My daughter and I saw "Winter's Bone" yesterday. It was depressing, and not that great a movie, from my point of view. Maybe Jennifer Lawrence and John Hawkes deserve the nominations, especially the later, but I'm not entirely convinced. Why wasn't Matt Damon up for supporting actor for "True Grit" or best actor for "Hereafter".
I was saying to a friend the other day, it's interesting that two films about psychics were prominent this last year - first "Hereafter" and second, "Biutiful". With both Matt Damon's and Javier Bardem's characters, there is a loneliness and sorrow attached to their gift, and a complex turmoil about serving others, benefiting financially themselves, and the overwhelming isolation they feel because they can "see things". Not since "The Sixth Sense" has this subject been dealt with delicately and with insight. In each case, the psychic is a representation of the aloneness that people can feel, when they are too empathetic and have not set their boundaries safely enough for themselves. These people are not jokes, as is Whoopi Goldberg in "Ghost" . These people seem real, and share our human dilemma. These people are unable to avoid death and its effects, unlike most of us in Western cultures, and they face what we refuse to face. Therefore, they seem fully alive, in a way that few are. Damon's character ends up being reconnected to another in a mutually beneficial way. Bardem's character has always been deeply connected, to his family and all beings. He dies, but the viewer believes his caring and legacy will live on in his children and the people who's lives he's touched.
So Bardem gets the Oscar recognition, and Damon not. Bardem's is the better performance, perhaps, but Damon is subtle and haunting in his film. I hope everyone sees both.
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