Art & Heart
By Mowahid Hussain Shah

 

A feature of the 92d Academy Awards ceremony was the fact that a Korean-language film won top dual Oscars, for Best International Feature Film as well as Best Picture. But will this choice stand the test of time?

Despite tall claims of rewarding cinematic excellence, the Oscars have been tinged by personal biases, lobbying, trend of the times, and political inclinations of more than 8,000 eligible Oscar voters, who are members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Over the years, Meryl Streep has been showered with Oscar accolades, having been nominated 21 times, and winning 3 times. In 2017, Trump called her “one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood.” He may have a point. Despite now calling “inexcusable” the behavior of serial sex abuser, once-powerful Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, Meryl once publicly proclaimed him as “a god” at the 2012 Golden Globes Awards.

Another Hollywood favorite has been Steven Spielberg, who has been constantly showered with laurels. Spielberg got Best Director and Best Picture Oscars for “Schindler’s List” (1993), with a Holocaust theme, which has been in vogue for quite some time. But, according to a 94-year-old survivor of Auschwitz, at the 75 th anniversary of the liberation of the death camp where 1.1 million Jews died, “Where was the world, who could see that, hear that, and yet did nothing to save all those thousands?” (Washington Post, January 28, 2020, by Loveday Morris)

“Parasite” may have been awarded partially to thwart Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman,” which unveiled the criminality infesting American public space. It was a true-life drama, unlike “Parasite,” a work of fiction which has been accused of plagiarism by Tamil language movie maker PL Thenappan.

Another movie nominated for best picture was Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.” Tarantino was inspired by Italian film director, Sergio Leone, whose 1966 film, “Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”, Tarantino considers as the best directed movie ever. Leone, whose incomparable Dollars Trilogy, accompanied by the magical musical score of Ennio Morricone, was “dissed” by the Hollywood Establishment. It was Leone who made Clint Eastwood – an average actor from the cowboy TV series “Rawhide” – into a famous star.

One is hard-pressed to believe how Peter O’Toole, whose lead performance in the 1962 “Lawrence of Arabia,” has stood the test of time, didn’t win a Best Actor Oscar then (or thereafter), losing out to Gregory Peck, portraying a fictional white savior battling racial injustice in the old American South in “To Kill A Mockingbird.” It was based on a novel by Harper Lee. Only in 2015 did it emerge that the original draft was poorly written and then heavily guided by professional editors to make it publishable.

55 years after the release of David Lean’s master work, “Doctor Zhivago,” Omar Sharif remains the perennial favorite of cinephiles for his immortal portrayal of a poet-physician caught in the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Did the Oscars duly honor the Egyptian? Ditto, the Mexican-born legend, Anthony Quinn, who portrayed Muslim heroes.

A few “feel-good” black-themed movies have won Oscars, including “Driving Miss Daisy (1990)” (largely about a white elderly lady driven around by a black chauffeur) and “Green Book” (2019). But a movie worthy of Oscar accolades, “Malcolm X,” based on the martyred civil rights leader, memorably portrayed by Denzel Washington (nominated for Best Actor 1993) and directed by Spike Lee, got nothing. It made too many in the Establishment squirm about the nation’s racial past.

Junk movies like “The Greatest Show on Earth” (1953) (chosen over “High Noon”) and “Crash” (2005) have won Best Picture Oscars.

A prominent example of political prejudice overtaking cinematic art was the movie, “Paradise Now” (on Palestinians driven to desperation because of humiliation of living under occupation.) A front-runner for Best Foreign Language Film (2006), it became the target of orchestrated attacks by vested quarters. The staid Financial Times of London termed it a “brilliantly crafted drama” and gave it 5 stars.

To go with the times, Hollywood has been played and manipulated in inciting Islamophobia through movies that demonize Arabs and Muslims (vide Jack Shaheen’s path-breaking book, “Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People” (rev. 2014)).

It is in the mingling of art and heart which makes a movie endure. Others predictably fade away.