and the Award goes to...

the Classics!

I know some people said that Billy Crystal looked like a reanimated corpse at the Oscars (which incidentally makes me think of my new hero Juanita (c/o thebloggess.com)), but he really did an adequate job. Aside from one unnecessary joke about someone's weight loss and some poorly executed impersonations, his jokes were mostly funny and relatively decent. He wasn't as funny as John Stewart or Steve Martin, but he made me laugh and his opening sketch was sort of funny.

What made this year's Academy Awards really great were the winners themselves. Christopher Plummer comes in first place with my favorite acceptance speech (including something like a pick-up line for the Oscar and an admission that he was guilty of counting his chickens before they hatched). I haven't seen "Beginners" yet--it's on my list for the next month, along with Hugo and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy-- but I feel with his career it must have been a worthy win, and nothing felt better than his sincere thanks to the people who made it possible, his nod to a daughter who makes him proud, and his lovely tribute to his wife. His speech made me laugh, cry, and want to watch it again, just like any great film.

A close second was Octavia's Spencer run away hit of a speech--literally. The woman seemed so bewildered that she just cried, rattled off all the thanks she could, and then walked away, still crying. After watching her in "the Help", I felt like she deserved the win, but the obvious shock she felt at winning just made it that much better. Her tears made me want to laugh, her clear excitement and disbelief made me want to cry. I love watching the Oscars for the joy, the speeches, and the overall basking in what I consider heaven on earth-- the movies.

That love of film was what made me so overjoyed at the winners of best Actor, Director, and Film. "The Artist" was a pitch perfect homage to film and classic Hollywood. Jean DuJardin, who brings to mind the result of some sort of magical combination of Tyrone Power and Errol Flynn, has the kind of poetic charm that can woo an audience with the lift of an eye brow. While most actors need some kind of megawatt smile, DuJardin only needs a half smile to say a thousand beautiful words. In "the Artist", costumes, half smiles, dance routines and timely newspapers were used to create an atmosphere bringing us back to the Silent Film era. Jean DuJardin, though, was all they needed to bring to life the sheer star power of those old movies. A grin, a wink, a nod of his head were eloquent enough to speak to his magnetism. A sad look, slumped shoulders, and a twitch of the lips spoke to his despair as the Silent era screeched to a halt.

For "the Artist" to win, there had to have been a lot of people out there who really love film. For me, film is a refuge, a beautiful, brilliant place where people speak with eloquence, be it audible or merely implied. Film is a liberation of the human mind in a form that we can all share. I can't remember my first movie --just the way they made me feel in my earliest memories. I don't know how old I was when I first saw an early film -- just a girl in a pretty dress dancing. I remember how it looked like an old photograph, but moving, magically. I knew then what movies were, yet this still felt groundbreaking. Imagine those first people, seeing moving pictures for the first time, understanding that life could be reflected in so many more ways than what we'd previously thought. Imagine the first time someone realized that you could use the new medium to tell stories, or the first time they made a cartoon and understood that they could make myths and fairy tales manifest.

"The Artist" felt like a love letter, as much to film itself as to the movie goers. It seemed to me sweeter than all but a note from my fiance, who watched it with me. He said that watching me watch the movie, I looked so happy I could barely contain myself, and he was right. It was a revelation to me that there still existed in society a sort of nostalgia that frequently seems mine alone. I forget sometimes that the world is much larger than my office or circle of friends, at least in the sense that not everyone thinks as the people around me do. I forget that I'm not alone in my love of film, or of what was once (and still is) great. Great innovation does not always invalidate preexisting art--it expands upon it too. "The Artist" paid such a tender compliment to the universe that I love, it reminded me that there are enough people out there that I don't have to wait for a sequel that looks adequate or a rehashed or remade idea that's been done to death. Instead, I can look forward to something great, something new, something that loves the old but embraces the future.

Maybe it seems so relevant to me because I'm getting married this year, and my fiance understands my love of the old, and my dreams for the future. We don't have everything in common, but this basic aspect of who I am is so deeply entrenched in my love of movies, family, history and art that it means more to me that he understand it than us sharing hobbies. So when we watched it together, and he understood its effectiveness and elegance, I knew that, for me, no other film could deserve to win over this. "The Artist" made me laugh out loud, cry unreservedly, and feel overwhelmed and relieved all within 100 minutes. It was exactly what a movies should be -- indeed, everything a movie should be.

I love how movies have perpetuated social changes, acceptance, education, and progress. I appreciate that sometimes movies are just about pure emotion, or story telling. But a movie in love with movies seems so hilariously narcissistic, so realistically heartbreaking, and so clearly made by a person in love with an entire art form is an exquisite thing to behold. I could see other movies winning best picture, but I couldn't imagine them deserving it over "the Artist". At this point I might be babbling, but to say "I love the movies as they were" and then to show that movies are the most eloquent way to show the human condition, all within a movie, seems to me the most evolved form of the art. When the director got up and thanked Billy Wilder three times, it felt like the most honest kind of hero worship--direct, to the point, and imitative to the point of flattery. I supposed I should calm down about now, but I'm still kind of on a high from my pick winning, from the amazing speech by the best supporting Actor, best Actor, best Director, from the overwhelmed best supporting Actress, the comfortably loved best Actress, from the man who thanked everyone who had been born or would be born, and from all the other people who expressed their joy and appreciation for the awards and for the charmed lives they now lead.

I could easily complain that I wish I had their jobs, or that I wish I could be a part of something as outstanding as "the Artist", but I prefer to enjoy the movies themselves, and once a year watch my own version of the superbowl. The rest of the year, I can bask in the love some people thankfully have for film. I can watch "the Artist", "Gosford Park", "Pan's Labyrinth", "Hot Fuzz", and "the Princess Bride". I can watch "the Ghost and Mrs Muir", "Dave", "Philadelphia Story" or "Indiscreet". I can watch everything that is great in film, and everything that pays tribute to it. I can go to a movie and leave feeling like I've been in a day spa, and I can buy a movie and surround myself with the joy of film when I'm sick or feeling down. I can share movies with my friends and loved ones, and I can watch when people get together and acknowledge great work. Positive reinforcement seems to keep great films in production, and I'll watch every year if it means that next year there might be another "Good Night and Good Luck", "To Kill a Mockingbird", or "Field of Dreams".

One thing I loved about the Academy Awards this year was when Billy Crystal quoted "Field of Dreams", applying the logic about people's love of baseball to their similar love of movies. It was a well chosen quotation, and I'll do about the same...

People go to the movies because it's something solid and good from their past that remains. When they go to the movies, "it'll be as if they dipped themselves in magic waters. The memories will be so thick they'll have to brush them away from their faces... It reminds of us of all that once was good and it could be again. Oh... people will come Ray. People will most definitely come." Aside from his lovely impression of James Earl Jones' stellar voice, Crystal's quote pick was apt-- as long as directors, producers, writers, actors, crews and artists keep creating films, people will go see them. The Oscars are a shiny, fun way to remind some of them why they do what they do, and they're a way for me to feel secure in thinking that they will keep building these films. So well done on another fun and satisfying Academy Awards, Hollywood. And please, keep the great movies coming -- I will most definitely want to go.