Cinematically speaking, Ben Affleck faces
down the Ayatollah Khomeini
in his Best-Picture winning Argo.
Academy Awards Show America's Got its Groove Back (Rzeczpospolita,
Poland)
"National flags are waving on the screens, Spielberg's Lincoln shows the U.S. House of
Representatives carrying out passage of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution,
and in Ben Affleck's Oscar-winning Argo,
American boys bravely and successfully help Embassy staff get out of revolution-ridden
Iran. ... America once again needs to believe in itself. And as Michelle Obama
said during the Oscar ceremony, cinema has always guided America."
In America, the crisis
is coming to an end, and with it, the time of uncertainty and the asking of
tough questions. This is also true in the arts.
Today, one couldn't
win an Oscar with a European film about an artist who can't break into the
talkies [The Artist]; or
about a king-stutterer struggling to overcome his own weaknesses and become leader
of the nation [The King's Speech].
Kathryn Bigelow would've had no shot at winning with her Hurt
Locker - a film about soldiers in Iraq. Nor would Danny Boyle, with his
picture about the Mumbai slums Slumdog
Millionaire; or the Coen brothers, with their
reproach of American greed No
Country for Old Men. Their time has passed.
Now is time to rise
from the ashes and hope for a return to traditional values. That is why
national flags are waving on the screens, Spielberg's Lincoln
shows the U.S. House of Representatives carrying out passage of the 13th Amendment
to the Constitution, and in Ben Affleck's Oscar-winning Argo,
American boys bravely and successfully help Embassy staff get out of revolution-ridden
Iran.
Posted By
Worldmeets.US
America once again
needs to believe in itself. And as Michelle Obama said during the Oscar
ceremony, cinema has always guided America. So those who believed 86-year-old
French actress Emmanuelle Riva would walk out of the Dolby Theater with an
Oscar - in Amour she is paralyzed by
a stroke and slowly succumbs to dementia - were wrong.
Among the directors, Ang Lee won with his Life of Pi, atale of survival in 3D. Even Tarantino,
harkening back to the infamous era of slavery in DjangoUnchained,
failed to get nominated for Best Director. Indeed, even Bond, battered by life in Skyfall,
was underappreciated by the Academy. So was the prophet-hustler from The Master,
which won the Golden Lion in Venice. Now is a time of new hope. Perhaps the
biggest surprise was the loss of Steven Spielberg's Lincoln - about building the basis of American democracy.
What remains of the crisis
moment, when Hollywood sought independent artists and allowed them to ask
difficult and bitter questions? The filmmakers recognized the power of facts. Very
many of today's American scenarios are based on real events and the biographies
of real people. And lots of them are targeted at a so-called mature audience. Not
the proverbial "dim-witted fourteen-year-old," but at people who
think. Let's hope this trend continues.
