The unlikeliest of sources often provide the idea for a movie for some filmmakers. In that list, And that Oscar goes to will probably occupy a unique spot. Salim Ahamed has drawn inspiration for his fourth film from the struggles he had to undergo while making his debut movie Adaminte Makan Abu , which was India’s official entry for the Academy Awards. Unfortunately, the latest movie does quite a disservice to that memorable first film.
And the Oscar goes to is woven around the much used trope of a youth madly in love with filmmaking. Izhak Ibrahim (Tovino Thomas) has this close relationship with cinema right from birth. But he has to overcome many hurdles to make his dream come true. Only that, his struggle is second only to that of the viewer.
Some of Izhak’s struggles are indeed real, like in the sequences where he pawns everything to cough up money to finish the movie. By the half-way point though, even this story of struggle is over as the film is made and sent to the Oscars.
All through the second half, one wonders why he set out to make this movie, for there is nothing compelling enough to narrate, other than his struggles to pay the Hollywood lobbyists to get the jury to watch his film. The biggest crisis he encounters in the second half is that he had to spend a day without eating anything. Though it is quite traumatic in real, it doesn’t really translate that well on screen.
Many of the scenes have ‘artificial’ written all over it, with the badly written dialogues making it even worse. This is so evident especially in Izhak’s scenes with the Hollywood PR person (Nikki Hulowki).
More than anything, what sticks out is the fact that Izhak did not do even basic research or even take permission from them, while adapting to screen the tragic story of a family from his own village. One can only hope that this is fiction, and did not happen in real life too. And, the Oscar would not even remotely go to this one.
S.R. Praveen
