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On an Oscar Night in which the nominees and a few of the speeches got political, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences backed away from making a true political statement.
Faced with the chance to make history - and possibly incur the wrath of right-wing moralists - by honoring the gay-cowboy romance "Brokeback Mountain," Oscar voters instead gave the Best Picture award to "Crash," a collection of interlocking stories about strained race relations in Los Angeles.
Considering the string of award victories "Brokeback Mountain" amassed this season, from January's Golden Globes to Saturday's Independent Spirit Awards, Sunday night's Oscar win for "Crash" is a major upset.
In her acceptance speech, "Crash" producer Cathy Schulman thanked "the people all around the world who have been touched by this message."
"Crash" director/co-writer Paul Haggis, accepting his Oscar for original screenplay, quoted playwright Bertolt Brecht. "Brecht said, 'Art is not a mirror to hold up to society but a hammer with which to shape it,' and I guess this is ours," Haggis said.
"Crash" won three Oscars: Best Picture, original screenplay and film editing. "Brokeback Mountain," which had led in nominations with eight, also won three, for director Ang Lee, adapted screenplay and original score.
Lee, the first Asian filmmaker to win a directing Oscar, took time to thank the fictional cowboys of his film, Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist (played by Oscar nominees Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal). "They taught all of us who made 'Brokeback Mountain' so much about not only gay men and women whose love is denied by society, but just as important the greatness of love itself," Lee said.
For all the controversy around its subject matter - including its abrupt removal from Larry H. Miller's Megaplex 17 theater in January - "Brokeback Mountain's" critical response was nearly unanimous in its praise. The consensus on "Crash," though, was mixed: Some, such as the Chicago Sun-Times' Roger Ebert, dubbed it the year's best movie, while other critics thought it facile and manipulative. (New York Times critic Manohla Dargis tabbed it "the consummate Hollywood fantasy" that appealed to the Academy's many white liberals.)
"Brokeback's" Ledger lost out in the lead-actor category to Philip Seymour Hoffman, for his indelible portrayal of writer Truman Capote in "Capote." Reese Witherspoon won Best Actress for another real-life portrayal, of country legend June Carter in the Johnny Cash biography "Walk the Line."
Witherspoon praised June Carter as "a real woman who [had] real dignity and honor and fear." The actress said she tried to follow Carter's example, adding "I'm just trying to matter, and live a good life."
Political messages were prevalent in the films that produced the supporting-acting winners, both movies about global corporate conspiracies. George Clooney won for playing a CIA agent facing oil-industry corruption in "Syriana," and Rachel Weisz took an award for her role as a woman uncovering a pharmaceutical conglomerate's African misdeeds in "The Constant Gardener."
Clooney, quickly becoming the new voice of Hollywood's political conscience, used his acceptance speech to praise his industry for being "out of touch" with mainstream America.
"We are a little bit out of touch in Hollywood. I think that's probably a good thing. We are the ones who talked about AIDS when it was only being whispered," Clooney said in his acceptance speech. "We talked about civil rights . . . I'm proud to be part of this Academy, proud to be part of this community, proud to be 'out of touch.' ''
Oscar sidestepped another major controversy by awarding the Foreign-Language Film award to South Africa's "Tsotsi," a gritty tale of a young street criminal, over the Palestinian drama "Paradise Now," which chronicles the last days of a suicide bomber. "Paradise Now" faced a petition campaign from pro-Israeli groups, who demanded the Academy revoke the movie's nomination.
Besides "Crash's" Best Picture win, the shock of the evening was the victory of the hip-hop group Three 6 Mafia, whose members performed and wrote the raucous Original Song victor, "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" from "Hustle & Flow."
"Memoirs of a Geisha," an exceedingly pretty movie, was the big winner in the categories where being pretty counts: cinematography, art direction and costume design. Peter Jackson's remake of "King Kong" took the geeky technical awards, for visual effects, sound mixing and sound editing.