With the 97th annual Academy Awards bearing down – now less than a week away – we’ve taken a close look at the controversies and contentions surrounding each of the Best Picture frontrunners and have even broken down the two divisive genre entries.
But even in a year as unpredictable and as closely fought throughout awards season as this one, there are always at least a couple of Best Picture nominees that are relegated to the outskirts of the odds, destined to be longshot picks with little chance of ever winning.
And this year, those longshots happen to be two of the most relevant, vitally important, and uniquely constructed films in the category.
Both Walter Salles’ “I’m Still Here” and RaMell Ross’ “Nickel Boys” are powerful ruminations on resilience under oppression and on the toll that long-term perseverance can take on a life.
Both are deeply resonant, unexpected films, and both have practically no chance at all of winning the big award.
‘I’m Still Here’
On paper, Brazilian political drama “I’m Still Here” sounds like an awards season shoo-in, following the life of renowned Brazilian activist and anti-fascist icon Eunice Paiva under the military dictatorship that ruled the nation in the 1970s.
But where you might expect a rousing and soul-stirring story of political upheaval or revolutionary voice-raising, writer/director Walter Salles instead offers only unrelenting realism and the quiet, glacial movements of real-life progress and the small victories and even smaller consolations that come with time.
After a plain-clothes military crew shows up one day and takes Paiva’s husband Ruebens – a former progressive Brazilian congressman – with no explanation and no return, the focus rests on her own struggle to balance her resolve and her quiet legal fight for information with raising and protecting their five children.
For Salles, it’s not a story about political or legal heroism or iconography. Those aspects of Paiva’s life are already well-documented in Brazilian culture. His story is one of a family clinging to one another in the face of tragedy and creeping dread, and one of the greater heroism of womanhood and motherhood in the face of oppression.
And perhaps even more, it’s about the long passage of time and the memories in which we live.
As Paiva, award-winner Fernanda Torres delivers a monumental leading turn filled with nuance and boiling an emotional depth buried beneath an armor-clad, firmly stoic exterior.
Torres inarguably deserved her Golden Globe win for Best Actress, but odds seem high that she’ll be passed over for the Oscar in favor of either Mikey Madison’s crackling, star-making turn in “Anora” or Demi Moore’s highly publicized, but frustratingly empty, one-note performance in “The Substance.”
“I’m Still Here,” then may have to settle for only the Best International Feature trophy, no small award, to be sure, but less recognition than a film as quietly effective as this one likely deserves.
‘Nickel Boys’
And speaking of a film receiving less recognition and buzz than it deserves, the continually unique and altogether remarkable “Nickel Boys” eked out a deserving Best Picture nomination, but has frustratingly been almost entirely absent from any conversation of viable contenders.
Based on Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, the film tells the story of two young Black boys and the bond they form while serving time in a concerningly violent and oppressively racist juvenile detention “academy” in the Jim Crow South of the 1960s.
Much like “I’m Still Here,” the story of “Nickel Boys” tackles institutionalized injustice and the time and human toll demanded by resistance in a tragically timely and harrowingly relevant film that mirrors many of the fears and regressions the world is facing right now.
But what sets “Nickel Boys” apart from even the other nominees this year is its shockingly unique perspective and cinematography.
Nearly the entire film is shot point-of-view through the eyes of the two boys, jumping between their perspectives and focusing on their emotional experiences and visual fixations rather than adhering to traditional plot or structure.
Director RaMell Ross (already hailed as a visionary following groundbreaking documentary “Hale County, This Morning, This Evening,”) forgoes simply telling a straightforward narrative in favor of showcasing the feeling at the center of Black life.
He shifts wildly not only between the boys’ points-of-view, but across time, across the world, across documentary footage and textbooks and internet entries and lunar exploration.
There is a plot at the core of the film, and a grounded, emotional story in its roots, but Ross is attempting to capture the bigger picture across generations and to re-frame it all literally through the eyes of these two fated friends.
It’s ambitious, to say the least, and it’s admittedly bound to sacrifice some elements in pursuit of that ambition. There’s a bit of stilted dialogue, for example, and a feeling of rushing in some of the performances, no doubt owing to the actors playing against off-screen lines rather than in the natural flow of a scene.
But there’s also a building momentum throughout that carries you along in the eyes and minds of these boys, pulling you across time and across feeling, all stitched together and made cohesive through the brilliantly effective score from ambient musician Alex Somers.
It’s almost strange, then, that the one and only award expected for “Nickel Boys” may be Best Adapted Screenplay, the only other category in which it nabbed a nomination.
Maybe its perspective device was just too divisive to be recognized for cinematography or direction, or maybe its open refusal to stay more firmly grounded in a single time or a single statement just left voters feeling lost or adrift. To me, those are exactly the film’s great strengths.
Both “I’m Still Here” and “Nickel Boys” represent the power and the potential of striking a unique viewpoint and a fresh insight into the lives at the center of these injustices, not just as heroes, but as starkly real, deeply human people.
Maybe audiences and Academy voters are turning away from such stark and worrying themes right now in favor of more cinematic escapism. Maybe they just want more flash or more pomp and circumstance.
Whatever the reason, these two films almost definitely deserve more than they’ll get, but it’s an honor just to be nominated, right?
The 97th annual Academy Awards air on Sunday, March 2nd.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
