The
2011 Oscars: Reflecting a movie year that was no match for reality.
Delito de Opinião, Portugal
2011 Oscars
Reflect World in Which Film Fell Short of Reality
"Someone once defined man as an animal that goes to the movies. The fascination with film can be explained by the existence of a group of neurons (mirror neurons) where the key to empathy resides. This allows us to live as if the anxieties, defeats and dreams of others were our own. But these are times in which reality offers us stories that far surpass fantasy."
By Rui Rocha
Translated By Brandi Miller and Patrícia
Viana de Lemos
Oscar night held few
surprises. It blessed a film that provides an interpretation of history backed
by excellent performances. No more, no less. It was a consensual night, with few
trip ups, controversies or disasters which is unlikely to illuminate the
history of cinema. It seems to me to have been a ceremony that befits the times
we live in.
Someone once defined man as
an animal that goes to the movies. The fascination with the Seventh Art can be
explained by the existence of a group of neurons (mirror neurons) where the key
to empathy resides. This allows us to live as if the anxieties, defeats and
dreams of other human beings were our own. But these are times in which reality
offers us stories that far surpass fantasy.
[Editor's Note: The term
'Seventh Art' is said to have been coined in 1912 by Italian Ricciotto Canudo after
the publication of his book La naissance du sixième art (Birth of the
Sixth Art) in which he argued that cinema is the synthesis of the spatial
and temporal arts.]
Let us live a few moments in
the life of Abdul - a boy who sells bread in the hell of Cairo. Or Salim, who's
ready to throw a stone at one of the last photos of Qaddafi. Both, like Fatima
in Tunis, now have an illusion of freedom that can also be ours if we want to share
it. For a time at least, the epics of fiction can wait. And Hollywood didn't
want to impose itself on the narrative of reality. Later, when those dreams are
fulfilled, frustrated or crushed, we'll offer new respect to cinema again, in
search of vertigo, drama or heroes fighting for freedom.
And it's possible that then, in
the first row, we'll find the cynics, skeptics and aquarium democrats
[sheltered democrats]. Those tireless advocates of a
freedom that extends only around the couches they sit on. We all have moments in
which we exercise our mirror neurons. Some only do so protected by the
compelling darkness of a movie theater. It's in those moments that they reveal,
in the empathy they experience, the deepest roots of their own humanity.
