That Word "Excellence," I Do Not Think…

Via Chotiner, I think this post from the usually entertaining David Carr contains some classic fallacies:

And what’s particularly clear this season is that the Academy will reward excellence, no matter if it comes from a big studio or a small independent. Sure, the big studio movie “The Dark Knight” came up short, but that probably had less to do with who made it and how much it brought in than with a third act that left some moviegoers and Academy members cold and confused.

This year’s Top 5 were studio and indie, big and little, broad and very specific. The string that pulls them together is not where the films came from in terms of backing, but where they come from artistically. Each of the films selected for a best-picture nomination — “Slumdog Millionaire,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Milk” and “The Reader” — represents the auteur ideal, in which a director is bankrolled and left pretty much alone. It is no coincidence that these five films were created by directors who also received best-director nominations.

A few points:

• Like Chotiner, I find it hard to see that list emerging from any kind of serious effort to reward excellence. Does anybody want to make the case that The Reader is one of the best films of the year? And I would probably rather see it again than see the 3-hour Forrest Gump remake, and certainly don’t believe that “excellence” and “Ron Howard” have ever had anything to do with each other. Even the two good movies here are good in very predictable ways — Slumdog‘s structure could be as much a tribute to underdog-wins-at-the-final-buzzer sports movies as Bollywood, and well-crafted as it is Milk also achieves the nice mix of allowing Academy members to congratulate themselves while playing it safe. (I’m guessing that it would have been nominated even if it had been a lot worse — cf. Philadelphia.)
• On a pedantic note, what Carr is describing is the precise opposite of the “auteur ideal.” “Auteur” critics were most interested in the shows of personality by directors that could be seen within studio product, not autonomous writer-directors.
• More importantly, I think the key problem here is the common fallacy of evaluating the means of production rather than the art. I’ve never understood someone saying they’re a fan of “indie” movies or music; process isn’t art. It may be true that, all things being equal, nearly full autonomy leads to better art, but it’s also obvious that there are so many exceptions — collaborative, commercial projects that are compelling art and sincere, personal creations that are dreary art — that rules are meaningless, and what matters is the quality of the work rather than the purity of the creation. Sometimes, gifted artists given autonomy will produce masterpieces; other times they will use the autonomy to try to prove that they can make a better 3-hour movie with Brad Pitt cast in a non-comic role than Martin Brest. I don’t think the latter case should be confused with “excellence.”

…UPDATE: My initial thoughts can be found here.