Los Angeles – The past fall, Be Baker He was sitting at a Manhattan restaurant, speaking of a survey. The survey, about sex in movies and television, showed that the spectators of generation Z were turned off by sex in the cinema.
“That broke my heart. I thought there is something wrong here, ”Baker said. “Do you agree with all the violence that exists? Sex is a vital part of existence. Why don’t you want to see sex in our stories?
“I remember being on the set and being like: we are pressing against that survey.”
When Baker’s “anora” He swept the 97th Academy Awards On Sunday, his five victories, including the best film, announced a different type of Oscar winner. “Anora”, about an erotic dancer (Mikey Madison, The best winner of the actress ) Who marries the son of a Russian oligarch, is atypically sexually explicit for a winner of the best film, a class that includes more serious films such as “The King’s Speech” and “lead to Miss Daisy.” The relationship of a young woman with her own sexuality has not been, historically speaking, in the Oscar Timonera.
But that is just a quality that makes “Anora” unique as a winner of the best film. The film, made for $ 6 million and distributed by neon, was made with little interest in the mainstream. In any case, “Anora” was more oriented to the Cannes Film Festival, the French Cinema of Cinema, where Won the palme d’Or last May – An award that Baker said more for him.
But, more and more, these are convergent cinema worlds. In the last five years, four winners of Palma d’Or have been nominated for the best film in the Academy Awards, including the “parasite” of Bong Joon Ho (also distributed by Neon), which became the first non -English language movie To win the first Hollywood prize.
“Anora”, a film that invests a Hollywood fairy tale like “Pretty Woman”, is, like many of the winners on Sunday, a blatantly modern movie and a comfortable film, even proud of the “Cinema” label. In a film industry where the administration of the manufactured franchise governs the day, “Anora” was celebrated, in part, because it is the real business.
It is also a more traditional choice of what it seems. Baker, a filmmaker who has sworn to make a series, a study film or anything for the transmission, is an apostle of the cinema of the 70s. In an Oscar that the host Conan O’Brien called “the 97º Longform Content Awards”, “Anora”, which shared some of the same streets of Brooklyn that “the French connection”, defended an increasingly threatened theatrical legacy, With Baker ardently defending a very old thing: the big screen.
“The filmmakers continue to make films for the big screen. I know I will, ”Baker said from the Dolby Theater stage. “Distributors, concentrate first in the theatrical releases of their films. Parents, present their children for feature films in theaters and will be molding the next generation of cinema and filmmakers lovers. And for all of us, when we can watch movies in a theater and maintain the great tradition of living and good film experience. “
The coronation of “Anora” was a triumph for the realization of independent movements, but that has also been a battle fought and won before. We have seen the defeat of “The Hurt Locker” Better “Avatar” and “Moonlight” “La La Land”. The coronation of last year of “Oppenheimer” was, in any case, an exception in a series of better smaller images that do not fit Oscar mold. “Everything everywhere at once,” the 2023 winner was antic, lascivious and about As much as possible as “Oscar Bait.”
What was different this year was that the hardest competition for “anora” was not “Wicked” either “Dune: Part two” or any other study product. Was “Conclave” and “The Brutalist.” All the main winners of the award on Sunday came from Independiente films. In the Oscar, the studies are out of the stage.
That trend has been developing for years, but the 97th Academy Awards showed how much things have changed. In the best animated category, where Universal and Dreamworks’ “The wild robot” It was the great favorite, “Flow,” A letona movieless movie made with open source software, triumphed instead.
“Any child now has tools that are used to make these films now winners of the Academy,” said “Flow”, Gints Zilbalodis, he said behind the stage. “So I think we are going to see all kinds of exciting movies made of children who could not have had the opportunity to do it before.”
That victory, such as “Anora”, suggested that international voters of the Academy have become a dominant block. When the academy, reacting to pressure to diversify its ranks, brought new members in recent years, issued a wide network abroad. Hundreds of new international voters, more likely to favor what succeeds in Cannes or Venice, now significantly influences Oscars.
What does that mean for the Academy awards in the future? A new inclination towards indie and arthouse cinema will surely alien some spectators. “Anora”, with $ 16 million for sale of national tickets, is one of the winners of the best most recaller image. The Oscar producers did everything possible to rely on larger films, opening with A luxurious potpourri For the “evil” Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo stars, repeatedly cutting a sand worm from the “Dune: two part” and even paying James Bond Tribute.
The musical number 007 was strangely timed, immediately arriving from The creative acquisition of the franchise by Amazon MGM Studios After decades of family administration of broccoli. It seemed to highlight only how much the regular business management of Hollywood brands was outside the new Oscar panorama.
But as surely as an “Anora” academy award could reject some, it could also inspire a new generation of cinephiles. “Anora” is in the screw screw farce, neorealist drama, satire of capitalism and devastating tragicomedy. It could be said that it is one of the best winners of the best image of recent years, a film that tries almost all genres before concluding in an unforgettable scene that catapults “Anora” in something classic and out of time.
It remains to be seen what will follow to the Romas of the Oscar de Baker. But shortly after the conclusion of the Academy awards, 3.9 Tremors of magnitude were felt in the nearby Burbank, an appropriate coda for the small earthquake of “Anora”.
