Oscar 2017 seen from the world's low-lying cinema

In a film industry that refuses to grow up and is increasingly dependent on money and romanceLike Vietnamese cinema today, a cinema industry that is always in the bottom of the world, what can we see from the Oscars?

Every year on this occasion, the world's film industry looks towards the Oscars, a film award of a single country, but with global influence.

2017 is the 89th Oscar award season, an award of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), but it has never lost its leading position, although every year when the Oscar season comes, film enthusiasts have the opportunity to dissect, analyze, and condemn it as "racist", "sexist", "lacking diversity", "politicized", and even demand a "boycott" of it.

Scene from the movie La La Land. Photo: eva.vn

The reason why the press and film industry closely monitor, make comments and predictions, and criticize and demand fairness and diversity on the one hand is because the Oscars are both an academic award and very popular, accessible to the majority.

Other major film awards such as the Palme d'Or (Cannes Film Festival), the Golden Lion (Venice), the Golden Bear (Berlin)... are usually voted by a group of prestigious juries, which are heavily subjective. The audiences of the above major film festivals are also only focused on a small group of audiences who have the opportunity to enjoy the films during the festival days. When the awards are announced, a larger audience will have access to these films, but not many.

In fact, the influence of films that win prestigious awards from the three international film festivals mentioned above is often quite modest. Even when they win the Palme d'Or, many films still have difficulty reaching audiences, and their revenue cannot cover the film's production costs, as in the case of the recent Palme d'Or-winning film, Dheepan (2015) from France.

The Oscars, on the other hand, showed its strong influence when the list of nominated films was announced, such as the 9 films nominated for “Best Picture” had a spectacular revenue growth of more than 300% compared to the time before they were nominated. The total revenue of these 9 art films has exceeded 1 billion USD worldwide and is expected to increase strongly after the Oscar night. That is the power of the Oscar award.

A scene from the movie Moonlight. Photo: Fandango

Of course, audiences and money are not the most important issues of art films. The important thing that this award aims at is, on the one hand, the storytelling art of the writers and directors; the acting talent of the actors and most especially the social issues, the messages about life and people that the artists reflect through their films.

Let’s take a look at the films nominated for the best picture Oscar this year. Apart from the much-talked-about La La Land, we, the audience, have also enjoyed other outstanding films. Moonlight is the story of a black child in a poor and crime-ridden community in America. Loneliness, poverty, bullying, confusion about gender...; how can a child growing up with wounds both inside and out maintain his or her conscience and strive for the good things in life?

How can a child who “cries so much that he turns into a drop of water” still be tolerant and forgiving of life and others? These are the hidden messages that black director Barry Jenkins conveys to the audience through his small film with a very personal yet universal storytelling art. That is the reason why this very small film (budgeted 1.5 million USD and had to be made quietly for 4 years) won all the blockbusters with budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars at this year’s Oscar season.

Manchester by the Sea is a family tragedy where people face losses, deaths without warning, without any signs, and then they imprison themselves in pain without salvation, until they have to face a new loss and learn to overcome the past. Hell or High Water is another bitter reality, a modern “Western” film about poverty “like a disease, passed from generation to generation” like a vicious circle, forcing them to commit crimes to escape it...

A scene from the movie Manchester by the Sea. Photo: IndieWire.

All three films mentioned above are three very small works in the Hollywood film industry. All three focus on the human condition of contemporary America, on the tragedies and personal pains they face. All three films “diagnose” America through personal stories. The stories in distant American films help us to reflect on the real life of Vietnam, on ourselves when facing the problems we encounter in life, problems that we cannot find in our cinema.

In a film industry that refuses to mature and is increasingly dependent on money, nonsense, romance, and fantasy like Vietnamese cinema today, a film industry that is always at the bottom of the world, what can we see from the Oscars?

Money is not a problem and has never been a problem in cinema. To raise funds for Moonlight, director Barry Jenkins had only one ticket: his debut film, Medicine for Melancholy (2008), which was made with a budget of 13,000 USD, much lower than the budget of current Vietnamese films.

Even Moonlight’s $1.5 million budget is only on par with many major Vietnamese films at present. Two other Oscar-nominated films this year, Manchester by the Sea and Hell or High Water, were also made with low budgets compared to the average level of American and world cinema (from $8-12 million). Money and technology, even censorship, have never been and will never be an obstacle to making an artistic film that shares the personal issues of the author but also tells stories of people in general.

Perhaps that is something we should learn and not blame objective reasons for our weakness when looking at the Oscars from a low-lying film industry in the world.

According to VNN