THE ARTS: The Return Of The King swept the board so completely that it left little room for excitement at the Oscars, writes Michael Dwyer.
About halfway through the 76th Academy Awards, Billy Crystal, the compère, quipped: "It's now official. There's now nobody left in New Zealand to thank." It was an apt comment, for The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King, the concluding part of Peter Jackson's trilogy, had just won the first five categories in which it had been nominated and seemed certain to take the other six. It did.
Made in Jackson's native New Zealand with a predominantly Antipodean crew and an international cast, the trilogy was a massive undertaking tackled with admirable ambition, scale and passion. Initially dismissed by film-industry sceptics as a high-risk folly, the project has been a huge commercial success around the world, amply repaying its adventurous US backer, New Line Cinema, which was acknowledged as often on Oscar night as was the author of the trilogy's source material, J. R. R. Tolkien.
The 11 awards for The Return Of The King, equalling the records of Ben-Hur, from 1959, and Titanic, from 1997, are a deserved and overdue recognition from cinema's highest-profile organisation for a monumental achievement whose first two instalments received Oscars only in technical categories.
Although most of the Academy Awards for Jackson's film were widely expected - principally the key awards for best film and best director - it had not been expected to make such a complete sweep, given that it failed to be nominated in the key categories of cinematography and sound editing and that none of the cast was nominated.
As the ceremony proceeded it seemed the academy electorate had ticked off every box next to a nominee from The Return Of The King - so much so that Denise Robert, producer of The Barbarian Invasions, the first French-Canadian film to win the award for best foreign- language film, joked that she was thankful Jackson's film did not qualify in that category.
The Lord Of The Rings trilogy is an artistic triumph for Jackson, a 42-year-old best known for low-budget horror movies - Bad Taste, Meet The Feebles and Braindead - before he edged closer to the mainstream with Heavenly Creatures, which provided Kate Winslet with her auspicious cinema début, and The Frighteners, starring Michael J Fox.
Jackson is now the world's highest-paid director, with a reported $20 million fee agreed for his next project, a new treatment of King Kong, to be made on his own terms in New Zealand with key crew from his Tolkien trilogy.
Jackson was the subject of one tribute after another in the acceptance speeches on Sunday night - the early hours of yesterday morning on this side of the Atlantic - and although he proudly accepted all the accolades for his film he remained modest and unassuming throughout. True to form, he was arguably the most sloppily dressed nominee at Hollywood's fashion-statement event of the year.
Many viewers had been expecting the unexpected. Last year's ceremony yielded several surprises, after all, most notably when the director Roman Polanski and the actor Adrien Brody won for The Pianist, and there were many more, in terms of omissions and inclusions, when this year's nominations were announced in January. But if there was any surprise this year it was that there were no surprises.
With The Return Of The King dominating the awards so completely, only two other films went home with more than one Oscar. Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World, the Australian director Peter Weir's robust seafaring epic, received 10 nominations but collected just two Oscars, for cinematography and sound editing, the two technical categories in which Jackson's film failed to be nominated. And Clint Eastwood's brooding drama Mystic River took two key awards, for Sean Penn as best actor and Tim Robbins as best supporting actor.
Coincidentally, this was the first acting nomination for Robbins, who was in contention for an Oscar just once before, as best director for Dead Man Walking, one of the four films for which Penn had been nominated as best actor.
Robbins and Penn were regarded as bad boys in Oscar terms, maverick nominees who might dare to rock the boat with a political outburst should either of them win.
As it happened, both were thoroughly gracious. Robbins, the first winner of the evening, watched by his admiring Oscar-winning wife, Susan Sarandon, diverted from the subject of films only to address the theme of Mystic River, in which his character is traumatised by the horrific sexual abuse of his childhood. Robbins assured victims of sexual abuse that there is "no shame or weakness" in seeking help or counselling for what they have experienced.
Receiving a standing ovation when he took to the stage to accept his Oscar, Penn made just a glancing political reference when he expressed his cynicism about acting awards. "If there's one thing that actors know, other than that there are no WMDs, it is that there is no best in acting."
In an unusually placid Oscar ceremony, the evening's most overt political barb came from Errol Morris, winner of the best-documentary-feature award for The Fog Of War, which deals with US foreign policy during the Vietnam War. "Forty years ago this country went down a rabbit hole in Vietnam and millions died, and I fear we're going down a rabbit hole once again." He also thanked the academy for finally recognising his films, commenting: "I thought it would never happen."
The South African star Charlize Theron deservedly won the best-actress Oscar for her raw, revelatory and unforgettable portrayal of the serial killer Aileen Wuornos in Monster, and before she took to the stage for an emotional acceptance speech she kissed her Irish boyfriend, the actor Stuart Townsend.
