'Avatar' and the Awards
Avatar has enjoyed amazing popular success in the four months since it opened, and hasn't gone entirely without recognition at the awards ceremonies. It has, however, faced some stiff competition in this arena, particularly from Kathryn Bigelow's intriguing Iraq war piece The Hurt Locker, and Precious, the story of a troubled black teenager. (That's a horrible, overly simplistic summary of Precious which belies the complexity of the plot and the quality of the acting and writing. Be sure to catch it on DVD.)
At the 2010 Golden Globe awards, Avatar took home both its nominated categories: Best Director and Best Picture. Widely seen as a warm-up for the Oscars, it was then a surprise that Avatar didn't score similar success at the Academy Awards. I think there are a couple of reasons underlying this decision.
First, in Bigelow and her film The Hurt Locker, the Academy had the opportunity to make history by awarding the first Best Director Oscar to a woman. It's sad that it took until 2010 and the 82nd Academy Awards for this to happen, but film remains a very male-dominated profession. However, without wishing to decry her work, how many people remember, for example, that Sidney Poitier was the first African American to win an Oscar?
Second is Avatar's screenplay, the bone of contention for most people who have seen the film (and I will cover this in more detail later). Avatar was not nominated in the Best Original Screenplay category, and to paraphrase one of the BBC's commentators, you can't give a film the Best Picture award unless they've also picked up a nomination for the screenplay.
Third is the Academy's tendency to vote against popular opinion. As James Berardinelli notes in his blog post "Grouching the Oscars", only three of the all-time top fifty films have won Best Picture Oscars: Forrest Gump, Titanic and The Return of the King. Slumdog Millionaire, for example, was a very popular release and the 2008 Best Picture Oscar winner, and yet is ranked 137th overall by box office takings.
In some respects, I agree with the Academy's decision. Avatar is a ground-breaking film that will remain suffused in the cultural pantheon for many years to come, but its unoriginal plot cannot be ignored when it comes to objectively comparing works against each other in this way. I do not believe, however, that The Hurt Locker is a better film than Avatar, however good it in fact is, and I believe that Cameron is a greater directorial talent than Bigelow: the imagination that he showed in developing Avatar has few rivals.
