Schindler's List

678 3-24-94

Allow me to speak heresy: Steven Spielberg's E.T. is just as award worthy a movie as Schindler's List. So is Close Encounters of the Third Kind, with Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Ark not far behind. Still, Oscar the snob would rather rust than honor these alleged popcorn flicks, no matter how plainly they reveal Spielberg's genius for humane fantasy. For 20 years, Oscar has ostracized the filmmaker who's built a name to rival Disney's. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Biases kisses up to films that wear serious credentials on their sleeves, where doddering Oscar voters can't miss them. Look for Schindler's List, the three-hour, black-and-white Holocaust drama that scored 12 nominations, to cover Spielberg in glory on the March 21 Oscarcast.

There's no shame in that. Schindler's List, despite blatant compromises, is a rending historical document. But the film's near-certain victory is based less on merit than on the marketing of its ambitious intentions. The academy doesn't judge movies, it weighs them by subject matter. On that basis, Spielberg's epic tips the scales. Oskar Schindler, the German war profiteer played by Best Actor nominee Liam Neeson, saved more than 1,200 Jews by giving them jobs in his factory in Poland. That makes Schindler a saint, and saints are tough competition.

Of course, awards shouldn't be confused with canonization. And size, except in terms of talent, shouldn't be confused with art. But Oscar just doesn't get it. Long and lofty suckers win this golden boy every time. Academy voters traditionally side with the noble gesture over disreputable behavior or liberating wit. So it's Dances With Wolves over GoodFellas in the '90s, Driving Miss Daisy over Do the Right Thing in the '80s, Patton over M*A*S*H in the '70s, A Man for All Seasons over Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? in the '60s, Ben-Hur over Some Like It Hot in the '50s, Going My Way over Double Indemnity in the '40s, Cavalcade over King Kong in the '30s and Wings over Metropolis in the '20s.

Nobody knows these facts of Oscar life better than Spielberg. In 1982, the year of E.T., he lost to Richard Attenborough's pompous Gandhi. Now it's Spielberg's turn to go the virtuous-artist route. Though his Jurassic Park is on its way to a worldwide gross of $1 billion and the top of the box-office heap, Spielberg plays straight to the academy's prejudices: "Jurassic Park didn't challenge me a 10th as much as Schindler's List did," he says. "I can't look at movies the same way."

To insiders, this is harmless promotion. What isn't so harmless is the manipulating Spielberg does within the movie. In a much criticized climactic scene, Spielberg distorts the facts to show Schindler breaking down in a speech to the Jewish factory workers. The episode never happened. Schindler was not a man to wear his emotions openly. Though the scene rings shockingly false, it fills what Spielberg discerns as the need for a big heroic moment.

Will academy voters care about Spielberg's lapse into fraudulent melodrama or Frank Rich's New York Times criticism that Spielberg has made the Jewish characters as "generic" and "forgettable" as "the chorus in a touring company of Fiddler on the Roof"? Don't bet on it. Oscar, Hollywood's top PR point man, is expert at putting on blinders. Spielberg has given the academy a movie that confers dignity and importance on the industry. He's playing the game the academy's way. That earns him sentiment -- a close second to nobility on the academy's preferred qualifications list. In 1985, Spielberg's glossy Color Purple received II nominations but none for the man who directed it. The snub was crushing; so were two later box-office disappointments -- the gooey Always and the god-awful Hook. In short, Spielberg has donned the hair shirt and paid his dues. It's time for Hollywood to embrace its prodigal son.

Schindler's List is such a juggernaut that academy members needn't bother to see the film to vote for it. Since Spielberg hasn't made videotapes of Schindler's List available, as is the current custom, academy pods may find the vote-on-faith method preferable to actually dragging their asses out to a screening. The attitude is, Spielberg's been ignored long enough -- what's the problem?

The problem is there were better movies than Schindler's List released in 1993, and some of them have even been nominated. Take The Piano, a low-budget, independent film about a mute Scottish mail-order bride (Holly Hunter) transported to the wilds of New Zealand. Written and directed by Jane Campion, The Piano has already won Campion directing prizes from the New York and Los Angeles film critics. She's Spielberg's chief competition. But he can rest easy. Campion is a woman director, something the academy has been dodging throughout its 66-year history, except for the surprising nomination of Italy's Lina Wertmuller (Seven Beauties) in 1976. Even those in the academy boys' club who might still resent Spielberg would be loath to vote for, yikes, a female!

