Oscars Special 2022

March Movie Madness

Welcome to this special edition of The Similitude! In honor of the 94th Academy Awards, I had a conversation with my best friend and fellow movie buff, Nicholas Collura. Nick is a spiritual director and chaplain, but (as he says early on) before finding God, he found cinema.

His knowledge of movie history—especially world film—is incredible. What I love about him (among many virtues) is his approach to film, which comes from a different aesthetic sensibility than mine. This leads to strong disagreement at times about a particular picture (as you’ll see). But underlying our differences is a shared love of the art form, a belief that movies—at their best—capture the truth of the human condition like no other medium. We seek and celebrate the pictures that achieve this humanism. And we agree on them more often than not!

This is the first video and interview I've put together for this newsletter. I apologize in advance for the rudimentary production values. For a movie critic, I am rather unskilled in the technical side of making a film, and at interviewing. This is an area I hope to grow for you readers down the road. Look for professional recording equipment, sharper questions, and a better wardrobe from yours truly.

A disclaimer: Nick and I discuss only the movies nominated for Best Picture this year. We simply didn’t have time to touch on acting and directing. Even then, we barely covered each film, despite going for about an hour and forty-five minutes. In the future, I hope to release individual videos about each film up for an award, giving my guests and me ample time to analyze the picture and address the directing and acting. I hope you find our conversation entertaining and edifying. May it add to your Oscar Sunday festivities!

Bonus Content

The columnist Ross Douthat published a piece today about the end of movies. Douthat, in addition to being an opinion commentator at The New York Times, is a film critic for National Review. While I often disagree with his artistic and political judgments (Really? The best year for movies was 1999?), he excels at diagnosing trends in politics, religion, and culture; offering counter-factual histories; and imagining potential options for the future. His thesis is that movies are going the way of opera, theater, and ballet—becoming a niche art form for an aging audience. Whether you agree or not, it’s worth a read. Money quote:

The power of condensation is why the greatest movies feel more complete than almost any long-form television. Even the best serial will tend to have an unnecessary season, a mediocre run of episodes or a limp guest-star run, and many potentially great shows, from Lost to Game of Thrones, have been utterly wrecked by not having some sense of their destination in advance. Whereas a great movie is more likely to be a world unto itself, a self-enclosed experience to which the viewers can give themselves completely.

This takes nothing away from the potential artistic advantages of length. There are things The Sopranos did across its running time, with character development and psychology, that no movie could achieve.

But The Godfather is still the more perfect work of art.