A post-game analysis of the European Film Awards, held this past Saturday blames America for raining on their parade; Americans just don’t get it. But wait, what is it that we don’t get?
A European journalist hears an American lady’s (private, mind you. If someone listened in on the phone conversations I have with my husband, I’d probably go to jail.)
“I was at the EFAs, the European Oscars…”, the young American woman says.
The journalist writes: “I hear this and say to myself: good pitch, but could do better. Because after all, the point isn’t to compare Europeans with Americans, even if the aim is to put them on an equal footing”.
OK. Wait. First of all, the woman (if this woman even actually exists and isn’t a literary device to serve his point) was on the phone making an offhand remark that she’d probably rather not be quoted. She’s most likely talking to someone who has never heard of the EFAs, and needs a point of reference. Most Americans haven’t heard of the EFAs, let alone very many of the films. I watched to cheer on the Italians, but even I didn’t know many of the films beyond the front-runners.
And so, second of all, no one here in the USA is even trying to put them on equal footing. No offense, we just aren’t. The whole world watches in awe and horror as the Hollywood Black Hole swallows up its box offices and overwhelms European competitors. The Oscars are long-winded, self-serving, and all and pretty darned narcissistic, but they are POPULAR. If nobody watched the EFAs, I don’t know, maybe it’s because of that weird host and his dumb dance routines.
The journalist goes on:
The American lady – who admits to me that she was invited by one of her business partners because she is a film buff – doesn’t make things any better. In fact, she makes things a lot worse, as she subsequently replies:
“… another black-and-white Polish film won all the awards. Europe, you know?”
“We know”, continues the journalist. “As well as being persistent, a cliché can also be scathing. The image of European cinema, which often gets boiled down to “arthouse” during conversations across the pond, has its fair share of these clichés, but by paying so many tributes to the masterpiece that is Ida [+], the members of the Academy have chosen to place this well-known fact to one side and have perhaps underestimated the counterweight of such a decision, which is entirely devoted to celebrating a type of cinema that incorporates the most beautiful and most fundamental of elements… “
Take a breath, darling. You’ll blow a gasket. Ida is beautiful movie and deserved to win.
The most lamentable thing, he goes on to say, “is the realisation that neither this information, nor the five statuettes, will be enough to entice an American woman who has not seen the film to the movie theatre – even though she “is a film buff” and attended the European Film Awards ceremony, which announced its nominees well in advance – and despite the availability of the movie all over her country.”
Oh dear, now he’s really getting carried away. If Ida’s win seems a cliché, it’s an earned one. What else would we Americans expect to win an EFA? We don’t get the chance to see much of anything else. Most of us ONLY get the chance to see art house films from Europe. IF ONLY Americans could see all the other good stuff that comes out of Italy. It’s all we ever get a chance to see.
(And you know what? If you want to talk about clichés, you might want to skip the ones like “across the pond”. There’s a lot going on over here, “across the pond”, and dismissive clichés like this one are petty and obtuse.)
I saw Ida on my cable company’s pay-per-view and I watched it because I read about European films every day, but I don’t know anyone else here in Hudson, Ohio, that would have even heard of it if I hadn’t told them about it. I watched it and I thought, “Uh-oh, Italy’s in trouble. This one is going to win.”
Europeans forget how massively big the United States, and how cut off from European films we can be. New Yorkers and Californians get to see a lot more than Midwesterners do but if you live in a town like I do, nobody is reporting on European films and they rarely make it to our local cineplexes.
What do you think I’ve been going on about around here for the last four years? I have been doing everything I can to quash the image of the aging hipster and his black beret as the only one who would be interested in European cinema. But I watch all of the movies, not just the ones who are distributed here. I watch Checco Zalone and Paola Cortellesi and I know that there is more to European cinema than black and white art house films, but for the majority here, it’s just not on their radars.
We Americans can be faulted for a lot, don’t get me wrong, but not loving the European Film Awards is not one of them. Seriously, we are just never going to get that host of yours, anyway. If there’s something that we “don’t get”, he’s it.
I Love Italian Everything 