From ‘Birth’ to ‘Zootopia,’ Awards Contenders Tap Into Zeitgeist
Any given film year is bound to reflect the zeitgeist. In 2016, with a critical presidential election on the horizon Stateside and instability rampant in all corners of the globe — from a Brexit-reeling United Kingdom to the bombed-out streets of Aleppo to a soft coup in Brazil — there is seemingly more fodder than ever for cinema to wrangle with the socio-political dynamics of the day.
That quality is readily apparent across the spectrum of this year’s awards contenders, films that present a striking cross-section of our lives and times.
Disney’s “Zootopia,” with its examination of implicit bias and discrimination within an animated animal kingdom, began the conversation upon release in March just a week after the Oscars put a bow on last year’s season. But animated projects have a long incubation period, so the current climate developed organically around the film as it came together.
Directors Rich Moore and Byron Howard initially set out to tell a story about predators and prey, and the dynamic that might sprout from placing them together in a community. That led to introducing concepts of diversity when it has become such a buzzword, not just in the larger conversation but within the film industry as well.
“We weren’t looking at tea leaves, but there was something in the ether,” Moore says. “Art and current events and reality somehow have this invisible bond that influence one another. It’s almost like the world was becoming the world of ‘Zootopia’ while we were making the film.”
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In David Mackenzie’s “Hell or High Water,” Chris Pine and Ben Foster star as low-level Texas robbers ripping off area banks to ensure that their family’s property isn’t seized. “Bank’s been robbing me for 30 years,” an eyewitness says in the film at one point. “3 tours in Iraq, but no bailout for people like us,” local graffito reads.
The movie could not be more timely: less than a month after its Aug. 12 release, Wells Fargo Bank was rocked by a scandal involving the covert opening of some 2 million deposit and credit card accounts without customer approval, purely to boost sales figures with transfer fees and charges.
Producer Carla Hacken notes that the themes of “Hell or High Water” blend perfectly with the western genre, the trappings of which Mackenzie exploits in a modern context, eight years removed from the 2008 economic crisis that inspired screenwriter Taylor Sheridan (“Sicario”) to write the film.
“It’s a very intimate genre: landscape and characters struggling,” Hacken says. “The movie takes that incredibly relatable distrust and abuse of institutions and boils it down to these tiny little towns. And I think there’s an aspect of the movie where red states think it speaks to them, and blue states think it speaks to them.”
Embattled though Nate Parker’s slavery epic “The Birth of a Nation” may be, that film has something to say about boiling points when race relations remain at a fever pitch. Images of Nat Turner leading a violent rebellion against systemic oppression in 1831 are striking in the context of contemporary black communities feeling underserved and, indeed, under siege by the law enforcement status quo.
“If Nat Turner had Facebook, it would have been a different revolution,” Parker says. “This was his attempt to throw a wrench in a system that would not only decimate him, but his children’s children. In the Bible it says a good man leaves an inheritance for his children’s children, so the question is, at what point will you break a system that not only oppresses you, but is sure to oppress generations to come?”
Stretching out globally, Garth Davis’ “Lion” tells the true story of Saroo Brierley, who, as an Indian youth in the mid-1980s, was displaced from his home and family by some 900 miles. Twenty years later, after being adopted and raised by an Australian family, Brierley finally tracked down his home town, which he was unable to pronounce correctly as a 5-year-old.
The closing credits of the film present a staggering statistic: more than 80,000 children go missing in India each year. Though “Lion” came together first and foremost in service of Brierley’s powerful story, it has evolved into a call to action.
“Our hope is that through the film and the plans we have, we can avoid Saroo’s story in its tragic first instance, which is losing his mother and not being able to communicate who he was and where he was from,” producer Iain Canning says. “We’re looking at specific initiatives around how the film and the audience can participate in a way that can make that something of the past.”
And Jeff Nichols’ “Loving” is so timely it tells the story of a Supreme Court case that was itself recently referenced in the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges decision that guaranteed marriage as a fundamental right for same-sex couples. The film recounts the struggles of Richard and Mildred Loving, who, in 1967, won their own landmark decision invalidating laws prohibiting interracial marriage. For Nichols, shifting the focus away from big courtroom movie moments and prestige cinema trappings to a simple couple struggling to live their lives together was the way into making the story connect.
“We are having, and need to be having, complex conversations about race in this country, and about equality in general,” Nichols says. “The Lovings remain this constant example of humanity at the center of that very complex, difficult discussion.”
Other examples of timely cinema abound: the indictment of the fossil-fuels industry in “Deepwater Horizon”; the exposure of government overreach in “Snowden”; the scrutinization of the welfare state in Palme d’Or winner “I, Daniel Blake.” They all join a long tradition of interrogating the zeitgeist with art.
“Cinema can provide a platform to debate ideas about how things have been problematic in the past and how they can change in the future,” Canning says. “As long as there continues to be inequality or there continues to be suffering, there will be a responsibility to reflect that world. And that’s what’s happening this year.”
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