Oscars have long been won by historical and war blockbusters, biographies of dead geniuses, epic musicals and dramas about fundamental social problems such as alcoholism, racism or capitalism. The main statuette of the evening was rarely won by the producers of a comedy, thriller or western. Even in such cases, however, it was usually about titles with a stamp of prestige and an overlap.
But after the #OscarsSoWhite campaign, which in 2015 responded to the low representation of minorities across the film industry, the composition of the Academy changed. The most-watched movie awards society has been expanded to include several thousand new members so that the results don’t just reflect the tastes of white Americans aged 60+. They still predominate, but at the same time the voting power of women, African Americans, LGBTQ+ people and foreign artists has increased.
Is there still an “Oscar movie”?
This is also why today it is more difficult to talk about something as a typical Oscar film. In recent years, films that seem like UFOs in the context of Oscar history have won: A fragile queer romance with a budget that wouldn’t even cover catering for the Marvel movies (Moonlight), a genre-hybrid South Korean satire (Parasite) or an oversized sci-fi with talking rocks, anal plugs and a big nihilistic bagel (Everything, everywhere, at once).
Obviously, the best film no longer has to be non-commercial, serious and English-language. This year’s top ten also corresponds to this. The idea of a pragmatically calculated Oscar film (so-called Oscar bait) is fulfilled only by Maestro. Bradley Cooper cast himself as composer Leonard Bernstein, who evidently loved cocaine, cheating on his wife and applause.
But audiences and critics were more likely to doze off while watching the stodgy drama than shout “bravo!” Nevertheless, the film, with seven Oscar nominations, managed to sell its distributor, Netflix, as an event with major Oscar potential. Even based on similar self-fulfilling prophecies, awards work. You’ve been sending the message to the media for so long that your film will compete for the top prizes when the wish comes true.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt if you can spend tens of millions of dollars on an Oscar campaign. Otherwise, you need to be tactical. Just like Harvey Weinstein used to do and A24 studio today. The production and distribution company, founded only in 2012, has been a regular participant in the Oscar contest for a few years now. By cleverly using social networks, they manage to turn both art gems and films without any substance into the sensation of the season.
This year, A24 is competing with the gripping Korean-American romance Past Lives. A fragile but perhaps too neat and literal film about lovers separated by time, culture and an ocean, it becomes more profound the more you project into it from your own (failed) relationships.
A24’s second Oscar candidate is Zone of Interest. The loose adaptation of Martin Amis’s novel represents one of the most formally radical pictures ever to compete for the Oscars. For a hundred minutes, we just watch mundane scenes from the life of the concentration camp commander and his family.
Mostly in still shots without music. And also without dramatic tension, hope, catharsis and characters we could identify with. Zone of Interest consistently avoids the aestheticization of carnage and outwardly represents a denial of everything that one imagines under the brand of “Oscar beater”. Except for one detail – it’s a film about the Holocaust. Since time immemorial, academics have reacted like moths to light on few other topics.
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Of course, if the Oscars also exist to tell the world that movies should be taken seriously, it makes sense that the voters highlight the works that deal with the most serious topics. Seriousness is characteristic of Martin Scorsese’s anti-western Killers of the Blooming Moon, which, like Zone of Interest, confronts the audience with their indifference to evil that does not directly affect them.
A film as long as the journey from Prague to Ostrava, despite its grandeur and undeniable storytelling skill, does not represent the pinnacle of Scorsese’s filmography. He should have gotten the Oscar more for Taxi Driver, Raging Bull or Mafia. But if the Academy wanted to show respect for the long-overlooked Native American population this year, it would be an ideal choice.
The reputation of The Killers has slowly swelled since its Cannes release. The premiere at a major festival also made other nominated films more visible. The predominantly German-speaking Zone of Interest won the Grand Prix at Cannes. The well-written French court drama Anatomy of a Fall, showing that everyone is right in court and in marriage, won the Palme d’Or there. The Poor, Greek Yorgos Lanthimos’ most digestible film, won in Venice.
Outwardly it is clear
Among other things, the above list proves that the A-class festivals are becoming less and less elitist and the Oscars more and more international. In addition to the changing composition of the Academy, streaming services have also played a role in this, making subtitled films more accessible to a wider audience than ever before. Despite the more varied composition of nominees, the Oscars remain the most populist awards far and wide, which is best demonstrated by the remaining four nominees.
Winter Break, in which Paul Giamatti excels as a snarky history teacher, is at heart a warm feel-good comedy despite its existential undertones and winter locations. American Fiction is also a comedy, albeit a more intellectual one. Cord Jefferson’s directorial debut follows a black writer who deliberately writes a novel full of racial stereotypes… which becomes a bestseller. A biting film about creative block and a lobotomized entertainment industry, it’s reminiscent of early Woody Allen, but with more melancholy.
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At the Oscars, which in recent years have been looking for a way to attract more people to the screens, especially from younger generations, the duel between the two titans from last summer, Barbie and Oppenheimer, will also continue. Outwardly, Christopher Nolan is the favorite with 13 nominations.
The narratively complex drama about ideas that changed the world is based on a period setting, convincing acting performances and a moral message clear enough to reach even the audience in the last rows. However, a film representing the values that academics usually listen to could pay for being too white and masculine. And not just compared to Greta Gerwig’s garishly pink and garishly literal feminist satire.
After all, the results of the Oscars never tell only about the personal preferences of the voters. It is always at the same time an expression of the values through which Hollywood wants to present itself to the world at a given historical moment. Currently, for example, it is a greater sensitivity to otherness. The task of producers, distributors and PR agencies is then to create such a story that academics believe that the work in question best reflects the spirit of the times. While ten or twenty years ago Oppenheimer would probably have turned most of the nominations on merit, this year we may be in for a night full of surprises.
2024-03-08 10:00:00
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