THB #453: Oscargasm - Everything In Its Box

12 Weeks To Oscar

I think it says good things about cinema that there is actual thoughtful debate about almost every film in the award season of films.

On the other hand, it makes me crazy that every bloody movie has been positioned in some way that demands taking a position so absolute that it defies the idea of experiencing art fully.

Is Barbie a feminist movie? A man-hating movie? Is too much fun to be taken seriously or too political not to be seen as a statement film hidden in pink?

Why is the female nudity in Oppenheimer? Is the privilege abused? How can the filmmaker allow the bomb to be dropped on Nagasaki without making the audience suffer through the imagery?

Killers of the Flower Moon was re-engineered to be more about the Osage Nation than about the white men causing havoc and the other white men trying to clean things up. Is it still too white? Is it disrespectful? Does the central Native performance, by the remarkable Lily Gladstone, comfort the white audience rather than challenge it?

Is Maestro about a great talent who is forced to live in the closet for most of his life or is it about the plight of a woman who agrees to both love him and be his beard? Did Leonard Bernstein pay any real price for his lack of public sexual honest? Was the sacrifice of Felicia Montealegre Bernstein honorable or self-destructive?

Is The Holdovers a movie about the privileged whites who have problems that lead to them not being privileged enough? Does Da'Vine Joy Randolph’s Mary Lamb, although beautifully evoked, serve to ease the whiteness of it all?

Is Poor Things really meant to be a feminist movie, therefore failing on that level? Is too easy on the men? Is Bella an irredeemable sexist, often-nude cartoon?