At the 98th Academy Awards, the most prominent Jewish names on the broadcast didn’t take home the gold Oscar statuettes.
Last year, Jewish actors Adrien Brody and Mikey Madison won Oscars for Best Actor and Best Actress. The year before that, biopics of three Jews — “Oppenheimer,” “Maestro” and “Golda” — were nominated in major categories. But this year, the most Jewish presence came during the In Memoriam segments.
The film community was shaken by the killing of director Rob Reiner and wife Michele Singer Reiner. The tribute to them was one of the most somber moments of the evening at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. Actor Billy Crystal took to the stage to speak about Reiner and the impact of his filmmaking. The two first met in 1975 when Crystal appeared on an episode of “All in the Family.”
“My friends, Rob’s movies will last for lifetimes because they were about what makes us laugh and cry and what we aspire to be,” Crystal said. “Far better in his eyes, far kinder, far funnier and far more human. And when Michele Singer entered his life, they were unstoppable. A gifted photographer, she not only produced films with Rob, but it was her energy that had them working tirelessly to fight social injustice in the country that they both loved. Now Rob and Michele Reiner became the driving force in the landmark decision for marriage equality across the United States, and their loss is immeasurable. And to the millions who have enjoyed his films all these years, I want you to know here and around the world how many times Rob told me that it meant everything to him that his work meant something to you. And for us who had the privilege of working with and knowing him and loving him, all we can say is, ‘Buddy, what fun we had storming the castle.’”
Rob Reiner’s “movies will last for lifetimes because they were about what makes us laugh and cry and what we aspire to be. … Far better in his eyes, far kinder, far funnier and far more human.” – Billy Crystal
It ended when the screen showing posters of Reiner-directed films was lifted to reveal 17 actors who starred in them.
Among them were Kevin Pollak (“A Few Good Men”), as well as Fred Savage, Carol Kane and Mandy Patinkin from “The Princess Bride.”
Two-time Oscar winner Barbra Streisand remembered actor Robert Redford, who passed away on Sept. 16. Streisand concluded by singing the title song from “The Way We Were,” the 1973 film starring both her and Redford. That film won two Academy Awards, one for Best Original Score (by the late Marvin Hamlisch), and another for the film’s titular song, co-written with Alan and Marilyn Bergman. Alan passed away on July 17 last year at age 99 and was also featured in the evening’s “In Memoriam” segment.
Others in the “In Memoriam” segment included Swiss producer and six-time Oscar winner Arthur Cohn (“One Day in September”), producer Stanley R. Jaffe (“Kramer vs. Kramer”), screenwriter Jeremy Larner (“The Candidate”), longtime Amblin Entertainment publicist Marvin Levy, Argentine composer Lalo Schifrin (“Mission: Impossible,” “Enter the Dragon” and the “Dirty Harry” films), British playwright Tom Stoppard (“Shakespeare in Love”), and documentarian Frederick Wiseman (“Titicut Follies”).
Jewish filmmakers David Borenstein and BBC’s Lucie Kon both took home awards for Best Documentary Feature for “Mr. Nobody Against Putin.” The documentary is about a Russian school official secretly documenting state propaganda after the invasion of Ukraine.
“’Mr. Nobody Against Putin’ is about how you lose your country,” Borenstein said in his acceptance speech. “And what we saw when working with this footage is that you lose it through countless small little acts of complicity. When we act complicit when a government murders people on the streets of our major cities, when we don’t say anything, when oligarchs take over the media and control how we can produce it and consume it, we all face a moral choice. But luckily, even a ‘nobody’ is more powerful than you think.”
Several Jewish artists were nominated for awards this year but did not win.
Songwriter Diane Warren received her 17th Academy Award nomination for “Dear Me” from the documentary “Diane Warren: Relentless.” While she still has yet to win an Oscar for her songwriting, Warren did receive an Honorary Oscar in 2023.
“Marty Supreme,” a sports comedy loosely inspired by the life of Jewish table tennis champion Marty Reisman, was one of the most Jewish-themed films in contention this year. The film, set largely on New York’s Lower East Side, follows a ping-pong player and Jewish immigrant in the United States post-World War II. “Marty Supreme” was nominated for nine awards, yet took home zero. Among them were three Jewish nominees, Timothée Chalamet (nominated for Best Actor) Josh Safdie (nominated for Best Director) and Ronald Bronstein (nominated for Best Original Screenplay).
Director Steven Spielberg received his 23rd overall nomination, as a producer for “Hamnet.” Producer Jerry Bruckheimer received his second nomination as the producer of “F1.”
The French animated short film “Papillon” (“Butterfly”), which tells the story of Alfred Nakache, a Jewish swimmer who competed for France at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, was nominated for animated short film. In 1941, he was a world champion and record holder for the 200m butterfly. In 1943, Nakache and his family were arrested and sent to Drancy internment camp in northern France. The following year, Nakache and his wife and daughter were deported to Auschwitz, where he was the only one to survive. Following the war, he became one of only three known athletes to have survived the Holocaust and who went on to compete at the Olympics. He was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 1993.
Three films nominated for awards involved the Israel-Hamas war. Israeli filmmaker Hilla Medalia’s documentary short “Children No More: Were and Are Gone” lost in the Best Documentary Short category and Meyer Levinson-Blount’s short film “Butcher’s Stain” lost in the Best Live Action Short category.
A Tunisian film, “The Voice of Hind Rajab,” about a Palestinian child killed in Gaza, was nominated for Best International Feature. Actor Javier Bardem presented the award for that category, but before the announcement, he said “No to wars and free Palestine” uncensored on the broadcast. Norwegian film “Sentimental Value” ended up winning Best International Feature.
Advocacy group Creative Community for Peace addressed Bardem’s comments in a statement, saying “The irony of calling for ‘no war’ and then chanting a slogan of a terror organization that started a war.”
Source:
jewishjournal.com
