Beauty contest

An all-American Oscar

by Peter Keough

An earnest film about life, death, and duty set during World War II goes up against a comedy about hopeless love, social constraints, and the redeeming power of art. A grudge match brews between DreamWorks and Miramax for the coveted gold statuette. Saving Private Ryan versus Shakespeare in Love? The battle between Miramax's The Cider House Rules and DreamWorks' American Beauty looks like a reprise of last year's contest, and though the outcome will be similar, a different studio will be rewarded.

Cider House's chances went sour a couple of weeks ago when American Beauty swept both the Directors Guild and the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Sam Mendes, the first-time director of Beauty, led an undistinguished pack of nominees to win the DG prize; SAG named Kevin Spacey Best Actor and Annette Bening Best Actress and gave Beauty's cast the Best Ensemble Award. Since 1949, the Directors Guild's choice has been Oscar's on all but four occasions; and in its five-year history every one of SAG's Best Actors and Actresses has taken home the Oscar statuette as well. So Beauty's chances of winning big on Sunday night look rosy.

For a while, it did seem that Cider House might rule. The Miramax machine tried its best, and indeed that may be the problem: after a decade of domination by the pushy pseudo-independent studio, perhaps Hollywood has decided to start off the new millennium fresh. As for Cider's political agenda, if the presidential candidates aren't showing much interest in the death penalty, racism, homophobia, abortion, corporate corruption, or dead people, why should the Motion Picture Academy?

Peter picks Best Film: American Beauty Best Director: Sam Mendes Best Actor: Kevin Spacey Best Actress: Annette Bening Best Supporting Actor: Michael Caine Best Supporting Actress: Angelina Jolie

In terms of Hollywood's internal politics, Beauty makes sense. Last year saw yet another resurgence in independent filmmaking, and Hollywood responded to 1999's fresh ideas with its usual half-hearted conciliation: the Academy snubbed more subversive films like Three Kings, Being John Malkovich, and The Limey while embracing the safer Beauty. Although ultimately conventional, Beauty feels original, and Hollywood likes the way the film indulges deviance just enough to provoke a vicarious thrill and then punishes it, restoring a chastened status quo. So I see American Beauty winning Best Picture, with Mendes as Best Director, despite his being a British tyro who, it's reported, had to rely heavily on his cinematographer. A director of greater stature might have won for Cider House, but Lasse Hallström is no Steven Spielberg.

Best Actor is complicated by the Hurricane factor. The Academy would no doubt like to belie its lily-white image by rewarding Denzel Washington for his muscular performance as wrongly convicted boxer Rubin Carter. But the absence of any other major nomination for Hurricane bespeaks Hollywood's concern over the film's shaky facts and (relatively) radical politics. A pumped-up Kevin Spacey is a less threatening figure, and the opponents he's up against -- a despiriting job, an emasculating wife -- are less controversial.

The Best Actress favorite also faces a contender with political baggage. Hollywood loves it when girls will be boys -- just look how well Gwyneth did in Shakespeare in Love. So why not Hilary Swank as a young woman who poses as a man in Boys Don't Cry? For one thing, this is a true story, and the sordid brutality of Brandon Teena's fate is far less glamorous than the artistic apotheosis of Paltrow's character. And unlike Paltrow's muse, who takes on male trappings but submits to male genius, Swank's rebel seeks the power as well as the appearance of men. A safer choice is Bening's termagant in Beauty, who exceeds her role as housewife by pursuing a career and committing adultery and is appropriately punished.

When it comes to Best Supporting Oscars, nothing is clear-cut -- even SAG predicts these winners less than half the time. This year, though, I think the guild might be on target. SAG winner Angelina Jolie, with her charismatic performance as a bad girl who is ultimately punished in Girl, Interrupted, should beat out Samantha Morton's mute doormat in Sweet and Lowdown, Catherine Keener's unredeemed bitch in Being John Malkovich, Toni Collette's beleaguered mom in The Sixth Sense, and Chloë Sevigny's bewildered teenager in love in Boys Don't Cry.

And SAG winner Michael Caine as the ether-addicted abortionist in The Cider House Rules will allow the Academy to cast its timid pro-choice vote. Michael Clarke Duncan's black idiot saint in The Green Mile would be a candidate for a racial consolation prize except that the role makes Hattie MacDaniel's Mammy from Gone with the Wind look visionary. Jude Law hasn't a prayer from The Talented Mr. Ripley, despite displaying his assets in the bathtub scene. And Tom Cruise's "Respect the cock!" tirade from Magnolia should serve him as well as his "Penis!" diatribe from Born on the Fourth of July did.

Caine's toughest competition would seem to be young Haley Joel Osment for The Sixth Sense. The Academy might give Osment the Oscar just to keep him from bursting into tears the way he did when he lost the Golden Globe. Or voters could be worrying that, when Osment looks out at an Academy that yet again has denied its best and brightest, the dead people he sees might be themselves.