Waltz’ Oscar win like a voyage to a new continent — in more ways than one

It’s a lot easier to think of bad Oscar acceptance speeches than good ones.  That is why the acceptance speech of best supporting actor Christoph Waltz at last night’s 2009 Oscars was such a delight. Waltz started off with a great scene-setter, an opening sentence that reminded us of his already-classic line from Inglorious Basterds, referring to the combination of the Oscar and presenter Penelope Cruz as an “uber bingo.”  He then wrapped the usual recognition of his colleagues into a metaphor about discovering a new continent — thanking Quentin Tarantino (”this fearless explorer”) for “putting together an expedition” and producers Harvey Weinstein et al for equipping it, and then again praising Tarantino for his “unorthodox methods of navigation.”   Waltz ended on a gracious note, saying to Academy members ”there’s no way I can ever thank you enough, but I can start right now. Thank you.”

But it was the voyage of discovery metaphor that was key to the speech, and it worked because it summed up the movie, Waltz’ career, and movie-goers’ reaction to his extraordinary performance. Waltz may have discovered a new continent, but a new continent also discovered him. Until a few months ago, few if any North Americans had heard of him. Basterds was his first American film, and it opened him to a U.S. audience by taking him back into German history, to a period he would rather not be associated with — a different kind of voyage. But the counterfactual account was enthusiatically embraced by both the German cast members and many Nazi victims. Or in the words of Tarantino (quoted or paraphrased by Waltz): ”This is where we’re going, but we’re going the other way.”