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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Wendy Ide

And the winner is … very unlucky: why picking up that Oscar can turn into a curse

Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Louise Fletcher’s win for her chilling performance as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest did not lead to a high-profile film career. Photograph: United Artists/Fantasy Films/Kobal/REX/Shutterstock

The year is 2006. Competing for Best Picture, the top prize of the 78th Academy Awards, are five films. Ang Lee’s wrenchingly sad queer cowboy love story Brokeback Mountain, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger is a critical favourite.

Capote, a meaty biopic by Bennett Miller, stars the incomparable Philip Seymour Hoffman in the title role. George Clooney’s gripping Good Night, and Good Luck celebrates CBS news reporter Edward R Murrow and an era of journalistic idealism and daring. Munich, directed by Steven Spielberg, is a propulsive historical thriller about the aftermath of the Black Friday terror attack during the Munich Olympics.

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