Gained in translation

But more than Scorcese finally joining the club — it was, after all, merely a matter of time (The Departed is hardly his best film, but an excuse for Hollywood’s collective guilt to work itself out) — the one striking aspect of this year’s Oscars was its sheer multiculturalism. Last year’s awards were Hollywood’s response to the Bush administration’s policies and posturings. Crash was a hard look at American society’s latent racism. Syriana at least partly blamed Big Oil’s greed for Islamic fundamentalism in West Asia. Brokeback Mountain subverted the myth of the macho cowboy by showing that the Marlboro man could be gay. Good Night and Good Luck was about state repression of the media. And Munich asked whether hunting down terrorists using some of the same means as they do doesn’t make us uncomfortably close to being jihadis ourselves. All these themes, at some level, are about left-liberal discomfort about the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld view of the world. This time round, it was about celebrating talent across ethnicities.

Of the five films nominated for Best Picture, three have clear international connections. In The Queen, Helen Mirren portrays Queen Elizabeth II as she deals with the aftermath of Princess Diana’s tragic death. Clint Eastwood’s Letters from Iwo Jima is about one of the bloodiest battles of the Second World War, fought between the Americans and the Japanese, but from the Japanese perspective. And Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Babel is one of the most international films ever made. The plot synopsis on the official Oscar site reads: “Several interwoven storylines unfold across four countries as difficulties in communication and understanding complicate life in the shrinking global village. A Moroccan shepherd, a pair of American tourists, a deaf Japanese teenager, and a Mexican nanny and her two young American charges are among the characters whose lives connect in unexpected ways.”

Similarly, the men nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor awards. Leonardo DiCaprio was nominated for playing a South African smuggler dealing with conflict diamonds in civil war-torn Sierra Leone. His co-star, Nigerian actor Djimon Hounsou was nominated for Supporting Actor. The Best Actor award went to Forest Whitaker for his role as Ugandan dictator Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. Among the ten women who won nominations for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, one is from Spain, one from Mexico, and one from Japan. Penelope Cruz, in fact, was not nominated for any English film, but for her role in Pedro Almodovar’s Spanish-language Volver. The other two, Adriana Barraza and Rinko Kikuchi acted in Babel. Babel director Inarittu was nominated for Best Director, but did not win. But Pan’s Labyrinth from his native Mexico won three statuettes. In fact, films directed by Mexican directors were up for a total of 16 Oscars this time.

Is this just part of the inevitable impact that economic globalisation has on culture? Or is this some kind of indication that the average American — or at least the Motion Pictures Academy — is now far better sensitised to the world outside the United States? Post 9/11, post the war in Iraq, are Americans now far more aware — and concerned — about how people in different parts of the planet think and live? And, in its attempt to come to grips with a world that is becoming increasingly self-contradictory, complex and in many ways incomprehensible, is America also becoming more inclusionist? In a way, this year’s Oscars represent the logical step forward from last year’s. Last year, Hollywood used the awards to give a thumbs down to George W. Bush’s beliefs and actions about ‘the other’. This year, it has gone beyond acknowledging ‘the other’. It has welcomed them in and given them a seat at the high table.

Was there no India connection then in the Oscars? Yes, Deepa Mehta’s Water was a contender for Best Foreign Language Film, but it was travelling on a Canadian visa. But Martin Scorcese’s win is itself cause for Indians to feel happy. In the early 1990s, Scorcese began the campaign to award Satyajit Ray a lifetime achievement Oscar. Roping in the likes of Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Copolla and George Lucas, he succeeded in 1992, when Ray received the award in his sickbed in Kolkata, just before his death. It is amazing to believe that a man who has spent his career making gory films about the Mafia and Catholic guilt could be such an admirer of Ray’s gentle oeuvre. But then, as Scorcese said once: “Ray’s ability to turn the particular into the universal was a revelation to me. I had grown up in a very parochial society of Italian-Americans and yet I was deeply moved by what Ray showed of people so far from my own experience. I was moved by how their society and their way of life echoed the same chords in all of us.” This year, the Academy too seemed moved by the same idea.

The writer is editor, The Financial Express