Emotional Support Cinema

Think of this year's Oscar contenders as a group therapy session for Hollywood - soothing an industry on the brink, one awards screener at a time

- BY STEVEN ZEITCHIK

While attending an awards season event recently, I found myself hearing a sonnet familiar to any of us who have toiled on the Oscar circuit.

“I wish it was over already,” the person said. And though that’s a slightly strange thing to say in October — like bemoaning how the oral surgeon hasn’t finished the implant at the first sign of a toothache — I understand the impulse. The endless schmoozing, standing, snacking, sitting and speechifying — and, oh yes, watching good movies — can seem like a lot when all we want to do is go to our beds, or anywhere no one has ever spoken the phrase “qualifying run.”

This year, the hoopla can seem especially overwhelming. Climate regulations are being destructed, diversity programmes are being reducted, innocent people are being abducted, AI systems are being inducted, and, on top of that, nuclear tests are now being conducted. Go to an awards event? I’d rather doomscroll and scream.

This is not going to be one of those columns that tells you the importance of culture, how movies make you feel the humanity that can be lost elsewhere, how cinema is a “mirror” held up to society. You’ve been to a Cannes premiere, or felt jealousy for someone who has. That’s thin slop.