PARIS—With the multiple nominations for “Lincoln,” “Django Unchained” and “Zero Dark Thirty,” Europeans may see this year’s Academy Award field as something of a celebration of American history, in the age of Obama.
Still, “Amour,” Michael Haneke’s Austrian film shot in France and in French, made it into the best picture category, confirmation that the Academy thinks subtitled films can hold their own against American blockbusters. “Amour,” about life, death, age and love, is nominated in five categories (best picture, best foreign film, best actress, director and screenplay).
As Vanessa Thorpe wrote recently in The Guardian, “Academy voters appear to be hinting at a new openness to other cultures and the growing acceptability of subtitled entertainment.”
She theorized that a larger cultural shift is happening:
The new appetite for foreign fare might have started with the mass popularity of translated Scandinavian thrillers, from Stieg Larsson to Jo Nesbo, or it may have been the accidental result of cash-strapped public television schedulers searching for new quality drama with a reasonable price tag.
France took great national pride in last year’s best picture winner, “The Artist,” but, as Elaine Sciolino wrote at the time, it was shot in Los Angeles with an American crew, the rights were bought by an American, and it is all about Hollywood.
The fierce competition this year, and perhaps its grim subject matter, makes “Amour” something of a long shot as best picture. Among the best foreign-language film nominees, however, it stands as the overwhelming favorite to take the prize at the awards ceremony on Feb. 24.
The film has already swept all the European awards, including the 2012 Cannes Film Festival Palme d’Or; it was given the Golden Globe last week for best foreign language film, and more than 20 other awards and nominations. Oscar observers tend to agree it should leave with a golden statue, if not for best picture then surely for best foreign film.
But award ceremonies sometimes welcome surprises, and the foreign film category this year has some other strong contenders. The selection was made from a record-breaking 71 submissions in the category this year.
With two Scandinavian films in the running, three of the five nominees are from Europe. Denmark’s entry, “A Royal Affair,” a sumptuous romantic drama set in the 18th century, lost to “Amour” at the Golden Globes but took two awards at the Berlin International Film Festival: for best script and best actor for Mads Mikkelsen, whom you might recognize as the villain from “Casino Royale.”
“Kon-Tiki,” a box-office hit from Norway, got a double Golden Globe-Oscar nomination. It tells the story of Thor Heyerdahl’s 1947 trip across the Pacific on a small raft with five other men. Larry Rohter, who has been following the foreign film race closely for The New York Times, writes on the Carpetbagger blog that the Weinstein brothers are reportedly planning to release it in English this year.
Last year’s contenders included Iranian and Israeli films, this year the remaining two nominees are from the Americas.
The Chilean director Pablo Larrain was third-time lucky with “No,” his third film about the Pinochet years. Starring Gael Garcia Bernal, the film is about the 1988 referendum that ended the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile. This is Mr. Larrain’s second attempt at the award after being shortlisted in 2008 for his film “Tony Manero,” With “No,” which opens in February in the United States, Mr. Larrain won the top prize in the Directors’ Fortnight section at Cannes.
In a recent Q&A with Larry Rohter, the 36-year-old director talked about the difficulty that film committees face in choosing their entries for the Oscars. “What happens when the committee in each country meets to decide, sometimes they make the mistake that they think the movie that should be submitted is the one that they like more themselves,” he said.
Canada got a nod with “War Witch,” a film shot primarily in Congo about an adolescent girl-soldier trapped in civil war. The film, in French and the African language Lingala, wowed the critics and was awarded a top prize at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. The nomination was yet another win for the government-supported National Film Board of Canada, which has garnered Oscar nominations for three years in a row.
Neither “No” nor “War Witch” made it into the Golden Globes selection.
The nomination will probably help “No” when it begins its release in Europe and the United States next month, as being in the Oscar race often gives movies a “nomination bump” in box-office figures, though Edmund Helmer wrote in an analysis recently for Reuters that a Golden Globe may be a better win financially.
One film that didn’t need to wait for its Golden Globe nomination to rock the box-office was “The Intouchables,” perhaps the most surprising absentee of the Oscars’ foreign film selection. The French movie, about the friendship between a rich Parisian quadriplegic and his caretaker, has become the highest-grossing film ever made in a language other than English, with a worldwide box-office take of roughly $410 million, about three times that of “The Artist.” Take that, Oscar.
Are you more likely to see a movie if it has won awards? Does the prospect of subtitles keep you from seeing a movie? And are there films you’ve seen that you think should have been nominated in the foreign film category that weren’t?
Fill out your own ballot in The New York Times Oscar poll.
