Oscars 2012: Foreign Language Film

Note: This is my personal ranking, listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite. Prediction for the actual winner is in orange.

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

1. A SEPARATION

2. BULLHEAD

3. IN DARKNESS

FOOTNOTE

MONSIER LAZHAR

 

Missing: The Skin I Live In

A Separation may not win here. Let’s take a moment and let that sink in.

This is despite a tight and compelling screenplay; a superb cast headed by Peyman Maadi, Leila Hatami and Sarina Farhadi (the director’s daughter); a bevy of awards including the Golden Globe; its status as the critical favorite and Asghar Farhardi’s discerning direction that paints pictures of separations physical, emotional, societal and visual (see the still above for one of many such literal splits between his subjects). It’s an alarmingly honest and visceral portrait of a family, and country, divided.

But when you throw a Holocaust film into the mix, all bets are off. In Oscar history, twenty feature length films — including docs and foreign language –have been nominated by telling the story of the Holocaust through the victims’  perspectives. How many have won in their respective categories? Eighteen. Those are not good odds for Farhardi’s film.

It also does’t help that the Academy tends to vote for the more blatantly sentimental/manipulative films à la El Secreto de Sus Ojos, rather than the critical contenders (not that that’s really any different than the Best Picture category — hello, The King’s Speech).

In Darkness, of course, beautifully fits both of these criteria with its true story: A not-exactly on the up-and-up Pole discovers a group of Jews desperately trying to escape a Lvov ghetto by way of its sewers. A shrewd businessman (re: thief), the conniving Leopold helps them hide for a hefty fee. Along the way, though, he develops a soft spot for his captives — lovingly declaring them, “My Jews!” with a big, genuinely joyful smile come film’s end. So Agnieszka Holland’s film is a conventional one, following the well-trodden path of the Holocaust narrative and too easily eliciting emotions from us — horror and hope and suspense and fear. But the performances are fine — especially the stocky and clever Robert Wieckiewicz as Leopold — and the well-made film is ultimately gratifying in the way that Holocaust films usually are.

Still, A Separation is exceptional, and hopefully the voters recognize and reward it as the year’s standout that it is.

But I still want to talk about Michael R. Roskam’s Bullhead, which is such an odd duck of a film (it’s the Dogtooth of this year). Unapologetically dark with its foreboding score (Raf Keunen), persistently overcast skies and discomfiting silences, it is an extraordinarily literal-minded Drama (yes, with a capital ‘D’) in which a meat mobster — who, as a boy, was castrated by a rock by a heartless little bastard — pumps steroids with alarmingly equal abandon into his cattle and himself. This is like the Godfather, but switch out the horse for the bull, and the excellent Matthias Schoenaerts as Jacky is like a Flemish Tom Hardy, all muscly, moody and scary as hell. Super-uncomfortable at times, Bullhead is a tense, weird, unnerving film. And I kind of really liked it, so obviously it has no chance of winning.

As for the last two films, neither has been released in the U.S. yet. The Canadian Monsieur Lazhar promises to be the touching and tender teacher story we’ve seen so many times before, while the Israeli Footnote is a wry Jewish comedy about a scholarly competition between father and son. No one is talking seriously, if at all, about either of these two nominees winning.

Oscars 2011: Best Foreign Language Film

Note: This is my personal ranking, listed in order from best to worst, with #1 being my favorite. Prediction for the actual winner is in orange.

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

1. Incendies

2. Dogtooth

3. In a Better World

4. Biutiful

5. Outside the Law

Full disclosure: I was only able to view Dogtooth and Biutiful, as Outside the Law and Incendies have not yet been released in the US, and as In a Better World is in that frustrating phase between theaters and dvd release. For all intents and purposes, this seems to be a competition between two films, and so take the following with a grain of salt..

A drama about the Algerian struggle for independence from France after WWII, The New York Times declares Outside the Law “a didactic, unashamedly manipulative film,” and it’s barely — if at all —  mentioned in the critical discourse concerning this award. At this point it’s fair to assume Algeria’s entry is near the bottom of the Academy’s list. I say that knowing full well that Dogtooth, which won or was nominated for a slew of film festival awards, is likely the absolute bottom choice for voters (how it was nominated for the Oscar, we’ll never know). A highly disturbing, bizarre and provoking film, Greece’s entry offers the nightmare version of parental over-protectiveness: three essentially adult children have never been allowed to venture past the grounds of their house; they are home-schooled, and are inexplicably taught the incorrect meanings of words; and when the son requires sexual release… well, let’s just say the parents are A-Ok with keeping it all in the family. Shocking at times (a tooth extracting scene tops the 127 Hours‘s arm-sawing in gross-out, cringe-inducing horror), alternately fascinating and frustrating at others (we never know why the parents have chosen to raise their children this way), Dogtooth encourages discourse, but the conclusion the filmmakers are searching for is unclear. And Oscars voters are going to run in the other direction.

