The big takeaway from this year’s crop of nominees for the 98th Annual Academy Awards is how very human they are.
Like them or hate them, that is the essence of great film: the ineffable search for what makes us tick — our humanity — and the flaws and foibles and quest for greatness and unpacking the journey.
Ah yes, the journey. The biggest foible being an attempt to displace God.
And while God is not center stage, He is certainly present, often by his absence, among the Best Picture nominees.
Take Frankenstein (Netflix). Directed by Oscar-winner Guillermo del Toro, it’s a cinematic feast, telling the tale of Captain Robert Walton’s rescue of Victor Frankenstein, who nearly froze in the Arctic, which Frankenstein broadcasts, leading him to construct a giant being from human body parts at the University of Ingolstadt. When he abandons his creation, it becomes a monster — telegraphing it’s dangerous to try to play God!
In Sinners (Warner Bros.), directed by Ryan Coogler, God is there as two brothers, Smoke and Stack (Elijah and Elias Moore), both played by Michael B. Jordan, leave Chicago in October 1932 to open a juke joint. They had migrated to the Windy City seven years earlier in the wake of World War I, along with tens of thousands of their Delta neighbors only to become engulfed in great sin, laced with the Delta blues, while working for Al Capone. “There are legends of people born with the gift of making music so true it can pierce the veil between life and death conjuring spirits from the past and the future,” the film begins. Now, returning to Clarksville, Mississippi, to go straight, they discover the racism that plagues the culture, vampires imaging the evil and violence once again engulfing them as they deal with it. But, then, God writes straight with crooked lines.
Garnering the most Oscar nominations ever — 16, outdoing All About Eve, Titanic and La La Land — Coogler’s film may well win the Best Picture Oscar.
Albeit, One Battle After Another (Warner Bros.), a black comedy action-thriller film produced, written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, is in the lead. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, and Teyana Taylor, it tells the tale of an ex-revolutionary (DiCaprio) forced back to his guerrilla lifestyle after a corrupt military officer (Penn) begins pursuing him. It’s an incredibly complex story of sin and struggle framed by cultural extremes that lead down dangerously wrong paths.
Hamnet (Focus Features), directed by Chloé Zhao, features the tragic death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, that birthed Hamlet. Yet it fails to give even the faintest nod to Shakespeare’s Catholicism, for which scholars make a compelling case. Not even a peep about Heaven. Even so, it has brilliant production values and Jessie Buckley as Shakespeare’s wife Anne Hathaway, seems a lock for Best Actress.
Bugonia (Focus Features), directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and starring Emma Stone, tells the bizarre tale of two conspiracy-obsessed men who kidnap a Fortune 500 CEO convinced she’s an alien out to destroy the world, reminding us of just how humanity-starved our culture can get.
Marty Supreme (Central Pictures), a genius of a film, set in 1950s New York, but featuring 80s music, is about a Jewish ping-pong champion nobody respects rivetingly played by Timothée Chalamet, who will go to hell and back in search of the respect he craves as he pursues the American dream only to discover the dangers of pride.
Then, there’s Sentimental Value (Nordisk Film), a Norwegian drama directed by Joachim Trier. This intricate emotional tale and filmmaking tour de force follows two sisters reconnecting with their estranged filmmaker father after their mother’s death. He’s a narcissist seeking closure by making a film about the family history. His daughters seek their own closure by trying to pierce his shell and understand why he abandoned them.
Train Dreams (Netflix), based on the novella by Denis Johnson, is a tale of the early 20th-century American West seen through the eyes of a day laborer and all the love and loss that goes along with this transformational time in America. Though its production values are somewhat lacking, like Sinners, it has clear spiritual sensibilities, noting the “great mystery” of life and features church scenes and biblical references, though the practice of faith is shallow.
Finally, Blue Moon directed by Richard Linklater, while passed over for a Best Picture nomination, did get a Best Actor nod for Ethan Hawke’s deft portrayal of Lorenz Hart, the talented lyricist who wrote such hits as “Isn’t It Romantic” and “Blue Moon” with partner Richard Rogers only to flame out with alcoholism, especially when Rogers tapped Oscar Hammenstein to write Oklahoma. Robert Kaplow, too, who wrote the screenplay inspired by the letters of Elizabeth Weiland to Hart, was nominated for an Oscar. And, though some vulgarity was necessary to convey what made Hart tick this opening night, its dialogue is brilliant and witty, including reflections on God that open a window on our humanity.
