Will this finally be Scorsese’s year?

This year’s best director contest reminds me of those Hemingway vs. Faulkner debates English majors used to have way back in the 20th century. In this equation Martin Scorsese is William Faulkner, with his swooping, swirling shots and breathless run-on sentences, while Clint Eastwood is Ernest Hemingway: simple, unadorned, with scenes of emotional power that are excruciating because of their very understatement.

But to complete the metaphor: Hemingway’s already got his Pulitzer; Faulkner doesn’t. And that, I hope, is the key.

Flowers for Scorsese
Yes, I’m rooting for Martin Scorsese. Who isn’t? The man is one of our greatest filmmakers and he’s 0-4. I wasn’t rooting for him two years ago when he was up for “Gangs of New York” because I thought that movie overlong and uneven, and he was competing against Roman Polanski’s “The Pianist,” which is the best film about the Holocaust ever made. But “The Aviator” soars, and feels light only in comparison with Scorsese’s heavier works (“Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull,” “Goodfellas”), not in comparison with previous best picture winners (“Gladiator,” “A Beautiful Mind,” “Chicago”). How heartbreaking would it be if, once Scorsese gives the Academy what they like, they still snubbed him? I might have to turn off the television.

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A few critics compared “The Aviator” to films by Scorsese’s friend Steven Spielberg, which is both correct (Spielberg once talked about directing a Howard Hughes biopic) and not. Spielberg always has to reach out to fiddle with our heartstrings, while Scorsese can’t be bothered with that crap. As averse as I am to Spielberg’s brand of sentimentality, this lack may be the main problem with “The Aviator.” Visually it’s stunning, and intellectually it’s fascinating: the story of a man who lived life big — he lifted the gigantic Spruce Goose into the air! — and who is undone by things too small to see. But there’s little emotional resonance. Scorsese has removed his usual dark heart and left the film with no heart. Just a slight “what might have been” stir at the end.

In Siskel and Ebert’s 1991 book, “The Future of Movies: Interviews with Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and George Lucas,” Spielberg, talking about the Hughes biopic he never made, mentions the “three or four lifetimes” that Hughes lived in a short span, and Scorsese has certainly captured those; but Spielberg also talks about the wonder of this gregarious man becoming our most famous recluse. “What drove him into the rooms with the curtains drawn?” Spielberg asks. Beyond a perfunctory childhood scene, Scorsese doesn’t answer. Is there a parallel between Hughes’ hygienic and filmic perfectionism? Did his life move so fast because he was trying to outrun the demons that finally caught him? Intellectually, we could talk about it all day. Emotionally, it never sank in.

Rush Limbaugh is still a big fat idiot

Merie W. Wallace / AP Clint Eastwood

For something to sink in it has to stand still, and this is what “Million Dollar Baby” does. Eastwood’s camera doesn’t move much and the film hits bone. In fact, most of the time, Eastwood simply films what John Ford once called “the most interesting and exciting thing in the whole world: the human face.” Then he brings the film in for as gentle a landing as any I’ve seen. The final shot, with accompanying narration, is haunting.

Unfortunately Eastwood hasn’t given up some of the moral simplicity of his Dirty Harry days. The world is still full of bullies (the trash-talking Shawrelle Berry) and victims (the dweeby “Danger” Barch), and those who avenge the victims (Morgan Freeman’s “Scrap Iron” Dupris). The female champion, Billie the Blue Bear, is basically Mr. T’s missus, while the only mean thing about Hilary Swank’s Maggie Fitzgerald is her hook. Her white-trash family? Not many shades of gray in that trailer park. They’re the biggest bunch of clowns to appear in a serious film.

This moral simplicity, by the way, doesn’t extend to the powerful final third of the film, currently under attack by right-wing blabbermouths Rush Limbaugh and Michael Medved. The choices the characters make here are made with gravity and love. An empathetic audience will feel the horror of the characters’ situations and wonder what their own choices might be in those situations. This is exactly what art is supposed to do. The film isn’t condoning anything. (I, for one, don’t think I could do what either character does.) The only ones uninterested by such powerful scenes are fundamentalists: people who believe they have all the answers and so don’t need to hear the questions. Apparently they don’t want the rest of us to hear the questions either.

And, just as an aside, what kind of insane nation have we become when the right-wing attacks Clint Eastwood? Who are they going after next — John Wayne?

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