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Pinkerton: Loaded for politics at the Oscars
 So are you looking forward to the Academy Awards show Sunday night? Really? Can you name the five movies nominated for best picture? Have you seen any of them? Most Americans haven't. The top-earning film among the best-picture nominees is "Brokeback Mountain," which has taken in about $75 million. That means that perhaps 10 million Americans have seen it. By contrast, the most recent "Harry Potter" movie and "The Chronicles of Narnia," each taking in four times as much money, were mostly ignored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. But, if the academy is overlooking popular films, it is paying close attention to progressive - even transgressive - films. As everyone knows, "Brokeback" is gay-friendly, but so is another film receiving nominations, "Transamerica." And let's not forget the preachily PC "North Country" and the overtly left-leaning "Syriana" and "Good Night, and Good Luck." And, oh yes, in Hollywood, there's usually special sympathy for a nonwhite-collar criminal, hence the Oscar-nominated song, "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp." But a furor is starting to erupt around another movie, "Paradise Now," nominated as best foreign-language film. The film is obscure (director Hany Abu-Assad is not a name heard much around Hollywood), and it hasn't made much money (barely more than $1 million), but the topic is red hot: suicide bombing in Israel. The tagline of the movie declares, "From the most unexpected place comes a bold new call for peace," and the film is nuanced and ambiguous. Still, it's hard to refute the argument that it humanizes Palestinian suicide bombers. A private group called The Israel Project has led the charge against "Paradise Now"; yesterday the project held a news conference in Jerusalem in which the Israeli father of a teenager killed by a suicide bomber referred to the film as "Hell Now." And the project is running an ad in Variety that asks, "Is it right to honor a film that puts a human face on deliberate murders of children?" That's a great question, although Hollywood, of course, humanizes murderers all the time. "Capote," one of the films in contention for the best picture Oscar, puts human - and to Truman Capote, at least, sexually alluring - faces on the men who killed four people in Kansas, including two teenagers, back in 1959. Still, "Paradise Now" might turn out to be too edgy for the Hollywood crowd. The Academy Awarders might not want to vote for the movie some say will encourage more suicide bombers in Israel - and maybe, too, in Iraq. Instead, there's another film up for best foreign film that might actually cleanse some of the blood on Hollywood's hands. It's "Joyeux N"el," and it's about temporarily ending a war that never should have been fought, World War I. The French film is a fictionalized version of a true occurrence: the "Christmas Truce" that blossomed briefly along parts of the Western Front in France in 1914. For a few hours the Brits and the Germans, inspired by the holy day, stopped killing each other. Indeed, the movie shows most soldiers joining in a Latin Christmas Mass - a lyrical reminder that the ancient language of the church once gave the continent a semblance of unity. Another unifying force in the film is Western music; men from the warring countries knew the same Christmas carols as well as the beauty of Bach. Sadly, tragically, the truce ended and the fighting resumed; some 8.5 million soldiers died. Afterward, a ruined Europe stumbled into fascism, communism and Nazism, leading to the deaths of many millions more just a generation later. Honoring "Joyeux N"el" with the Oscar for best foreign film won't change that painful history. But on Sunday Hollywood has a chance to remind us that audiences can be warmed and heartened by what unites us - not thrilled and chilled and bloodied by what divides us. Posted by: .com 2006-03-02 |
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