A Look at the Oscar Winners

At the 82nd Academy Awards, several of the year's big winners highlighted some important causes, either in overt or subtle ways.

Let's start with the little film that could: The Hurt Locker swept the awards, picking up Best Picture, Directing, Original Screenplay, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing. Unfortunately, a lot of the buzz has been pitting Kathryn Bigelow against ex-husband, Avatar director James Cameron, and amping up her film's David-and-Goliath victory over Cameron's blockbuster. The more important buzz, however, is about the historic moment that her win represents: Bigelow is the first woman to win the Oscar for Best Director. Bigelow herself has expressed reluctance about hyping up the feminist side of her win. I think it's important to acknowledge that a woman was recognized for making an amazing film, with brilliantly executed and suspenseful sequences like this:



Check out my last post to see why The Hurt Locker ranks on my list of the top ten most important war films.

Precious, based on the novel "Push" by Sapphire, was another little film that rocketed to the top and won big at festivals around the world, before winning an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. Actress Mo'Nique, previously known for coarse comedy performances, won an Academy Award for her dramatic performance. She is the fourth black actress to win in the Best Supporting Actress category. Precious is not an easy film to swallow: its main character, played by Gabourey Sidibe, is an obese, illiterate 16-year-old African American girl in Harlem, who has been impregnated twice by her father and abused physically, mentally and sexually by her mother (Mo'Nique). It unflinchingly shows us situations that we would rather not acknowledge exist in America and I'm thrilled that these issues got exposure at the Oscars.

Sandra Bullock, romantic comedy darling, won for Best Actress for her dramatic performance in The Blind Side, the true story of football player Michael Oher. Like Precious, the movie highlights American poverty with its portrayal of an impoverished African-American foster child, who is adopted by a suburban family and discovers a talent for football.

The Short Documentary Winner, Music By Prudence, also tackles poverty, this time out of America. The film depicts the life of Prudence Mabhena, a Zimbabwean girl with a debilitating condition called arthrogryposis, who escapes her abusive upbringing thanks to a scholarship she received for her singing talents. In The Blind Side and Precious, the main characters also end up embracing education in the end, with Precious resolving to take the GED and Michael Oher embracing a college education with a football scholarship.

Crazy Heart, a movie about a country singer trying to turn his life around, for which Jeff Bridges won the Best Supporting Actor award, is not usually heralded as a cause-based movie. I've chosen to include it because it features a major story line in which the main character struggles with severe alcoholism. I've never seen such a vivid and gritty portrayal of the life of an alcoholic - we see Bridges throwing up on himself and driving his car off the road in a stupor. Its a multifaceted look at the issue, even if the ending, in my opinion, ties up his recovery too neatly and easily.

The most obvious cause-related winner, of course, is The Cove, a personal favorite of mine. See my post for a more in-depth look at why The Cove is one of the most important documentaries, environmental or otherwise, to come along in a while. Participant Media, producers of one of the most famous Oscar-winning docs, An Inconvenient Truth, did it again with this win. Their documentary Food, Inc., was also in the running. Both The Cove and Food, Inc. have been helping to make feature documentaries mainstream, something that, in my opinion, needs to happen without Michael Moore's name attached.

Avatar is being talked about more for what it didn't win than what it did, which was Oscars for Visual Effects, Cinematography and Art Direction. Despite missing out on other awards, it nevertheless remains an appealing commentary on anti-militarism, conservation, and tolerance. It's easy to see, even from the trailer, why it swept the technical awards:



For all these movies, although Avatar hardly needs more viewers, I hope that these wins will draw more attention to the causes at the root of each story. It would be nice to see the media give some attention to the issues in between the red carpet coverage.

The Top Ten Most Important Environmental Films (So Far)

Every week, I'm going to be posting a Top Ten List highlighting a certain genre of cause-driven filmmaking. Of course, my choices will be colored by the perspective of my generation, but I'd like to think that the same things matter to people who are older or younger.

What I'm really striving to figure out is not necessarily what makes a film entertaining, visually pleasing or profitable, but what makes it "important." This is my interpretation of what it means for a film to be "important:

- Impact on the audience. Do people who see this film actually go out and change anything about their lives?
- Staying power. Are people still talking about it more than 15 minutes after seeing it?
- Popularity. Unfortunately, change can hinge on how many people see a film, which is why these lists might not contain less famous, smaller films that are equally good.
- Actual change taking place. Whether the film revolutionizes its entire field or gets one innocent man released from prison (see The Thin Blue Line), I believe that the full potential of the medium is finally realized when change takes place in the wake of a film.

So here we go, with one of my pet causes:

The Top Ten Most Important Environmental Films (So Far)

10. Winged Migration (2001)
I was babysitting my professor's three-year-old son the other day, who is a big animal lover, and he was completely entranced by this detailed French documentary about the migrations of numerous species of birds across the hemispheres. Its gorgeous photography and empathic portrayal of the peculiarities of birds made a significant impact on audiences worldwide.

9. March of the Penguins (2005)
This documentary, also originally in French, also about the migration of birds, won the Academy Award in 2005 for Best Documentary Feature. The movie presented the struggles of the penguins in a very human way, squeezing empathy from its audience. Although it didn't have an overtly environmental message, it was a vivid representation of the intricacies of animal life at the far ends of the earth, and a great reminder of all that we have to lose.

