The Oscar Project #69: The English Patient (1996)

by Chris Marshall:

I spent so much time dreading The English Patient that it became something like a superstitious object. For whatever reason, I had it in my head that it was the worst movie ever made, maybe even worse than The Great Ziegfeld. I guess that had a lot to do with its tone and subject matter, as well as being perhaps the clearest example of Oscar bait in many years. Whatever the reason, I always viewed this film as the last real roadblock of The Oscar Project.

Then I watched it, and strangely enough, it wasn’t as horrible as I had feared. I wouldn’t go so far as to say I liked it, but it was nowhere near the worst Best Picture winner I’ve seen on this journey. The most obvious comparison that came to mind while watching it was Out of Africa. I could recognize why it’s considered a “good movie,” but at the same time, it was the type of film that often fails to capture my interest.

I’ve had a long-running joke with my former (and future) roommate Justin, in which I claim that nobody has ever actually seen The English Patient, and it won the Oscar because all the voters assumed it was probably good but didn’t want to take the time to sit through it. This is a slight exaggeration, of course, but I’d venture a guess that it is probably the least seen Best Picture winner of the last 25 years.

The Oscar Project #59: Platoon (1986)

by Chris Marshall:

Before Tom Berenger and Charlie Sheen became members of the Cleveland Indians in Major League, they fought together in Vietnam, and I think it’s safe to say their relationship was slightly more contentious in Platoon. Berenger, as the sinister Sgt. Barnes, is the platoon leader, while Sheen, playing the tastefully-named Chris, is a neophyte recent arrival to the war.

The film is mostly based on Chris’s experiences, particularly on his relationships with Barnes and Sgt. Elias (Willem Dafoe). In many ways, the main thematic element of the plot is similar to Oliver Stone’s next film, Wall Street. A character played by Charlie Sheen is forced to choose between the “good” father figure (Dafoe here, Martin Sheen in Wall Street) and the “bad” one (Berenger, Michael Douglas).

The Slovenian cultural critic Slavoj Zizek argues that the problem with Oliver Stone’s films is that the message he wants to deliver is obscured by the way he goes about it. Specifically, he argues that even though we are supposed to disagree with Berenger’s and Douglas’s tactics in the two films, that’s not what actually happens because the villains are the most dynamic, charismatic characters in the movies.