c. 1998 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ Hollywood watchdog and conservative Christian Ted Baehr said if he had to vote on which nominated film should win this year’s Academy Award for best picture he”wouldn’t pick any of them.” Ditto for Terry Lindvall, a veteran film professor at Regent University, the Virginia Beach, Va.-graduate school founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertston.”I think the academy missed the best film of the year,”he said.

The same goes for Henry Herx, director of the U.S. Catholic Conference’s Office for Film and Broadcasting, who said just one of this year’s best picture contenders,”L.A. Confidential”_ nominated alongside”As Good as It Gets,””The Full Monty,””Good Will Hunting,”and”Titanic”_ made his top 10 list.

It’s not that these critics of popular culture didn’t enjoy some of the Oscar nominees, but they don’t believe any of them convey the sort of thought-provoking storylines and complex characterizations a film should in order to warrant such a prestigious accolade.

According to Baehr and Lindvall, last year’s best picture was Stephen Spielberg’s historical epic”Amistad,”based on the true story of kidnapped Africans who seized the Spanish slave ship transporting them to 19th-century America and the legal trial resulting from their rebellion. It also tops Herx’s ten-best list only because he arranges the films alphabetically, refusing to prioritize them.

Herx chose”Amistad”primarily because he admired Spielberg’s attempt to”reconsider … the racial divisions that still exist in our country,”he said.”It’s a very ambitious thing to do.” Baehr esteemed”Amistad”for its”strong sense of redemptive values … of people constantly laying down their lives for others.” Lindvall agreed.”`Amistad’ is a film of substance as well as feeling. … It’s an intelligent film.” But Michael Medved, longtime film critic for the New York Post and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host, offered harsh criticism for”Amistad.””`Amistad’ was an extremely poor film that failed on its own terms,”he said in a telephone interview.”It’s an unconvincing period piece, historically irresponsible and dramatically inert.” At the same time, Medved, an Orthodox Jew and social conservative, is quite satisfied with this year’s top-Oscar nominees.”This is more than most years an honorable and sane selection,”he said.

Not so to Baehr, who recalled films produced last decade as shining examples of Hollywood filmmaking at its brightest.”The best pictures for a long time, in the ’80s, had redemptive themes and were the most powerful,”said Baehr, whose monthly Movieguide is billed as a”family guide to movies and entertainment.”As examples, he cited such dramas as”Chariots of Fire”(best picture, 1981),”Places in the Heart”(best picture nominee, 1984), and”Driving Miss Daisy”(best picture, 1989).”Now, we’ve moved from redemptive themes to romantic themes,”he said.”Instead of seeing man as fallen and needing grace, (romantic films) see man as noble, following his own heart and doing what he wants.” As evidence, Baehr pointed to last year’s best picture winner,”The English Patient,”which detailed the adulterous affair between a land surveyor and a married woman during the German drive across North Africa in World War II.

This year, Baehr said, it’s”Titanic,”the story of a doomed teen-age couple who find love while struggling against class warfare aboard the famed, ill-fated oceanliner.

The problem with the type of romanticism expressed in”The English Patient”and”Titanic,”Baehr said, is that it offers”love affairs that can never completely be fulfilled.”Films like these, he added,”stunt your emotional and cognitive development in a very skewed way.” Herx, too, observed Tinsel Town’s latest infatuation with romantic-themed films.”Hollywood is desperately looking for the next cycle to get into,”he said.”Something like `Titanic’ may indicate that romance is what it’s all about.” Many film critics _ including Medved _ expect the record-breaking”Titanic”to walk away with the academy’s top honor. The film has received a record-tying 14 Oscar nominations. It is also the most expensive film ever made and is expected to become Hollywood’s highest grossing film by March 23, when the Academy Award winners will be announced.”`Titanic’ will win and deserves to win partially because it’s the most cinematic film of the year,”said Medved.”It dared the most and accomplished the most.” When pushed to pick his best picture choice of the five nominated films, Lindvall chose”L.A. Confidential,”a lurid, often-violent film-noir crime drama set in 1953 Los Angeles.”It’s wonderfully slick, classic Hollywood filmmaking. It’s mesmerizing. …”Film noir speaks of the fall,”Lindvall said.”It has the tendency to look at the darkness of the human heart, acknowledge it and confess it.” Although”L.A. Confidential”made Herx’s top-ten list, he said he is”personally pulling”for an upset win by”The Full Monty,”a comedy about unemployed British steelworkers who take up strip dancing in order to recover their self-respect and pay their bills.”`L.A. Confidential’ is a genre film done very, very well, but it doesn’t contain the moral strength that one finds in `The Full Monty,'”said Herx, who gave”The Full Monty”a”positive”review because of its focus on the plight on the unemployed and its”flip”on the sexual exploitation of women.”It gives a much bigger picture of what human dignity is all about.” Ever so slightly behind”L.A. Confidential,”Lindvall placed”The Full Monty,”which he called a”blessed”film.”It allows you to go and care for other people,”he said.”And also to commiserate. We suffer with those who suffer and rejoice with those who rejoice. I think the film captures that theme.” And what of the last two nominees _”As Good as It Gets,”the story of a misanthrope whose life is transformed by a relationship with a waitress, and”Good Will Hunting,”in which a poor, urban youth is discovered to be a genius with the help of a math teacher and a psychiatrist?”`Good Will Hunting’ has a lot of moral messages, but it peters out in the end. The guy never goes in the right direction,”said Baehr, who also summarily dismissed”As Good as It Gets”as”Scrooge for the ’90s.” Herx, too, expressed dismay with both films.”Good Will Hunting”and”As Good as it Gets”are”wanting in the human dimension,”he said.”They are phony, formula films that set up less-than-real situations, which drive you toward a feel-good ending.” Nevertheless, Medved said a common thread weaves through each of 1997’s best picture nominees. It’s the same classic theme, he said, that has been integral to Hollywood filmmaking since the 1920s.”What you see in common in all the nominees is this great American love for underdogs, outsiders, and losers who somehow transcend their circumstances, whereas the smug establishment in most cases turns out to be more vulnerable than thought,”Medved said.”This is one of the reasons American film is the most popular in the world.”

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