When Awards Season began, everyone said the race was wide open. The Los Angeles Film Critics chose Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as Best Film, the New York Film Critics Circle chose Traffic as Best Film, the National Board of Review named Quills the Best Film of 2000, and the Golden Globes gave Almost Famous its award for Best Picture - Musical/Comedy. As always, the race narrowed as the year continued. Gladiator won the BAFTA for Best Film, the Golden Globe for Best Picture - Drama, and the PGA Award for Outstanding Producers of Theatrical Motion Pictures.
The final group of nominees came down to: Chocolat, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Erin Brockovich, Gladiator, and Traffic. And the film that kept winning, did so again:
As I fully reviewed all the other films of the year in order of their release, I shall do the same here, before ranking them:
Only thrice has one person taken two slots for Best Director. Clarence Brown did it at the 3rd Academy Awards, Michael Curtiz did it at the 11th Academy Awards, and Steven Soderbergh did it at the 73rd Academy Awards.
One of the big stories of the season was Soderbergh's double whammy of Erin Brockovich, proving to be more than "just" a Julia Roberts vehicle, and Traffic, the all-star drug trade epic proving to be just as entertaining as it was Important. But despite being the critics' pick, it was believed he would split his own vote and go home empty-handed. Besides, there were two other more likely would-be winners. One was Ridley Scott, who helmed the movie that, after all, many believed would win, Gladiator. The other was Ang Lee, Taiwanese director of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, who was winning the battle against foreign language bias: the Golden Globes, the British Academy, and even the Directors Guild of America named him the Best of the Year. He had the momentum, the industry vote. Rounding out the five was Billy Elliot's Stephen Daldry, this year's representative of Audience-Friendly British Entertainment.
In the end was the beginning. That is to say, the critics awards got it right:
Was there any beating Benicio del Toro for Best Supporting Actor?
Realistically, probably not. From the moment people started seeing Traffic, the name was on the trophy, with critics like Kenneth Turan immediately singling him out as the film's best performance. Come awards time, he collected a haul of hosannas from the Golden Globes, BAFTAs, LA Film Critics, National Society of Film Critics, and the Screen Actors Guild. His SAG win was particularly miraculous, considering they bumped him up to the Lead Actor category, suggesting that the industry was eager to award that performance no matter where it was placed (it's also indicative of the lack of a real frontrunner in Lead Actor throughout the season).
As tends to be the case with Best Supporting Actor, the Oscar Five was a done deal for a while. The BAFTAs nominated Billy Elliot's Gary Lewis and Gladiator's Oliver Reed, but those were very British decisions: Lewis's performance wasn't a standout here the way young discovery Jamie Bell or previous Oscar nominee Julie Walters were, while, as Inside Oscar 2 describes it, the idea of anyone else nominating Reed, who died during that film's production and whose performance was "completed" with the use of CGI, was too morbid to consider. Some critics' groups, including NYFCC and NSFC, made mention of Fred Willard's hilarious turn in Best in Show, but always as an also-ran, not the winner. And The Contender's villain Gary Oldman filled the SAG slot left vacant by Del Toro's promotion, but his public feud with the film's director Rod Lurie and distributor DreamWorks, plus his reported insistence that he campaign as Lead, left a sour taste in many Academy members' mouths, even if the performance is that film's best.
So no, there was no disrupting the quintet of Del Toro, Oldman's co-star Jeff Bridges, surprise possible upset Willem Dafoe of Shadow of the Vampire, early favorite Albert Finney of Erin Brockovich, and the acclaimed Joaquin Phoenix of Gladiator. And there was no disrupting Del Toro's march to Oscar victory:
So we come to the end of the year 2000. There's one rewatch I saved for this post, for the last week of the year is always a marathon of holiday filmgoing. For me, anyway. Here is what cinemas offered - in LA and NYC, at least - from Christmas Day to the end of the year...:
