Joy and Despair

Why Two of the Best Films of the Year Were Overlooked by the Oscars

In thinking about the Oscars for films released during 2023, I want to hold up my two favorite movies of the year, both of which received zero nominations. I believe that neither of them got recognized because they’re complpex portrayals of cultures that can only be widely accepted if they are simplified. The Starling Girl looks at working class and rural life through a lens of complexity. All of Us Strangers delves into LGBTQ issues in a way that’s never been articulated before. I believe that both of them are so accurate that they weren’t taken seriously by the Academy Awards.

Complexity is the opposite of stereotype.

This is something I’m often reminded of when I’m reading, or writing, or watching television and film. The most stereotypical portrayals of any marginzalized group, whether they be Appalachian, LGBTQ, or BIPOC, are ones that rely on simplistic notions of who people are. They tend to villify or to romanticize people and cultures without understanding historical or cultural context. They buy into easy definitions and generalizations.

I always tell my students that a sure way to stereotype a particular group is to lean too heavily on only the depressing elements. Think of the concept of “poverty porn”. The reason so many people love certain pieces of literature or film—I won’t name specific examples because I don’t want to give them more air—is because they provide a look at the despair of poor people so that the viewer can say “Well, at least I’m not like them. I’m superior.” 

On my last book tour I was in a city far from home and a woman who was a longtime reader of mine came to the event and brought along her husband, who was new to my work. “When reading Lark Ascending I thought, ‘Wow, this guy is good at capturing despair,’” he said, with a big smile on his face. “But then I thought, oh, he’s from Appalachia. Of course he understands despair.” He wasn’t being malicious. He was simply basing this observation on what visual media had been teaching him his whole life. He intended to give me a compliment as a writer but accidentally insulted my place and people. In the moment I was struck by his comment but later, as one does, I thought of the perfect response; I wish I had replied with “Well, if you think our despair is thick in Appalachia you ought to see our joy.” One test for a piece of art’s complexity on a people or culture is to think about if the art relies primarily on despair to portray them, or if there is cultural joy present to make it a truly complex illumination. “Show us the despair and the joy,” I tell my students.

All of this is to reiterate that I believe the reason that both All of Us Strangers and The Starling Girl were completely overlooked by the Oscars is because they portray people and cultures in their full complexity. I’ve seen some people saying the same about Ava DuVernay’s Origin, based on Isabel Wilkerson’s bestseller Caste, but I haven’t had the opportunity to see that one yet.

The Starling Girl is one of the most complex looks at rural and working class life that I’ve ever seen. The characters are never caricatures and are never judged because of their class or place in the world. They are not shown as dumb and mired in the despair of poverty. Nor are they shown as saints or magical country folk who have an uncanny connection to nature, as we often are when filmmakers want to offer a positive view of us. They are not people who lead dull existences because of where they’re from or their class. Theirs are lives of observation and thought. They are faulted but they are also interesting and wonderful. They are full human beings who are not defined by their place and class but also not apart from them. It’s a fine balance that writer and director Laurel Palmet pulls off perfectly. While fundamentalism and hypocrisy are obviously the culprits of the film the religiosity is, again, not the result of the place, but simply a part of it. The lead character, Jem Starling (beautifully played by Eliza Scanlan) is a thoughtful, observant, and intelligent “old soul” who wants more for herself than her parents want for her. She ends up having what may or may not be an affair with her youth pastor (since he is older, there are complications about power that eventually make the viewer question what exactly the relationship is). The youth pastor, Owen, is played by Lewis Pullman, who gives the character so many layers that he adds layers to the film itself, leading to the kind of cinematic experience that deserves conversation afterward. There is plenty of joy, too, which is often manifested through dance for Jem Starling, and it’s particularly interesting to see how that expression of self evolves over the course of the film, from her being the obedient member of her church dance troupe to challenging the boring choreography of the group to literaly dancing on her own by film’s end.

            It’s important to think about the way The Starling Girl uses a rural place in the film to serve the story, as well. Set in rural Kentucky (and filmed there, too, in the lush beauty of Oldham County). Almost always in films set in rural places, the place will be portrayed as backward, behind the times, a place to escape, a place full of dullards who are all obstacles in the way of the more forward-thinking lead. This film could have very easily gone down that path and even gets close to the last detail in that list. But it doesn’t go there, revealing the complexity of most of the characters (a father who is hemmed in by his own guilt about being closeted after the loss of his “best friend”, a mother whose desire to protect her daughter leads to her hurting her, etc.). The characters dress like any Americans would for their class and time period (rural characters are usually only shown in gingham, flannel, and overalls), drive cars that are of the time period (usually rural characters always drive cars that are thirty years old, the rustier and more precious the better), and even get references to pop culture and the larger world. The cinematography captures the quality of light present in summertime Kentucky, too, from the bright outdoors to a particularly beautiful scene filmed in the woods during the gloaming when lightning bugs are drifting up from the forest floor.

 But most American audiences don’t want their rural places to be portrayed with too much complexity in literature or film because we’re not used to that. Ever since the beginnings of cinema we’ve been fed a specific idea of who country people should be: simpletons, bigots, murderers, animals. In most films about rural places, the idea is to make the audience—who are overwhelmingly not rural—to give them someone to look down upon. That doesn’t happen in The Starling Girl, and I believe that’s why the awards totally overlooked it. Filmmaker Palmet refuses to simplify any of it and has gained the respect of many for it, even if we’re not the ones who hold the reins of power in Hollywood.

