Best Picture Recap

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Looking over the list of Best Picture winners, I was surprised at the diversity. I started categorizing the winners from 1980 on (about the time that I became a serious movie watcher) and tried to come up with groupings that made sense. Separating the films into genres like western, epic, drama, comedy, and musical is one way to go, in which case crime movies, war movies, and dramas predominate. But these are mixed in with a surprising number of movies that are less definable. For example, Chariots of Fire (winner in 1981) would have to be deemed a drama, but it's a far cry in tone than Out of Africa or American Beauty.

So then I tried categorizing them by tone: sad, joyous, tough, or even---"even" referring to those movies that are not predominately one strong emotion. For example, I would say that Chariots of Fire was even. Among this year's nominees, Up in the Air would be even, while The Hurt Locker would be tough and Up would be joyous. Avatar would be something else altogether, but what? Maybe inspiring.

Here's what I came up with:

SAD
Ordinary People
Out of Africa
The English Patient
American Beauty
Million Dollar Baby

TOUGH
Platoon
The Silence of the Lamb
Unforgiven
Schindler's List
Braveheart
Gladiator
Crash
The Departed
No Country for Old Men
The Hurt Locker

JOYOUS
Terms of Endearment
Amadeus
Rain Man
Driving Miss Daisy
Forrest Gump
Shakespeare in Love
Chicago

INSPIRING
Gandhi
Dances with Wolves
Titanic
A Beautiful Mind
The Return of the King
Slumdog Millionaire

EVEN
Chariots of Fire
The Last Emperor

I put a film like Terms of Endearment in the Joyous category because, even though the ending is sad, the bulk of the movie is funny, even when dramatic. I'm surprised by how even the categories turned out to be, with many more joyous films than I would have guessed. The Even category is most sparse, not surprisingly. If we did the same parsing with the acting awards, the Joyous category might be similarly sparse.

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