It’s a slippery slope. That’s the main thing I’ve found whilst writing and researching for this essay. I would like, if I may (you may), to talk about what I see as the issue with consolation prizes and faux lifetime achievement awards at award ceremonies, particularly at the Oscars, where I believe this travesty is most present. There is a divine issue with lifetime achievement awards. Not actual lifetime achievement awards, but fake ones. Let me explain.

Al Pacino winning an Oscar, Best Actor in a Leading Role Scent of ...
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Take Al Pacino, undoubtedly one of the finest actors of all time and a rightful winner of multiple Oscars over his time, for incredible performances in The Godfather, Dog Day Afternoon and a third win for his electric co-lead performance in Heat. The only issue is that statement is all a lie. Pacino only won an Oscar (as he commented with his tongue firmly in his cheek) in the abominable Jack and Jill. Pacino, for me, is the greatest victim of the plague of consolation prizes. The Oscars implemented a brand of awarding recipients with lifetime achievement awards without actually having to give them one. They are simply given Oscars for their later, lesser work, rather than their earlier stellar pieces. People all around see these as nothing short of consolation prizes. So Pacino wins for Scent of a Woman because Art Carney got his consolation prize in 1974 for Harry and Tonto, when Pacino should have won. Denzel Washington doesn’t win for his best performance in Malcolm X , because we have to correct our wrongs against Pacino and give him the Oscar for Scent of a Woman. Pacino is in no way bad in the film, but he is also in no way as excellent as Washington, or as good as his previous work. This is the slippery slope I started talking about. It’s a domino effect that still affects us to this day.

My only gripe is when, such as with Pacino and Washington, a performance of relative genius is thwarted by a fine, or even great performance, that gets the boost by it being from an actor or actress due their time. A prime example being Julianne Moore winning for Still Alice, a brilliant performance from a brilliant actress, but nowhere near as good as Rosamund Pike as the terrifying Amy Dunne in Gone Girl.
Which Martin Scorsese Movie Won the Most Oscars?
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There is another camp as well, where we look at performances or directors of a certain age who have yet to win, who do win for excellent work and are patronised into it looking like a consolation. Christopher Plummer in Beginners was a marvellous performance and one of his best and more than deserved to win that year. Much has been made of Scorsese winning for The Departed, but people forget to look back at the nominees that year and realise that Scorsese was undeniably the best director and that The Departed was undeniably the best film. Then there’s the situations where the best performance lines up beautifully with a celebration of somebody’s body of work; an example being Michael Keaton in Birdman, which incredibly lost to Eddie Redmayne, who produced an actively bad performance as Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything. But frankly, the less said about that film, the better.

There are those of course who beat the curve and won out on their first breakthrough role. Jennifer Lawrence, for instance, or more recently Olivia Colman. Us Brits seem to forget how new Colman was to American audiences, despite us adoring the woman for the past ten years or so on our screens. If it was up to many Brits, she would have been the leading lady of many films prior to year before last’s The Favourite. The victim of Colman’s win, however, was Glen Close, who most bookies, critics and Oscar contemplators had down to win for The Wife, a seriously mediocre film with an adequate performance from Close. But chiefly, it would have been her first win, it would have been her consolation prize. Close’s true winner should have been a tossup between Fatal Attraction (which she lost to Cher for Moonstruck...a travesty) or Dangerous Liaisons (which she lost to Jodie Foster for The Accused...the right person won there I’m afraid).
There is, of course, the further list of those who have NEVER won an Oscar and have passed and so, never shall... 

Directors: Orson Welles (who should have won for Citizen Kane), Hitchcock (who should have won for Vertigo), Kubrick (who should have won for Dr. Strangelove or The Shining). Then add three directors who deserve something and could still in the future: Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino and David Fincher. 

Actors: Jake Gyllenhall, Ryan Gosling, Amy Adams, Jim Carrey, John Goodman, Michelle Pfeiffer, Robin Wright, Bradley Cooper, Steve Buscemi, Woody Harrelson, Edward Norton, Samuel L Jackson, Michelle Williams, Annette Bening, Harrison Ford, Robert Downey Jr, Ralph Fiennes, Liam Neeson, Johnny Depp. And then are those unable to win anymore: James Dean, Peter O Toole, Richard Burton. 
Would I be happy if these guys all got Oscars for lesser work rather than nothing at all? Yes, of course I would.

So what do we do? Do I stick to my point and declare that these shouldn’t have won Oscars later in their lives for lesser work? I don’t know. It’s only the really glaring ones that annoy me. Streep winning, again, for playing Thatcher – that was a real low point in my eyes. For me, there is only one solution, as I have noted, the slope getting more slippery every year. There have been debts made in the 80s that still haven’t been paid off (Glen Close, I return to). So there is only one thing to do. From this point on, I declare we wipe the slate clean and from this point on, we try our hardest to award the best performance, as objective a thing as it may be, we should try not to lean towards consolations. I cannot speak for every actor, actress, director, writer or whatever, who has received one of these perceived consolation prizes; however, I am sure that the achievement is lessened by the fact that they, deep down, know that it’s for previous work. But at the end of the day if I’m ever fortunate enough to win an Oscar in any field, I would not be directing everybody back to this essay if it was for a lesser work, later in my life. I guess I’m nothing short of hypocrite.

Then there is the ultimate question, does any of this actually matter? Nobody looks on Hitchcock any differently because he didn’t win. Nobody puts The Departed above Goodfellas or Taxi Driver just because it won. Nobody has forgotten Pacino in The Godfather films, nor do I think they ever shall. Whereas, most have forgotten Harry and Tonto, if they had even heard of it before. So maybe this whole article was worthless, but you’ve read it now, so I guess that’s more so up to you.

-Thomas Carruthers