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It’s About the Message: The Top 10 Oscar-winning Socially Aware Films

It’s About the Message: The Top 10 Oscar-winning Socially Aware Films

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Many moviegoers consider the world of film as a reprieve from their current existing realities. This is rather interesting because in looking to escape the everyday realities for a fantasized slice of reality in cinema might seem quite redundant for some folks. However, the realities that are portrayed on the big screen are varied so whatever life experiences are depicted we may not have quite lived that particular episode therefore making it intriguing and fresh for our entertaining curiosities.

Films, when capturing a fragrance of reality through triumph and tragedy, are usually armed with a special messaging about the human condition through sacrifice, self-discovery, suffering and of course social awareness.  In It’s About the Message: The Top 10 Oscar-winning Socially Aware Films we will take a look at Academy Award-winning movies that dared to examine the spirit about being socially aware–through inspiration and insidiousness (or both simultaneously)–and put them under a meaningful microscope for noteworthy consideration of their impacting messaging.

The selections for It’s About the Message: The Top 10 Oscar-winning Socially Aware Films are (in alphabetical order):

1.) Dances with Wolves (1990)

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The American western frontier and its majestic wonderfulness steeped in historical hardship of cultural consciousness. Dances with Wolves is an epic that is just as somber as it is sensual in revisiting the human interest of Native Americans and giving them an introspective voice through the eyes of an oppressor whose willingness to experience an emotional opening or a rebirth of humane perspective through the ways of a proud native people in their faith and spirituality.

Union Lt. John W, Dunbar (Kevin Costner) receives a renewed awakening when his assignment to a remote post in South Dakota leads to his spiritual connection with the Sioux Indians. Dunbar relinquishes all his identity as a rampaging white soldier with preconditioned adversarial instincts against a resilient tribe that once freely ruled their spacious landscape with dignity and peace. Now dubbed “Dances with Wolves”, Dunbar’s spirited journey with the Sioux is further cemented when he comes across and falls in love with Stands with a Fist (Mary McDonnell), a white woman that was raised by the Sioux Nation.

Dances with Wolves was a liberating and absorbing account in its dramatic acceptance of cultural tolerance (and intolerance) as an understanding that a perceived enemy may in fact have the capacity for learning, growing and fostering a mutual respect for what was once regarded as dismissive under the skin of conflicting brotherhood.

2.) The Deer Hunter (1976)

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Filmmaker Michael Cimino’s harrowing and horrific war drama The Deer Hunter is perhaps one of the most realistic and stark accounts of what the raging effects of battle fatigue had on the wounded psyche of the damaged men that experienced the inescapable brutalities of their Vietnam War duty. In returning to American soil after the brutal brainwashing and menacing memories of the Vietnamese jungle with death and other war-related atrocities settled in the imprisoned psychological cell of the majority of soldiers returning to civilian life, The Deer Hunter skillfully and hauntingly captured the struggles–in the war and away from the war zone. Cimino’s social awareness about battered war-torn vets was candidly gripping and convincingly fearless.

The premise revolved around the band of blue-collar Russian-American steelworkers from the Pittsburgh area that are subjected to the lingering dire consequences of their Vietnam War stint during the war and in present-day civilian life filled with sadness and celebration. Headlined by such immensely talented star power as Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken (who won an Oscar for best supporting actor), Meryl Streep, John Savage and the late and highly underrated John Cazale, The Deer Hunter was probably one of the most contemporary compelling and chilling forays into the controversial campaign that was The Vietnam experience in the late 1970’s (not far removed from the real-life war that had finally concluded for returning service men). Indeed, war is hell and The Deer Hunter put an exclamation point on that very shocking sentiment.

3.) Forrest Gump (1994)

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Robert Zemeckis’s Forrest Gump does not nearly get enough credit for being a thoroughly socially aware narrative that has more bite to its dramatic pulses than people really give it credit for in actuality. Sure, it is entertainingly whimsical, lighthearted in its nostalgia and has produced some of the cinema’s finest and most memorable catchphrases. And of course we cannot overlook the film’s Number One ambassador whose back we climbed on to take us through the surreal moments–the treasured and truly compassionate simpleton himself in Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks).

