Love conquers all?

For Oscar this year, play's the thing

by Peter Keough

So they saved the guy. Enough already.

More than the usual degree of ambivalence pervades this year's Academy Awards. Despite its early lead, Saving Private Ryan shows signs of weakening after hitting the beaches of our collective guilt for the past seven months -- a span roughly corresponding with the period of our collective political shame that ended with the president's acquittal.

Thank, in part, the Weinstein brothers at Miramax Films, who have mobilized behind their two Best Film nominees, Life Is Beautiful and Shakespeare in Love. The former -- along with Terrence Malick's ponderous tone poem The Thin Red Line, could split Saving Private Ryan's war-reparations vote -- to the benefit of the latter. Even more than penance, Hollywood pushes redemption; as much as it loves wallowing in mea culpas over our ingratitude toward the sacrifices of "the greatest generation" (as Tom Brokaw's bestseller puts it), Oscar prefers to honor its own capacity for transforming guilt and trauma into purging entertainment.

So why not Life Is Beautiful, which dares to suggest that make-believe can overcome the worst nightmare in history? No doubt Roberto Benigni's film will win the Best Foreign Language Award and probably more, but I think many Academy voters will be uncomfortable singling out a non-Hollywood film as representative of what Hollywood does best, particularly one that has been charged with making light of such a devastating subject (Best Documentary nominee and probable winner The Last Days should add to that discomfort).

Shakespeare in Love has no such baggage: not only are the woes it transfigures commonplace -- writer's block, illicit love, murder -- but they are fictitious and 400 years in the past. They are also the kinds of troubles the average viewer endures, and by showing how all the thousand shocks that flesh is heir to can be the stuff that Bardic genius and feel-good entertainment are made on, Shakespeare congratulates its audience, itself, and the process of studio filmmaking in general. A Best Picture Oscar for Shakespeare will be Hollywood's acknowledgment that it's in love with itself.

So too will be the Best Actress Award for Gwyneth Paltrow. Not only is her character ultimately the invention of Shakespeare's Bard -- in drag on the stage, his Romeo; undressed in bed, his love object; and in his imagination, the inchoate Viola of Twelfth Night -- but Paltrow herself is Hollywood's invention, a glamorous, shimmering cipher in the mode of such previous icons as Jean Harlow, Marilyn Monroe, and Grace Kelly.

True, Oscar has always had a soft spot for the dedicated mom with a terminal disease (Meryl Streep in One True Thing), transgressive non-moms with a terminal disease (Emily Watson in Hilary and Jackie), and aging non-moms who discover their maternal role too late (Fernanda Montenegro in Central Station). But this is the year for play rather than platitudes. As for Cate Blanchett's regal turn in Elizabeth, she is, as her character admits, too much her own woman; instead look for Judi Dench, bestowing her queenly approval on the art of mummery in Shakespeare, to take the royal honors as Best Supporting Actress.

The Winners? Best Film: Shakespeare in Love Best Director: Steven Spielberg Best Actor: Roberto Benigni Best Actress: Gwyneth Paltrow Best Supporting Actor: James Coburn Best Supporting Actress: Judi Dench

Best Actor poses a problem. Although Tom Hanks puts in one of his best performances in Ryan, the Academy might find it a little thin to pin a third Oscar to, even though the role epitomizes the sainted fathers we uneasily acknowledge now at the end of their century. Ian McKellen's arch and rueful James Whale in Gods and Monsters also fits that bill, as the gay progenitor of Frankenstein, but not as the would-be seducer of Brendan Frasier.

If not the self-sacrificing father, why not the grateful son? That would disqualify Nick Nolte's sad, caustic performance as the lumbering victim of patriarchal abuse in Affliction and Edward Norton's posturing tour de force as a latter-day stormtrooper for the Fatherland in American History X. Which leaves the Best Actor Oscar to Roberto Benigni as the doltish dad who convinces his kid that genocide is just a game and millions of viewers that Life Is Beautiful and father knows best.

Or does he? The supporting acting awards are often an outlet for minority opinion, and this year the nominees reflect badly on fathers and father images for the most part (including Billy Bob Thornton as the unfortunate son in A Simple Plan). James Coburn plays the father from Hell in Affliction, an epic performance that should get the gold, especially since it marks the veteran actor's return to the screen after years of hardship.

He should just beat out Robert Duvall -- who really should have won Best Actor last year for The Apostle -- in A Civil Action as the cagy barrister who outclasses his upstart opponent and surrogate son John Travolta in a variation on The Great Santini played in a different court. As for Ed Harris as the diabolical director who sires The Truman Show and Geoffrey Rush as the venal producer in Shakespeare in Love, the Academy might find these portrayals too close to home.

Steven Spielberg, on the other hand, is too close to home to ignore, and given the weak field, he should win Best Director handily. Although the Academy might not crown the film he made to honor his father's generation, there's no mistaking who's the head of the family now.