I already discussed González Iñárritu’s Biutiful within the realm of the Best Actor in a Leading Role category, and there isn’t much to add besides the fact that its resolute bleakness, combined with melodramatic tendencies, leaves little to beholden it to voters. You can count this one out of the race.

Which leaves us with the two real contenders, neither of which I’ve seen. In Incendies, when a mother passes away, her children, fraternal twins, embark on a journey to the Middle East in search of a brother they never knew they had. Based on the acclaimed play, Scorched, by Wajdi Mouawad, the trailer intrigues, and this Canadian French-language film appears to tell a complex story in a vivid, riveting manner, garnering it great reviews. Golden Globe-winner In a Better World is set in a quiet village in Denmark and an African refugee camp in a country torn by civil war. By all accounts, it’s well-acted, and the trailer definitely makes it appear all high stakes, all the time, but it’s also been accused by some as being condescending in its ethics on violence. Nevertheless, it’s the favorite to to capture the Oscar tomorrow night due to its big, sweeping topic that is both domestic and international.

Oscars 2010: Foreign Language, Animated, + Documentary Films

Note: My personal rankings are listed in order from best to least accomplished, with #1 being my favorite, while predictions for the actual winners appear in orange.

BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM

1. The Milk of Sorrow (Peru)

1. A Prophet (France)

3. Ajami (Israel)

4. El Secreto de Sus Ojos (Argentina)

5. The White Ribbon (Germany)

I honestly have no idea what will win this category. If you believe “serious” critical sources like the New York Times or Roger Ebert, the big prize will go to that severe (and severely painful) commentary on fascism, The White Ribbon (I’ve already said once why it shouldn’t win). If you have more faith in your Average Blogger or popular ‘zine (Entertainment Weekly, perhaps?), the decades-spanning crime drama El Secreto de Sus Ojos may very well be the evening’s big spoiler. I’m putting my money on the latter; with its universal themes of love and retribution, it’s as decent a prediction as any despite its penchant for overly-romanticized cinematography and cheesetastic lines like the following: “A guy can change anything: his face, his home, his family, his girlfriend, his religion,his God. But there’s one thing he can’t change. He can’t change his passion.” However, it does pack one solid gut-punch of an ending.

But don’t entirely discount A Prophet. Another crime drama, but this one is more The Godfather than The Fugitive with its graphic violence and mafia obsessions. A young Arab (the stunning Tahar Rahim) serves a six-year sentence for a petty crime, and  finds himself ensnared in a dangerous world of warring criminal factions. A gritty and entirely gripping prison drama, this fantastic French film offers some solid competition to the pretentious (The White Ribbon) and the popular (El Secreto de Sus Ojos) choices. And while the ambitious and beautifully acted Ajami convincingly depicts the volatile relationship between Arabs and Jews in Israel across multiple story lines which are expertly woven together (its structure is reminiscent of Slumdog Millionare), the film is over-long and stumbles into some clichés.

The one nominee that’s sure to be overlooked, however, is arguably the year’s most fascinating film – foreign or otherwise. The Milk of Sorrow is beautifully shot: single pearls drop with acute promise into a bowl, daunting dessert staircases spiral upward endlessly, and an old woman in intimate close-up sings emotionlessly about brutalities we’d dare not imagine. Along with these stunning images comes a fierce allegory of Peru’s sexually violent and political history: a timid young woman suffers from “the milk of sorrow,” a psychologically damaging disease causing her to take drastic measures to maintain her personal and emotional safety. Harrowing and gorgeously compelling, The Milk of Sorrow is the year’s finest film that Academy voters never saw.

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

1. Up

2. Fantastic Mr. Fox

3. The Princess and the Frog

4. Coraline

5. The Secret of Kells

There’s always this moment: when something – a film, a band, a novel – earns raves, the hype consequently builds, and it becomes so extraordinarily popular and beloved by both critics and audiences alike that the backlash is inevitable. All of a sudden something that was so fantastic isn’t nearly so fantastic anymore simply because everyone loves it. Somehow it loses its appeal. Somehow, suddenly, the popular thing is to not like it, and to throw support to the “underdog.”

