We all know that the Oscars are not really an apt representation of the best of cinema, and like every year, many superlative films have been ignored by the Academy. While you wait for the 88th Academy Awards night to unfold, here’s a curated list of ten films that didn’t win big last year, but will entertain you like any worthy Oscar winner. So, here we go.
1. Mia Madre
A filmmaker juggling a star on the sets, a teen daughter at home, and a dying mother in the hospital, Nanni Moretti’s tragicomedy is both contemplative and laugh-out-loud funny. It may not be as satiating as his Palme d’Or clincher The Son’s Room (2001), but it offers certain truths that we usually shy away from. And yes, John Turturro returns to form like an asteroid.
2. A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
Swedish director Roy Andersson’s third installment of his Living trilogy, following Songs from the Second Floor (2000) and You, the Living (2007) is the work of a master at the peak of his creative wit. In his trademark deadpan humour, the film takes us to the world in which human existence reveals itself through measured absurdities and arbitrary laughs. With a series of vignettes on the meditation of life, it refuses to give in to the rulebook of cinema, and creates a language of its own. It will make you chuckle and question your mortality in equal measure.
3. Macbeth
Justin Kurzel made his debut with the nihilistic masterpiece, Snowtown (2011), it was only fitting that he chose Shakespeare’s violent tragedy Macbeth for adaptation. Kurzel takes liberties, but remains true to the spirit of the play, and chooses the colour palette of a dark graphic novel that would make the Bard proud. Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard, two of world cinema’s most delicious entities, lose themselves in characters that thrive on violence, both implosive and explosive. You will feel the mournful texture, the rage will make your heart race, and the underlining sorrow will haunt you. All in all, a stunning addition to the library of great Shakespearean adaptations.
4. Desde Allá
When the glitzy jury presided by Alfonso Cuarón handed over the Golden Lion to first time director Lorenzo Vigas for his debut feature over celebrated names, it heralded something special. A consummate drama about a middle-aged loner who gets involved with a street ruffian, it is an incisive romance built by an economy of visuals, and a sea of bottled-up feelings. The ending will surprise you, and the film will make you think again about the contrivances of love and desire.
5. Beasts of No Nation
#OscarsSoWhite is the right thing to trend considering the biggest casualty of this year’s Academy Awards is the Netflix original. Based on Uzodinma Iweala’s novel of the same name which tells the tale of an African boy forced to join a unit of mercenary fighters, it is a work of soaring cinematic ambition with all the dirt, grime and blood on display. Director Cary Fukunaga minces no words to whip us on a harrowing journey of misplaced ideas of war and exploitation of childhood, and the two leads, Abraham Attah and Idris Elba offer first rate performances in this real and poetic tale.
6. The Lobster
Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos’ English language debut is a work of protest, a ferocious satire against the conventional obsession of coupling in our world. In a dystopian near-future, singles must find a romantic partner within 45 days or else they will be transformed into an animal to be sent to the woods. With weird and peculiar ideas, the strange world is bound to elicit laughter, but out of this bizarreness, a romance of tenderness also emerges.
7. Tangerine
Sean Baker’s meagre-budget film has been praised for its feat of shooting such gorgeousness with just an iPhone 5s, but it also posed as a constraint for its appeal at big award shows. That’s a travesty. Because this film shows the uninhibited frankness of its world with two transgender buddies as leads, a rare exception when it comes to casting conventions, and takes us on a ride of blistering fun without compromising the humane side of its characters. Tangerine has the kind of confidence that Hollywood studios can’t buy with money.
8. The Dukes of Burgundy
Peter Strickland’s erotic drama is the breed of film that wants your complete submission, for it avoids the campy road and chooses to travel the path where desire meets feelings with artistic whimsy. Unlike 50 Shades of Grey, fetishes and pleasure mechanisms here make a parable of love with emotions so frankly throbbing, you will root for Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen) and Evelyn (Chiara D’Anna). This is kinky, but free of judgment.
9. Aferim!
Set in Wallachia of the early 19th century, and shot in crisp black and white, Radu Jude’s Aferim! sends a father-son duo in search of a runaway slave. Disguised as a road trip film, their journey bares the ugly side of racism in a key historical period through the prism of black humour, and never for a moment, does the director let his contempt for the past come in the way of objectivity. This costume drama doesn’t wish to set the record straight, and makes you stand at the hapless space between the perpetrator and the perpetrated, with an anger so informed, it will make you wonder whether we would be capable of such a feat in our cinema, without getting swayed by nationalistic fervour.
10. Phoenix
The story has the ring of a Bollywood melodrama, but in the hands of Christian Petzold, it becomes a haunting portrait of identity and lost love. Nina Hoss illuminates as an Auschwitz concentration camp survivor, who returns to her husband with an altered face, and her husband fails to recognise her. This is a film that’s more interested in the ambiguities of loss of history than history itself. A thriller more spiritual than suspenseful, it would have pleased Rainer Werner Fassbinder a great deal.
(The writer is a journalist and a screenwriter who believes in the insanity of words, in print or otherwise. Follow him on Twitter: @RanjibMazumder)
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