Oscars rehash: ’00, Year of Pleasant Surprises

The biggest surprise ending: the Best Picture might actually still be the best picture.

I judge a surprise ending by one quality: did the movie have to lie to me to make it a surprise? A friend once told me he hated American Beauty because of its surprise ending: Lester Burnham dies. But it isn't a surprise at all; he announces his death minutes into the movie. Had he not died, it would have been a surprise -- and a lie. Chinatown didn't lie. The movie was a mystery slowly being unraveled, and the ending is a surprise only because it is so unlikely. The Empire Strikes Back didn't lie. We are somewhat misled by our own preconceived notions about good and evil in movies, but it never lied. 12 Monkeys didn't lie. It was confusing as hell and set a standard for screwing with a viewer's mind that few movies dare approach, but it never lied. Fight Club pushed it so far, and, yes, it lied, because what can easily exist on a page -- two characters who are, in fact, one person -- cannot exist on the screen as one actor without ruining the work completely. But the movie is constructed to make the surprise obvious if you're paying attention. The Usual Suspects lied. I like the movie, mostly for the acting despite the presence of a Baldwin, but it lied.It is never a good idea to judge the relative merits of specific surprise endings, because what is a surprise is relative. Many people love the ending of The Usual Suspects and hate the ending of The Sixth Sense. For me, it is the other way around.

Verbal Kint/Keyser Soze spins a story that is fun to see spun, but it is a lie. In the end, everything we saw turns out to be nothing more than an improvised con. We have nothing to latch to and say, oh, so that's what happened.

The Sixth Sense doesn't lie. Its surprise ending is hardly a surprise any longer and wasn't even a surprise for very long when it came out. The movie was so popular it was nearly impossible not to know something was up. Those who recommended the movie to friends could hardly contain their I-know-something-you-don't-know giddiness after having seen it. If you knew someone who had seen the movie you were likely to enjoy it less because you were on the lookout for something.

For whatever reason -- likely because the summer The Sixth Sense was released was also the summer I shut off my TV for three months, and also, really, I don't like people who act like they know something I don't know -- I saw the movie early and knew almost nothing about it. I knew it was supposed to be a scary movie, I knew it starred Bruce Willis, I knew it was getting very good reviews. Usually I read reviews of everything, but not that summer. So I was able to see the movie completely unspoiled. I was looking for nothing but a good movie. It misdirects and misdirects and misdirects, but even then the answer is right in front of you. In fact, I was a little annoyed at how boring it was at times, how these characters seemed unwilling to fight even though they all were so annoyed with each other. Because I knew nothing about Shyamalan at the time, I assumed for the first two-thirds of the movie that he just wasn't very good. In fact, he was going to great lengths to keep the surprise hidden and still not lie.

The surprise ending has now become something of a fetish for Shyamalan (among many, many others). Only his second film, Unbreakable -- for most critics at the time, a disappointment, because its ending was not surprising enough -- has weathered as well as his first, in part because Unbreakable is not about its surprise ending. It is not about how Mr. Glass finds David, but how David finds himself. The surprise in its ending merely shades the plot rather than twisting it around completely. Shyamalan created the standard by which I have since judged any surprise ending to a movie: should I have known what was going on if I paid closer attention? At the same time, though, he has done something worse to undercut his own standard. By creating a body of films that all have some surprise, some twist in the end, some gotcha moment that still plays by the rules, he has trained us to always be on the lookout for something. He has taken the surprise out of the surprise, which is perhaps worse than lying.

What should have won: So what if, in retrospect, Wes Bentley's nutjob peeping-tom cameraman seems less profound than he did at the time? Best Picture winner American Beauty still stands as a fine film, the first time I was and have remained happy with the winner. There's nothing earth-shattering about American Beauty, it's just a nice film about the obstacles we put up around us in the name of happiness that in fact keep us from being happy.

The Insider comes so tantalizingly close to perfection. After L.A. Confidential, Russell Crowe could have made a career of only playing the tough guy. But here he creates a weak man trying to find strength to do what's right. Even Al Pacino's now-familiar it-goes-to-11 style of acting could not ruin this movie. In fact, we needed just a little more of him, more shading about Lowell Bergman's and CBS's pursuit of the Unabomber story. The journalist's dual pursuit of the Unabomber and Jeffrey Wigand defines the relationship between Bergman and Wigand -- the tobacco whistle blower is more story than man. But the secondary story is cut down to the point it just gets in the way.

The Green Mile was too long. It was a fine movie, but in a year of really inventive movies, this one felt a little too normal. And way, way, way too long.

As noted above, The Sixth Sense was hugely popular for the novelty of its surprise ending. What's easy to overlook thanks to the ending is that it is a really effective story of a mother and son who don't really understand each other.

The Cider House Rules was just happy to be nominated.

Better movies that got screwed: So, so many.Want a movie from a young, inventive filmmaker? Magnolia. Or Being John Malkovich. Or Electon. Want a movie from an indie great? Limbo. Foreign film? Run, Lola, Run or All About My Mother. Or The Red Violin, which was sort of foreign even though Samuel L. Jackson kept popping up in it. Want a box office smash? Toy Story 2, arguably better than first. Want a good movie from a filmmaking legend? Sweet and Lowdown, further proving that anyone who says Woody Allen hit a dry spell in the '90s wasn't really paying attention. Any of these movies would have been better choices than The Green Mile or The Cider House Rules.

Worst award: Phil Collins for Best Original Song. First off, Aimee Mann's Save Me is a good song from an actual artist whose music provided the basis and soundtrack for an interesting movie. But not even she deserved the award. Blame Canada by a mile. This all happened too soon after the the release of a movie that made many people nervous. It would be a few more years before South Park was seen for what it really is: one of the best movie musicals in ages. Phil Collins? Ugh. And nothing against Kevin Spacey, who won Best Actor for the sort of performance that rarely gets recognized, but this was a particularly strong year for lead actors.