So normally at this point in the end of January I’d have written, like, six posts about the Oscar nominations, kvetching about everything from the complete and utter shafting of my favorite 2007 movie (Zodiac) to the deafening homoerotic undercurrent of almost all of the Supporting Actor nominees (look closely, it’s there).
But Tuesday’s untimely passing of Heath Ledger harshed even my Oscar buzz, and I mean that in the most sensitive way possible. And I don’t think there’s really any way to properly reflect on it apart from saying that, even if it didn’t mark the most groundbreaking example to date of a mainstream actor plunging headlong into the role of a gay romantic lead, Heath’s Brokeback performance would be one for the ages. And that more than anything else, it really felt like the beginning of something, not only for gay audiences, but for Heath, who had lifted his game to an unexpected level.
It has been bothering me for weeks that Cate Blanchett, amazing though she is, has been receiving the lion’s share of the attention for Todd Haynes’ fucking awesome quasi-Bob Dylan fantasia I’m Not There. Ledger (as a reluctant movie star who’s playing a version of Folk Singer Dylan in a biopic-within-the-movie) brings much of the ground-level humanity that this conceptual art project of a movie couldn’t quite do without. His breakup embrace with Charlotte Gainsbourg, scored to “Idiot Wind,” is the most beautiful moment in a movie where just about every shot deserves its own undergrand semiotics seminar.
All the more reason to include the movie on your pre-Oscar Catch-Up List, I guess.
The 2007 Oscar Nominations [Movie City News]
