By Laurie Baron
SAN DIEGO — I’ve been doing research lately on the Oscars. Although I have my favorite films, I realize that my criteria differ from the members of the Academy who not only respond to the merits of the films themselves, but to publicity campaigns waged by the studios, sentimental sympathies for popular actors and directors who have lost in the past and deserve belated recognition, and current political and social concerns. Here are my predictions of the winners and some of my personal favorites.
Best Picture: The Revenant
Frankly, I thought The Big Short was this year’s best film because it managed to tell a complicated serious story in a creative and humorous way. Steve Carrell’s character Mark Baum is based on Steve Eisman. The movie traces Baum’s early recognition that subprime mortgages will topple the American economy to his yeshiva training where his teachers worried about his uncanny ability to discern contradictions in religious texts.
Best Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu , The Revenant
I always think Best Director and Best Picture should go together, so I’m for Adam McKay of The Big Short.
Best Actor: Leonardo DiCaprio, Revenant
Leo has been nominated five times before and has never won. This is his year. Personally, I preferred the performance of the bear.
Best Actress: Brie Larson, Room
Room was a gem of a film, and Brie Larson’s acting was dazzling.
Best Supporting Actor: Sylvester Stallone, Creed
It has been nearly 40 years since Stallone was up for acting Oscar for Rocky. Six sequels later he finally has been nominated again. This is a strange category. Christian Bale’s quirky portrayal of Michael Burry in The Big Short should have earned him a nomination, if not an Oscar for Best Actor. Instead, he was placed in the Supporting Actor category. Without the Rocky factor, he could have been a contender.
Best Supporting Actress: Alicia Vikander, The Danish Girl
I preferred Kate Winslet’s role as Joanna Hoffman, the only person at Apple who could communicate with Steve Jobs. The real-life Hoffman, whose father was Jewish, had the patience of Job.
Best Animated Feature Film: Inside Out
Teaching kids to deal with their emotions is an accomplishment. Now we need a sequel for adults.
Best Documentary: Amy
Amy Winehouse was a brilliant jazz singer who ended up being destroyed by her celebrity as a pop icon, her addictions, and her family and relationships. While this documentary does not minimize her flaws, her talent still emerges as an impressive legacy. If the Academy wanted to atone for its crime of omitting African-American nominees, it would choose What Happened, Miss Simone? about another musical genius who suffered not only from personal demons, but from racism as well.
Best Foreign Language Film: Son of Saul
Rarely do the style and substance of a film align so perfectly. This grim tale relegates the gory realities to blurry peripheral images and an intrusive cacophony of different languages, orders barked by guards, whispered exchanges among inmates, and the ambient sounds of the machinery of extermination and the pain endured by those it destroys. The camera follows the titular character as he navigates this hellish inferno through fulfilling his duties as a Sonderkommando, a reluctant recruit to the resistance, and a father trying to sanctify the death of his son by giving him a Jewish burial.
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Baron is a professor emeritus of history at San Diego State University. He may be contacted at lawrence.baron@sdjewishworld.com