8. The Cove (2009)
See my post below for a more detailed explanation of why I appreciate The Cove so much. Most importantly for these purposes, this documentary about dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan, showed that environmental documentaries can be made in fresh, exciting ways. Its spy-thriller feel and adventurous tone did something entirely new with the genre.

7. Wall E (2008)
Surprisingly, Wall E's director, Andrew Stanton, maintains that he never set out to make an environmental film with this blockbuster animation from Pixar. Yet the message is undeniable in the film's powerful visuals of an Earth devastated and abandoned by the unsustainable actions of humans. It is a cautionary tale that reached both young and old audiences.

6. Food, Inc. (2008)
Food, Inc., which was just nominated for an Academy Award, is more than just an environmental film. It tackles the entire corrupt industry of food production in America, effectively disgusting audiences throughout the country with its portrayal of factory farming. However, I think the side effect of its message will be that more people will be eating sustainably, locally, organically and even vegetarian. And this could be one of the most important environmental changes we see.

5. The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
This blockbuster is kind of a silly film, showing an extremely exaggerated alternate reality in which the projected effects of global warming happen in a couple of days. But the apocalyptic images of Manhattan sinking under the ocean and most of America perishing in cataclysmic storms made a vivid impression on a lot of viewers who might not previously have been able to imagine climate change as a physical manifestation.

4. Avatar (2009)
Avatar, the highest grossing film in history, is the only environmental movie on this list that actually doesn't take place on Earth. Unlike Andrew Stanton, director James Cameron was fully aware of the environmental message in his movie, and has called attention to our loss of biodiversity and the effects of climate change. Check out my last post to see how the plot of the movie is being played out on Earth. Avatar is important because its revolutionary visuals conveyed the most realistic and tangible sense of environmental beauty yet (ironically, because the plants don't actually exist), and also because so very many people saw it.

3. Erin Brokovich
In Erin Brokovich, we are shown how environmental issues can affect humans very directly and very intensely. In the movie, based on a true story, Julia Roberts' uncovers the industrial poisoning of a small town's water supply, which severely threatens the health of the entire community. Her award winning performance drew viewers around the world, who learned to be more aware of the reality of industrial pollution.

2. An Inconvenient Truth (2006)
This documentary by Al Gore is probably the most famous environmental film of our time (and the most lucrative, bringing in an unprecedented $50 million for a documentary). The polarizing scientific evidence it contained brought the climate change debate to a head and is almost always cited, either with derision or in awe, when the issue comes up. Without it, it is hard to say where the climate change movement would be today.

1. FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992)
This might seem like a surprising pick for a list with so many hard-hitters, but hear me out. If you mention the name "FernGully" in a room full of 20-somethings today, you will get the same positive and nostalgic reaction everywhere. Kids loved this animated movie about a fairy trying to save her rainforest home from both a lumber company and an evil spirit named Hexxus who gains power from pollution and resembles oil sludge. This was a highly popular movie with a strongly environmental message that came out to young audiences before the "green" movement was anticipated. The 20-somethings that were wowed by FernGully when they were impressionable children absorbed the message that forests, biodiversity and conservation are good, and that pollution, destruction and greed are bad. This movie effectively primed my generation to now look at movies like Avatar and An Inconvenient Truth with the mental framework of nature being inherently good and important to preserve. Fern Gully wasn't alone in this; movies like The Lion King and Pocahontas had a more subtle pro-nature lean. Yet FernGully was alone in personifying pollution as arguably one of the scariest, evil villains of animated entertainment. For a lot of people my age, seeing FernGully was the first time we were ever lead to think about conservation and the importance of a world outside of our human one.

Does this bring back any fond memories?

Avatar: The Fantasy is A Reality for some Indigenous Tribes

You have probably heard by now that James Cameron's hit movie Avatar is now the highest-grossing movie in history. Of the top 20, (mostly starring Harry Potter, Jack Sparrow, and the Lord of the Ring's hobbits, with Batman and Spiderman thrown in), Avatar is one of the only that can be said to present a straightforward cause-driven message: Greedy industries looking for profit should not ruin the cultures and homes of defenseless indigenous people.

The movie is set on the fictional, whimsical planet of Pandora, but the issues it addresses are anything but alien. The U.K.-based charity Survival International, which supports tribal people worldwide, has brought attention to the eerie similarity between the predicament of Pandora’s Na’vi and the plight of Earth’s Dongria Kondh tribe in India, whose story you can watch below:

The charity describes how the sacred forests of the Dongria Kondh, just like those of the imaginary Na’vi, are under threat by a mining company, in this case Vedanta Resources. The mountain, which the Dongria Kondh describe as a form of deity, contains a rich stream of the mineral bauxite, or aluminum ore. According to Amnesty International, and to the video above, the local communities are already threatened by the air and water pollution perpetrated by the company. Amnesty is urging the Indian government to withdraw the clearance granted for the mine until measures are taken to uphold their international human rights obligations.

Vedanta has defended its project in the area, claiming that it will serve to stimulate the economy and uplift the rural community. But the people in the video “Mine – Story of a Sacred Mountain,” don’t seem very uplifted.

Survival posted an advertisement in the Hollywood entertainment magazine Variety, saying, “Appeal to James Cameron. Avatar is fantasy…and real.” We’ll have to wait and see whether the message of this film proves to be more than just Pocahontas in Space.