The Oscars of the pandemic? The purest Oscars?
Los Angeles (USA), Apr 17 (EFE) .- Goodbye to theaters, but only for a while. The Hollywood Academy a year ago joined the feelings of millions of moviegoers and exceptionally suppressed the sacred requirement of its regulation, the mandatory theatrical release, to celebrate Oscars in completely different circumstances.
Many of the films that will compete next week have not hit theaters or have done so anecdotally. But the absence of major premieres has also meant that two independent productions, “Nomad land” and “Minari”, appear as big favorites and that for the first time two directors compete for the prized statuette.
“Without events, this could be the purest awards season. Also the strangest,” anticipated Dave Karger, a veteran host of the cinephile channel TCM, to The Washington Post.
THE FIRST OSCARS WITH HOLLYWOOD HALF GAS MACHINERY
The closing of the cinemas altered the calendar with two very different responses: The large studios decided to save their blockbusters for a better time, while the small films and without great commercial expectations found a way to reach the public during the confinement on television.
Thus, premieres such as the new James Bond installment “No Time to Die”, “Ghostbusters: Beyond”, “Top Gun: Maverick”, “Jungle Cruise” and the musical “In a New York neighborhood” were postponed until 2021 .
To the list of postponements were added titles that, by genre or by prestige, were even more likely to receive the applause of the Oscars, among which are the new “Dune”, by Denis Villeneuve, or “The French Chronicle”, by Wes Anderson, as well as the updated version of “West Side Story” by Steven Spielberg.
The void left by all these films contrasted with an audience that, confined to home, had one of its few forms of entertainment in the cinema and on television.
That explains how “Minari,” a film that simulates the arrival of a Korean family in the US, has gradually gained attention to become one of the great titles of awards season. The case of “Nomad land”, the great favorite of 2021, is not far off. Rarely does an independent film, with a slow pace and with a political background about the abandonment of the elderly in the American economic system, achieve so many headlines.
Its director, Chloé Zhao, has suddenly achieved four nominations for best film, direction, screenplay and editing. The first woman to do it.
Something similar happens with other contenders: “Sound of Metal” is a journey, almost experimental, through the anguish of a drummer who loses the ability to hear; “The Father”, a French-british co-production, shows the cognitive deterioration of an old man and “A promising young woman” is a thriller with shades of black comedy about structural machismo.
Some of these titles may have crept into the nominations during a typical year, but others might have been dwarfed by the red carpet spotlights, franchises, and big names in the industry.