At E&M, our film critic was frothing at the mouth during the cinema ‘awards season’. Here he explains why.
Jumped-up Yanks
What is it about those jumped up Americans that makes them think their ‘cinema’ is the best in the world? Every year in February the world watches with outsized attention as, usually, a fairly mediocre film spends the month being over-promoted.
And at the end some vacuous starlet wins a big trophy and everyone massages their ego. How does one win an Oscar, well it’s certainly not about the acting. Last year Leo DiCaprio was mauled by a bear for his, ahem, art (pfft), next year he’ll probably spend three weeks inside of a dead cow at the bottom of the Atantic to really nail-on an award.
Of course, this year the Yanks couldn’t even do their own awards ceremony right. They dally and screw up often, but this year, to manage to actually announce the wrong winner of the most important award? How amateur.
The English have a good phrase for bad organisation, and mon dieu the people behind the Oscars could not run a party in a brewery.
I must be fair, Moonlight is that rarest of things, an American movie with depth, so I cannot be too malcontented by its victory, but it is like being the best German wine in a cellar — not a difficult feat to achieve.
Bah, the Academy Awards have nothing on the Cesars, or even the awards which garnish the Cannes Film Festival.
There is something fundamentally different between us. In Europe we appreciate art, in America they appreciate loud bangs and storylines a five year-old could deconstruct.
In Europe we appreciate art, in America they appreciate loud bangs and storylines a five year-old could deconstruct.
It is perhaps their attitude to sex that most riles your humble critic. It is, again, a topic they treat with all of the subtlety of a rhino driving a bulldozer. And then they realise that the poor little American children have unrealistic expectations about the act!
One need only watch something like Love, or anything by Bernando Bertolucci to know that we appreciate the erotic on this side of the Atlantic. I do not understand why the repressed folk in the United States so abhor a little flesh. The discomfort is quite hilarious.
Cover photo: Kevin Dooley (Flickr); Licence: CC BY 2.0
