BENGALURU: Finally, Leonardo DiCaprio wins his Oscar. After six nominations and countless Internet jokes and memes on his near-misses, the role of Hugo Glass in The Revenant secured him the Best Actor Award.
The Alejandro G Innaritu directorial, inspired by a true story, shows Glass surviving bloody attacks and a hard, indifferent wilderness. City Express speaks to a few movie buffs and finds that most of them think he deserved the honour.
Lekshmi Baskaran, a visual communications student, says “he should’ve won Oscars for his earlier films as well.” She finds his choice of scripts “phenomenal” and his characters impressive. “It is sad that he is underrated,” she says.
The Oscars deserved Leo, says Arihant Chaturvedi, expressing a sentiment common on the social media. “This year Leo had outclassed every other nominee with his performance,” he says. “But this wasn’t the case with his previous nominations.”
While most agree that DiCaprio’s Glass was unforgettable, some say that he may have won because the competition was less forceful as compared to previous years.
Edward (Eddie) Redmayne, who played Lili Elbe in The Danish Girl, and Bryan Cranston, who played Hollywood’s ace scripwriter Dalton Trumbo in Trumbo, were Leo’s biggest competitors this year, says Arvind Krishnan, a media student. “But Leo’s performance was on a different level. He might have lost to Eddie if he had given his performance last year.”
Eddie Redmayne had won the Oscar for Best Actor last year, for playing physicist Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything.
Nigil Varghese, analyst at Beroe, says DiCaprio had given similarly powerful performances in Aviator (2004) and Blood Diamond (2006). “But this year, the competition was not as exciting,” he says.
Harsha Vardhan, another movie buff, also believes that DiCaprio would’ve lost to last year’s contenders. “Last year, he would’ve lost to Eddie Redmayne’s portrayal of Stephen Hawking,” he says.
Online jokes seem to suggest that the actor picks his roles to win the Academy Award. But not everyone buys into that.
Shweta Sridhar says, “I don’t think DiCaprio chooses movies to get an Oscar. He would’ve done the movies he has done irrespective of whether or not they won him an Oscar.”
Best Movie Could’ve Gone To
While Spotlight won for the Best Movie, Bengalureans thought MadMax (another nominee) and The Room (which did not have a nomination) were equally good.
Arvind Krishnan says, “The Room had a much deeper impact because it conveyed a lot of emotions compared to Spotlight, which suggested more than it depicted.”
Spotlight might’ve been chosen because it is based on a true story and many previous winners were also based on a true story, he adds. Arihant Chaturvedi thinks The Room and Spotlight were almost as good.
“If I give 51 marks to Spotlight, I would’ve given 49 to The Room. But better than the two was MadMax. The VFX, editing and costumers were far better in that,” he says.
Shweta was surprised when MadMax was nominated and not The Room. “Nevertheless, MadMax was a great action movie.”