Oscars Seazon

By MARGOT BECKER ‘20

I love the Oscars. From the suave celebrities hobnobbing on the red carpet, to the over-rehearsed and glittery performances, the night is one of absurdity and excess, captivating to the last moment. Going into this year’s Academy Awards, though, I was worried. After watching a multitude of this year’s nominated films and engaging in numerous spirited debates with my friends, family, and random confused people on the street, I had developed a strong set of opinions, many of which were not terribly kind to some of the nominated films.

This year was a peculiar one for popular cinema. The Joker, a film which many thought was too mainstream to captivate the tastes of The Academy, raked in a whopping 11 nominations, many more than expected. In contrast, a number of films which were beloved by critics and fans were hardly recognized at all. Uncut Gems, the Safdie Brothers’ tour-de-force film featuring Adam Sandler in one of his most daring and powerful roles to date, for example, was entirely snubbed.

My own, personal desires were confounded by the list of nominees, which heavily favored 1917 (which I am on record as commonly saying is like “watching someone else play the most boring third-person shooter of all time”), Joker, The Irishman, and Ford V Ferrari. Don’t get me wrong, I had a fantastic time watching some of these films; in an article early this year I described James Mangold's historical fiction as an “automotive romp,” and a “masterpiece blockbuster,” but it pales in comparison to a number of other nominated and un-nominated films of this year.

Despite a disappointing slate of nominees, the 97th Academy Awards proved exciting, unexpected, and, in the end, satisfying. Bong Joon-Ho’s acclaimed film Parasite raked in four Oscars, including Best Picture, making it the first foreign-language film ever to earn this prize, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. Joker won only two awards, one for Best Original Score, and one for Best Actor (by all accounts, Joaquin Phoenix’s performance was a triumph). 1917 claimed three awards, most deservedly best cinematography for its daring, though in my opinion, overly-gimmicky, presentation. The rest of the awards were surprisingly democratic, which is somewhat rare for the Academy awards. In previous years individual films have thoroughly swept the show, but the 97th Academy Awards spread the love, rewarding a multitude of different films.

In traditional fashion, women and people of color were disappointingly underrepresented, and this underrepresentation is unlikely to change in coming years. Parasite’s victory, though, is a critical step in the right direction, and hopefully it will encourage greater acceptance of foreign and non english-language films in the future.