SO how do you like your America -- as a mildly flawed Mayberry or a seething pit of lies, corruption and greed?
That's the battle shaping up at the 2008 Oscars, as films as brutal as "There Will Be Blood," "No Country for Old Men" and "Michael Clayton" line up against the sunny upstart "Juno" for the top prize. The entirely British but equally dark "Atonement" is the final film battling for the best picture spot.
Putting aside "Atonement" for a moment, the best picture nominees are quintessentially American stories, and all but "Juno" can perhaps best be analyzed on a bleakness scale of 1 to 10.
On the dystopian end of the spectrum are Joel and Ethan Coen's "No Country for Old Men," whose random violence is echoed in the harsh landscape and ill winds that howl through its desert Texas landscape.
Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood" also focuses on brute, animalistic greed, albeit against the backdrop of legal capitalism -- specifically, early 20th century oil wildcatting.
And then there's "Michael Clayton" -- a throwback to such anti-corporate Hollywood polemics as "Silkwood" and "Erin Brockovich" -- starring George Clooney as a morally defeated law firm fixer who must bring down the outsized evil he's spent decades enabling.
The most redemptive is "Atonement," the World War II romantic drama in which a young girl's accusation leads to tragic results. But at least there is peace at the end.
Against all this tide of despair is the little lifeboat "Juno," about a pregnant teenager, which takes an upsetting subject and turns it in a wry and ultimately hopeful look at the American family.
"[Studios] thought it was a dicey thing to do, to have a comedy dealing with such a serious subject, about a minor, about a girl who doesn't regret having sex with her boyfriend and calls it 'magnificent,' " said "Juno" producer Lianne Halfon.
The movie's explosion as a mainstream entertainment invariably helped its evolution from small indie to Oscar contender alongside films with more rarefied pedigrees.
"Juno" was made for $7.5 million and has already earned $85 million at the box office, becoming the top-grossing movie of all time at Fox Searchlight.
For the last few years, the Oscars have reflected the globalization of the film business, with attention-grabbing nominees such as "Babel" and "Pan's Labyrinth." This year, the only nominally global movie is "Atonement," a Hollywood-funded, all-Brit production. Based on Ian McEwan's novel, the movie is this year's lush, period WWII nominee, the kind of nod that feels safer, in its way, than the others.
