Oscar Season

Films set to make an impression at this years' awards

I really like films, and I’m especially big into foreign-language films. It’s a passion I’ve had for a long time, so much so I took film studies for one of my A-levels.

This time of year is always an interesting moment, when a glut of popular, well-trailed, Oscar-nominated films are released, alongside the big blockbusters of the previous summer.

Away from the confected noise of Oppenheimer and Barbie, the films nominated for Best Picture this year which I have seen include Past Lives, Anatomy Of A Fall and The Zone Of Interest.

I very much recommend watching all of these films, as they are excellent in many different ways. Past Lives is a touching, poignant and sad love-story, whilst Anatomy Of A Fall is a bilingual courtroom drama investigating the death of the husband Sandra Hüller’s character, and the complications this creates for their blind son, the only other witness. Hüller is nominated for Best Actress In A Leading Role for her part in that gripping film, but, astonishingly, could easily have received a similar nomination for her role in The Zone Of Interest, in which she plays the wife of Rudolf Höss, the comandant of the Auschwtiz concentration camp.

The Zone Of Interest

The film focuses on what is presented as something of an idyllic family life, in which the Höss family live in luxury, with their extensive gardens backing onto the walls of the camp, seemingly unaware - or uncaring - of the deathly horrors being committed on the other side of the wall.

There is so much to say about the numerous ways in which this staggeringly good film was made, not least the terrible and awful sense of forboding you feel as a viewer throughout. Of course, it is difficult to describe it as enjoyable - it is thoroughly horrific. However, the cinematography, the lighting, the editing, and most notably for me, the score and sound-design is what makes this film so powerful.

The musical content in The Zone Of Interest is scored by the impeccable Mica Levi. After the initial title screen, the film begins with an extensive period of pitch-black screen, accompanied by an increasingly urgent and distressing set of converging pitches, sounds and textures, which leave you feeling utterly out of kilter, and deeply uncomfortable.

The film has also received a nomination for Best Sound, and rightly so. One suspects Oppenheimer might take that award by dint of there being so much noise around the film, but in The Zone Of Interest, the way that sound is used to such devastating and horrifying effect is fundamental to our experience and understanding of the film.

The video below highlights some excellent points about the use of sound in the film.

As the reviewer mentions, the sound is the most overt way in which the horrors unfolding on the other side of the wall are dictated to the viewer. It is a painfully gut-wrenching juxtaposition with the mostly-happy family life depicted on screen, and I am not sure if I have ever seen a film which manages to successfully create such tension between two fundamental elements of film as a medium.

It is obviously a hard watch, but one which would be good for all to see.

Perfect Days

Changing tack entirely, to move on to possibly one of my favourite films I have seen in a long time. Set in Tokyo, Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days stars Koji Yakusho as Hirayama, a public toilet cleaner.

The film captures his slow, ritualised life over a number of days, in which we see his dedication and commitment to doing his - hard and mundane - job, alongside his love of music (played in his van on cassette), growing and caring for plants, taking photos of trees, and his seeming fascination with sunlight.

This is held alongside his daily rituals: making his bed, brushing his teeth, trimming his moustache, watering his plants, drinking a coffee from a vending machine outside his front door, eating lunch in the same park, and returning to the same public baths and two eating establishments where he is well-known to the proprietors.

It is a testament to the quality of the Wenders’ direction, Takuma Takasaki’s script, and Yakusho’s brilliance that over the course of the duration of the film, we become accustomed to his routine; beginning to know and expect how the following day will likely unfold, never experiencing it as boring - or frustrating and confusing as we see in a film such as Groundhog Day - but being invited in to share this sense of calm simplicity and contentment with life.

Here’s the trailer:

Hirayama’s life is portrayed as one of intense contentment. At times, you wonder if he ever feels lonely, but he seems to take great joy plus a sense of curiosity and intrigue in his interactions with a range of other people and characters, many of whom contrast with his personality by being ostentatiously more vivacious, mischievous even, which he seems to take great delight in, joining in with it in his own low-key, understated way.

We see this in his back-and-forth game of noughts and crosses with an unknown person who leaves a scrap of paper tucked away in a gap near the sink of a toilet, which is played out over a number of days. It is a small thing, but one which you sense gives him great joy in personalising what could be quite a mundane task, and serves as a metaphor for the film as a whole: taking pleasure in the smallest, most mundane of tasks or activities.

There are so many aspects and qualities in Perfect Days which serve as antidotes and a challenge, not just to modern life as a whole, but subverting our expectations of what a film should be and do.

It is a beautiful portrayal of a life lived in relative simplicity, predominant calmness, and lacking any sense of overt grandioseness or self-importance. It is not beholden to multiple complicated plotlines, and aside from the use of popular music played on cassette whilst he drives from job to job in his van, is often still and silent. There are very few extensive periods of dialogue or conversations.

We are invited in to experience a life of contentment - set in contrast to how Tokyo is often depicted as a place of intense bustle and busyness - and it is just beautiful. I hope it wins the award for Best International Feature Film. It is stunning.

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Have you seen any of the films mentioned above?

Which films have you seen recently?

Do you have any other recommendations?

I’d love to hear about them…