Keeping It in the Film, Not the Speeches

Cast and Film Makers of One Battle After Another accepting award for Best Picture,  Photo via Getty Images

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This year’s motion-picture award cycle was one of the most competitive ones we’ve seen in recent years. With Guillermo del Toro creating possibly the most highly esteemed version of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein, Formula 1 racing receiving its own thrilling film adaptation starring Brad Pitt, and independent film and television production and distribution company A24 breaking its record for its highest-grossing movie ever with Timothee Chalamet’s Actor Award winning performance in Marty Supreme, alongside Gwyneth Paltrow. 

Despite the box-office success and high esteem from viewers these movies received, only two movies truly reigned triumphant at this year’s Oscars. With 16 and 13 overall Oscar nominations at the 98th Academy Awards, Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another and Ryan Coogler’s Sinners ultimately swept a majority of the awards, including similar wins at the Actor Awards, BAFTAs, and the Golden Globes. 

One Battle After Another, described by IMDB as a “groundbreaking cinematic experience with ambitious style,” won the most Oscars this Academy Award season, with 6 wins in categories such as Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Supporting Actor. The film received exceptional praise for its political commentary. Through engaging comedic style and action sequences, Anderson creates a deceptively dense film that explores the theme of politics through generational trauma and tension, and the idea of change within generations. In his acceptance of his Best Adapted Screenplay award, Anderson says, “I wrote this movie for my kids to say sorry for the housekeeping mess that we left in this world we’re handing off to them, but also with the encouragement that they will be the generation that hopefully brings us some common sense and decency.” 

Right behind One Battle After Another was Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, which received a record-breaking 16 Oscar nominations this year, holding the new record for the most nominations for a single film in history. With 4 wins, Sinners took home the awards for Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Score, and Best Cinematography. Sinners follows two aspiring-entrepreneur brothers, who return to Mississippi from Chicago to open a juke joint during the 1930s Jim Crow era. Halfway through the film, the twins and their friends are attacked by bloodthirsty vampires, which serve as an allegory for colonialism and the erasure of African American identity following the Jim Crow era. The film received accolades for its use of Southern Gothic atmosphere and supernatural elements to portray the predatory nature of colonialism and dark themes of human nature. 

While I personally enjoyed both of these films and would deem them among the best of our time, I was surprised by the acclaim they received not only from The Academy but from Hollywood as a whole. This past award season, both musical and film, we’ve seen little protest or even acknowledgement of the horrors we’ve seen worldwide within the past year. Just mere days before the Oscars, the United States bombed Iran under the pretense of “weapons of mass destruction”—weapons that have been days away from development since the Bush Administration. Additionally, throughout the entirety of this past award season, we as a nation have seen U.S. Citizens and immigrants of Hispanic descent treated by our government as dangerous criminals, on no basis other than race. The political goings-on of our nation over the past 6 months are almost direct parallels of the themes of generational polarization and the attempt at erasing minority culture. Despite this, the actors in these films, as well as the award show attendees and Academy voters who gave both films immense praise, showed little to no regard for these events, with the most outspoken celebrities wearing a 1×1-inch “ICE OUT” pin, hardly noticeable to the naked eye. 

It’s no secret that celebrities are prone to political grifting. With the well-received One Battle After Another and Sinners receiving praise from reviewers and celebrities, they are bound to echo their praise, without paying any regard to the films’ overarching themes. As approval rates for President Trump lessen, and social media continues to be outraged over the actions of his government, we are bound to see celebrities try to performatively cling to these movements, whether that be through tiny pins or Instagram infographics, without for a second realizing how much they could change with their wealth and status if they truly advocated for change. It’s important that we, as a society, acknowledge the disparity in quality of life between us common folk and these A-list movie stars, and not depend on them for political support, as to them, our suffrage is something to be commodified. Instead, we must steer away from celebrities and state-sponsored media when receiving political news, and instead turn to each other for opinions from those these political decisions affect. 

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This article was edited by Abigail D’Angelo.