However, Forrest Gump managed to humanize and equip our slow-witted protagonist with a sense of self-discovery because much like him we too have stumbled upon history-making events that have shaped our social awareness in ways we never imagined. From events concerning the Vietnam War, the Black Panther movement, presidential encounters, political scandals such as Watergate, pop cultural tie-ins with musical icons in Elvis Presley and John Lennon and civil rights public forums Forrest Gump delivered to movie audiences a history lesson and social road map that they did not even realize they were following through the guise of a well-received blockbuster.

4.) Gentlemen’s Agreement (1947)

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Director Elia Kazan’s Gentlemen’s Agreement is the Oscar-winning drama that introduced to the movie audiences in the late 1940’s the conception of antisemitism in the media–or in this case journalism. The premise of the film was to expose the non-preference for Jews in New York City via an expose of a magazine writer Philip Schuyler Green (Gregory Peck), a non-Jewish journalist posing as a Jew named “Phil Greenberg” to draw out the authenticity of his story and see how it really resonates in the context of his written material.

Of course Philip’s eyes are open to the subtle and overt prejudices that are waged against him and his family as he masquerades around with his disguised Jewish journalist persona as he discovers first hand what it is like to be labeled, restricted and chastised for not being a privileged gentile New Yorker (or even one in a posh Connecticut-based suburb for that matter). Philip sees the lengths that his friends and others have to go through to deny their Jewish heritage just to “pass”. The gesture in changing one’s Jewish surname for consideration in employment or housing for fear of being rejected and harshly judged is the social awareness for prejudicial persecution being demonstrated in this revealing character study of balanced bigotry.

Sadly, even in the millennium age these practices of hiding one’s Jewish ancestry in favor of passing off as another ethnicity for fear of alienation and degradation is still prevalent. This certainly proves that Gentleman’s Agreement was ahead of its time nearly seven decades ago in its social awareness of scrutinized anti-cultural/religious identification.

5.) Ghandi (1982)

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Director Richard Attenborough’s absorbingly brilliant biopic Ghandi is the very essence of an Oscar-winning film that staunchly showcases its social awareness messaging–especially in the case of one of the twentieth century’s most highly regarded social activists in lawyer-turned non-violent leader Mohandas Karamchand Ghandi (Ben Kingsley).

Ghandi was a hopeful symbol for his Indian people as they suffered at the hands of British rule. First being ostracized in South Africa and helping his people gain independence and recognition in that country through a series of arrests, sit-ins and non-violent resistance that generated worldwide attention and finally got his people their human rights Ghandi was able to return to his native India and empower the people there whose livelihood under the British Empire was considered jeopardized. Of course Ghandi’s philosophy as a man of peace did not stop the British detractors from imprisoning him or wanting to do violent harm to him and his protesters in India. Nevertheless, Ghandi was a sweeping film of emotional scope that told an intense tale of a frail man with a sturdy conviction for his cherished ideology in social change not just for his homeland…but for the global community as well.

6.) In the Heat of the Night (1967)

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Certainly filmmaker Norman Jewison’s explosively charged crime mystery In the Heat of the Night was an appropriate film of its time as it mirrored the American racial relations hostility of the late 1960’s. Importantly, it went against the grain and dared to show a capable and intelligent black northern police detective take on the vile racist attitudes of a southern small town while conducting a homicide investigation.

While awaiting a train to head back home Philadelphia’s top-notch police homicide honcho Detective Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier), who is erroneously under suspicion and taken to the Sparta, Mississippi police station, is questioned about the recent slaying of a businessman from the north. After discovering Tibbs’s expertise as a hotshot crime solver, local Sparta police chief Gillespie (Rod Steiger) asks for Tibbs’s assistance in solving the murder case too sophisticated for him and his crew. And so the northern well-informed black detective and bigoted white backwoods law enforcer team up to find the culprit behind the killing.

Suspenseful and racially raw, In the Heat of the Night was a crime caper that sizzled with intensity. When an ignorant white man of power feels obligated to slap Tibbs in the face and the defiant black cop struck him back without hesitation to remind him that he is not messing with an intimidated little slave boy on a plantation one knew that In the Heat of the Night was an encouraging awakening for black empowerment. Heck, it is an awakening for anybody that feels underestimated and overlooked as to who they are as a capable individual from any given background and cultural experience.

