The 1997 Academy Awards

The saddest past was that it wasn't an upset. By the time you got to the end of the night and endured the other eight Oscars The English Patient had won, you could at least say it was a well-produced, well-performed work that was, at worst, the sum of its award-winning parts. Unfortunately, it was the least interesting Best Picture winner since Annie Hall.

Sitting across the table was Fargo, a breath of fresh air and the mainstream arrival of the Coen brothers. Fargo was everything viewers are trained to seek in movies: unique, interesting, unordinary, technically sound and a step above the rest. It sat right behind Patient for most of the same Oscar categories, and it was clearly the popular — and better — pick.

Having been a two-horse race, the rest of the nominations were awards in and of themselves, a nod for being good enough to share the category with these two works. Shine was a wandering, roaming biopic, pulled together by Geoffrey Rush into a characterization tour de force. It lent itself to one of the eeriest Oscar moments of the '90s: David Helfgott, disturbed subject of the film, racing through Flight of the Bumblebee in a last-minute arrangement in front of the Shrine Auditorium crowd.

For Your Consideration ... Breaking the Waves Evita Flirting with Disaster Get on the Bus Hamlet Lone Star Microcosmos Mission: Impossible The People vs. Larry Flynt Primal Fear Prisoner of the Mountains Sling Blade Tesis Trainspotting When We Were Kings

Jerry Maguire was little more than the nod to big studios, the Academy's way of saying "Men, the challenge is upon us." This was an off-center year that didn't favor the major studios, but the Academy had to give them some recognition, and when looking for the best, most mainstream foot to put forward, nothing's better than a sports movie/love story with Tom Cruise at its center.

The other major problem is the nomination of Secrets & Lies, a marginally interesting Brenda Blethyn drama. Tapping on the window were such works as Sling Blade, The People vs. Larry Flynt, Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet, and Evita. Flynt had its fans for its content, but Edward Norton stole too much attention from the title character to merit a nomination. Evita, yes, was Madonna. Not nominated? A crime, say all her fans, though not all the critics.

Sling Blade and Hamlet, though, had the right to complain, and for opposite reasons. Hamlet, a four-hour dream dotted with as many great cameos as strong performances, was perhaps the greatest Shakespeare adaptation of the previous 20 years. It remained unseen, though, because of its length.

Sling Blade was the opposite — a spirited story that arose from Billy Bob Thornton's passion for a chance to retell on a larger canvas the 1993 short which he'd written and starred in. One, the large canvas and masterful treatment of a time-honored classic. The other, the birth of a scribe, a story from scribbled notes and shorter scripts.

But Fargo's loss to The English Patient shows, as well as anything, that in 1997 the Oscars honored standard-bearers of good cinema, not intriguing, invigorating — and risky — productions.