For the second year in a row, small has won big at the Oscars. Katherine Bigelow may have made history by becoming the first woman in 82 years of the Oscar awards to win the Best Director prize, but her war story The Hurt Locker is a very small film, low on budget, low on box office.
Ever since its low-key debut at the Venice film festival in 2008, it has got many awards for its chilling/thrilling account of an American bomb disposal squad in Iraq (or could be anywhere, actually), but not met with box office success. Made on a small budget of $16 million, it has only raked in $21 million at the box office. The film, which also won Best Picture, elbowed out 9 other films, including ex-husband James Cameron?s 3D sci-fi thriller Avatar, made on a budget of $230 million. Avatar has grossed over $2 billion at the box office. But at the Oscars, it had to be satisfied with just 3 technical awards. Also, not surprisingly, it picked up one for cinematography too. Small did win big this time. Remember, at one point Bigelow didn?t have hopes of finding a distributor.
In many ways, The Hurt Locker has had a run to the Oscars similar to the one made by last year?s big, small winner Slumdog Millionaire. Bigelow?s film almost went straight to DVD. But a small-time producer/distributor Summit Entertainment got into the act. Even Slumdog Millionaire was rescued by Fox Searchlight just before its premiere. But Danny Boyle?s made-in-Mumbai, rags-to-riches story made on a modest budget of $15 million had tremendous box office once it got word-of-mouth buzz after premiering at the Toronto film festival. It ended a dream run with Golden Globes and Oscar glory, grossing $77 million worldwide and still counting.
Will the Bigelow film?s box office improve? Well, Best Picture Oscars generally set the cash register ringing, especially with releases in the rest of the world, DVD sales and TV premieres. Only a handful of Best Picture films at the Oscars haven?t crossed the $100 million mark, including the Coen brothers? No Country for Old Men and Steven Spielberg?s Schindler?s List. When the Coen brothers won the best picture award in 2007, Joel Coen thanked all the people out there ?for letting us continue to play in our corner of the sandbox?.
Finally, it seemed, the Academy was taking note of films purely on merit. And even when it had snubbed Ang Lee?s Brokeback Mountain, the Oscar nomination did wonders for the film around the world.
But really, the Oscars need to do more for small films, foreign films. They also need reforms on several other fronts, not least the way they choose to recognise stalwarts. Two examples come to mind. Martin Scorsese never got the Best Director nod for his best films (Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, Aviator), but got one for The Departed, a wonderful watch but a remake and surely not his best.
This year, Jeff Bridges got his first Oscar for acting in a clich?d film called Crazy Heart?which incidentally didn?t find place in the Best Picture nomination list?when he could have won for so many in the past, not least The Big Lebowski. Sandra Bullock, who won Best Actress for The Blind Side, will perhaps add meatier roles to her career with the win, but the film is too sugary to have a long shelf life.
As for small vs big, by expanding the list to 10 for the Best Picture awards this time, the Academy booted out, perhaps not unwittingly, many small films including A Single Man, Road, The Last Station and The Messenger?to name just a few that have been rated highly by critics, but have simply not been watched by a wider audience. Instead, box office successes like the animation film Up, Quentin Tarantino?s Inglorious Bastards and Cameron?s Avatar, which don?t really need an Oscar push for sales, found place in the list, ostensibly to push up the falling ratings of the Oscar show.
But if the Oscars are about honouring the best films in the world, they must widen horizons to take in the best in the world, and not search for films with box office glory. As for the Indian no-show at the Oscars this year, things are back to square one after Boyle and AR Rahman and company?s glorious run last year. After those wins, everyone was talking about how Hollywood had finally met Bollywood. Well, nothing much has happened on that front after Oscar night last February, at least not on the ground.
For Indian filmmakers too, there?s perhaps a lesson in Bigelow?s Oscar glory: make films that ring true, and the rest will follow. Then again, the two films that should have been sent for the Oscars from India, Anurag Kashyap?s Black Friday and Neeraj Pandey?s A Wednesday (both small films), never got there, for whatever reason. But that?s another story.