Oscar Index: OK, Everyone, Just Freaking Calm Down About The King's Speech

The Nominees:

1. Tom Hooper, The King's Speech

2. David Fincher, The Social Network

3. Joel and Ethan Coen, True Grit

4. David O. Russell, The Fighter

5. Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan

Notes: "Fincher -- period." And with those two words alone on Saturday morning, Scott Feinberg curtly attempted to predict the DGA Awards outcome. Haven't we all been there? In any case, much vexation and confoundment and condescension ensued! Take "gobsmacked" EW critic Lisa Schwarzbaum for example:

What were those DGA voters thinking? My conclusion: They weren't thinking; they were feeling. And they were feeling because of incalculable help provided to the director by two geniuses ineligible for an award in this or any other year to come. I'm talking, of course, about Ludwig van Beethoven and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. [...] I recently rewatched the movie to study the exact musical architecture involved in Alexandre Desplat's discreetly hardworking score. So if/when you see it again, try to imagine what the drama would be like without Beethoven or Mozart stepping in to do heavy emotional lifting in these four crucial moments...

Ah, yes -- the old blame-the-awards-upset-on-the-music-cue trick. Because the director rarely chooses music cues, or wants his/her audience to "feel" anything, right? And because awards bodies have a history of rubber-stamping mediocre directors like Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick (combined DGA/Oscar wins: zero) on the mere strength of their music cues. Wait, what? Anyway, Lisa, now it's my turn to be patronizing and urge you to keep up the good work.

David Poland, meanwhile, was irritating in the same vein:

I am regretting writing this as I write it... I have enormous respect and admiration for Tom Hooper. I like the guy. And unlike other directors in the race, he has been generous with his time and thoughts. It also SUCKS to begrudge someone who has won an award their pleasure from that moment. But... Seriously? The inherent ambition of at least 3 of the other 4 nominees is simply on another level. I have no problem when people vote for a movie they like or love, but this is directors voting for achievement in direction. Hooper did excellent work and is responsible for a movie people love. But the list of people who could deliver with that cast and script vs the singular visions of the other films...

Oof. I'm regretting it, too, David. [Cue shrug, close tab.] Others were far more gracious in acknowledging the unequivocal truth that Hooper is indeed the race's front-runner: "The King's Speech is all heart," wrote O'Neil, while Tim Appelo cataloged a few of the traits, skills and life lessons that helped Hooper climb within sight of the pinnacle of feature-film directing. For example, check out Hooper's approach to directing and filming his principal actors:

"I'd start out with a closeup and -- oh God, he's doing something amazing with his hand which I'm missing. Then we'd go a bit wider. Then I'd go, God, I love that, but I'm missing the silhouette his body's making, so I'd go wider still, to explore his body language.

"So it made me think about Colin's body language. Was there a way he could create a silhouette specific to Bertie? Was there a way of deconstructing the confidence with which Colin naturally stands, 'cause he's a big strapping lad of six foot three and, and, and, and [Hooper sometimes repeats words rapidly, a bit like stuttering] creating a sense of a man who folds into himself, crumples into himself? Who on a sofa will sit in the corner as if to use the arm of the sofa as a kind of friend, as a security blanket?"

"In some ways there's this process of transference that goes on, where you see what one actor is bringing and could I bring the other into the language of the first so there's an equilibrium going on in the style of both. And managing those exchanges of action, of, of, of their, of their, of their essences, is kind of very interesting."

DGA aside -- which is largely composed of TV directors, from whose ranks Hooper emerged less than two years ago to direct his true feature breakthrough The Damned United -- what actor wouldn't recognize that process onscreen and be inclined reward it come awards time? I mean, if voter perception comes down to that or David Fincher's exacting 99 takes, can we really say we're that surprised?

In any case, Guy Lodge notes that the last time a DGA winner lost at the Oscars, Roman Polanski sneaked in over Rob Marshall for the 2002 Best Director prize. Whether that speaks to the Academy's aversion to recognizing screen newcomers over old-timers, or whether it was a political statement, or whether it was an earnest meritocratic recognition, or whatever it was, Fincher should take heart. He's hardly out of this.

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