Odd Lot of Films Dominate Oscars

The Associated Press

When the year's big Academy Award-winning movies are an early-summer Roman action flick, a martial-arts fable in Mandarin and a docudrama about drugs with a hundred or so speaking characters, you have to wonder - this is Hollywood?

2000 was a year that broke a few formulas. Many critics considered it scarce on quality films - a number of more traditional awards-type hopefuls, such as "The Legend of Bagger Vance" or "Pay It Forward," proved to be critical and box-office disappointments.

But awards voters found a diverse lot to choose from.

"Any year that a bunch of motion pictures that don't fit the traditional grids are very successful is just good for the movie business, because it makes everyone guess more about which choices they make," said Douglas Wick, a producer on "Gladiator."

Toss in Julia Roberts' best-actress win for the pollution drama "Erin Brockovich" and Marcia Gay Harden's supporting-actress award for the bleak artist bio "Pollock," and it looks like a continuation from 1999's awards season, which featured such darker, moodier flicks as "American Beauty," "The Green Mile," "The Sixth Sense and "Being John Malkovich."

The year before that, more traditional awards pictures - "Shakespeare in Love," "Saving Private Ryan," "Elizabeth" - were in contention.

"We know you're not supposed to make pictures about toxic waste," said Wick. "You don't have pictures with subtitles. You don't use swords and sandals. So there's a lot of rules to be broken. Every time there's a success, it's good for everybody, so I think it will open up everyone's thinking."

In "Gladiator," which took best picture and four other Oscars, the Roman epic became new again through the magic of computer imagery. The drug drama "Traffic" and the historical romance "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" followed with four Oscars each.

And besides the awards, these films made money.

"Gladiator," "Erin Brockovich," "Traffic" and "Crouching Tiger" all became $100 million hits. Films are never sure things, but these four seem unusually risky in an industry that often hedges its bets with generic pictures aimed at the broadest audience.

The fifth best-picture nominee, "Chocolat," arguably was the most conventional of the bunch, a feel-good film about tolerance and sweets. While still a commercial success at $60 million and climbing, it lags well behind its Oscar competitors and failed to win an Academy Award.

"Erin Brockovich" and "Traffic" were two issue-driven movies by Steven Soderbergh, who won best director for the latter. "Brockovich" had the luster of Roberts, but she's flopped in dramas before. And the film was based on a little-known legal case about toxic water, not the sexiest of topics on the surface.

"Traffic," a farflung tale based on a British miniseries, had much of its dialogue in Spanish and three parallel story lines. It bleakly depicts the futility of the war on drugs, yet ends with a glimmer of hope when the Mexican drug cop played by Benicio Del Toro watches kids playing baseball under their new night lights.

"I think the movie says something interesting, which is, we need to educate," said Del Toro, the supporting-actor winner.

"Gladiator" had the sort of big-picture quality that Hollywood loves, but as its producers have noted, there was a reason no one bothered making Roman spectacles for more than three decades, since the heyday of "Ben-Hur" and "Spartacus." The filmmakers easily could have had a "Battlefield Rome" on their hands, a revival of a genre better left buried.

"Crouching Tiger" was the most audacious of the lot. By rights, director Ang Lee had every reason to expect better U.S. results from his previous historical romance, the Civil War saga "Ride With the Devil," in 1999. But that film bombed at the box office and was ignored by awards voters.

A year later, Lee's tale set in ancient China has soared past "Life is Beautiful" to become the most successful foreign-language film ever in the United States.

At a post-Oscar party thrown by distributor Sony Pictures Classics, Lee said the diverse class of 2000 bodes well for the industry.

"We're looking for something new," he said. "I think that's why people go to the movies in the first place. We have to keep making them excited."

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