So, the English actress now has a Lifetime Achievement Award sitting proudly on her mantelpiece next to the plaque that proclaims “you may now call yourself Dame Judi Dench”. (I think you are knighted as such upon playing the Queen of England, but seeing as Dench has starred as Queen Elizabeth I and Empress Victoria in Mrs. Brown, I’d say she deserves a double-honour. Henceforth, she shall be Grand-Dame Judi Dench) What was especially intriguing, though, were her comments after she’d accepted the applause, delivered a speech in Danish and departed the ceremony. Speaking on BBC News she remarked, “I know what you’re thinking: lifetime achievement, is that it then?” I’m not a universally-loved cinema personality so I wouldn’t know, but I guess that getting a lifetime achievement accolade, or acknowledgement in any area of popular culture, evokes similar feelings to milestone birthdays. After the initial jubilation and celebration with others, the sad truth that you are, in fact, now older and now also hungover and partied out as well, dawns on you and leaves you in a despairing state of melancholy, musing “what next? Is this it? Am I now a has-been?” If this is the case, then it’s upsetting to think that movie legends may find themselves, post-proclamation event, in such a depression. It makes you wonder: why give out lifetime achievement awards before the lifetime has elapsed? It’s also true that these kind of total career commemorations can be used as lip service to reward those that haven’t received due recognition the rest of their life. You need only look to Alfred Hitchcock, who never received an Oscar and only got the Irving G. Tharlberg Memorial Award to make up for it; Stanley Kubrick didn’t even get that. It wasn’t too late for Hitch, though, to make the self-proclaimed critical elite eat humble pie, but Kubrick, on the other hand, can only exact his revenge from beyond the grave. This, I feel, gives us another reason why lifetime achievement awards should only be presented to people once they’ve shuffled off this mortal reel… How do we go about presenting the prizes? Gathering around shamans and necromancers at grand gala evenings, the spirit of the honouree would be conjured back to this realm for one night only in order to receive mass public veneration and possibly even an apology from the critics for being overlooked whilst they were actually around. Should the spirit choose to haunt some people (I think Hitch would like that) then, by all means, it’s their big party; let ‘em spook to their heart’s content. If Hollywood and all the other film industry structures and hierarchies start such spiritual dabbling immediately then there’s a chance that, beyond lifetime achievement awards, Heath Ledger could be invoked back in time for the Oscars to collect his Best Supporting Actor accolade. We’re already into the awards season and Ledger’s appearance as The Joker in The Dark Knight has started gathering posthumous prizes. So if we can find a way to have his poltergeist present on February 22nd 2009, as well as saluting what stands as, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest villain performances on screen, we could also give a proper respectful send off to the late, great Paul Newman. James’ previous column can be found here.
