The Oscars: Can I Be Real Here?

Some personal grumbling.

Looks kind of creepy close up, doesn’t it?

I never expect much any more from the Academy Awards. When I was a nerdy kid, I used to quiver with excitement, looking forward to the night. It was a bright beacon, a moment when I felt in synch with “the culture”—weird, I know, but I was lonely and the movies were a huge source of comfort and a dream of possibilities. I didn’t always agree with the choices, but I loved the event. The movie stars. The clips from Best Picture nominations. And actually, in a way I loved all the movies, too. I loved that there were movies. I often saw them in New York City, having driven across the tunnel from Newark with my family, on the lookout for that line that announced you’d left Jersey and entered “the city.” Sometimes, my father and I would go alone and do a double-bill and see two back-to-back. We were the biggest movie-fanatics in the family, and possibly the biggest disappointed dreamers, too. At the time, anyway.

I’ve never stopped being in love with movies. But as for the Oscars. at a certain point, I became more interested in “who wore it better” and the “work” actresses had done than in who won or didn’t. I was writing about the female body (and after that, the male body) and that’s where my eyes and analysis gravitated. Then there was Anne Boleyn, and then the 2016 election, and then the pandemic, which put a halt to my every-Sunday movie-going with my good buddy Michelle. The last book I wrote—no surprise—was on television, which give me a nice justification for never going outside at all, let alone to a virally-loaded movie theater.

But now I have no book deadline looming, and I’ve got this great new platform called Substack. And because I’m writing about the movies (among other things) I’m paying attention to the “buzz” around the Oscars—and finding that my sensibilities are so divergent from popular opinion (Facebook as well as critics and media mavens) that I’m wondering if my brain lives on another planet (or universe?)

Specifically—and if I insult the movies you love, please don’t take it personally (although of course the movies we love are personal)—here’s what I find baffling/irritating/depressing:

• The adoration for everything, everywhere, everyone in “Everything, Everywhere All At Once.” It would be one thing if it was based on the film being inventive and fun (which I didn’t find it to be) or even—as one FB friend described it—like seeing her own nervous breakdown condensed into 2 hours (not what I’m looking for in a film, but ok.) But people have come up with the most high-flying existential analyses, seen it as a feminist treatise, elevated a very, very traditional corny ending to a message about life, and knocked criticism as anti-Asian. Sorry (unsubscribe me if you must) but it feels like a cult to me. Or a runaway train. It got momentum, and then there was no stopping it. (For a more lengthy discussion, see my post on “Everywhere”)

  Everywhere

• The overwhelming focus on chopped fingers and donkey death in criticisms of “Banshees of Inisherin.” I was unnerved, even horrified by those things too (please, please, bring Jenny back to life!) but there was a reason for them, unlike the gratuitous violence that we’re so used to we’ve become inured to it. And that’s something to think about, isn’t it? These were horrors that still have the capacity to shock—as they did the characters in the movie—and wasn’t that at least part of the point? “Some things there’s no moving on from,” says Padraic at the end. That’s both a metaphor for the often pointless escalation of wars and a reality about relationships. Watch what you do and say to others, because you can go too far and create disaster. And I could add (although it may not be what McDonagh was thinking at all) the disastrous wake left by the past is also the horrible truth about the last decade of American political life. I’m not one to look for “messages” in movies, and don’t like movies that force them on us. But if you want one, this one rang truer to me than the “heart-warming,” “healing” reconciliation at the end of EEAAO. (For a more lengthy discussion, see my post on “Banshees”:)

  A Vote for “The Banshees of Inisherin”

• The fact that neither “She Said” or “Aftersun” was nominated for any major awards (except for Paul Mescal for Best Actor in “Aftersun”) Thinking about those films—as well as my favorite nominee, “Banshees”— I realized that post-pandemic, what I crave—and am inclined to appreciate more than dazzling effects and multiverses—are movies that center on relationships, movies in which the expression on faces, physical connections (or disconnections) between the characters, tiny moments that make us understand and feel for the characters, create the universe of the movie—not everywhere—and pull us into it emotionally.

• That’s what I love, too, about the television series “The Last of Us”; it has zombies in it, but they are incidental to the relationship between Bella and Joel, the two central characters. I’ll be writing about that and “Aftersun” soon. In the meantime, for more on the cultural context of “She Said” and other films about women, see my post “Goodbye, Postfeminism.” It’s long, but you can read it in chunks.

  Goodbye, Postfeminism

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