Taiwanese director Ang Lee’s signing off his acceptance speech at the 2013 Oscars with a “namaste” was a ringing endorsement of the role India and Indians played in his award-winning Life of Pi, a lyrical tale of a boy and a mostly digitally-created tiger sharing a castaway lifeboat.
While Lee’s success was a tribute to Hollywood’s ability to assimilate and acknowledge the best of international artistic talent, he was gracious in profusely thanking his Canadian and Indian crews. The four Oscars the film got also symbolises Hollywood’s Indianisation; though maybe the Bombay Jayashri song was unlucky in being edged out by the power of Skyfall in the golden jubilee year of James Bond movies.
Life of Pi’s dominance at the awards merely reaffirms that there is no business like show business, particularly in its new 3D avatar. And then there was the touching British humour of Daniel Day-Lewis, who made history as the first star to win a third “best actor” Oscar. The son of a poet laureate, he floored everyone with his self-deprecating humour — where he seemed to suggest the acting may have been as good had presenter and legend Meryl Streep played Lincoln in his place! The thespian, already rated the finest screen actor in history, was a shoo-in for the award: the hero he played with a virtually maddening obsession about getting into the character’s skin was also one of the most powerful in US history. His gripping cinematic recreation of Abraham Lincoln has a powerful, pertinent message of what a politician can achieve if he decides to act solely in the interest of humanity, even more than what is right for a nation.
How Lincoln changed the racial history of the world is so evident at a time when Barack Obama has just been re-elected America’s President. The way Day-Lewis projects “Honest Abe” is a lesson that goes way beyond celluloid entertainment. In this day and age, Lincoln is perhaps even more relevant as his qualities are not just admired 160 years after his assassination, they are also sorely missed in today’s selfish world.
It may have been even more appropriate had Michelle Obama been beamed via videolink for the best actor award rather than for best picture, which went to Iranian hostage drama Argo, that also sealed Ben Affleck’s resurrection in Hollywood after a series of flops. It was typical of Hollywood to think up a way to liven up the proceedings by beaming Michelle in live from the White House, but here we are talking of an industry that knows just about everything on using the most technologically advanced systems and gadgetry to enhance even more the overwhelming sensory power of entertainment.