Welcome to this year’s edition of Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars, where we will break down each of the 23 categories, analyze the films, and make some guesses at their awards prospects.
Best International Feature
The nominees are:
Io Capitano
Perfect Days
Society of the Snow
The Teachers’ Lounge
The Zone of Interest
There are two things I want to note before we dive into the nominees here.
First, though a wonderful crop of films, this group of nominees is heavy on European filmmakers, with Italy, Spain, Germany, and the United Kingdom all represented. Even the Japanese nominee, Perfect Days, is directed by German legend Wim Wenders. We can acknowledge that all of these films are great while also acknowledging that the world is a big place and that an international award should look beyond a single continent.
Second, despite that heavy emphasis on European films, you will notice France is not represented here. How can that be, you ask? Isn’t one of the most well regarded films of the year French? Didn’t it win the Palme d’Or? Isn’t it nominated for Best Picture, Director, Actress, Original Screenplay, and Editing – five of the most significant awards – at this very ceremony? All of those things are true about Justine Triet’s masterful Anatomy of a Fall, and yet, it is not nominated among the best international feature films of the year.
Why? Because in its infinite wisdom, the French nominating committee submitted to the Academy as the nation’s representative Tran Anh Hùng’s The Taste of Things. This is not the fault of Hùng’s film, which is lovely and has been unfairly maligned as the “film that knocked out Anatomy of a Fall.” It is the fault of a system that insists a nation have only one representative. The best is the best, and artificially limiting your awards to a single entry per country does not lend them any more credibility.
So, yeah, Anatomy of a Fall should probably be here, but it isn’t. Let’s take a look at what is.
Io Capitano
I might end up using the word “harrowing” a lot to describe this particular set of nominees. I’ll try to run to my thesaurus when I have a moment, but there’s really not a better term to describe this story of two Senegalese teenagers who set out on their own to emigrate to Italy. The journey to their goal is methodical and painstaking, and as we watch them, we are awed by their spirit but infuriated by the structures in place that force people to risk their lives in pursuit of something better.
Remarkably, despite widespread critical acclaim throughout his career, director Matteo Garrone had never previously had a film nominated in this category at the Academy Awards. Garrone has a facility for taking epic stories, like this or his gangster picture Gomorrah, and turning them into human stories with stakes that feel earned because we care so deeply about the characters at their centers.
Perfect Days
German-born Wim Wenders has one of the most fascinating directorial careers around. He has bounced back and forth between fiction and documentary, features and shorts. He has directed music videos for U2 and the Talking Heads. He made back-to-back masterpieces in the ‘80s with Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire. He has been at the forefront of demonstrating how 3D technology can be incorporated into documentary filmmaking. He’s done it all. So, of course he’ll be at the Academy Awards this year representing Japan. Why wouldn’t he be?
Perfect Days, which won the best actor award at Cannes last year for its lead, Kōji Yakusho, is a quiet, meditative movie about appreciating the little things in life and understanding that beauty is all around us. Yakusho plays a Tokyo toilet cleaner who treats his job with respect and dignity, smiles at strangers, takes pictures of the trees, and generally goes about his day in a seemingly zen-like state of acceptance about the ways of the world. Through the film’s elliptical nature and deliberate pacing, Wenders lulls the audience into a similarly zen-like state. It’s the kind of movie that makes you look at the sky differently when you leave the theater, and that’s a rare quality.
Society of the Snow
And, we’re back to the word “harrowing.” How could we not be? Director J.A. Bayona’s film tells the true story of the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes mountains. Anyone who has seen the U.S. take on this story, 1993’s Alive, knows the basics, but I guarantee you have never seen it told like this. Bayona expertly takes you into the headspace of the survivors, ensuring that you, the viewer, experience the loneliness and desperation of every moment.
There are sequences in this film that beggar belief, including an avalanche that is perhaps the most frightening scene of the year. After the misfire of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, it’s great to see Bayona in this mode, pulling triple duty for the first time as writer, director, and producer of Society of the Snow. The film dominated the Goya Awards (the Spanish film industry Oscars) and was a massive hit on Netflix. Hopefully, this success will launch Bayona into the next phase of a wonderful career.
The Teachers’ Lounge
What a taut, disturbing thriller this is. School as a microcosm of society has been done before and done well, but rarely to such devastating effect. Director İlker Çatak’s film is a tale of how the best intentions can easily go awry when we are trapped in systems that leave no room for humanity or empathy. It is about how small actions can have widespread consequences and how, once set in motion, a chain of events can become impossible to stop.
Leonie Benesch, whom you may recognize from her role as a sinister adolescent in Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, is stellar as a teacher dealing with pressures from her students, her administration, and her peers after she sets off a firestorm by accusing a fellow staff member of serial theft. Every moment of this film is filled with tension, and we recognize that one wrong move could lead to a dire ending for all involved. For a film that is mostly people sitting in rooms and talking, The Teachers’ Lounge is absolutely riveting. It’s one of the great discoveries, for me, of this Oscars season.
The Zone of Interest
In the history of the Academy Awards, just three films representing the United Kingdom have been nominated in this category and none this century. Of course, this film is in German about a German family and set in Germany. For good measure, it was also filmed there with a fully German cast. Still, London-born director Jonathan Glazer is one of the great modern UK directors, so here we are. The category is called International Feature, and this is about as international as they come.
The Zone of Interest is a masterwork, one of the finest films ever made on the psychology of the people who carried out one of the greatest atrocities in human history. It is also a prescient warning about the world we inhabit. There is evil out there, and it will not be so easy to recognize because it will look like this: business as usual. This kind of casual cruelty did not die with Hitler and his acolytes. When we say, “Never again,” it should not be merely a slogan but an active promise that we will not allow this again. The conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as elsewhere around the world, are testing us on this promise right now. We should strive not to fail that test.
The final analysis
In four of the past five years, the winner of this award has also been a nominee for Best Picture. In the only year that was not true, none of the nominees was noted in the top category. No film has ever been nominated for both International Feature (formerly Foreign Language Film) and Best Picture and failed to win the international category.
Had Anatomy of the Fall made it into the lineup this year, that would have set up a truly fascinating showdown. Alas, The Zone of Interest is your lone torchbearer, meaning this bit of Academy history is almost certain to remain unchanged. For a spoiler possibility, look to Society of the Snow, which got a huge boost in fans from its lasting success on Netflix, but until we get an exception to prove the rule, we’re just going to have to go by the rule as it stands. Glazer deservedly should have this all sewn up.
Will win: The Zone of Interest
Should win: The Zone of Interest
Should have been here: Anatomy of a Fall
A note about my favorite snub: What more can one say about Justine Triet’s masterpiece? It placed No. 3 on my Top 10 Films of the Year list, one spot ahead of The Zone of Interest. It’s a perfect crime procedural with so much more on its mind than who did what to whom and how. It’s the kind of film that doesn’t come along very often and represents the kind of work we should recognize and appreciate when it crosses our paths.
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