Gay romance ‘Brokeback Mountain’ tops Oscar bets

By Arthur Spiegelman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Gay and political films are
dominating this year’s Academy Awards race with some experts
expecting that Oscar will wind up wearing pink, either for
left-leaning politics or sexual preference.

As Hollywood starts its annual awards season leading to the
March 5 Oscars, key front-runners in main categories are either
gay-themed or political films, with Ang Lee’s “Brokeback
Mountain,” a drama of love between cowboys, leading the pack in
the all-important best picture race.

“It could be the gay Oscars this year because gay-themed
movies could win almost all the major awards,” said Tom
O’Neill, show business awards columnist for The Envelope.Com.,
referring to the sudden dominance “Brokeback Mountain” has
gained so early in the race.

“‘Brokeback’ is going to be hard to beat. Rarely do we have
this kind of award consensus for a movie, and its director
(Taiwan’s Ang Lee) is long overdue for an Oscar,” O’Neill said.

“Brokeback,” the first gay romance to make a bid for
mainstream respectability, has already won the top awards
handed out by critics in New York and Los Angeles and copped
seven nominations for the January 16 Golden Globes, often a key
indicator as to which way the Oscar wind might be blowing.

As for political films — the field is crowded with
potential winners: “Munich,” “Good Night, and Good Luck,”
“Syriana,” and “The Constant Gardener.”

Many experts predict that “Brokeback’s” toughest
competition could come from either George Clooney’s “Goodnight,
and Good Luck,” a steely-eyed examination of the McCarthy era,
or “Munich,” Steven Spielberg’s study of the price Israel paid
for its reprisals for the murder of its athletes at the 1972
Olympics.

DON’T COUNT “MUNICH” OUT

Before the race began and before anyone had a chance to see
Spielberg’s movie, it was being touted as the odds-on favorite
to snare the best picture award, namely because Spielberg is a
revered figure in Hollywood and had chosen to make his most
serious movie since “Schindler’s List.”

The film is an examination of the cost of fighting
terrorism and whether a democracy can use methods like targeted
assassinations without destroying or shaming itself.

The film was hit by a backlash as soon as it was shown to
Jewish American and Israeli groups, who argue that Spielberg
ignored arguments that Israel was justified in using the
methods it does in the war against terrorists.

New Republic literary editor Leon Wieseltier wrote that
“‘Munich’ prefers a discussion of counterterrorism to a
discussion of terrorism; or it thinks that they are the same
discussion. This is an opinion that only people who are not
responsible for the safety of other people can hold.”

David Poland of Movie City News said that “Munich” has to
overcome the impression that it is anti-Israeli and possibly
can do this “because the anti-Israeli accusation is a
neoconservative one and not a mainstream Jewish one.”

He noted that at screenings at the headquarters of the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, whose members give
out the Oscars, “Munich” was well received.

Poland, himself, is optimistic, predicting that “‘Munich
will still win the Academy Award. I think ‘Brokeback’ will
suffer when it goes into a wider viewing.”

Other films with gay characters or gender-challenging
themes that have won prominence this year include “Capote,”
thanks to its standout performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman as
writer Truman Capote, and “TransAmerica,” with Felicity Huffman
winning rave reviews as a man on the verge of completing a sex
change.

In this movie, she’s a woman playing a man about to become
a woman and if that sounds easy, rest assured it isn’t.

“Brokeback Mountain” is also doing well at the box office
– even though it is only in 69 theaters, it was last week’s
eighth-highest-grossing movie.