The 2009 Academy Award Nominations were announced last Thursday with a sound no louder than a “thud.” The lackluster Oscar push of this year’s nominations left much to be desired from last years onslaught of intellectual and intriguing titles. “Slumdog Millionaire” seems to be this year’s favorite for best picture, already taking home the Golden Globe’s Best Picture award (Drama) along with many other accolades from contests around the world. I could spend this time detailing the differences between this years and last years Best Picture nominees, but you can’t blame the Academy on the quality of movies released in the past year. Instead, I’d like to focus on blaming the Academy for overlooking one of the best films of the year, Pixar’s “Wall-E”, and allocating it to a meaningless, hypocritical category, Best Animated Feature.
The Best Animated Feature Category was created in 2001 in order to commend the work done by animators and directors in this particular field of work. The Best Animated Short award has been given out since the 5th Academy Awards in 1932. Until 2001, feature length animated films (70 minutes or longer) were judged equally alongside live-action films – 1991’s “Beauty and the Beast” becoming the one and only animated feature ever to be nominated for Best Picture.
With the rise of CGI animation, competing distributors, and the millions and millions of dollars brought in by any new children’s CGI film, it seemed only fair to give this booming technological and money making genre its due at the Academy. What is unfair is placing “Wall-E”, one of the most critically acclaimed and celebrated films of the year, into an animated film category whose films only add to the perception that American animated films is a sandbox genre: replacing artistic merit and meaning for sight gags and loose plots in order to cater to children. Official Academy Awards rules and regulations state that any film nominated in this category is not banned from being nominated for Best Picture. But if “Wall-E”, an intellectual, post-apocolyptic, social commentary, romantic film that can only be understood by adults, yet loved by children at the same time can’t be nominated for Best Picture, than what hope does the future of American animation have?
In 2002 Japan’s “Spirited Away” took home the award for Best Animated Feature. France was nominated in this category for “The Triplets of Belleville” in 2003, Japan again for “Howl’s Moving Castle” in 2005, and last year’s “Persepolis” marked another nomination for France. Starting in 2002, I was ecstatic to realize that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was finally taking notice for the groundbreaking techniques and complex thematic elements used in animation in other countries around the globe. Various nations, besides France and Japan, use and view animation as an art form. Not to say America doesn’t either, but it is hard to gain respect for a genre thats normal function is to entertain children with fluff piece CGI films or teenagers and twenty-somethings with cheaply made late-night comedies (I’m looking at you Adult Swim!).
Another confusing twist in this year’s Best Animated Feature Category is Israel’s submission, “Waltz with Bashir,” a fully animated feature detailing various Israeli soldiers’ experiences in 1982’s Lebanon War. The twist here is not that it was nominated for Best Animated Feature, but Best Foreign Picture – no doubt a more prestigious award than Best Animated Feature. So why wasn’t “Waltz with Bashir” placed with the other animated features? And why weren’t any of the past foreign animated films nominated for Best Foreign Film? It can’t be for lack of prestige: “Persepolis” won the Grand Jury Prize and was nominated for the Golden Palm at 2007’s Cannes Film Festival, two of the highest honors any film can receive. There is also no rule against films double-dipping in categories. In 2000, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” was nominated for Best Foreign Film and Best Picture, taking home the award for Best Foreign Film. So, if the fully animated film “Waltz with Bashir” is nominated for Best Foreign Film, than wouldn’t that automatically place it among the best animated pictures of the year?
The Academy needs to do something about the hypocrisy faced with Animated Features and their role in America. What’s the final kick in the pants to this story? “Wall-E’s” competition; Disney’s “Bolt” and Dreamworks’ “Kung-Fu Panda.” Want a tidy solution to this problem? Separate the kiddie animated films from the mature animated films. An even easier solution? “Wall-E” should have been justly nominated for Best Picture of the Year.