Oscar 2017 seen from the world's lowland cinema

In a film industry that refuses to grow up and is increasingly dependent on money and romanceLike Vietnamese cinema today, a cinema that is always in the lowlands 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 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), the Golden Lion (Venice), the Golden Bear (Berlin)... are often voted on 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 viewers 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 much.

In fact, the influence of films that win prestigious awards at the three international film festivals mentioned above is often quite modest. Even when winning 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 their immense power when the nominees were announced, with the nine Best Picture nominees seeing a 300% increase in box office revenue compared to the time before they were nominated. The combined revenue of these nine arthouse films has surpassed $1 billion worldwide and is expected to increase even more after the Oscars. That’s where the power of the Oscars lies.

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 enjoyed other outstanding films. Moonlight is the story of a black child in a poor and crime-ridden community in America. Lonely, poor, bullied, confused 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 it 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 the art of storytelling that is both very private and universal. That is the reason why this very small film (budgeted at 1.5 million USD and had to be made secretly 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 of the above films are 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 in the bottom of the world, what can we see from the Oscars?

Money is not 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 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 author’s personal issues 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