All's fair in the Oscar race!

All's fair in the Oscar race!

At the Oscars on Sunday, Sam Mendes's portrait of suburban angst, American Beauty walked away with most of the major awards. In his acceptance speech Mendes said modestly, "I'm a little bit overwhelmed. I want to say huge respect, first of all to my fellow nominees. It's an honor to be in your company, genuinely. It's an honor to be here."

The afternoon papers have subsequently extended the story, giving the exclusion of Sixth Sense from the awards racial overtones, linking it to Shekhar Kapur's exclusion last year from the list of nominees for Best Director, as well as his Elizabeth's failure to pick up any major awards.

The fact is that Hollywood recognizes the awards as a means to further sell their product -- the stamp of Oscar nomination alone, let alone winning, guarantees an increase in revenues for the studio involved. Smaller films without A-list star power benefit the most from the recognition by the Academy, simply because without stars to sell the picture, the awards are the next best thing.

So naturally it follows that there is a lot of lobbying that goes on behind the scenes at the awards. Currently there are two studios that are at the head of the pack in terms of being the most aggressive in pursuing an all out campaign to win Oscars for their films. Billy Crystal even made a joke about their campaigning in the course of that evening.

The first is Miramax, run by Harvey and Bob Weinstein, which pulled off last year's Shakespeare In Love sweep, and also successfully pushed Roberto Benigni's Life is Beautiful for the two major awards of Best Actor and Best Foreign Language Film. Both films were smaller by Hollywood standards, but their box-office success is in no small measure due to the awards.

The second is Steven Spielberg's Dreamworks, which one year ago had Saving Private Ryan walk away with upto five major honours, including Best Director and Best Cinematography, and this year they were behind the American Beauty triumph. This film is once again smaller than the average Hollywood film, with neither Kevin Spacey nor Annette Benning the kind of names that draw crowds, and the themes explored in the film are ultimately quite dark and unconventional compared to the standard fare that the industry produces. So after have taken the brave decision to produce such an unconventional film, the studio pulled out all stops in finding a way to market their product. This meant garnering critical acclaim, then pushing the film at the Golden Globes, and then going after the member of the Academy, so that they would have Oscars in hand, to help them sell more movie tickets.

American Beauty's triumph does nothing to take away from the merit of Sixth Sense, which remains a superb feat of storytelling craft. It was also by far the most popular film of last year, and the ninth on the all-time list, having collected over $640 million dollars already, in addition to being voted one of the top ten favorite films of all-time as polled by imdb.com, one of the Net's most popular movie sites. The only other film to be in both box-office and viewer's choice top ten lists is Star Wars, which only made it because of a successful re-release twenty years after its original launch. Testament enough to the director's ability to put forward his vision without compromising the film's universal appeal.

So was there a grand conspiracy hatched against Indians by the Hollywood establishment? Probably not. I think as Mendes said, to be in the company of such talent and such humility, is rewarding enough.