It’s not very cool to love Up anymore. The trendy thing is to dig the argyle-lovin’ Fantastic Mr. Fox with its hipster soundtrack and clever dialogue (and oh, how I do totally dig it).

Wait, that’s so five minutes ago.

Now it’s really all about the flat, abstract illustration of a young Irish chap as he rebels against his monk-father and befriends a wolf-fairy-girl in – a rather dry – pursuit of the legendary book in The Secret of Kells. And while practically everyone suffers from mommy/daddy issues that will always keep us in deep sympathy with the pale goth-girl Coraline as she battles her creepy button-eyed Other-Mother, Tim Burton dark ‘toon has the added misfortune of arriving on the scene before that CGIed tale of the soaring senior, which immediately took all the wind for its own balloon-sails. And the erratically charming The Princess and the Frog arrived terribly late to the game with its outrageously belated first African American princess, tired Randy Newman ‘tunes, and lazy hand-drawn animation. Clearly Disney didn’t want to steal any of its own thunder.

Despite all the backlash, no one can argue that Up (read my full review here) is a sure bet on Oscar night. All you need to do is rewatch that brilliantly calibrated opening montage of love and loss and you’ll laugh, weep, and then laugh and weep again – all within ten wordless minutes sensitively underscored by Giacchino.  How quickly you’ll forget all about those foxes and frogs, and long to take the journey Up all over again.

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

1. The Cove

2. Food, Inc.

3. Which Way Home

4. The Most Dangerous Man in America:
Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers

5. Burma VJ

Note: This is a quick update to my list, as I just watched Which Way Home this afternoon (3/7/10).

It’s been a year of seemingly endless affliction (as these nominees and others would lead you to believe). The freshly filmed and nicely polished-looking Food, Inc., for example, offers us the comforting knowledge – rather redundantly if you’ve read the novel or seen the cinematic adaptation of Fast Food Nation, that this doc is based on – that everything we eat is terrible for us; and it all goes back, way back, to the inhumane treatment of farm animals and the horrible working conditions within our factories. New information? Not exactly. Perfect blend of the personal, the facts, and smooth filmmaking? Definitely.

The other three docs aren’t nearly as refined as Food, Inc. but The Most Dangerous Man in America is definitely more interesting – at least if you’re anything like me and are solely lacking in the knowledge of this highly historical moment. A well-told story of the one super-smart Everyman who smuggled thousands of Pentagon documents and leaked them to the press, uncovering top-secret governmental policies regarding Vietnam, this documentary simultaneously personalizes and historicizes the essential, vital argument for free press and freedom of speech.

The simple act of filming Burma VJ is an incredible and harrowing achievement. Governed by a repressive military regime, the people of Burma are forbidden to film or photograph anything, and the filmmakers literally risked life and limb to smuggle this film to outside sources. After the initial shock wears off of the uber-necessary stealthy filming techniques and the typical daily treatment of citizens (not to mention the jailing of monks), the doc loses power and yet trucks right along, capturing footage after footage of much the same.

Which Way Home is an interesting doc, but one that seems to sympathize with its subjects more than question them. About children migrating illegally over the Mexican-US border, the kids’ courage and ambitions to better their families lives by finding the “American Dream” is both endearing and frustrating, and their parents’ knowledge of the extreme dangers that they are facing in crossing the border  (and allowing them to take the risk anyway) is infuriating.

It’s strange how a film that is so flawed (and for which I had strong remarks for in my full review) ended up topping my list.  The Cove’s largely personal, highly emotional – and to mention thrilling – mission to uncover the needless and horrifically violent yearly dolphin slaughterings in a cove off of Japan, is by far the most mesmerizing and the most effectual. Sure, the facts are skewed for emotional effect, and the film’s main human subject, a Flipper-trainer-turned-activist, is obviously on a mission of self-redemption, but this personal journey actually ups the stakes – for both the subjects and for us. Revealing passion – even passion that is at times misguided – doesn’t discredit the film, but actually heightens its effect: as enraged as I was at some of the factual shortcomings, I was even more so at the acts of violence being perpetuated. If filmmaking inspires movement and change from its audience, then perhaps the other nominees should take a passionate cue from The Cove.

Next up: Best Actor + Actress