We tackle the Drama from a Gen X perspective

So with one complete category behind us, we charge forward to explore what's good in the world of drama.  As previously mentioned, the selections here will come from a crowded field.  The challenge here is that the drama movie is the sandbox that Oscar talk plays in.  I need to be upfront that every movie is on a level playing field in this project.  Just because a film had a run that included a star studded red carpet evening where people in Versace cried about how much it meant to them to be involved in it before carrying a gold statue stage left gives it no extra points here.  It is noted that the deciders of who receives those statues don't care what we here at the Big Empty think and the feeling is pretty much mutual.  The Academy is ultimately a political entity as much or more than it is a judge of quality.  Put another way, it is an institutional gathering for the sole purpose of congratulating and celebrating the institution.  That doesn't mean they always get it wrong, but it definitely doesn't mean they always get it right either; and when they do get it right, they took a very different path to get there from the one I would take.  To represent the folks like me and what we think, the only voice we have is our $$$.  So we here take it seriously that if the institutional insider opinion and ticket sales are really the only measure of what's good, that we need to bring something important to the narrative to make this a useful exercise.

Phew, well that was a mouthful of a preface.  I'm going to mix things up for this category.  It is a crowded field, and so there will be several honorable mentions and I'm going to discuss them first.  Some of them will be hard to discuss as everything that should be said about them has already been said.  In those cases, I'll do my best to touch on themes that didn't get as much attention, but should have.  So in no particular order, I'll start my list of Honorable Mentions with:

The Hunger Games (2012)
A few memorable high school reading assignments had a significant impact in forming my worldview as an adult.  The Hunger Games is what you get if you combined the thematic elements of three of them:

• The Lottery (short story by Shirley Jackson published in 1948, also depicted in a short film)
• Lord of the Flies (William Golding, 1954)
• The Most Dangerous Game (short story by Richard Connell published in 1924)

The 'Reaping' scene in Hunger Games has all of the tension and sense of dread and immediate relief for others that you see in The Lottery.  

Once the field is chosen, those who must participate are split between Tributes that don't want to be involved and those who embrace the role of hunting and killing fellow humans for sport.  In Lord of the Flies, this transition is slow, but there is always an undercurrent of something dark in some of the kids that only needs the conditions to be changed enough for it to come out into the open.  In Hunger Games, this transition is quickly enabled by the society that establishes the game.  But I find great similarity between the two in scenes like this:

One last point on it that makes it culturally significant is that I read this story as one that speaks very specifically to a teenage audience about how life for them is only a non-lethal form of the Hunger Games, where it can be hard to know who to trust, and harder to avoid the feeling that everyone is being hunted metaphorically to become fodder for everyone else's entertainment.  

________

Black Hawk Down (2001)

I don't have a war movie category.  If I did, this would belong there.  What makes it culturally relevant to my generation is that we grew up in a United States going through an international shift from a nation primarily interested in NATO goals to one that engaged in regime change and nation building.  Black Hawk Down is the result of a well intentioned effort to provide relief to the inhabitants of a politically distressed African country.  While the cause was noble on paper, ultimately it was misguided in that Somalian culture was not well enough understood by Americans for them to help in way that could make things any better.  This is made abundantly clear in the disparity between captured American helicopter pilot Michael Durant and Somali warlord Abdullah "Firimbi' Hassan:

________

Whiplash (2014)

This one boasts a shiny golden statue to go with it and is an outstanding look into the pursuit of greatness and what it takes to get there.  Miracle came from a category that is not as competitive and was able to make the final list but would be hard pressed to make the cut in this category.  So it is no disparagement of Whiplash that it didn't make the final cut like Miracle did.

JK Simmons portrayal of music teacher Terence Fletcher is like taking Herb Brooks on steroids and a steady diet of  nothing but caffeine who is not in pursuit of anything tangible like a gold medal.  But that doesn't make his pursuit any less driven or maniacal.  Quite the contrary.  It is impossible to know what is good enough for Fletcher, and nobody will know until it happens.  Whiplash is good enough to stand on its own for consideration, but there is something extra special about it being the only movie that tackles the value of pursuing music when compared to other things that society values.  Students are glorified for playing sports, especially football, while funding for music has to be obtained through bake sales.  A pursuit of one's passion is all that matters to them, but not all passions are on equal footing and there is this scene which is particularly memorable for how it confronts this:

Tune in soon for the top 3!