Ever since the Academy Awards began in the late 1920s, Hollywood filmmakers have continued to create socially conscious films. Many of those best films went on to win the city’s highest honor, the Oscar for Best Picture.
This year’s winner may be “Oppenheimer,” a bold and revealing depiction of humanity’s most dangerous invention: the creation of nuclear weapons.
That might be Killers of the Flower Moon, the film that brought a horrific lost piece of American history into the light of the Cannes Film Festival and ultimately garnered awards season attention.
It could be either “Barbie” or “Poor Things.” These two are the wildest, most colorful and original explorations of feminist and/or postfeminist femininity ever seen on the big screen.
It could be “American fiction,” a sarcastic and witty look at the identities and familial relationships of middle-class black Americans under absurd and unpleasant cultural pressures.
But are the films with the strongest social impact the ones that register most favorably with voters?
History has shown us that nominees for films that truly capture the hot issues of the moment, and perhaps even move moviegoers to a movement and grapple with the issues presented, always win Best Picture. Not necessarily.
James Bridges’ “The China Syndrome” (1979) sparked a national debate about nuclear power, but in the Oscar sweepstakes, its four missing nominations didn’t even include one for Best Picture. That same year, Martin Ritt’s Norma Rae celebrated the importance of unions and was nominated for Best Picture (ahead of Robert Benton’s Kramer vs. Kramer, a moving depiction of the emotional toll of divorce). defeated). Did “Norma Rae” liberalize America or stall the anti-labor trend in the workplace brought about by the election of ultra-conservative President Ronald Reagan? There is little evidence that it has had much of an impact on the fortunes of emerging liberalism.
Nevertheless, the Best Picture category has produced important films that have raised awareness of important issues or promoted social action in some way, due to their wide media influence and box office popularity.
Taking a rather unconventional approach, director Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland (2020) tackles the growing phenomenon of homelessness in America, depicting a rootless state that is half the result of society’s callousness and half the chosen one. It depicts the journey of a woman who feels like she has a unique lifestyle. But by putting the issue front and center, it sheds light on how tech giants are turning workers into 21st-century sharecroppers during the darkest days of the coronavirus lockdown.
CODA (2021), directed by Sian Heder, joins William Wyler’s “Our Best Days” (2021) as two of the most important films that put the lives of Americans with disabilities at the center of drama. 1946). Lives may also be praised for its sensitive portrayal of a World War II veteran whose scars were invisible, but today PTSD is considered more openly discussed and treated than it was in the 1940s. You will probably be killed.
Notable Best Picture nominees that raised awareness of living with a disability and the myriad challenges faced by this community include Hal Ashby’s Coming Home (1978) and Randa Haines’ The Lesser Gods. Children’ (1986). It is worth noting that both films earned acting trophies for the actors who played the moving protagonists of the films. And once again, this time, the postwar trauma of the Vietnam conflict has seeped into the national dialogue thanks to “Coming Home.”
1967 was one of the most important years of the 1960s American civil rights era, and Best Picture winner Norman Jewison’s In the Heat of the Night is a hopeful reminder of this important period in our history. It highlighted both fear and fear. The film’s triumph, and the powerful charisma of its star Sidney Poitier, who was empowered to dramatically assert black dignity and anger, helped energize a movement that was clearly outdated. Ta.
That same year, Poitier starred in another Best Picture nominee, Stanley Kramer’s Who’s Coming to Dinner, which took a completely different approach? From her gripping violent realism to her light comedy, Poitier played an immeasurably powerful role in advancing black rights in America.
“Norma Rae” may not have restored the forward momentum of the American union movement, but in 1954 Elia Kazan’s “On the Waterfront” brought the American workers’ The film’s theme was corruption that eroded profits, and it was featured prominently on screen. The painting remains controversial because it glorifies those who inform on those who betrayed them.
Sadly, anti-Semitism is once again a dangerous and harmful plague on the social landscape, and Kazan’s 1947 film Gentleman’s Agreement explores the insidious ways in which anti-Semitic prejudice poisons society. It is important to appreciate how unflinchingly it depicts the world.
Decades before addiction awareness and treatment became widely discussed on talk shows and self-help books, Billy Wilder’s 1945 Best Picture winner The Lost Weekend tells the story of a man who is losing his fighting strength. It offered a frank and personal study of “ordinary” citizens. Against the alcoholism that destroyed his world.
There are many notable anti-war films, from Lewis Milestone’s masterpiece 1930 adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front to Oliver Stone’s 1986 Platoon. These films are harrowing, timeless, and endlessly effective. He scored well in Francis Coppola’s 1979 Best Picture nominee Apocalypse Now.
Is Donald Trump the representative of a populist alternative to a calcified political system, or a fascist dictator in disguise? The 2024 presidential election is dominated by questions about the possibility of the rise of a dictatorship in the United States, with Robert Rossen’s Best Picture winner “All the Kingsmen,” directed by Robert Penn Warren Hollywood was working on this scenario in 1949 when it brought us the powerful five-alarm fire alarm. Bringing the novel to the screen.
The word “woke” hadn’t been used yet, but like most Hollywood films that strived to create a better world, All the Kingsmen celebrated its commitment to important issues. Either they will be criticized, or their efforts will be ridiculed. political ambition. Fortunately for filmmakers back in the day, there was no social media hell where good intentions were rewarded.