7.) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

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It would be a major oversight to dismiss Milos Foreman’s captivating and powerfully poignant One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as an Oscar-winning film that did not provide social awareness for its movie audience. In the case of mental institutions and the portrayal of mental patients being more than just “caged-up screwy lost causes of society”, Nest gave a disturbing face to the so-called “normal overseers”  that treated these broken men with mental challenges as locked lab animals not worthy of their humanity.

R.P. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) was an unconventional pot stirrer whose rebellious impishness was indeed instrumental and liberating to his fellow “crazies”. But it is clear that McMurphy realized the defeat and damage that was festering inside these medicated shells of incomplete personalities that needed a reason to live and be part of life even if it meant within the confining world of their padded walls and steel cages.

The anti-authority anarchy and resistance for conformity at the hands of  a restrictive no-nonsense Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher) as well as a judgmental functioning society all symbolized the taste of self-worthiness for the underdog regardless of the question of insanity involved. Just ask the likes of Billy Bibbit, Martini or the Chief.

8.) Schindler’s List (1993)

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One cannot begin to even find the defining words that speaks of the inhumane atrocities and at the same time the uplifting and inspirational heroics of one man in Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson) within the historical human madness that persists in the heralded and haunting Schindler’s List. Filmmaker Steven Spielberg’s penetrating direction (not to mention Steven Zaillian’s screenplay and Thomas Keneally’s book) is what fortified this melodramatic masterpiece with its social awareness message of self-destructive humanity and an unlikely individual’s attempt to minimize the ugliness and despair in his corner of the war.

When World War II was at its height in Poland German businessman Schindler had to face the harsh reality that his Jewish workers were in peril due to the Nazi presence at large. Schindler was a capitalist but realized his need to save as many of his Jewish workers at his factory as possibly as he can to shield them away from Nazi reign and ultimately from being put to death from the notorious Auschwitz concentration camps. Schindler sat on the sidelines and could do nothing but witness the destruction of Jewish lives at the hands of the Nazis’ thirst for persecution and eradication. Probing and unsettling, Schindler’s List is still unshakable as a prominent nightmarish piece of cinema that reminds us about the historical ruination of man’s potential for hatred, evil and blatant disregard for the gift of life.

9.) To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

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Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1961 novel To Kill a Mockingbird finally came to the big screen in the early sixties under the direction of Robert Mulligan. Compelling, poignant, honest, indignant and oddly harmonious, To Kill a Mockingbird is an unlikely coming-of-age tale for Scout  (Mary Badham) as she grows up in her small Alabama town where she enjoys a seemingly peaceful childhood in the 1930’s.

The reality of Scout’s charming southern town, however, shows a different side of tranquility when her father in lawyer Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) decides to defend an innocent disabled black man named Tom Robinson (Brock Peters) for the accused raping of a local white woman in the racially divisive quaint town. While Finch’s courtroom defense for Tom shows some promise and gratification for the black supporters his legal eagle act leaves much to be desires for the white townsfolk that deem him a sellout and race traitor. Of course Finch’s continuation of the Robinson court case will spell severe animosity as danger hovers over the concerned safety for him and his family.

To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic film that delves into the inequity of race relations and the injustice within the American legal system in southern small town USA. This remains one of the most timeless tapestries into the deep-rooted mindset of historical humiliation and hostile racial politics in American cinema. Absolutely riveting in forethought.

10.) 12 Years a Slave (2013)

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British director Steve McQueen’s searing historical drama 12 Years a Slave tells the incredible tale of an upstate New York-based and born free black man in well-spoken and gifted musician Solomon Northup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) who was tricked (possibly) but certainly abducted during a visit to Washington D.C. and sold into slavery for a lengthy twelve years before realizing his freedom and returning home to a family he was unceremoniously taken away from so deceivingly.

Facing varied experiences with slave owners that range from the tolerable religious-minded Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch) to the twisted and cruel Edwin Epps (Michael Fassbender) Solomon must rely on his faith to stay focused and keep his survival skills in tact if he is ever to escape his enslaved predicament and see his loved ones ever again.

Based on the real-life 1853 memoirs of Northup, 12 Years a Slave is another historical human horror show that peeks into the precarious past of America’s institutionalized slavery and the racial division that was this nation’s very fabric. Piercing and heartfelt, 12 Years a Slave entertained and informed with insightful outrage and disillusionment.

–Frank Ochieng

 

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