Oscar nominations were announced today. And members of The Tribe were on the lists. The 88th Academy Awards ceremony will be broadcast from Los Angeles on February 28, 2016.
Most importantly (to me)… a nomination was given for Foreign Language Film to SON OF SAUL. The Hungarian film tells a story of a Jewish death camp inmate who is forced to cremate his fellow prisoners. Other nominees in this category are MUSTAND (France); THEEB (Jordan); A WAR (Denmark); and EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT (Colombia). Check a Washington Post analysis of the film HERE Irritated by the Holocasut film genre? Read this criticism from the WaPo:
The Holocaust movie as a genre has become — pardon the overused expression — singularly problematic. Exemplified most notably by “Schindler’s List,” which focused on an apolitical businessman who gradually decides he must save the lives of his Polish Jewish workers, the classic Holocaust film has come to mean a few readily identifiable tropes, including improbable heroes, the fight for survival, carefully arranged tableaus of emaciated bodies and the inevitable vista of barracks, with ominous wisps of smoke rising from the crematorium chimneys. These images have become so ubiquitous that they’ve taken on a rote, ritualistic quality, the reenactments almost obscene in their attention to fetishistic detail. There are at least 11 million stories to be told from the carnage of Adolf Hitler’s genocidal ambitions during World War II, counting the ghastly end game of the Final Solution. Is it possible for a filmmaker to tell them with any kind of freshness and vigor, to jolt viewers out of their perceived familiarity and into the dread, terror and confusion of the experience itself? With “Son of Saul,” first-time writer-director László Nemes delivers his answer in the brilliant and shattering affirmative. A classically simple story, told through an elegant visual language as bold as it is thoughtful, this is an important film not just in content but in form. Finally, a cinematic genre heretofore mired in pietistic melodrama and safe aesthetic distance has been blown open and virtually reinvented, even the well-known contours of its subject matter reinvested with urgency, meaning and mournful honesty.
One of the nominees for Documentary Short is CLAUDE LANZMANN: SPECTRES OF THE SHOAH.
AMY, a doc about the singer Amy Winehouse, received a nom for DOCUMENTARY.
Actress Jennifer Jason Leigh received a nomination for Supporting Actress for her role in the The Hateful Eight, which is set during the American Civil War. BRIDGE OF SPIES received nominations. It is produced and directed by Steven Spielberg, and written by Joel and Ethan Coen. THE REVENANT, starring actor Leonardo di Caprio received multiple nominations. One of its producers is Israel-born Arnon Milchan.
STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON received a nom for SCREENPLAY. It was written by Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff. (This is sure to create a tempest in a tea cozy, in that the film about non white characters received a nom for their white writers)
Minions received no nominations. But has a fabulous merchandising program that trumps any Oscar.
