The Oscars: too tame for today's world?
The 98th edition of the Academy Awards was held in Hollywood on Sunday evening. Commentators take stock and ask whether cinema can still live up to its role today, or if it's being swept away by the whirlwind of current events.
Painfully ignorant of reality
The ceremony largely ignored the reality of Trump, criticises Der Spiegel:
“In the ice-cold elegance of the theatre, whose aggressive Zen décor was deliberately designed to provide 'refuge from a chaotic world', there was ultimately little sense that the US is currently embroiled in a war that is shaking the global order to its core. Or that venerable US democracy will soon exist almost only on paper. Or that Hollywood is on the brink of ruin - okay, yet again, but this time perhaps for good. The split screen was painful to witness. Outside, a nation caught between war and autocracy. Inside, glamorous self-adulation.”
A reflection of Hollywood
The Warner Bros. productions "One Battle after Another" and "Blood and Sinners" swept the board at the ceremony, winning ten Oscars in total. Público sees this as symbolic of the contradictions within the US film industry:
“The irony is that Warner's success with these two films felt a bit like a 'last hurrah' at a time when the studio, known for its creative freedom, is on the verge of being taken over by Paramount, a company with little appetite for risk and dangerously close ties to the current US administration. The Oscars are, above all, a reflection of the American film industry and the way it behaves - sometimes like a crab (taking two steps sideways for every step forward), sometimes like an ostrich (burying its head in the sand and waiting for the storm to pass).”
Let's have a martini!
All things considered, the Salzburger Nachrichten is pleased with how the evening went:
“'This is pretty amazing, let's have a martini!' ... The big winner, Paul Thomas Anderson, said summing up the mood of the evening: given the bizarre madness unfolding in the world around the Dolby Theatre in LA, there's probably nothing left to do but celebrate the fact that, at least artistically, we've made the best of it. For even though both host Conan O'Brien and the vast majority of the award winners took great care to avoid making overly explicit political statements in their acceptance speeches, the award-winning works in many cases take a clear stance, and the standard across the board is higher than it has been for a long time. So don't let anyone try to say that cinema is a dying art form.”
A blow to Kremlin propaganda
Pavel Talankin's documentary Mr Nobody Against Putin, about everyday school life in the Urals, won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature Film. Kirill Martynov, editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta Europe, takes a closer look at the film on Facebook:
“This Oscar is a heavy blow for propaganda. It would seem that Russian culture hasn't been erased from the world, as long as it speaks to human values. In Talankin's film there is no hatred for his country, but rather bitterness over what the state does to its people. It's a precise humanistic argument that is particularly uncomfortable for the Kremlin because it has nothing to say in response. Except for claims that Talankin is a traitor because he wants peace for Russians and all people.”