Mini Prep for the Oscars

If you are a long time reader, you know I love the movies. And you know each year my husband and I try to see at least some of the nominees for Best Picture of the Year.  Since the Academy has expanded the number of movies which could be nominated--from 5 to up to 10--that has gotten more difficult.

First, we don't go to THAT many movies. Second, some movies, even though nominated, are just not my "cup of tea."

So, here's what we saw this year--in order of seeing them.

Fences, Lion, Moonlight, Hidden Figures, La La Land


Yes, I know that means we missed Manchester by the Sea, but that will just have to do.

Our favorite among these--in order of enjoyed the most to the least.

Hidden Figures
Lion
Fences
La La Land
Moonlight

...although between the last two, it's a toss up.

And now why.
We loved the story of Hidden Figures--an aptly named movie about African-American women who were highly talented, and eventually able to work on the early U.S. space program. A revelation to me, having never heard of any of these women.  Hidden indeed.  Their jobs--well, mathematical computation and computing. In fact, there was a whole room full of "computers"--not machines, but people, working on mathematical computation using figure. And they were all "colored" in the jargon of the day.  When the one woman who was from her childhood a math wizard gets an opportunity to move into the main mission control room, she is understandably elated and incredibly challenged. Not by the scope of the work--that she can do--but by the arrangements. While she works side by side with white co-workers, when she needs to go to the bathroom, she is told "there are no colored bathrooms in this building."  So she has to run across the sprawling complex (a half a mile, we learn later) to use the "colored bathroom" in her old work space.

When another one of the heroines, Dorothy Vaughn, seizes an opportunity to do programming on the gigantic computer (think a whole room that is the computer)--she is mistaken for a janitor and is told where the trash is. She has learned how to program on her own by reading instructional books on programming in Fortran. And a third heroine, Mary Jackson, has to go to court to get permission to attend night classes at an all-white high school in town, just so she can meet the entry requirements for the job.

These women fill me with wonder, awe, gratitude and anger. While never the point of the movie, I can't help but think of our country's regression to a time like the early 1960s, before the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965.  Racism is never far below the surface in our country. And this movie is a reminder of what we lose when we make outcast a whole group of people--whether women, people of color, people of different ethnicity or religion.

This post will get entirely too long if I tell you how I felt about the other movies--
Lion, a triumph of incredible perseverance for an orphan from India who is adopted by a family in Australia to find his birth home through use of Google Earth (!).
Fences--a masterpiece of American literature by the late playwright August Wilson, which explores the triumphs and defeats of an African-American family in Pittsburgh in the 1950s. The movie is a show case for Oscar worthy performances by Denzel Washington and Viola Davis.
La La Land--a popular favorite and presumptive winner about the dreams of a young couple who want to make it big in Hollywood. Their dreams are realized and dashed in equal portions. Oh, and it's also a musical, presumably an homage to big Hollywood musical productions with a plot overlay of modern disappointment.
Moonlight--a story of one African-American young man from his childhood where he contends with being bullied, having a derelict drug-abusing mother, and a stand-in father figure who turns out to be a drug dealer to his maturing and regrets which have brought him to a lonely existence. As if that weren't enough, he also works through coming to an understanding of his sexuality as a gay man.

There you have it.
We'll be watching on Sunday night.