I'm someone who believes the Academy Awards more often than not get it wrong, but 1994 feels like a particularly galling year. Keep in mind I'm talking about a ceremony that technically took place in 1995 but was honoring films from the year 1994.
Today, 1994 is viewed fondly as both a good year for indie cinema -- especially with the mainstream breakthrough success of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction -- and also a solid year for big popular films like The Lion King and sigh, Forrest Gump.
Forrest Gump would go on to win Best Picture, a result that may not have been controversial at the time, (I was too young and disinterested in the Oscars horse race at the time to remember if it was considered an upset or a front-runner), but most discerning cinephiles today would say that it's baby boomer fellating trash save for a few graceful acting choices by Tom Hanks (albeit ones that make no sense character-wise. Hanks' Gump is simply not intelligent enough to be as self aware as he is in the closing segments of that movie, but I digress)
Let's go back in time and make our fantasy picks...
Best Actor
Morgan Freeman, The Shawshank Redemption
Nigel Hawthrone, The Madness of King George
Paul Newman, Nobody's Fool
Tom Hanks, Forrest Gump
John Travolta, Pulp Fiction
Who won: Tom Hanks
Who should have won: Morgan Freeman
As I just said, Hanks is probably the saving grace of Forrest Gump, a film that seems to want to codify the 1960s with quaint exaggerations and really has no core philosophy other than 'life goes on.' Today, the very premise of this movie might earn picketing, but Hanks is likable and earnest throughout and you'd have to be missing a part of your soul to be unmoved by his graveside chat with Jenny.
Still, he shouldn't have won for this. His previous Oscar for the previous year's Philadelphia was sufficient and well-earned. And his later work in Saving Private Ryan, Captain Phillips and The Post (just to name a few) have cemented his status as 'the great American leading man' -- but this is just a bit of a groan in retrospect.
I'll have to put Hawthorne aside, having never seen his film. In Nobody's Fool, Newman is terrific, giving the kind of gruff, effecting performance he seemed to so effortlessly knock out of the park in so many of his later career roles. He is certainly deserving, but he'd already won one six years earlier as another lovable son of bitch in The Color of Money so I would pass on him.
Travolta's an interesting case. He's good in Pulp Fiction, totally fine, but there is nothing about the performance that screams Best Actor to me or Academy Award nomination at all. I suppose he deserves kudos for being credible as a hitman given his image at the time, but the real heavy lifting dramatically in Pulp Fiction is all on Samuel L. Jackson and to a lesser extent Bruce Willis than it is Travolta.
In a just world it should be Jackson in this Best Actor race and not Travolta. He gives perhaps the greatest performance of his career in that movie and it's a travesty that he didn't win then and hasn't won ever for his fantastic work over the years.
For me, the winner in this crop should be a no brainer -- Morgan Freeman. First of all, good on the people behind the Shawshank campaign to recognize that it's Freeman who is the real lead of that movie. Sure it's Tim Robbins on the poster and he might even have more screen time, but it's Freeman who drives the narrative, whose journey is completed at the end of the film and while the role might have been a touch magical negro, but he imbues it with such gritty integrity that I think it rises above that.
The scene where he finally drops his sunny facade before a parole board is some of the finest acting I have ever seen. He'd be rewarded years later for a solid supporting turn in Million Dollar Baby, but that was clearly a consolation for getting robbed for this.
When it comes to Best Actress, I have to plead the fifth. I haven't seen enough of these performances to fairly critique them. Jessica Lange won for a relatively obscure film called Blue Sky, which I've never seen. She's great, but had won before for Tootsie. I've seen Nell, with Jodie Foster, but don't remember it too well outside of her oft-parodied vocal affectation.
Probably the only performance I really vividly remember is Susan Sarandon in The Client. She was very good in it, but would win next year for Dead Man Walking, so she'd be just fine. Basically, I'm agnostic on this one. Honestly, I might have given it to Jamie Lee Curtis that year for True Lies. She was a long shot potential Best Actress nominee (she was nominated for the Golden Globe) and that actually feels like the most memorable leading lady performance from exactly 25 years ago.
Stay tuned for part two, where I'll take a look at the supporting categories.
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