(Credits: The Academy Awards)
Handing out trophies for artistic endeavours is arguably a futile act, for how can subjective filmmaking be fairly judged? This is only underlined when the Academy Awards so often misjudges its nominees, politically picking a smattering of popular films, but perhaps the most interesting insight the Oscars gleans is in its ability to summarise the contemporary zeitgeist into one overriding theme or feeling that can be found distilled in each of its ‘Best Picture’ nominees.
In what feels like a modern first, the Oscars seem to have done a pretty accurate job reflecting the contemporary world of political, environmental and moral turmoil, choosing films that largely address most of these issues. Indeed, if one word and one theme could neatly tie all of these films together, it would be ‘reparations’, with each release trying to untangle the complications of the past to make sense of the present.
Celine Song’s Past Lives most snugly fits this mould, telling the story of two former lovers who allow the flow of time to separate their souls, only to try and reconnect them again decades down the line. Although there’s no direct effort to make reparations in their intimate relationship, the pair learn to better understand themselves after reconciling and reminiscing.
Though Past Lives may be far more emotionally wrought, the essence of its being isn’t all that different to Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers, a Christmas fable about broken souls who each help each other to thrive through personal connection. Creating a symbiotic human relationship, the trio relies on each others’ compassion as they wrestle with the wrongdoings of their past.
Bradley Cooper’s Maestro also fits this mould on a personal level, with the story following the life of American conductor Leonard Bernstein from his burgeoning youth through to his old age. Yet, to make sense of the man he eventually becomes, it’s imperative that his past is unpicked, with the protagonist himself learning to reconcile with the past and repair the relationships that meant the most to him.
Elsewhere in the list of ‘Best Picture’ nominees, reparation is appreciated in more political contexts, with Killers of the Flower Moon depicting the very real consequences that came to the perpetrators of the Osage murders of the 1930s and American Fiction wielding generations of racial injustice to deliver its satirical final blow about such issues in the modern world. Even Justine Triet’s Palme d’Or winner, Anatomy of a Fall, delves into finding justice through a complex court case that highlights the absurdity of the modern world.
Indeed, although the Oscars usually seem so regularly unperturbed by the issues of the wider society, this year demonstrates that such issues may be becoming unavoidable.
No film better speaks to this than Jonathan Glazer’s Zone of Interest, a remarkable insight into the banality of evil that isn’t as interested in reparations as it is trying to convey how the systematic wrongdoing of humanity can never be repeated in the present. Working in a similar vein is Christopher Nolan’s study on the inventor of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, a biopic that tries to deconstruct the complex figure who had moral regrets about the violence he had brought into the world.
Both Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things are the outliers in this summation, even if the former does touch on the insidious nature of the patriarchy and the importance of not surrendering personal autonomy.
Living in the modern world can sometimes feel like an uphill struggle, with so many individuals feeling disaffected in a society which they feel doesn’t reflect their own issues at all. But, as the essence of the 2024 crop of Oscar nominees demonstrates, reparations are crucial for understanding our own place in an increasingly complex world and also for making sense of the political systems and conflicts around us.