Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Original Screenplay 1992

The Contenders:

The Crying Game (winner)
Husbands and Wives
Lorenzo’s Oil
Passion Fish
Unforgiven

What a Difference a Year or Two Makes

Films: Husbands and Wives
Format: DVD from NetFlix on The New Portable.

This is not going to be easy. The world changed in 2017 with the #metoo movement, something that was overdue. But that didn’t make certain aspects of this easy to handle. It meant confronting difficult and ugly truths about people who might otherwise be admired. I can’t help liking the movies of Roman Polanski despite Polanski himself being a human shit. And the same is true of Woody Allen. I don’t like all of his films, but I like a lot of them, and when I watch one I really like (say Radio Days or Midnight in Paris), I’m reminded that sometimes monsters make art. I wasn’t sure what to expect with Husbands and Wives. Now, having watched it, there’s a part of me that wishes I’d seen it three or four years ago.

The reason for that is simple—this is the sort of Woody Allen film that tends to bother me in the best of situations. The Allen I tend to like best is when he’s more nostalgic and romantic. When everything is tied up in his own libido, I tend to check out pretty quickly. Husbands and Wives is one of those movies that is entirely about marriages falling apart and people deciding to move on with their lives because their sex lives are terrible. No one is ultimately going to be edified by anything. One marriage seems strong and breaks up. One marriage seems weak and ends up staying intact. Everyone is concerned entirely with their genitals the entire time.