Movies: Why Leonardo DiCaprio Should Get His Damn Oscar Already
The 85th Academy Awards. The brightest and most beautiful stars in Hollywood, draped in their finery and smelling expensive, exchange back slaps and congratulatory smiles. Sweaty hands tremble clutching gold naked men, rising scores sing off overly grateful winners, jewellery rattles, throats are cleared, jokes are offered and the porcelain faces of the celebrated laugh at the insanity of their own brilliance, in plush red chairs with their photograph crudely sellotaped to the back.
In the darkness, he sits.
He claps the nominees politely in his sharp black suit. He soaks up each acceptance speech like a modest sponge. He smiles contently for the cameras. He takes a long, deep breath.
‘One day’ he tells himself. ‘One day, that will be me up there.’
Who the hell does Leonardo DiCaprio have to sleep with to get his goddamn Oscar?
There are Oscar snubs, Reader, and then there are continuous Oscar snubs, to the point where Master Leo could nearly start taking this personally. What will it take for him to get the recognition he so sorely deserves? He acts his little socks off in everything he stars in and he gets nothing but rejection in return.
The final decisions of the mysterious Academy have been suspect in the past, but how can they get it so wrong, so often when it comes to DiCaprio? Has the nomination criteria narrowed so specifically to ‘getting a dramatic haircut and doing a decent Sinead O’Connor impression’ and ‘being Daniel Day Lewis’ that Leonardo is doomed to be excluded no matter what he does?
We would be willing to accept that DiCaprio doesn’t have a statuette gathering dust on a shelf if he was simply not a good enough actor, but he is.
Have a cursory glance over the following performances, to remind yourself.
What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? (1993)
LEONARDO DICAPRIO IS: Johnny Depp’s mentally challenged brother who enjoys birthday cake, climbing water towers and setting houses on fire.
This Boy’s Life (1993)
LEONARDO DICAPRIO IS: Ellen Barkin’s son who is regularly subjected to emotional, verbal and physical abuse by his evil stepfather. He enjoys nothing. It’s a barrel of laughs.
The Basketball Diaries (1995)
LEONARDO DICAPRIO IS: A basketball playing juvenile drug addict who enjoys heroin, prostitution and writing about basketball, heroin and prostitution.
Marvin’s Room (1996)
LEONARDO DICAPRIO IS: Meryl Streep’s mentally challenged young son who enjoys bone marrow transplants and setting houses on fire.
Romeo and Juliet (1996)
LEONARDO DICAPRIO IS: A Capulet banging a Montague who enjoys gun fights, costume parties and Claire Danes despite her quite frankly ludicrous cry face.
FEELINGS
Titanic (1997)
LEONARDO DICAPRIO IS: A confident, free spirited Yank who enjoys boat trips, sketching women in the nip and being too polite to tell girls to budge the fuck over because there is clearly room for two on that door.
The Man in the Iron Mask (1998)
LEONARDO DICAPRIO IS: Both an incompetent miltaristic King Louis XIV AND his secret good-natured twin brother Philippe with the identity crisis. He enjoys shouting, crying, being a twin and looking fabulous.
Catch Me If You Can (2002)
LEONARDO DICAPRIO IS: A young con artist who enjoys playing chasies with Tom Hanks and posing as pilots, doctors and lawyers for shits and giggles.
The Aviator (2004)
LEONARDO DICAPRIO IS: An eccentric reclusive millionaire who enjoys planes, having relations with famous actresses and pissing into jars.
The Departed (2006)
'Right DiCaprio, yew slaaaaag. Ain't no one threatens Matt Damon on my watch. Ain't no one.'
LEONARDO DICAPRIO IS: An undercover Boston cop who enjoys infiltrating Irish American mobs, JUSTICE and talking about his feelings.
Blood Diamond (2006)
LEONARDO DICAPRIO IS: A South African lad although lots of people said his accent was shit and it completely distracted anyone watching the film.
Revolutionary Road (2008)
LEONARDO DICAPRIO IS: A husband bored with suburban life who enjoys… well… not a lot.
Shutter Island (2010)
LEONARDO DICAPRIO IS: A detective who enjoys doing detective shit on an island.
Inception (2010)
LEONARDO DICAPRIO IS: MAGIC SLOW MOTION DREAM MAN
Django Unchained (2013)
LEONARDO DICAPRIO IS:… not as good as Christoph Waltz (who is?) but clearly the next best thing in this film after the aforementioned Waltz is when the camera zooms in really quick to DiCaprio’s face.
We would also like to include, for the purpose of the argument, this photograph of Leonardo DiCaprio eating soup.
If this were a courtroom, we’d throw down the book and declare our case rested. It doesn’t make sense? Your face doesn’t make sense.
Out of the performances above, DiCaprio has had just three nominations. He is always the bridesmaid and never the bride. This injustice makes us sadder than a sad thing that once was very sad.
Having successfully navigate the battlefield that is the transition from child actor to fully fledged adult movie star without even so much as a trip to rehab, DiCaprio has made (mostly) wise career decisions and offered continuously excellent performances, whether or not you think his South African accent in Blood Diamond was accurate (it was) or not.
We know DiCaprio is a great actor but in Hollywood, it’s not technically official until The Academy bestow upon you that Oscar.
So what exactly is the problem here?
Some would argue that perhaps, he is simply too good looking to be taken seriously. Sometimes, being blessed with a face that can break hearts is something of a curse when you want people to pay attention to the words you are saying rather than have them focus on imaginging what it would be like to smell your hair and lick your cheek.
We imagine it would be as magical as the first time we heard The Beatles
We can completely understand this applying to DiCaprio, speaking as people who once had actual binders full of his pictures at school and spent long hours daydreaming about the day he’d give us a fireman’s lift out of the classroom and take us off to some tropical island. However, to many, DiCaprio no longer possesses the boyish good looks he once had and yet, as he ages and grows more and more into his overly baked potato face, his talent still shines through.
What if The Academy are simply jealous? DiCaprio lives a life of rotating supermodel girlfriends, foreign holidays, court side seats at basketball games and hanging out with (the dude that used to be) Spiderman which would leave a sour taste in the mouth. However, DiCaprio is always shiting on about saving the environment, donating to charity, walking around LA carrying a bit of extra beef not giving a fuck and generally living a quiet, incredibly inoffensive life in the public eye so there is no reason to resent what appears to be a genuinely nice guy.
It may well be that DiCaprio just has bad luck. Having lost out to Tommy Lee Jones, Forest Whitaker and Jamie Foxx during his nomination years, he was simply outacted (outacted?) by performances that were slightly more impressive than his output that particular year.
Nevertheless, here at Ramp.ie, we say this cannot continue and he should get ALL THE AWARDS before he throws the towel in for good and we never see his pretty face again. He deserves recognition for his (so far) glittering, mostly credible career because we damn well say so.
Until then, don’t worry yourself, Leo. We’ve never won an Oscar either and we’re still awesome.
