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2008 Foreign Film Oscar Analysis

2008 wasn’t the best year for international cinema with a few exceptions. The Academy snubbed a couple of strong efforts, especially one from Kazakhstan. The eventual slate is a pretty good one, though, but the wrong movie won unfortunately. It’s an eclectic list of nominees with three solid but far from great movies and two truly strong outings.

My Ranking of the Nominees:

5. Revanche

Revanche is a solid Austrian thriller that is more of a drama disguised as a thriller. Strong dialogue and characterization are its highlights, but minus points go to its overly convenient storyline that hinges on too many circumstances where characters know each other or happen to be involved in each other’s lives awkwardly. It’s also a tonally cold movie that prevented its interesting conflicts and drama from ever fully kicking in. This year’s slate was quite strong given the fact that this admittedly solid movie got the last place on my list.

4. Departures

Departures is a Japanese movie that has an interesting subject matter that it ultimately frustratingly refused to explore it in more sophisticated and thematically rich terms. The movie started off strong, but it ended up being quite lackluster due to its refusal to be more engaging, sophisticated and dramatic. The pacing is off, the plot quickly became quite clichéd and the emotional manipulation is evident throughout. This is one of the weakest nominees on this slate, so the fact that it won over much better movies is quite frustrating to me.

3. The Baader Meinhof Complex

This is a German crime drama about the RAF, which was this far-left terrorist organization. The movie is very important in its subject and particularly valuable in reminding viewers that the far-left is just as capable of being violent as the far-right, which is something that most people today refuse to acknowledge. It’s a very well performed, well directed and suitably intense film, but one that was too documentarian in its approach – the staggering amount of details they included made the whole affair feel quite overwhelming, lengthy and cluttered.

2. Waltz with Bashir

Ari Folman’s Waltz with Bashir is one of the most acclaimed animated documentaries for many valid reasons. While its point of view bias and a lack of historical background hurt its narrative in the long run, the anti-war messaging is potent and the film’s treatment of hazy memory and PTSD after a war is quite powerful. The movie is particularly praiseworthy for its strong soundtrack, phenomenal editing and highly unique, stylistic and polished animation. This was the only animated movie until ‘Flee’ to be nominated in this category and it’s also a rare documentary feature nominated. It undoubtedly deserved all of these achievements.

1. The Class

The Class is a French drama that offers an engaging, emotionally driven and highly authentic look into your regular school class and everything that can go wrong for the poor teachers in them. The film has a documentarian approach to its storytelling as it clearly avoided moralizing or making any statements, but you can easily read between the lines here and you’ll find surprisingly conservative themes – it depicts the many issues that stem from multiculturalism, especially in the school environment, and it also effectively conveys that these overly pacifist, non-authoritative teaching methods will lead to nothing but a headache. Powerfully acted and consistently riveting, The Class is an incredible film and the fact that it lost the Oscar when it was clearly the best of these nominees and one of the best 2008 movies is baffling to me.

Films That Should Have Been Nominated:

Tupan – Following the life of herdsmen in the Kazakhstan steppe, Tulpan is a film that is difficult to watch in its realism, but also an essential look into this lesser-known culture and way of life that becomes truly touching in some of its more heartbreaking sequences. The Academy really needs to honor more films from lesser-known cinemas.

Let the Right One In – Let the Right One In is a famous Swedish romantic horror movie that is among the best modern vampire films. It is slowly paced at first and almost too dark and cold in its tone, but the movie’s realism is admirable and the mixing of the horror and romantic drama elements was very well handled.

Ponyo – Ponyo is such a charming, cozy and wonderfully endearing family film. Miyazaki elevated the unoriginality of his plot by adding enough quirks and interesting ideas to make it his own story. Ponyo is one of the better Studio Ghibli movies, but of course the Academy would relegate animation to just the animated category and nothing else.