That’s never happened before at the Oscars
Felix Kammerer in “Nothing New in the West”
Quelle: Reiner Bass/NETFLIX
The German anti-war film “Nothing New in the West” received a unique nine nominations, including “Best Film of the Year”. Even “Das Boot” couldn’t do that back then. But, viewed soberly, the favorites are other films.
EActually, one had thought that the electrifying news from Los Angeles would be whether the Austrian film “Corsage” with actor Florian Teichtmeister, accused of possession of child pornography, would receive an Oscar nomination. Now it is clear that another Oscar news was much more sensational: the nine nominations for the German film “Nothing New in the West”.
Let’s first deal with the topic of “corsage”. The five nominees for Best International Film are Ireland’s Quiet Girl, Nothing New in the West, Argentina’s Argentina, Belgium’s Close and Poland’s Eo, the latter three from the Cannes competition. Whether the Teichtmeister scandal has damaged “Corsage” can hardly be assessed. The deadline for casting the nomination votes began on the 12th and ended on the 17th of January, and the scandal became public on the 13th. No one knows how quickly the news reached America, where 90 percent of voters are based. In any case, it’s a strong film year, the strongest since the beginning of the pandemic, there was enough competition that was at least of equal value.
Florian Teichtmeister as Emperor Franz Joseph in “Corsage”
Credit: Felix Vratny/Alamode Film
Nine nominations for a German film are a singular event in the 95-year history of the Oscar. What’s more, it’s a “German” film through and through, it’s mostly German spoken (and some French), it’s an quintessentially German subject (World War I as seen by German recruits), and there was German talent from director to cast the sound on; it is one of the last films cast by the recently deceased Berlin casting director Simone Bär.
It’s a Netflix film that first ran in our cinemas. Netflix involvement is key here because it’s the streamer’s policy to target talent in local countries; if a traditional studio had remade the Remarque novel, international stars would have flown in, such as Tom Cruise for the Stauffenberg role in Operation Valkyrie.
The uniqueness of the case also includes the fact that “In the West” is up for both “Best Foreign Language” and “Best Film of the Year” in general, a very rare moment, most recently with “Parasite” from Korea, which actually happened in 2019 won the highest trophy. “Das Boot”, the most nominated German film to date, made it to six places in the final selection in 1981, but in none of the two “Best” categories.
Which brings us to the water in the wine. Because the pure number of nominations says nothing about the final chances of a film. You have to look at the “Big Seven”, the seven most important categories: best film, director, leading actor (male/female), camera, screenplay (original and adapted). If you count the nominations there, other favorites emerge: “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (four out of seven), “The Banshees of Inisherin” (also four), “The Fabelmans” (three). “In the West” also has three by that count, Best Film, Camera and Adapted Screenplay, with the remaining six – sound, music, international film, make-up, set design, visual effects – having a chance at the March 12 awards ceremony not bad at all.
Michelle Yeoh in „Everything Everywhere all at Once“
Quelle: David Bornfriend/Leonine Distribution
“Everything Everywhere All at Once” could become the new “Coda”. “Coda” started last year with few copies almost unnoticed and slowly gained stature. Same with Everything, which came out with us in April 2022 (it’s still in a cinema in Berlin), a sci-fi adventure that starts in a laundromat and ends in a multiverse, starring a great Michelle Yeoh who used to Eastern action star.