Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 1994

The Contenders:

Bullets Over Broadway
Four Weddings and a Funeral
Heavenly Creatures
Pulp Fiction (winner)
Three Colors: Red

Down the Rabbit Hole

Film: Heavenly Creatures
Format: Streaming video from Hulu+ on laptop.

It would take a very special movie to make me want to slap Kate Winslet. I like Kate Winslet a lot. She’s one of the best modern actors around and when she’s on screen, she’s always worth watching. As a matter of fact, I can’t think of a performance of hers that I haven’t enjoyed. I’m not saying such a performance doesn’t exist, mind you. I’m just saying I haven’t encountered it yet. That’s true of Heavenly Creatures despite the fact that I have never wanted to reach through the screen, grab her by the shoulders, and shake her more. It’s a testament to her skill that an actress I find so entertaining and worth watching can play a self-possessed and infuriating character this well.

Heavenly Creatures is based on the true story of two young girls in New Zealand plotting and murdering the mother of one of them. While some details have certainly been changed from reality, a cursory examination reveals that Jackson kept to the real story as much as possible, embellishing only visually rather than narratively. This is a film that contains a number of vivid flights of fancy designed to add realism to the shared hallucination of the two girls at the center of the story.