The Piano has something more damaging working against it -- originality. It's not history like Schindler's List or biography like In the Name of the Father, which details the efforts of Northern Ireland's Gerry Conlon (Daniel Day-Lewis) to prove himself innocent of an IRA bombing. It's not based on an acclaimed novel like The Remains of the Day, with Anthony Hopkins as a repressed butler blindly serving a politically naive master against a backdrop of war. And it doesn't have the cachet of a hit TV series like The Fugitive, with Harrison Ford chasing the one-armed man who killed his wife. The Piano is a product of Campion's vibrant imagination.

Academy voters can't figure what to make of this raw little movie. They're not alone. Even President Clinton has weighed in: "I don't know what the fuss is about," he said. "The Piano was just OK." And this from a White House that urged every American to see Schindler's List.

The message is clear: Make movies larger than life. What gets lost in the process are brave, questing movies that tackle reality on a nonheroic scale. When Robert Altman gets nominated for directing Short Cuts, but the film is ignored, the implication is that the academy doesn't want to see fallible human beings struggling to understand themselves and the world they live in. When Mike Leigh's incendiary Naked, with a career-making performance from David Thewlis as a homeless Londoner, is ignored, the implication is that the academy doesn't want to be confronted with the waste of intelligent life we see every day on our streets. When the Hughes brothers' Menace II Society, a look at violence in an L.A. hood, is ignored, the implication is that the academy doesn't want to face social problems unless they are comfortably set in the past with villains vanquished and solutions found.

In my opinion, these films -- each done without compromise -- are at least the equal of Schindler's List. That the academy disregards them is not just a slight; it's a disturbing sign of things to come. Oscar nominations are just what these small films need to survive. My annual rant isn't meant as vindictive sniping; it's a wake-up call to the academy: Use your power to, give voice to the mavericks who celebrate challenge instead of complacency.

Oscar rates a few cheers this year. For the first time in ages, the Best Picture category doesn't contain one laughable embarrassment. There's no Scent of a Woman or Prince of Tides or Gbost or Field of Dreams or Fatal Attraction. Kenneth Branagh's Shakespearean hamathon, Much Ado About Nothing, was justly ignored. Oscar even opened the door to rock in the Best Song category by nominating the music of Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young for Philadelphia. Now that Oscar has caught up with the '70s, there might be a chance for Kurt Cobain or Dr. Dre by the time of Home Alone II.

It's hard letting Oscar completely off the hook. Where's raging bull Martin Scorsese, who dropped the f word and the violence and practically got into a corset to direct the rapturous Age of Innocence? His radiant star Michelle Pfeiffer, whose performance ranks with her best work, was also snubbed. And for what? Debra Winger repeating her Terms of Endearment deathbed scene in Shadowlands? Shame.

Comedy got bagged, as usual, including Bill Murray in the ingenious Groundbog Day and Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in the intriguing Manhattan Murder Mystery. Robin Williams even dolled up in drag for Mrs. Doubtfire to no avail.

Other glaring omissions include Denzel Washington, whose performance in Philadelphia is at least the equal of that of his nominated co-star, Tom Hanks. Jeff Bridges, superb in Fearless, confirmed his rep as America's most unappreciated actor. And where are last year's victors? Unforgiven winner Clint Eastwood got the brush for directing A Perfect World and for giving what is arguably his best performance in In the Line of Fire (his striking costar Rene Russo was also snubbed). Scent of a Woman winner Al Pacino made no headway with Carlito's Way (his scene-stealing costar Sean Penn didn't, either).

New faces had it worse. No notice was taken of Ashley Judd's auspicious debut in Ruby in Paradise or David Thewlis' career breakthrough in Naked. Ditto Embeth Davidtz (Schindler's List), Chazz Palminteri (A Bronx Tale) and Gwyneth Paltrow (Flesh and Bone). And while we're talking rejection, how about the entire casts of Short Cuts and The Joy Luck Club?

The list goes on. There's no mention of Michael Ballhaus' cinematography for The Age of Innocence or Geraldine Peroni's editing of Short Cuts or Michael Nyman's original score for The Piano. Schindler's List, natch, is nominated in all those categories.

Oscar removes the blinkers only when another chance arises to play noble. That means a likely Best Actor win for Tom Hanks, portraying an AIDS patient in Jonathan Demme's simplistically earnest Philadelphia. Though Hopkins and Day-Lewis gave superior performances, the academy can hardly resist showing off its social awareness. Otherwise, look for Schindler's to dominate Oscar's list. Even academy court jester Billy Crystal will be replaced as host by a star Spielberg made in The Color Purple: Whoopi Goldberg. It's not known yet whether Goldberg will follow Crystal's lead in doing song parodies of the nominated films. But one tune truly fits the occasion as the 66th Academy Awards turns into Spielberg's pay-back time: "I Only Have Eyes for You."