Waltz with Bashir snubbed in LA

February 24, 2009 - 1:24 PM by Harry · Leave a Comment
Filed under: A New Reality, Art, General, Movies, Pop Culture

Japan's Departures Conventional wisdom unequivocally asserted that the only Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominee to hold a candle to Waltz with Bashir was France’s The Class – but that even that movie was hardly as technically groundbreaking or thematically poignant as Israel’s nominee. Regardless, The Academy instead gave the award to Japan’s Departures (pictured in all of its smirking glory).

Bashir therefore joins a long list of Israel-made Oscar losers that includes Sallah Shabati and HaShoter Azoulay.

When Joseph Cedar’s Beaufort failed to take home a statuette a year ago, the director was gracious and stoic, putting the situation in the proper context. He even went so far as to give The Jerusalem Post the ultimate cliché Oscar loser soundbyte:

[Cedar] seemed to keep his hopes in check at a symposium prior to the ceremony, saying he was “happy just to have been nominated. I’m not even thinking about winning.”

….”We have shown that Israel can make very good movies,” Beaufort actor Eli Eltonyo told the cheering crowd [at a post-Oscars party], “and we will prove it again next time.”

Next time was earlier this week, but Eltonyo’s prediction didn’t come to fruition – at least not as fully as he might have hoped. But Bashir‘s creative team was hardly as gracious as Beaufort‘s was. The jPost caught up with director Ari Folman after the show:

“It’s a game,” Folman said, shrugging. “It’s 500 anonymous voters, and I don’t know a single one.”

He said he planned to drink the night away before getting on a plane home to Israel.

“I’ll be glad to be done with all of this traveling, though I am going to miss it in a few months – but right now I just want to go home and be with my kids,” Folman told the Post.

Back here in Israel, the rest of the Bashir team was even more disappointed, as Haaretz notes:

Nitzan Roiy, in charge of composing and special effects, stayed in his chair.

“It’s horrible,” he said. “When we came here we were sure we had it in our hand. It’s a shame.”

…. “We were very confident before the ceremony,” said Neta Holzer, one of the animators who joined the Israeli delegation to Los Angeles. “We didn’t talk about winning, but we had a very good gut feeling. Everyone is disappointed, but we’re getting used to it.”

With so many great movies continuing to come out of our local industry, we can all comfort ourselves by saying, “There’s always next year.” At least that;s what the good sports among us will say.

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