To cite a cliché, it’s that time of the year when the brightest stars of the planet will shimmy up the ecosphere’s luckiest red carpet. In other words, it’s time for the 89th Academy Awards, or the Oscars, which will be held on February 26. Amidst all the hullabaloo in the movie orchard, cinephiles like yours truly will be eyeing the relatively more obscure category: the Best Foreign Language Film. In an ideal world, cinema from every country would be able to compete in every category for the golden statuette on the basis of merit, not just the ones that are in English. But the Academy Awards are clearly a celebration of American cinema, and Hollywood makes no bones about it.
Beyond Hollywood
If you look at Hollywood’s evolution, the golden age of American cinema was largely dominated by studio fare. Which is why, before 1947, no foreign film was considered for the awards. The change started trickling in after World War II, when films from France, Italy, Sweden and Japan made an entry into the American market. Between 1947 and 1955, a special/honorary award was given to one foreign film for outstanding achievement. These foreign films offered philosophical musings, sexually uninhibited characters, and a glimpse into new countries and fascinating cultures, with cinematic invention then absent in America. So near, yet so far, all thanks to transcontinental cinema.
Familiarity with auteurs like Jean-Luc Godard, Federico Fellini, François Truffaut, Ingmar Bergman and Akira Kurosawa were soon an essential step in being culturally literate. Eventually, a new category, the Best Foreign Language Film, was introduced at the 29th Academy Awards in 1956. Actors like Marcello Mastroianni, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Sophia Loren, Max von Sydow, Toshiro Mifune and Jeanne Moreau soon became increasingly familiar to American cine-goers. Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960) was a roaring theatrical success in the U.S., a reflection of countercultural ideas gaining momentum, and films acquiring intellectual currency. All of these would later inspire younger Hollywood directors, who studied world cinema before they entered the industry. Ironically, the themes of sex, blood, philosophical reveries and morally uninhibited characters in many foreign films would become unattractive to the American public later.
Troublesome rules
When it comes to Oscar snubs, the Foreign Language Film category suffers like no other. And it begins from what can be sometimes a random process of selection. For instance, eligibility requirements render many first-rate films out of the race. The ‘lack of artistic control’, in other words too many foreign personnel employed for the film’s production by the country of submission, can lead to debarment. As a result, Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution (2007) was rejected as Taiwan’s entry, and Adolfo Aristarain’s A Place in the World (1992) was tragically disqualified despite securing a spot in top five. The Academy also takes the moniker ‘foreign language’ too seriously, which means dialogues in English can lead to exclusion. This was the fate of Israeli entry The Band’s Visit (2007), as a great deal of the film’s dialogue was in English.
The one-film-per-country submission system is also inexplicable, considering any nation is capable of churning out more than one brilliant film a year. Again, the official submission by a country as a political establishment is weird since the Academy’s very definition of the term ‘country’ remains vague. On the one hand, it accepted entries from Hong Kong when under British rule, and on the other, rejected an entry from Palestine, as it did with Elia Suleiman’s Divine Intervention in 2002. Three years later, Paradise Now (2005) managed to get a nomination, but an intense Jewish lobby made sure that the Academy opted for the term ‘Palestinian territories’, damaging its chances of winning and incensing its director Hany Abu-Assad.
Each country choosing its official submission reflects peculiar results, as designating bodies have their own set of rigid rules and political compulsions. Almost every year, the selection by the Indian committee is hotly debated for mostly being undeserving, with Hindi language films dominating the selection. In 2013, Ritesh Batra’s The Lunchbox , despite its warm reception in the foreign press, was passed over in favour of Gujarati film The Good Road directed by Gyan Correa. In a similar fashion, Akira Kurosawa’s Ran (1985), despite being hailed as one of the filmmaker’s masterpieces, was not selected by Japan for the Oscars as its national entry thanks to a controversy around the film. It was because of the Japanese master’s Hollywood admirers, especially director Sidney Lumet, who lobbied for Ran as an independent entry, that the film secured four nominations in the main categories, including Best Director. Alas, Batra had no such luck with his film.
From nomination to winners, the Academy has displayed a strong bent for the West, with more than 80% of the successes belonging to European nations. For example, Korean cinema, despite showing a resurgence in the new millennium, has failed to score even a single nomination in recent times.
Cinematic goldmine
Yet, if you’re a connoisseur of cinema, you would know that the Foreign Language Film category is actually a goldmine to discover films from countries you’re not even aware of. Just take this simple logic: in a single year, American movies fight for nominations in diverse categories, but the rest of the world fights it out for just five nominations in this category. That’s pretty tough competition.
Unlike most premier film festivals of the world that favour auteurist works over populist excursions, the Academy thankfully suffers from no such eye-rolling syndrome. It’s the reason Sergei Bondarchuk’s gargantuan epic War and Peace (1969) and Ashutosh Gowariker’s Lagaan (2002) were nominated in the same category. Starting from Vittorio De Sica’s neorealist masterpieces, this is the same category that introduced us to Jiří Menzel’s Closely Watched Trains (1966), Roman Polański’s Knife in the Water (1962), Jan Troell’s The Emigrants (1971) , Ephraim Kishon’s The Policeman (1972), Paul Verhoeven’s Turkish Delight (1973), Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s The Lives of Others (2006) to Yōjirō Takita’s Departures (2008) — wondrous films and filmmakers that otherwise would have escaped our attention.
In terms of cherry-picking winners, the Academy has been sniggered at for some of the outlandish choices it has made, but that applies as easily to the main category winners. In recent times, there’s plenty to cheer about though, with the statuette going to films that reflect artistic consistency, such as Juan José Campanella’s Th e Secret in Their Eyes (2010), Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation (2012), Michael Haneke’s Amour (2013) and Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty (2014).
And the Oscar goes to…
This year, the five nominees are Land of Mine (Denmark), A Man Called Ove (Sweden), The Salesman (Iran) ,Tanna (Australia), and Toni Erdmann (Germany). Maren Ade’s Toni Erdmann , an eccentric father-daughter voyage of discovery, has been a critical favourite since its début at Cannes last year. The comedy has received such warmth from Hollywood that an English language remake with Jack Nicholson has been proposed. Nothing really poses competition to Toni Erdmann, except The Salesman, whose director Asghar Farhadi has decided to skip the Oscars as a sign of protest against U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order restricting entry of people from seven Muslim countries. If political will and liberalism could dictate choices, Farhadi would easily diminish Ade’s chances at bagging an Oscar.
