Oscar Submissions: Japan, Sweden and Germany's "Pina"
Friday, September 9, 2011 at 11:40AM Three more films have been announced for this year's foreign film Oscar competition, and all are from countries with a fairly large degrees of success with Academy's foreign nominating committee. Though the Academy always has a veritably orgy of films to choose from (usually sixty-plus) for its five-wide profile boosting arguably hit-making honors, they do tend to prefer European pictures. They also tend to prefer Japanese films to other countries when it comes to Asian cinema. Will they choose any of these three pictures?
JAPAN (12 noms, 1 win, and 3 honorary awards before the foreign category existed)
Postcard, an anti-war film about a soldier (Etsushi Toyokawa) returning home from World War II to see his family devastated, comes from the 98 year old director Kaneto Shindo. He has already stated that this will be his last film.
SWEDEN (14 noms, 3 wins)
Beyond is the directorial debut of the actress Pernilla August (More and more actresses are making the leap: see also Vera Farmiga and we're loving it. Why shouldn't they?) The actor-centric heavy drama stars Noomi Rapace as the adult survivor of alcoholic parents in the 1970s. Noomi's real life husband Ola Rapace co-stars. Beyond opened at last year's Venice Film Festival but didn't premiere in Sweden until December 2010, placing it safely within the eligibilty period for this year's submission.
Wim Wender working on his documentary homage "Pina"
GERMANY (18 nominations, 3 wins)
Pina is a high profile 3D documentary on the work of the influential German dance artist Pina Bausch who died two years ago -- it was not intended, originally, to be a posthumous film. Dancers convinced the acclaimed filmmaker Wim Wenders to continue with the project which is now an homage to Bausch featuring several of her most acclaimed pieces performed by dancers onstage and outdoors.
Honestly dance is a great use of 3D if you must use 3D at all. Unfortunately the dance movies that have used it previously have rarely understood that to get 3D to work its spatial relations magic and what that means to choreography (a lot), you need to actually not cut every second to a different camera angle so that the eyes can observe the physicality, distance, and depth. I haven't yet seen Pina (very soon I hope) but I'm assuming Wim Wenders understands this in a way, say, the makers of Glee the 3D Concert Movie would not. Just a hunch.
This is not the first time a filmmaker has been inspired by Pina or used that inspiration to really heartbreaking affect. Remember the way Pedro Almodóvar used Pina to set the stage for the ineffable emotional pull of Talk To Her?
My guess right now is that the documentary Pina may have enough acclaim and novelty interest to make the finals (at least). But documentaries have a tough road for Oscar acclaim in any category other than Documentary. To my knowledge no documentary -- and at least one is submitted each year in this category -- has ever been nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. (Unless you count Waltz With Bashir which you could; it strikes me more as an uncategorizable hybrid film.)
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Reader Comments (8)
Maybe I missed it, but does "Pina" have a U.S. release date?
I'm a little torn. First of all, my arthouse theaters aren't equipped for 3D, so it's probably not an option anyway. I've never actually seen a 3D movie outside of a museum, because I wear eyeglasses, and wearing the 3D glasses over them is so uncomfortable. But this seems like possibly the only must-see use of 3D out there.
What to do?
Nathaniel,
Another documentary is an Oscar submission:
PORTUGAL choose JOSÉ E PILAR (JOSÉ AND PILAR), a documentary based on the last years of José Saramago's life, for its Oscar submission.
It is a very powerful and moving film where he sort of ponders about life and love and you get to see a side of Saramago that you don't associate with him.
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkxyTc9BbkU
I saw Pina at TIFF last night - really liked it!
Sweden seems like they wanted to build on the recognition of Noomi from the past couple years by actually selecting a film that she's in.
Pina looks fascinating, hope to catch it eventually. And I love when countries submit documentaries into the FL film race. It's like they don't care at all and this is what they genuinely believe to be their best choice. Like Hungary always does, aggressively. It seems to adds a slice of integrity to the whole shady process and anytime pandering it avoided altogether, brownie points. However, those particular countries that do submit nothing but mondo Oscar bait (old/young friendship road movies about WWII) can't exactly be blamed considering what gets nominated year in and year out. *has horrific flashback about The Counterfeiters' baity-as-hell win*
I was so immersed in Pina that I didn't even notice the cutting. So I'd say that's a good sign.
I did find the 3D glasses annoying as ever (I will never get over the way the make everything a shade too dark), but still, the film was a gorgeous and transporting experience.
Totally agree with Mark. I'd love for the Executive Committee to intervene with Pina. This definitely seems to be the highest-profile documentary entry in the Foreign Language category since the ExCom's inception.
Speaking of WWII ploys, Japan's seems to have taken that to a new level...
I'm actually quite suprised that Germany submitted "Pina",I mean do they really think that the film stands the Academy competition,though considering that this year they don't have any high profile films,this choise is the best they have got...And also this week it started at Israel's (yeah,I live in Israel :) cinemas so I'm happy that I can watch another submission in cinema.
@Mark
Have you seen Beyond so you can judge if it is chosen because of Noomi's recognition or because it is a really good film?
Noomi might be a star, but she is not the only shining actress in this movie.