Have
your party
at
Best Director: The Academy traditionally awards the Best
Director trophy to the individual who helms the Best Picture
winner. Last year was one of those rare exceptions. Steven
Spielberg took home the statue for directing Saving Private
Ryan, which was subsequently upset in the Best Picture cate-
gory by Shakespeare In Love. If I were a betting man, I would
have to wager that we will not see a similar split this year.
First-time director Sam Mendes, the English Jew who
drew raves for his direction of Cabaret on Broadway and
now for his debut feature film, American Beauty, has so
wowed his colleagues that he has already taken home a
Golden Globe and the Directors Guild's top honor. SinCe
the inception of the Directors Guild's Awards in 1949,
only four DGA winners have not gone home with Oscar.
If there are any surprises in this category, it will result
from the Academy entirely snubbing American Beauty in
favor of another contender, likely The Cider House Rules,
and offering its highest honor to its director, Lasse
Hallestrom. Mendes remains the strong favorite.
Best Picture: Let's put aside the films that will not win Best
Picture. Most pundits were surprised to see The Green Mile
even make the final five. By not garnering a nomination for
Best Director, this rather lengthy film's chances to win the
top prize are slirri to none — and slim just left the room.
Although The Insider's direct hit against big tobacco is
surely a popular message within Hollywood, the film has
had trouble building an audience, even after the nomina-
tions were announced.
Although The Sixth Sense has been widely praised for its
unforgettable and unpredictable ending — and don't tell
me you saw it coming — Oscar rarely warms up to
thrillers, especially ones that are considered "commercial."
The studios with the two leading contenders in the
Best Picture contest battled to the finish last year in this
same category.
DreamWorks' Saving Private Ryan was the odds-on
favorite, but was stunned by what many considered to be
an overly aggressive marketing campaign on behalf of the
ultimate winner, Miramax's Shakespeare In Love.
While Miramax would love to pull another upset, its
feel-good film The Cider House Rules has been virtually
shut out of the kudos count the entire season.
In DreamWorks' American Beauty, we have a film that
has completely captured the imagination of Hollywood for
its eerie assault on American suburbia. And after winning
the Golden Globe for Best Drama, this disarmingly modest
tragicomedy strongly solidified its front-runner status. 111
ABC will broadcast the 72nd Annual Academy Awards,
hosted by Billy Crystal, 8:30 p.m. Sunday, March 26,
preceded at 8 p.m. with a live Oscar preview show.
JTA pho to courtesy Sony Pictu res CI
ders that he did not commit. The film was denied several
major nominations over just how true-to-fact the picture
was, but the brouhaha has not affected the appreciation for
Washington's performance. The actor took home the Golden
Globe for.his depiction of Carter.
If Washington is denied the statue in favor of another
nominee, it would surely fall to another previous Oscar
winner, Kevin Spacey. His portrayal of the rebellious subur-
banite Lester Burnham was so textured that he has always
been seen as a serious Oscar contender. With Spacey taking
home the Screen Actors Guild trophy late in the Oscar
derby, most prognosticators are calling this race a toss-up.
Joan Gruffudd and Nia Roberts are the lead characters in
Paul Morrisons Oscar-nominated "Solomon and Gaenor.”
Jewish-Welsh `Romer And Juliet'
O
ne of the films nominated for this year's Oscars
stemmed from an exhibit — and a filmmaker's instinct.
Until he saw a historical display on life in South
Wales several years ago, Paul Morrison never knew that
Jews had lived among the Welsh working class -- let
alone that there were riots against Jews there in the
early part of the 20th century.
But the writer and director of Solomon and Gaenor,
nominee for this yen r's Oscar for Best Foreign Film,
says that once he learned the history, he knew that the
1911 clash between tough Welsh miners and immi-
grant Jewish shop owners would provide a perfect back-
drop for a love story
"I just had the image of the black-coated Jew from
Eastern Europe and these chapel-going Welsh miners,"
says Morrison, who lives in London. "The juxtaposition
of cultures. Both of them being Old Testament people."
The result is Romeo and Juliet -- with a Jewish twist.
The film, scheduled to be released in the United
States in August, focuses on the love affair between the
Jewish, Yiddish-speaking Solomon (Joan Gruffudd) and
the Christian, Welsh-speaking Gaenor (Nia Roberts).
Both families, while portrayed sympathetically, are
depicted as provincial in their desires to keep the
lovers apart. Gaenor's family belongs to a strictly
Protestant community — in one scene, Gaenor is
cast out of the community in a display worthy of
Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.
By contrast, Solomon, who lives in a neighboring val-
ley, is the son of religious, immigrant shopkeepers and
dreams of opening up his own establishment. Uneasy with
his Jewish background, Solomon hides his Jewish immi-
grant identity, claiming to be of English background.
In addition to Solomon and Gaenor's religious strug-
gles, class and gender weigh heavily on the film.
For Gaenor's brother Crad — a poorly educated, physi-
cal man who is willing to use violence to protect Gae.nor
— Solomon is an outsider, not just because he's Jewish but
even as an Englishman who doesn't work in the mines.
"In North London, its experienced as a Jewish film.
In Wales, it's experienced as a Welsh film," says
Morrison, who also is a trained psychotherapist
The film features dialogue in Welsh, English and
Yiddish.
The other nominees for the Best Foreign Film are
Spain's All About My Mother, the Nepalese Caravan,
France's East West and Under the Sun from Sweden.
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