Oscars 2015: what will win best foreign language film?

The Academy creeps towards world cinema credibility with a slate of acclaimed nominees, from Pawlikowski’s wistful Ida to short story collection Wild Tales

In a perfect world — or, at least, as perfect a world as would still allow for gaudy film-award pageantry — there’d be no need for a separate best foreign language film Oscar. The fact that, after 87 years, the Academy has yet to honour a film not predominantly in English as the year’s best says everything about their own limitations, and nothing about those of world cinema. From that fundamentally flawed premise, a host of other factors have made this the most critically sneered-at of all Oscar categories: pedantic eligibility restrictions, a politically fraught one-film-per-country submission system and, most cripplingly of all, the branch’s frequently whey-bland taste. This is the group that preferred Mediterraneo to Raise the Red Lantern, In a Better World to Dogtooth, Departures to Waltz With Bashir and The Class. Choose your own gripe.

But a funny thing has happened to best foreign language film in the last three years: with the prize having gone to roundly acclaimed critics’ pets A Separation, Amour and The Great Beauty, it’s rapidly in danger of becoming credible. That’s no accident. Aware of the complaints, the Academy has significantly tweaked the category’s voting process: most crucially, seven years ago, a select executive committee was instated to supplement the broader vote of the general branch. The results are again apparent in this year’s healthily diverse slate of nominees, which includes four high-profile, critically approved festival favourites — three of them from the Cannes competition lineup.

A win for the exception, Estonia’s little-discussed Tangerines, would therefore prompt some of the collective eye-rolling that used to be the standard response to this award. That’s not to say Zaza Urushadze’s short, sweet anti-war parable is a bad film: this story of an elderly carpenter reluctantly sheltering two soldiers from opposite sides of the Georgian-Abkhazian conflict in 1992 hits its thematic marks with tenderness and wit. But with its lack of formal flourish and emphasis on message, it’s very much an old-school Academy choice; it’s a safe bet that Estonia — never previously nominated in this category — didn’t require the executive committee’s intervention here. Not many years ago, when members had to attend special screenings of all five nominees in order to vote, Tangerines could easily have been a surprise victor. Now, as the only film in the race without a US distributor, it faces an uphill battle for voters’ attention.

Another nominee that didn’t have to fight very hard for its place is Ida. Pawel Pawlikowski’s wise, wistful, meticulously crafted tale of a young nun forced to reconsider her identity in the 1960s Polish People’s Republic surprised even its own distributor with its robust commercial performance in the US, sticking in arthouses for six months and building particularly keen word of mouth within a genteel elderly demographic not dissimilar to the one that drives the Oscar vote. This time, the critics and the public are in agreement: Ida’s heavily stacked trophy cabinet includes prizes from the New York and Los Angeles journos. Meanwhile, the Academy’s sympathy for Holocaust — or post-Holocaust, in this case — subject matter was well known long before Ricky Gervais and Kate Winslet made a punchline of it. After 10 nominations, Poland is still seeking its first win in this category; they’ve never had a better chance to break their duck.

Team Ida was thwarted, however, at the Golden Globes, where Andrey Zvyagintsev’s moody, massive Leviathan pulled off something of an upset. Beloved as it is by critics, this searing allegorical satire of Russian system corruption was widely deemed too severe for Globe voters’ sensibilities; it could be a mistake to similarly underestimate the Academy. In addition to the backing of Sony Pictures Classics — the company behind six of the category’s last eight winners — Leviathan might well benefit from the well-publicised resistance it has encountered from officials and pro-Kremlin pundits in its home country. In the past, the Russian selection committee has stoked controversy with ideologically conservative, artistically dubious submissions; it’s a minor miracle that Leviathan is in the race to begin with. Culture minister Vladimir Medinsky accused Zvyagintsev of making the film for “fame, red carpets and statuettes”; progressive voters may wish to assist that argument.

Unless, of course, the Academy faction that prizes here-and-now political topicality is sufficiently distracted by Abderrahmane Sissako’s startling Timbuktu to split the vote. Amid the rather graceless media furore over Ava DuVernay’s omission from the best director field — one that saw the Academy field numerous accusations of racism — little was made of Mauritania’s maiden appearance in the Oscar race, nor of Sissako becoming the first African-born black film-maker to score in this category. Voters needn’t be made aware of such statistics, however, to be moved by his visually ravishing, mordantly funny, finally gut-churning portrait of the eponymous west African city’s 2012 occupation by Islamic fundamentalists. And with the film having opened to ecstatic reviews in the US only last week, time is on its side in more ways than one.

Any of the last three contenders would be among the most formidable winners in the category’s spotty history — yet I fear the Academy may shoot itself in the foot by choosing the field’s flightiest alternative. It’s no surprise that Argentinian director Damián Szifrón’s Wild Tales (another Sony Classics acquisition) has been a roaring crowd favourite on the festival circuit. Placed alongside the demanding likes of Leviathan and Timbuktu at Cannes, this blackly comic, Almodóvar-produced compendium of cinematic short stories — standalone chapters linked by a common theme of revenge — was such a refreshing tonic that it was easy to overlook its uneven construction and limited payoff. Academy types may well feel the same way. If the portmanteau format doesn’t strike voters as too slight — it’d be the first such film to win since Vittorio De Sica’s Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow 50 years ago — Argentina may well repeat its giant-killing coup of 2009, when The Secret in Their Eyes trumped A Prophet and The White Ribbon. It wouldn’t be a mortifying pick, but a newly minted reputation is at stake.

Will win: Wild Tales.

Should win: Timbuktu.

Hey, where’s... White God? This may be the category’s most respectable and colourful field in recent memory, but if the executive committee had really wanted to throw voters a curveball, they’d have included Hungarian auteur Kornel Mundruczo’s brilliantly barking fable of canine revolution.

Contributor

Guy Lodge

The GuardianTramp

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