“The Artist,” French filmmaker Michael Hazanavicius’s hommage to Hollywood’s silent movie era, emerged as the new awards season's top contender following two announcements yesterday. The New York Film Critics Circle voted it Best Feature and Hazanavicius Best Director. In the Film Independent Spirit Awards, it’s been nominated for Feature, Director, Male Lead, (Jean Dujardin), Screenplay (Hazanavicius), and Cinematography (Guillaume Schiffman, who shot it on color stock converted to black and white in post-production).
If “The Artist” were to carry this success to the Adademy Awards and win Best Picture, it would be the first silent film to achieve that honor since William Wellman’s “Wings” won for “Outstanding Picture, Production” at the inaugural Oscars in 1929. F.W. Murnau’s silent masterpiece “Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans” won for “Unique and Artistic Production” that year, but “Wings” was retrospectively acknowledged as 1929’s equivalent of Best Picture.
The NYFFC voted acting awards to two of the stars of “The Tree of Life”, but neither won exclusively for their turns in Terrence Malick’s meaning-of-life opus. Brad Pitt’s Lead Actor prize was also for his work in “Moneyball,” which won Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin the screenplay award. Jessica Chastain’s Supporting Actress prize was also for her performances in “The Help” and “Take Shelter,” the latter of which earned her a Spirit nod. Albert Brooks’s portrayal of a film-producer-turned-gangster in “Drive” netted him the Supporting Actor award and a Spirit nomination. “I feel like Herman Cain at a Dallas Cheerleader convention,” Brooks tweeted.
Meryl Streep’s impersonation of Margaret Thatcher in “The Iron Lady” earned her a fifth award from the critics’ group (and her fourth in a lead role). Pitt, in comparison, is an NYFFC newbie. Should they be available, they will add considerable star wattage to the critics’ awards ceremony in January.
Notable for the absence in the NYFFC choices are “The War Horse,” “Hugo,” “Alfred Nobbs,” “Beginners,” “The Descendants,” “Midnight in Paris,” “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo,” “J. Edgar,” “Melancholia,” and “Shame.” Although the latter pair were among the Spirit nominees for Foreign Film (along with “A Separation,” “The Kid With a Bike,” and “Tyrannosaur”), their Oscar chances may be cooked. Lars von Trier’s “Nazi” comments at Cannes cost “Melancholia” the Palme d’Or and could now be costing it American laurels.
J. Chandor’s financial-crisis thriller “Margin Call” was the critics’ pick for first feature and will be awarded the Robert Altman Spirit award. The critics’ nonfiction choice was Werner Herzog’s 3D hit “The Cave of Forgotten Dreams,” in which he filmed himself examining the oldest known drawings in the Chauvet Caves in southern France. Asghar Farhadi’s “A Separation,” which won the Golden Bear at Berlin, took the Foreign-Language Film award. The Iranian drama concerns a couple that splits because the wife wants the family to leave the country to have their daughter educated abroad whereas the husband wants to stay to look after his ailing father. Winner of the annual special award was Raúl Ruiz, the Chilean filmmaker who died at 70 in August, the same month in which his four-hour swansong “Mysteries of Lisbon” opened.
In the Spirits, to be presented in Santa Monica on February 25, “The Artist” will compete for the Feature award with “50/50,” “Beginners,” “Drive,” “Take Shelter,” and “The Descendants.” As director, Hazanavicius will be up against Mike Mills (“Beginners”), Jeff Nichols (“Take Shelter”), Alexander Payne (“The Descendants”), and Nicolas Winding Refn (“Drive”). The First Feature nominees are Chandor’s “Margin Call,” “Another Earth” (director Mike Cahill), “In the Family” (Patrick Wang), “Martha Marcy May Marlene” (Sean Durkin), and “Natural Selection” (Robbie Pickering).
Along with Dujardin, the Male Lead nominees are Demián Bechir (“A Better Life”), Ryan Gosling (“Drive”), Woody Harrelson (“Rampart”), and Michael Shannon (“Take Shelter”). The Female Lead choices are Lauren Ambrose (“Think of Me”), Rachael Harris (“Natural Selection”), Adepero Oduye (“Pariah”), Elizabeth Olsen (“Martha Marcy May Marlene”), and Michelle Williams (“My Week With Marilyn”). Williams and Viola Davis ("The Help") remain Streep’s stiffest competition for the Oscar.
To qualify for a Spirit Award, a film must be made by An American producer for less than $20 million.
Next up are tomorrow’s National Board of Review awards, controversially beaten to the punch this year by the NYFCC, which moved its voting forward so it could claim the kudos of launching the Hollywood awards season.