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| The Polish film Ida is nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. |
Each day as we make
our way to the Academy Awards ceremony Feb. 22, Last Cinema Standing will take
an in-depth look at each of the categories, sorting out the highs, the lows,
and everything in between. Check back right here for analysis, predictions, and
gripes as we inch toward the Dolby Theater and that world-famous red carpet.
Best Foreign Language Film
The nominees are:
Ida
Tangerines
Timbuktu
Wild Tales
Not that anybody asked me, but I think Federico Fellini is
the greatest film director of all time. If you would like to discuss that
ranking, I am happy to have that conversation another time, but for now, all
that matters is that the greatest director of all time never won a competitive
Oscar (if your loyalties lie elsewhere, feel free to insert Ingmar Bergman or
Akira Kurosawa in place of Fellini). He was nominated in the screenplay
categories eight times and four times for best director, but he never won,
though he did receive a lifetime achievement award in 1993.
Fellini died later that year after receiving his honorary
award, so you may be wondering why I would bring up a director who has been
dead more than 20 years. Well, I will tell you. Despite never winning an Oscar
in his unparalleled career, Fellini directed four films that were nominated for
and won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. However, since its inception
at the 1956 ceremony, the award has officially gone to the country of origin
and not the filmmaker. No longer.
Beginning with this year’s ceremony, the Oscar statuette for
Best Foreign Language Film will have the director’s name engraved on it along with
the country of origin. The change has been a long time coming. Though the
Academy of course will not be retroactively awarding the directors of past
winners in this category, future winners will have the privilege of not
succumbing to the same Oscar fate as some of the medium’s greats. It is
impossible to say if any of this year’s nominees is the next Fellini or Kurosawa,
but if they are, the Academy can take pride in having rewarded them here.
Ida (directed by Pawel Pawlikowski) – In spite of a tremendous
cinematic heritage that includes greats such as Andrzej Wajda and Roman
Polanski, no Polish film has ever won the award for Best Foreign Language Film.
Pawlikowski’s small but potent Ida
seems set to break that streak. Concerning an orphan raised to be a Catholic
nun who finds out her true heritage just days before she is to take her final
vows, Ida is a story of faith and
forgiveness in a world where both of those qualities are seen as weaknesses.
Gorgeously shot – the film is also nominated for Best Cinematography – and stunningly told, Ida
is one of the true gems of the year. Pawlikowski’s film is tiny in scope but
big on ideas and has a clear moral center that is never muddied thanks to the straightforward
plot and no-frills filmmaking. It is a true testament to the power of a good
story well told.
Leviathan (directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev) – I do not know that
there is much more I can say about Leviathan,
my No. 1 film of the year. It is a dark, brooding masterpiece that is filled to
the brim with pitch-black humor, hardline political commentary, and riveting
drama. Zvyagintsev speaks for a generation of Russians who came of age under
communist rule and who are now watching the country slip back into extremism
and antagonism. Zyviagintsev and his cast and crew take all the anger they feel
over the current governmental situation and spew it back out as bile onto the
screen.
The film follows Kolya (Aleksey Serebryakov), who simply by
living his life runs afoul of the local mayor. He compounds his problems by
attempting to fight back against the crushing behemoth that is the Russian
governmental bureaucracy. He winds up in a downward spiral of despair, from
which he seeks solace in religion. He finds none. Zyagintsev’s film is an
uncompromising descent into the bleakness of a country ruled by a power
structure that sees no citizens, just enemies. He provides no easy answers and
no happy endings because when you come face to face with the leviathan, your
best hope is a quick end.
Timbuktu (directed by Abderrahmane Sissako) – Kidane (Ibrahim
Ahmed) is a cattle herder who lives with his family outside the city of
Timbuktu. The city is controlled by a strict Muslim regime that imposes its will
on the citizens of the town in increasingly draconian and absurd ways. Living
among the dunes, Kidane and his family have mostly been sheltered from the
violence and oppression of the city, but such peace cannot last long in this
place.
Timbuktu has
already had a good week. The first film from Mauritania to be nominated for an Academy
Award, Sissako’s critically beloved drama about faith and freedom just won
seven Caesar Awards, the French equivalent of the Oscars, including best
feature and best director. This is the kind of important, hard-hitting film
voters like to reward in this category for bringing a faraway struggle to light
for the world to see.
Wild Tales (directed by Damián Szifrón) – Argentina has had the
most success in this category of any of this year’s nominated countries with
two previous wins, including as recently as 2009 for The Secret in Their Eyes. Szifrón’s odd, darkly comic anthology
film had been tapped by some as the film to beat this year before the
nominations were even released, but against this set of this set of films, Wild Tales seems perhaps the slightest
and least likely winner.
Composed of six standalone stories, any one of which would
have made an intriguing Best Live Action Short nominee, Wild Tales is a simultaneously thought-provoking and humorous
meditation on violence and vengeance. Despite its often dark subject matter,
Szifrón’s film is easily the most enjoyable sit of the five nominated pictures
just from an entertainment standpoint, and that cannot be underestimated when
it comes to guessing what Academy voters may choose.
Tangerines (directed by Zaza Urushadze) – Tangerines reminds more than a little of 2001 Best Foreign Language
Film winner No Man’s Land, which also
concerns soldiers from opposing sides of a conflict trapped together in the
middle of a battlefield. Writer-director Urushadze throws in the added twist
that the combatants are being housed by a neutral third party, raising
questions about the nature of war and the reality of collateral damage.
An Estonian village is caught in the middle of an uprising
against the Georgian government. The village is deserted, except for two men,
one of whom will leave as soon as he has harvested his tangerine crops. After a
particularly bloody battle, the wounded are left behind in the village, and Ivo
(Lembit Ulfsak) takes them into his home. It is a classic story about two sides
of a conflict finding they have more in common than they would have thought,
helped along by someone caught in the middle who sees the absurdity of it all. Tangerines is the first film from
Estonia nominated in this category and certainly fits on this list.
The final analysis
Though Wild Tales
is the most outright enjoyable of the nominees just for delivering the wild
ride its title promises, voters tend not to be swayed by such considerations
when making their choices. Plenty of popular films from well known directors
have been nominated in this category but went home empty-handed because voters
opted for more challenging or esoteric choices. If any film is going to
surprise in this group, Timbuktu is
the most likely candidate.
Ida is the
frontrunner here, having picked up the majority of the early season awards,
though Leviathan earned the Golden
Globe for best foreign language film. Leviathan’s
Golden Globe triumph stands as my single favorite moment of the Oscar season
thus far, and if it pulls off the mild upset with the Academy, it would be
easily my favorite win of the night. Ultimately, the low-key charms of Ida should rule the day.
Will win: Ida
Should win:
Leviathan
Wish it had been here:
Force Majeure
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