U.S. Critics’ Awards 2007
by Andre Soares
Much has been said about the absence of a front-runner for this year’s Academy Awards. Be that as it may, one film is clearly the favorite among the myriad film critics’ groups in the United States.
Directed and written by Joel and Ethan Coen, No Country for Old Men (left) has been chosen the top film of 2007 by nearly all critics’ societies, associations, and circles in the US — and by the Toronto critics.
What often crosses my mind whenever I look at those award lists is their lack of variety. (That could be the result of the way votes are tabulated; if so, perhaps the rules should be changed.) Generally speaking, the consensus choices of US critics tend to fall within the parameters of mainstream — and almost invariably American — cinema. Within that category, each year a mere handful of films are picked ad nauseam.
For instance, if you looked at the vast majority of critics’ and journalists’ best picture winners of the last several years you’d think there have been at most two award-worthy films released annually: Sideways (10 wins*) and Million Dollar Baby (5 wins) in 2004; Brokeback Mountain (14 wins) in 2005; United 93 (9 wins) and The Departed (8 wins) in 2006; and No Country for Old Men in 2007 (17 wins thus far).
Even in the best foreign-language film category critics tend to pick the same one or two films — perhaps because those are the only non-English-language movies they saw all year. For 2007, Julian Schnabel’s French-made The Diving Bell and the Butterfly has been the top choice in nearly every list.
True, the National Board of Review, and the Los Angeles and New York film critics can’t really be blamed if their picks are similar to everybody else’s as they’re usually the first voting bodies to announced their results. And whether intentionally or not, the San Diego Film Critics Society and the National Society of Film Critics are generally quite good at avoiding the groupthink mentality afflicting other critics’ bodies. But these are the exceptions.
Additionally, even though critics (and bloggers) enjoy dismissing the members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association as starstruck whores, the same could be said of just about every critics’ group in the U.S. as in recent years nearly all winning performers and directors have been well-known names in Hollywood circles. For every prize given to a Vera Farmiga (the LA critics‘ best actress choice in 2005, above) or a Ken Takakura (the San Diego critics‘ best actor choice in 2006) many more went to the likes of Annette Bening, Hilary Swank, Martin Scorsese, Clint Eastwood, Jamie Foxx, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Helen Mirren.
This year, things haven’t been much different. Apart from a handful of surprises — e.g., best actor Frank Langella, a well-known name but an offbeat choice for Starting Out in the Evening, and best supporting actor Vlad Ivanov for 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days — the winners have been the expected suspects: Marion Cotillard (who, considering all the ballyhoo since La Vie en rose opened at the Berlin Film Festival in early ‘07, must have an excellent publicist), George Clooney, Daniel Day-Lewis, Julie Christie, Javier Bardem, Ellen Page. (Amy Adams is the odd woman out in this case. Although Enchanted was a big late-year hit and Adams’ performance was quite well-received, she has been all but ignored by critics’ groups.)
I must add that the above paragraph is not a complaint against any particular choice. I’m simply suggesting that American critics could have gotten off the beaten track here and there to pick, say, Gordon Pinsent in Away from Her, Mirjana Karanovic in Grbavica (right), Sam Riley in Control, Tang Wei in Lust, Caution, Sabine Azéma in Private Fears in Public Places, Anamaria Marinca in 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (the LA critics’ best actress runner-up), or Ulrich Mühe in The Lives of Others. Those are all well-respected performances that have received little-to-no recognition in the U.S. (The aforementioned actors — with the exception of Mühe, who died earlier this year — should all call Marion Cotillard to get her publicist’s contact info. Amy Adams might consider doing the same.)
My suggestion to those who are interested in discovering unpublicized, un-awarded gems is to look at individual critics’ "best of the year" lists. A few days ago, I was surprised to see that there are notable differences between the results of the critics’ opinion polls conducted by indieWIRE and those of the critics’ groups’ awards. In other words, if critical consensus tends to lead to sameness, critical individuality — wherever it exists — will most likely lead to eclecticness. And that’s always a good thing.
* Those are my figures. I may have missed a couple of critics’ choices here and there.
Online Film Critics Society Awards - 2007
Oklahoma Film Critics Circle Awards 2007
St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association Awards 2007
Utah Film Critics Association Awards 2007
Florida Film Critics Circle Awards 2007
Detroit Film Critics Society Awards 2007
Las Vegas Film Critics Society Awards 2007
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