▶ In Hollywood’s snubs, a form of cultural protectionism.
Around the globe, movies are flourishing. The list of national cinemas to watch seems to grow every year, from countries like South Korea, Serbia, Kazakhstan, South Africa, Thailand and a dozen other places. New waves of creativity are cresting across Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and Latin America; Russia is experiencing perhaps the most robust surge in filmmaking since the 1960s. France, Italy and Germany refuse to be ignored.
And then there is Greece, with Giorgos Lanthimos’s “Dogtooth,” a creepy, funny, elegantly shot allegory of something very weird in human nature. Mr. Lanthimos is part of a generation of Greek filmmakers whose work is iconoclastic, formally daring and sometimes abrasive. These directors, in turn, are part of a loose network that spreads across much of the world, linked by the promise of festival exposure and the challenge of raising money in a worldwide climate of economic constriction.
Of course, worthy films are often passed over at awards shows, but such capricious neglect happens so often that it can be taken as a yearly reminder of the American film establishment’s systematic marginalization of much of world cinema.
Yet one of the few surprises at the Golden Globes on January 16 was the award given to “Carlos,” the French director Olivier Assayas’s five-hourplus tale of Carlos the Jackal, the notorious terrorist of the 1970s and ‘80s. The award represented a high point of cosmopolitanism at a predictably parochial event: 11 languages spoken onscreen; dozens of locations around Europe and the Middle East; a polyglot cast led by a Venezuelan star, Edgar Ramirez.
But “Carlos” was not nominated in the best-foreign-language category (the winner was “In a Better World,” from Denmark): it was made for, and first shown on, French TV, and thus ineligible for consideration by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Mr. Assayas’s victory was for best miniseries or motion picture made for television. But its exclusion from the Oscars seems arbitrary.
This year the Oscar nominees for best foreign-language film are “Dogtooth” from Greece, “Incendies” from Canada, “Biutiful” from Mexico, “Outside the Law” from Algeria and “In a Better World.”
“Of Gods and Men,” Xavier Beauvois’s moving drama about French monks in Algeria during civil war, was also snubbed by the Academy. The Academy insists on a one-filmper- country rule, but why - And what determines the nationality of a film? Why is Rachid Bouchareb’s “Outside the Law” an Algerian film, given that its director is a French citizen and that it was made with mostly French financing - And what makes “Biutiful,” shot in Barcelona with a Spanish cast, a Mexican film?
This cultural myopia is merely the continuation of a 30-year trend, even though most popular culture has shrunk the world and bridged gaps of culture and taste.
Hollywood remains a welcoming place for far-flung talent: there has always been room for British and Australian actors, intercontinental sex symbols and emigre directors .
Javier Bardem, a somewhat surprising nominee for best actor in “Biutiful,” has already won for a supporting role in an English-language film (in 2008, for “No Country for Old Men”) . Pedro Almodovar won for best original screenplay in 2003, and Marion Cotillard took best actress honors five years later playing Edith Piaf in “La Vie en Rose.”
But Hollywood casts a long shadow over the rest of the globe. In the past there were protests against American cultural imperialism, but those seem to have waned lately. My concern here is with cultural protectionism ? the impulse not to conquer the rest of the world but to tune it out.
In redoubtable art houses and on cable TV across America, there is perhaps more variety and vitality than ever. Yes, it is fashionable in some circles to lament the old days when international directors and stars were household names. But the last 15 years also qualify as a golden age. What has changed is the sense of cultural cachet and social currency.
This may be a product of superabundance. International films are available to anyone willing to navigate video-on-demand and streaming Web video. The Academy will sometimes take notice, but a whole world of movies is out there waiting to be discovered.
A. O. SCOTT
ESSAY
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