In All of Us Strangers, the lead character, Adam (exquistely played by Andrew Scott in what should have been a nominated role) is dealing with deep grief. He’s writing about his parents, who died when he was twelve, and he never has properly dealt with that loss. But as a gay man in his early fifties he’s also starting to deal with all of the trauma he experienced as an LGBTQ person who grew up in an incredibly homophobic time and is now living in a time when much of that rhetoric is being spoken not only by school bullies but also by people in the highest places of power (see footnote). At one point Adam says “It doesn’t take much to make you feel the way you felt back there,” referring to how easy it is to be rushed back in time to the way so many LGBTQ people are treated as young people, particularly by the people meant to love them the most as well as by strangers, and particularly in the past.  No other moment in cinema has ever explored the trauma of the existence of LGBTQ people (especially of a certain age, the ones of us who became teenagers near the height of the AIDS epidemic) as fully or as beautifully. In fact, I have never before seen this kind of trauma examined in a film. When I saw it in the cinema, several people around me burst into tears at that comment. The weeping was the cleansing kind, though. Finally, someone was articulating what we had been carrying in our bodies for decades. As the movie went on it became clear that finally the LGBTQ experience was being examined in its deepest complications and most of all it is a movie that is in no way made for a straight audience (as Maestro most definitely is) or by straight people (Maestro, again).

All of the above might lead you to think that All of Us Strangers leans heavily on the despair. But it is full of joy as well, shown through scenes of intense intimacy, dancing, the balm of creating art, and celebratory music.

But again, most audiences want their LGBTQ characters to be the way they expect: either dying, miserable, conniving, or—more often these days—people whose only role in life is to dance the night away with no responsibility, endless wealth, and a witty straight sidekick. The miserable, conniving queer is how Bradley Cooper chose to portray Leonard Bernstein, one of the genuises of the twentieth century, instead of showing him as a complex person. Even though Bernstein’s own wife seems to have accepted who he was the film doesn’t. The film judges Bernstein harshly and the last act of Maestro delivers exactly what mainstream audiences want of their LGBTQ characters. By the end of the movie we’re clearly being told that the hero is his long-suffering wife, who allowed him to act on his gay desires while suffering beautifully as she dies. Meanwhile, he is a melting mess on a dancefloor who has betrayed his whole family because he’s selfish. That’s the message, and that’s the main reason that it’s an insult for Cooper to be nominated for playing Bernstein. There is no historical or cultural context as to why Bernstein does the things he does and we only see him through a judgmental lens. With that said, I do have to say that Maestro is a true achievement in filmmaking on a production level, and it features a ferocious, lovely performance by Carey Mulligan. But it does a disservice to Bernstein as a fully complicated human being…the main thing that a biopic should do.

I’m not saying that straight actors should never play gay characters. But I am saying that if they’re going to do so they need to strive to understand the complexity of being a gay person in the world. It’s epecially insulting that one of the best gay actors of our time, Andrew Scott, was overlooked by the Academy when they gave nominations to such a terrible interpretation of being a gay person by Cooper and also nominated straight actor Sterling K. Brown (normally a brilliant actor), who plays his gay character in American Fiction by portraying him as a straight man. For the first time ever in Oscar history gay actors have been nominated for playing gay characters (Jodie Foster in Nyad and Colman Domingo in Rustin—update, neither of them won, which means that still no gay actor has ever won an Oscar for playing a gay character ). Theirs are brilliant performances because Foster and Domingo are playing them as fully complex people, not just as gay people. It’s great that finally gay actors are playing gay characters and getting recognition for it, but it’s too little too late, and there’s never been any mainstream outrage about it, just as there is never any mainstream anger about the way rural people are constantly negated and simplified in most films. And the way films about rural and working class people are constantly overlooked.

Inevitably someone will read this and tell me that there are bigger things to worry about. Well, of course there are. But when people say that they’re really just saying “I don’t care about this”, which is what Hollywood has been saying about rural, working class, and LGBTQ people for more than a century now. And that’s certainly what the Oscars have said by overlooking The Starling Girl and All of Us Strangers, not only great pieces of filmmaking art, but also two of the most beautiful and complicated looks at their respective cultures ever.

The Starling Girl is now available to watch on Paramount Plus/Showtime with a subtraction or can be streamed anywhere.

All of Us Strangers is now available to watch on Hulu with a subscription or can be streamed anywhere.

Footnote: When Tom Woods, a state senator in Oklahoma was recently asked about the death of a nonbinary student in his state, he said that LGBTQ people are “filth” The current top candidate for governor of North Carolina, and the current lieutenant governor of that state, Mark Robinson is campaigning on bigotry. He is calling for trans people to be arrested, he claims God “formed” him to fight LGBTQ rights, says that straight people are superior to LGBTQ people, and has cast doubt on the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. Meanwhile, Trump recently promised to ban gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth, has spent a lot of time on his campaign attacking hospitals that provide treatments and is calling for a federal law to recognize only two genders if he’s re-elected.