The only good news for Ireland came when the award for best documentary short film went to Maryann DeLeo for Chernobyl Heart, which features the work of Chernobyl Children's Project, the charity run by Adi Roche, who was present to hear DeLeo describe her as a true hero.
Jim Sheridan's fifth feature film, In America, received three nominations but, along with the great majority of this year's nominees, went home empty handed. Just as The Return Of The King had shut out most of the mainstream contenders, Sheridan's film was faced with formidable competition from Lost In Translation, the year's hottest independent film, which took one award, best original screenplay, for its writer and director, Sofia Coppola.
There was much better news for Sheridan's film on the eve of the Oscars, when it won two prizes at the annual Independent Spirit Awards: best cinematography, for Declan Quinn, and best supporting actor, for Djimon Hounsou.
During that ceremony Sheridan led a rendition of Happy Birthday To You for the 13-year-old Dublin actress Sarah Bolger; she and her younger sister, Emma, play characters based on Naomi and Kirsten Sheridan, the director's daughters, who collaborated with him on the screenplay for In America.
Among the many other nominated films that did not collect Oscars this year were Seabiscuit, which had seven nominations, Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl, which had five, and City Of God and The Last Samurai, which had four each. The long list also included Girl With A Pearl Earring, 21 Grams, House Of Sand And Fog, Belleville Rendez-vous, Thirteen, The Cooler, Big Fish, Dirty Pretty Things, American Splendor, Whale Rider and Something's Gotta Give.
Despite the predictability of the awards themselves, this year's Oscars show, the first produced by the former studio head and film director Joe Roth, moved along relatively briskly, mercifully coming in at about 15 minutes short of four hours. ABC, the TV network carrying the show in the US, charged $1.5 million for every 30-second commercial during the numerous ad breaks.
Much of the credit for the show's success was again due to the fast-thinking wit of Billy Crystal, who noted how different everything was when he first hosted the show, 13 years ago. "Bush was president, the economy was tanking and we'd just finished a war with Iraq." The actors Jack Black and Will Ferrell added to the humour when they performed a witty duet to the music played by the orchestra to cue award winners off the stage - a welcome intervention after the pointlessly and insufferably long list of people thanked by Aaron Schneider, the director of the award-winning short fiction film Two Soldiers, a William Faulkner adaptation.
The funniest moment of the show came as the lifetime-achievement award was about to be presented to the writer, producer and director Blake Edwards, whose credits include Days Of Wine And Roses, Breakfast At Tiffany's and the Pink Panther films starring Peter Sellers, even though Edwards had received just a single nomination in his entire career, for the Victor/Victoria screenplay in 1982.
After a shaven-headed Jim Carrey paid obsequious tribute to him, Edwards came on in a wheelchair and, with one leg in a plaster cast, shot across the stage, crashing into the set and emerging covered in dust to accept the award. It was a truly Clouseauesque moment.
WHO WON WHAT
Actor in a leading role: Sean Penn for Mystic River
Actor in a supporting role: Tim Robbins for Mystic River
Actress in a leading role: Charlize Theron for Monster
Actress in a supporting role: Renée Zellweger for Cold Mountain
Animated feature film: Finding Nemo, directed by Andrew Stanton
Art direction: The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King; Grant Major (art direction), Dan Hennah and Alan Lee (set decoration)
Best picture: The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King; Barrie M. Osborne, Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh
Cinematography: Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World; Russell Boyd
Costume design: The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King; Ngila Dickson and Richard Taylor
Directing: The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King; Peter Jackson
Documentary feature: The Fog Of War; Errol Morris and Michael Williams
Documentary short subject: Chernobyl Heart; Maryann DeLeo
Film editing: The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King; Jamie Selkirk
Foreign-language film: The Barbarian Invasions (Canada), directed by Denys Arcand
Honorary award: Blake Edwards
Make-up: The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King; Richard Taylor and Peter King
Music (score): The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King; Howard Shore
Music (song): The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King; Into The West, music and lyric by Fran Walsh and Howard Shore and Annie Lennox
Short film (animated): Harvie Krumpet; Adam Elliot
Short film (live action): Two Soldiers, Aaron Schneider and Andrew J. Sacks
Sound editing: Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World; Richard King
Sound mixing: The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King; Christopher Boyes, Michael Semanick, Michael Hedges and Hammond Peek
Visual effects: The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King, Jim Rygiel, Joe Letteri, Randall William Cook and Alex Funke
Writing (adapted screenplay): The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King; Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Peter Jackson
Writing (original screenplay): Lost In Translation; Sofia Coppola
