Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actor 1980

The Contenders:

John Hurt: The Elephant Man
Robert Duvall: The Great Santini
Robert De Niro: Raging Bull (winner)
Peter O’Toole: The Stunt Man
Jack Lemmon: Tribute

Watch Your Six

Film: The Great Santini
Format: Turner Classic Movies on rockin’ flatscreen.

Movies like The Great Santini are difficult for me to watch. This has nothing to do with the events of the film and everything to do with the story that is presented on screen. The Great Santini is less a film with a plot and more the story of the relationship between a man and his son, a relationship that is nothing but issues and problems and emotional abuse. I don’t have an issue with that at all. The problem is that the film seems all over the place. It’s all about this relationship, but at the same time, it tells that story not with rising action or a building plot, but a series of not-well-connected events that are essentially just slices out of a year of their life. It’s so disconnected from itself that I had trouble with where it was going.

Lieutenant Commander “Bull” Meechum (Robert Duvall), known as The Great Santini to his fellow Marine jet pilots, is a top pilot but also a discipline problem, a drunk, and emotionally stunted. He and his family are transferred to Beaufort, South Carolina in the years between the Korean and Vietnam War. The film follows most of that year, giving us as much of Santini as we can handle.