The trends in Oscars can be a bit unpredictable, but the winners are not. What drives it is difficult to gauge. Market forces? Political correctness? Or just being plain wild, to create newer and bigger thoughts?
One thing is clear. One BIG IDEA rules. Love is all-consuming but it has to be placed against bigger issues, bigger concerns. So Oppenheimer was a foregone conclusion to sweep as many awards as possible. What is feminism, when humanity is at stake? The nuclear bomb does not discriminate – the whole world can be annihilated in a second through the invention of one man.

Similarly ‘gender’ in a much more broader sense is the flavour the world over; with the LGBTQ + spectrum ruling the written word, Hollywood has already been there and done that with films like Brokeback Mountains by the Taiwanese director Ang Lee in 2005. Adapted from a short story by the same name, it depicted a complex romantic relationship between two American cowboys. The film did not win the Best Picture award, but Lee got it for best director. There have been other such films.

Black Lives Matter was the theme till very recently with films such as Steve McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave. Indians are yet to feature big time in the Oscars, with only stray awards like Bhanu Athaiya’s best
costume award for the Richard Attenborough directed film Gandhi and more recently, music directors AR Rahman’s Jai Ho or M.M.Creem’s ‘Naatu Naatu’ , coming her way. The various Indian documentaries that get nominated run into controversies in India for their voyeuristic depiction of people, and animals!

The Oscars are perhaps getting a little tired of the kind feminism that Barbie portrayed. by showing, in phases, that women learn and practice the same tricks from men; like matriarchy is almost a franchise of patriarchy, very much like the way business models work. Mattel for one?

But Poor Things, a dark horse, scored on a different kind of feminism. It is more deep, bizarre and philosophical though philosophy or religion or any ism is taken a swipe at by director Yorgos Lanthimos, through the writing of Alasdair Gray, the writer of the book by the same name.

The freedom to choose for oneself is paramount though life is and always will have its share of horror and beauty; the sad reality that this contradiction in life is what makes it so tragic, yet beautiful. The acceptance of this fact and to give ourselves some beauty while we are alive should be the purpose in life and it should come from freedom of choice is the clear message, nay exploration, as the director would have us know.

Poor Things is very deep though it is a simple story of creating a new life but the complex layers are simplified through some bold and raw symbols depicting an unfair world. That the issue of science scores above all emotions, yet science in addition to empirical evidence, must have a heart rings out.

And women as scientists and doctors would be better to save lives and limbs, as Alasdair Gray, conveys in his story. That they could have a greater say or path in which to have greater control over their own bodies and desires.

Just for a sense of humor, the good surgeon Dr Godwin Baxter creates animals in the film which are reminiscent of Sukumar Ray’s hilarious combinations of two creatures. Ultimately, it is the man who has to be punished as he tries to cure the woman of her overtly sexual appetite. She, with her newly acquired medical.expertise turns him into a semi-goat that chews leaves in the garden as the women enjoy their drink.

The treatment is unique and stylistic with fish-eye lens cinematography creating some stunning visuals while the film moves between 19th century Victorain references in interiors and costumes, and futuristic projections. The music is discordant.

The complete package of winners at the Oscars did not leave out the raging concerns of today. Even though
Killers Of The Flower Moon and Scorsese became an also-ran, the New Yorker jived through the song ” I am just Ken.”

20 Days In Mariupol, the Ukraine war impact on its people, the Nazi revisionist tale The Zone Of Interest, even with the ongoing Gaza crisis in the backdrop, were the other highlights. Cillian Murphy and Emma Stone, awarded for Oppenheimer and Poor Things respectively, were expected.

But for now, the Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos of such masterpieces as Favourites and The Killing Of A Sacred Deer is the flavor of the season. It also looks like Christoper Nolan, whom the latest issue of Sight and Sound describes as someone who has mainstreamed cerebralism, will continue to give other filmmakers a run for their money.

Till someone else upstages him at the Oscars.