And the Academy Award for best portrayal of gloom goes to…

Take the three films which got six nominations each: Crash, a portrayal of the deep seated fears of racialism in the heart of Los Angeles; Good Night and Good Luck — George Clooney’s masterpiece about Senator McCarthy’s witch hunt for Communists in the fear-ridden 1950s; and Memoirs of a Geisha — an intimate view of the shadowy world of Geishas in Japan.

There is Steven Spielberg’s Munich, that stirred controversy worldwide, Capote — the disturbing relation of author Truman Capote with two killers he met while writing his bestseller In Cold Blood; Walk the Line — the not-too-happy life of singer Johnny Cash. All of which have won five nominations each.

ISSUES, QUESTIONS

From homosexuality (Brokeback Mountain), to sexual harassment and activism on lines of Erin Brockovich (North Country), crime and redemption (Hustle and Flow, Tsotsi) and politics (Munich, Paradise Now, Syriana), the themes cover a wide ground. If Munich gives one side of the question, Paradise Now, Palestine’s maiden entry in the “best foreign film” category, covering 27 hours, when two would-be suicide bombers bid goodbye to family and friends, looks at the other side.

THE OTHER SIDE

In fact, all five films in the foreign category shakes one out of torpor. Italy’s 27th nomination, Don’t Tell, delves into the disturbed psyche of an actress who had repressed the memories of sexual abuse by her father. Sophie Scholl — The Final Days, from Germany recounts the experience of two resistance workers in Nazi era who get caught by the Gestapo. The nomination from France, Joyeux Noel, recreates the magical Christmas eve of 1914, when enemy soldiers celebrated together in the trenches of France. And South Africa’s Tsotsi tells of a modern day Jean Valjean.

WOMAN ON TOP

If the leading men of the leading movies — Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Good Night and Good Luck, Walk the Line and Hustle and Flow — are gutsy and wild, the women are no less. Be it Dame Judy Dench in Mrs Henderson Presents, Charlize Theron in North Country, or Keira Knightley in Pride and Prejudice, the leading ladies have a never-say-die attitude.

But the most off-beat is perhaps Transamerica, where Felicity Huffman, playing a pre-operative trans-sexual, starts on a cross country trip with her troubled teenage son to resolve their relationship.

THE SILVER LINING

Animations, expectedly, provide the comc relief. The most promising entry is Wallace and Gromit in the curse of the Were Rabbit, where Cheese-loving inventor Wallace and his dog Gromit take on a huge garden devouring beast. In Tim Burton’s Corpse Bridge, a first for both Tim Burton and Mike Johnson, timid, sensitive Victor Van Dort by mistake marries an adorable corpse called Emily. And there’s Howl’s Groaning Castle by Hayayo Miyazaki, where Sophie is transformed into an old woman by the Wicked Witch of the Waste.

ANINDITA SANYAL