Lights! camera!…Award? What we know and think about the 97th Academy Awards

BY CORA WILLIAMSON

     Throughout 2024, theaters around the country were packed with giddy audiences: each cloth-backed seat filled by a history buff, theater kid, indie film fanatic, or avid Letterboxd reviewer. Upholding the annual tradition of commemorating the year's best films, the Oscars nomination list was officially announced a couple weeks ago, and the public was not short of scathing opinions. 
      On January 23, 2025, the 97th Academy award nominations were announced and the categories were stacked with all of the year's household names.  The nominations for best picture are as follows:

PHOTO CREDIT: 6ABC
Posters for the year's best movies decorate the walls of theaters around the country; their alluring imagery and color pull in new audiences in search of their next favorite film. 

     Emeilia Pérez, A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Nickel Boys, I’m Still Here, The Substance, Dune: Part Two, Wicked, Anora, and The Brutalist. Each movie presents its own unique style with plots that starkly contrast one another. Many of these nominations were expected given their extraordinary cinematography and performances, but some elicited a clamour amongst the public. 
     “If the Oscars have a shortcoming, it's a lack of authenticity. One of the most impactful things about movies is being able to put yourself in anyone's shoes, and yet the Academy continues to award films that choose to portray a Hollywood version of reality and pass it off as fact,” Hunter Seib, A DSA senior in the film pathway, commented.
     Emelia Perez, directed by Jacques Audiard, follows the story of a cartel boss transitioning into a woman and finding a second chance in America. With the recent Golden Globe win by Zoe Saldana for best supporting actress and the 13 academy nominations, Emelia Perez has generated more buzz than it did when the movie initially came out.
     "Liberal-centrists can seemingly only understand queerness as 'the exceptional' to their 'normality', so they make a hyperbolic spectacle out of us and then go on to say that it's good optics, that it's 'representation', when in fact it is abstraction and dehumanization -- Emilia Pérez is made to represent so many contradictory things that in the end the film situates her as an icon rather than a real person, it is a crude mystification of everything the film claims to care about,” one Letterboxd Reviewer, under the username @comrade_yui, ranted. 
     In the short time that this film has been in the public eye it has been ruthlessly criticized. Many people feel the awards are undeserved given that the musical numbers and acting were sub par and overall inferior when compared to its nominee counterparts. 
     “Giving this film so many nominations has not just worsened its reputation, but also stolen some valor from this year's best works. Challengers, for example, received zero nominations, despite coming from award favorite Luca Guadigino,” Seib added. 
    One of the most controversial elements of this year's Academy choices was not what movies were nominated, rather what movies were not. 

      “With all of this neglect of celebrated films and acclaim for derided movies, it can seem like nobody should pay attention to the Oscars. But when a truly wonderful film comes along and earns its rightful awards, it's an incredible feeling,” Sieb voiced.
    Despite the discontent with certain nominations, the other names elected to the podium have been positively received by the public and met with ample acclaim. 
    “Dune: Part II, for one, has defied the Best Picture category´s long-held stigma against science fiction films. The real surprise to me, though, was with The Substance. It feels amazing to see not just a horror film, but a horror film with an unapologetically feminist stance be nominated for the most prestigious award in the film world. It's certainly something I would have nominated if I were on the Oscars board,” Seib raved.
    Two films that have been the subjects of constant praise since their release are A Complete Unknown and The Brutalist, because of James Mangolds’ (director of A Complete Unknown) artful navigation of the biopic and Brady Corbets (director of The Brutalist) tactful depiction of immigration and the “American Dream.” 
    “The fifth-longest Best Picture nominee in history [The Brutalist], it is the first American film to be shot in the pristine VistaVision format in over 60 years. The technical craft alone is commendable, but it took me days after my first viewing to even move on from its timely themes about immigration and America.” Sieb detailed. 
     It’s safe to say that the Academy had an abundance of captivating films to pick from for this year's Oscars and hopefully the results will reflect the quality of each piece. 
    “The artistic courage it takes to make these tales of heroism or ballads of desolation are one thing, but for them to resonate with the American public is a difficult second step…and yet the most important. To me, it’s an integral part of what ‘Oscar worthy’ means,” Sieb concluded. ​