The winner of practically every precursor and no Best Picture Oscar, who said AMPAS members don’t have a mind of their own, or don’t they after all?
Did Brokeback Mountain lose because Hollywood denizens genuinely preferred a film about contemporary Los Angles to one they euphemistically dismissed as one about “gay cowboys” or was it homophobia? Was the joint influence of Roger Ebert and Oprah Winfrey pushing for a Crash win too strong to ignore or was it the fact that the practically forgotten Crash was the first film out with screeners that put it on a level playing field with Brokeback Mountain?
I suppose we’ll never know but the fact that Brokeback Mountain did win Oscars for Ang Lee’s direction as well as for its screenplay and score, does seem to indicate it came awfully close to winning the big prize over a film that won only two other Oscars.
To be fair, Brokeback Mountain did not make a clean sweep of the major precursors, but on the other hand, Crash was nowhere in sight.
Good Night, and Good Luck won the National Board of Review and Capote the National Society of Film Critics while Brokeback Mountain took the New York Film Critics, the Los Angeles Film Critics and The Broadcast Critics awards as well as the Golden Globe – Drama and just about every regional critics award out there. Walk the Line won the Golden Globe – Musical or Comedy.
David Cronenberg won the National Society of Film Critics award for Best Director for A History of Violence while Ang Lee took everything else for Brokeback Mountain.
Ang Lee’s road to Oscar glory was pretty much sealed when he won the Directors Guild award over Crash’s Paul Haggis; Good Night, and Good Luck’s George Clooney; Capote’s Bennett Miller and Munich’s Steven Spielberg.
In a rare show of unanimity, all five directors were nominated by the Academy as were their films for Best Picture.
That being the case there weren’t too many high profile films that were shut out of Best Picture contention, but there were certainly some with A History of Violence (2 nominations, no wins); The Constant Gardener (four nominations, one win) and Walk the Line (five nominations, one win) coming quickly to mind.
If those three were to be entries nos. 6, 7 and 8 in a ten nominee scenario, what would the other two have been?
My guess would be Pride & Prejudice (four nominations, no wins) and Cinderella Man (three nominations, no wins), even though personally I would have preferred The Squid and the Whale and The Family Stone or even Match Point.
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