For the first time in a multitude of years I did not see the Oscar ceremony and I did not find out the identity of the blessed until several days later. No longing for me. For a long time I saw them accompanied by friends, in wildly ethnical nights and in which anything could happen in the vicinity of dawn, when they delivered the jackpot. And something curious happened, in my case shameful. My colleagues were engaged in sports journalism. That is, football. The movie specialist was supposed to be me. And we always made a club. Juicy, I think I remember. I never won it. Even worse, I think I never got a single prize. You have to be a chump. However, some of the soccer players had seriously studied the calculation of possibilities throughout the year. Those joyful meetings made the boredom that usually accompanies the supreme festival of cinema disappear. In recent years I swallow it alone, giving frequent heaps. There are no presenters anymore, something that was an incentive when someone as funny as Billy Cristal performed that function. I would also sign up for any gala that was conducted by that man as insolent as acid named Ricky Gervais.
Read the last columns of Carlos Boyero
- What happens that I see everything black?
- Haven't you seen 'The hustler' yet?
- That cinema that removes you and that you remember
And I find out later this year that the full cake has been taken by Korean director Bong Joon-ho. A miracle? No. Apparently, the members of the Academy have grown spectacularly, the average age has dropped a lot, there are people of multiple nationalities. And they have decided that the only queen of the party, the most beautiful and intelligent, the one that brings together all the gifts and attributes is the Korean film Parasites . And okay, it's very good, it is unpredictable and original, mix with ease and intelligence several genres, biting and sarcasm work. But I do not think the bomb, would not be part of that film library that, with permission from Cabrera Infante, is my Arcadia every night. And it seems to me an injustice and nonsense that the accumulation of awards that Parasites have achieved implies that two films as powerful and memorable as The Irish and 1917 have been despised.
And blessed be the Korean director. He has achieved what, unfortunately, two exceptional directors such as the Polish Pawel Pawlikowski and the Mexican Alfonso Cuarón did not achieve last year with two masterpieces entitled Cold War and Rome . Both live in my film library and do not sell out in each new vision. I'll see Parasites again when it appears on digital platforms, but I'm not in a hurry. And I remember a few creators (I know that the term may be emphatic, but it turns out that they were dedicated to creating) who never received the Oscar for their direction. It happened to two of the most fascinating visual storytellers that has given the history of cinema, people whose cameras spoke with gifted language, capable of describing the strongest sensations and emotions. That is, Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles. Nor was the Oscar for the best director awarded to Fritz Lang, Jean Renoir, Howard Hawks, Roberto Rossellini, Charles Chaplin, Stanley Kubrick, Luis García Berlanga, Luis Buñuel, Akira Kurosawa, Sidney Lumet. What a paradox. Which is a shame for the Oscar. The art of these people did not need academic recognition either, but if there are prizes, the rational and the obvious thing is that they would have been awarded.
