Everyone was counting on the expected outcome at the Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Actress, Joaquin Phoenix for Joker and Renee Zellweger for Judy—not to mention Best International Feature Film for Parasite (South Korea). But then came a “wow” moment, and then another and another. No foreign language film had ever won for Best Picture until Parasite. Director and cowriter Bong Joon-ho also earned Best Director and Original Screenplay
Parasite is both deserving and surprising. It’s a great film that rose to the top in a good year for motion pictures. It’s not as if it was up against movies only their studios could love. Except for JoJo Rabbit, the nominees in major categories all had good reason for their acknowledgement. Favorites down to the wire included 1917, poorly plotted after a point but deserving of its awards for Visual Effects, Cinematography and Sound Mixing; and Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, which received Production Design and honored Brad Pitt as Best Supporting Actor.
Interesting to note that the Academy voters largely shut out Netflix, aside from Laura Dern’s win as Best Supporting Actress (Marriage Story). And yet, the proliferation of foreign-language miniseries and other content reaching American audiences via streaming (in some cases through PBS) might have helped lower the prejudice against reading subtitles. Is Parasite a fluke, like the French film The Artist, which took Best Picture 2011 but didn’t launch a new wave of silent movies? Or with the greater connectivity of the world, is it a mark of more to come?
