly enough.
It was also a year of scandals that highlighted the inability of men to handle the power granted them by society. Rep. Anthony Weiner was forced to resign after moronically tweeting nude pictures of himself to young women (the icing on the cake was his wife’s pregnancy coming shortly thereafter). It likely went unnoticed amidst the debt ceiling drama, but Rep. David Wu also vacated his position after an alleged sexual assault.
Look at TIME’s Person of the Year and you can deduce the prevailing emotion of the year: anger. Protesters throughout the world channeled their distrust and disapproval of government, of institutions, even of people into the streets. Some were organized, like the Arab Spring through social media and around a particular message, such as Egypt’s demands that Mubarak needed to resign for the sake of freedom and posterity. Others, like Occupy Wall Street and its various offshoots, just inspired people to bring whatever grievance they had in a display of civil disobedience. While the topics of income inequality, corporate greed, and the government influence of the financial sector floated into mainstream conversation, the lack of a unified goal has led to frustration, confusion, and inefficacy. In America, anger has just bred more anger.
Cue everyone on Facebook and Twitter screaming in all caps “CASEY ANTHONY IS SO GUILTY!” No one wanted justice, they wanted blood. An eye for an eye, the perpetrator for the victim. That misplaced anger showed up once again at Penn State, where students rioted in support of their beloved Coach Paterno, whom they believed to be collateral damage in the fallout of the scandal. Yet if they had really listened, they would have known that Paterno had not called the police when directly given the information of Sandusky’s sexual misconduct in his facilities. We could be better … but for some reason we weren’t.
It was a year of intelligent apocalyptic movies, on a global scale by way of storms (“Take Shelter”), viruses (“Contagion”), planetary collisions (“Melancholia”), technological manipulation (“Rise of the Planet of the Apes”), and financial meltdown (“Margin Call”), all of which tied into the anxieties of living in the now.
Just like “Inside Job” showed us that the banks scammed America, the preponderance of 3D revealed to most moviegoers that the technology was being used less for art (like in “Hugo”) and more for increasing profit margins (like for “Captain America”). As 
If we thought 2010 was a year that people most needed cinema to make them feel good, 2011 looks to be even more so. That’s why it just seems right for a movie like ‘The Artist” to sweep in and take Best Picture. It’s got the happy factor, the B&W factor, the silent film factor, and the nostalgia factor all going for it. I have yet to see it, but even if I were somehow not to like it, I could still be content with this winning Best Picture because it would affirm the power of the prize. When they reward risky, out-of-the-box movies, Hollywood responds by thinking even more creatively. When they reward movies like “The King’s Speech,” studios start focus grouping the hell out of their contenders to perfectly calculate Oscar success.
Here’s where ballot manipulation will start to muddle the waters. Michael Hazanavicius, director of “The Artist,” is largely unknown, but Harvey Weinstein will have him making rounds on the circuit to cure lack of name recognition. He got Tom Hooper a win last year at the expense of widely renowned David Fincher. If “The Artist” appears headed for a sweep, it will have to take this category too.
Can the “he’s a leading man, not a supporting actor” logic prevail to give George Clooney another Oscar? I think that’s going to be the message from Fox Searchlight, and the starpower may be their only weapon to fend off the irresistible Jean Dujardin in “The Artist.” I suspect it may already be down to these two, and wouldn’t it be exciting if we had another showdown like Penn-Rourke in 2008?
My gut tells me that Streep will take the day here and win her first Oscar in 30 years. The role is baity enough, the time is right, we may have never appreciated Meryl more. But the fact that the film won’t open to audiences until next year makes it hard to gain audience support.
I’m counting on big love for “The Artist” to make the unknown Bérénice Bejo an Academy Award winner. Again, she has to battle unknown status, but her biggest challenger will likely be another unknown, Octavia Spencer in “The Help.” Since “The Artist” is much more likely to take home the big prize, I think Bejo is more likely to ride on her film’s coattails to victory. I’d hate to demean her with the term tack-on, but think Jennifer Connelly winning for “A Beautiful Mind” and Catherine Zeta-Jones winning for “Chicago.” To justify Best Picture, maybe voters will decide it needs an acting win as well.
It’s really a shame that even with the number of really impressive original screenplays this year, the Academy will likely settle for standard fare. I’m still counting on golden boy Woody Allen to pull through here, but if “The Artist” is poised for a sweep, I don’t see how it can not take an award for its writing. Only three films in the past decade have taken Best Picture without a win in the Screenplay category.
Scribe Alexander Payne is an Academy darling, winner in 2004 for his adaptation of “Sideways” as well as nominee in 1999 for his work on the script for “Election.” I think until otherwise informed, it’s not smart to bet against him.
George Clooney’s “
Many times, critics try to write the film history books by declaring movies groundbreaking, innovative, daring, or bold. We note trends, developments, and overall moods in the field of cinema at large. We have little power to affect artistic merit, but we have a great deal of power in affecting how much cultural merit a film has.
For the record, I don’t hate understated movies. I love a movie that can say a lot without actually saying much at all. I can appreciate when the mood or the atmosphere tells the story instead of a 200-page script.
Marshall and the Movies 
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