The Power of Movies

The Oscars this year were unique in many important ways. For one thing, there was no host. Comedian/actor Kevin Hart had been invited to be the host, but after it was revealed he had used some homophobic jokes in the past he was asked to publically apologize. Instead, he withdrew from hosting the awards night.

Diversity was huge this year. There seemed to be an attempt, whether genuinely sincere or the Academy trying to shed its elitism and whiteness, to be truly inclusive. Three Oscars went to Mexican film director, Alfonso Cuarón. Black actors won other major categories: Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Regina King) and Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Mahershala Ali). The film, Black Panther, won 3 Oscars. Rami Malek, an American born actor to immigrant parents, won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role. The Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role went to British actress, Olivia Coleman. And first time ever to act, Yalitza Aparicio in Roma, was a candidate for Best Actress in a Leading Role.

In total, minorities and women were massive winners across all categories.

That result was a clear message that today’s divisive politics, often bigoted and demeaning, are being given a crucial cultural lesson. These films and their Oscar winners revealed a more truly American landscape.

What most Americans deal with on a personal daily basis is reflected in these films. What happens in Washington, D.C., in the White House, in Congress, has little or nothing to do with the real lives of the majority of people in this country.

Prejudice, broken relationships, the hard-working lives of nannies and house servants, addiction, suicide, the effects of brutal and insensitive politics on American families, the struggle to fulfill one’s dreams, the compromises people make in order to financially survive—on and on, these real-life experiences portrayed so convincingly in the Academy Awards films this year is where Americans live.

In one of Peter Matthiessen’s books he writes, “The sun glints through the pines and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day, we become seekers.”

For me, this is what movies do. They remind. They instruct. They inspire. They motivate. They take us places we are afraid to go. They show us ourselves in the lives of people on the screen. They challenge us to rethink our values. They call us to realities we try to ignore. They caution us against our worst impulses. They ask us to live within the warmth of our heart, to fight evil forces, to not just survive but to live.

Great movies help us become seekers. They push us beyond mediocrity, beyond staleness and being stuck in lousy jobs, in a marriage that is not working, in beliefs that keep us in guilt and shame. The tell us we can make changes in our lives that are transformative. If only we dare to seek the better and the best.

Bette Midler provided a touching moment at the Oscars when she sang from the movie Mary Poppins: “Do you ever lie awake at night? / Just between the dark and the morning light / searching for the things you used to know / looking for the place where the lost things go? / Do you ever dream or reminisce? / wondering where to find what you truly miss / well maybe all those things that you love so / are waiting in the place where the lost things go.”

Movies, in all of their glory and wonder, take us there.

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