Oscars Review Special Talking Movies

Now on BBC News, it's time

for a Talking Movies Oscars Special.

Hello from California,

I'm Tom Brook, and welcome to this

special edition of Talking Movies

where we look back at the 90th

annual Academy Awards.

A recap of what happened

on the big night.

We hear from those who took

home top Oscar prizes.

I'm going back home

with these babies.

Director Guillermo del Toro's film,

The Shape of Water, won

four Academy Awards,

more than any other picture.

We bring you his thoughts

on his Oscar-winning movie.

The idea was to make a movie

about love and cinema.

It was a night of

inclusion at the Oscars.

We hear how the Chilean picture

A Fantastic Woman made history

when it won the best

foreign-language film trophy.

And we ask why does the Academy keep

giving its top best picture prize

to little scene films.

Why doesn't it embrace blockbusters?

All that and more in this special

review of the Oscars

edition of Talking Movies.

The Academy Awards really engage

the film-making community

here in Hollywood and this year

there were a lot of unanswered

questions going into the ceremony.

Everybody wanted to know which film

would win best picture

and what impact would the Time's Up

movement have on the proceedings.

Let's take a look

back at the evening.

It was not an Oscars in which any

one picture made a major sweep.

The Shape of Water came away

with the most trophies,

four in all, for best picture,

original score, production design

and for best director.

This story of a mute cleaning lady

who becomes involved with an aquatic

creature had a boldness

of vision, a vision that

came from its director,

Guillermo del Toro, a man clearly

delighted by his victories.

My next stop is going to see my mum

and my dad this week.

I'm going back home

with these two babies.

At Oscar viewing parties in

Hollywood there was the expectation

that The Shape of Water would win.

Loved the movie, not surprised

at all, wonderful film.

One of my favourites in a long time.

I knew it was going to be Shape

of Water, I would have preferred

for it to be Three Billboards

but I loved Shape of

Water, it was great.

So this is one of those

silly Academy things

where they spend a fortune...

Veteran awards expert and movie

lover Anne Thompson had been backing

The Shape of Water all along

as the best picture winner.

This is a case where

you have a beloved director

in Guillermo del Toro but it's also

a movie that happens to tie

in with the political narrative

of the day and so you have a Mexican

director, he made a movie

that was a fairy tale,

it was sincere, it was romantic

and it was inclusive

in the sense that it was

about outsiders who would

ordinarily be marginalised.

It fit everything and it was

gorgeously made and all the crafts

loved it and so that's why it got

so many nominations and four wins.

The best actor prize went,

as expected, to Britain's Gary

Oldman for his skilful portrayal

of the British wartime

leader Winston Churchill

in the film Darkest Hour.

Winning an Oscar for playing

arguably one of the greatest

Britons who ever lived,

to win it for playing Winston

makes it doubly special.

It has been an unforgettable

experience and a highlight

of my career.

And best actress went

to Frances McDormand who gave

a powerhouse performance as a mother

seeking justice for her daughter's

murder in director Martin

McDonagh's dark comedy

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing,

Missouri.

Look around, everybody, look around,

ladies and gentlemen.

Because we all have stories to tell

and projects we need financed.

McDormand gave a memorable

acceptance speech in a show

of solidarity, asking all female

nominees to stand.

The plight of women in the film

industry, their experiences

with sexual harassment,

the rise of the #MeToo

and Time's Up movements,

were referenced at different

occasions during the ceremony.

It was very much an

Oscars of inclusion.

We had Time's Up represented

on the stage as part of the show

and the fact that the Academy

integrated that into the show,

the monologue, addressed

a lot of what has been

going on in Hollywood,

I think it was really important

that the Academy and the Oscars

acknowledged this this year.

But there are those who think that

politics at the Oscars telecast may

have turned off some TV viewers.

I almost wonder if the political

cast of it was a good idea.

They leaned in.

I understand why, I understand that

in Hollywood everyone wants this

kind of women's agenda,

Time's Up, #MeToo, inclusion,

they really do, but you know what

are the Oscars are supposed to be?

They're supposed to be

an advertisement for the movies.

And back to the movies.

Jordan Peele, Get Out.

One highlight of the evening

was Get Out winning best

original screenplay.

This film, a clever fusing

of a racial satire with a horror

movie, has been a critically

lauded huge hit.

The Oscar went to the man who wrote

and directed it, Jordan Peele.

These are exciting teams

for black film-makers.

I'm so proud to be part of a time,

the beginning of a movement,

where I feel like the best films

in every genre are being brought

to me by my fellow black directors.

Call Me By Your Name.

Also winning for screenplay

was the gay romance

Call Me By Your Name.

89-year-old James Ivory was awarded

the best adapted screenplay trophy

for his work on the film.

He is now the oldest

Oscar winner ever.

Gay romance this film might

be but Ivory sees it

as a story of first love.

It's a universal situation,

first love and how we feel about it.

Whether it has made us unhappy

or joyous or whatever,

that is universal and that is

subject matter that everyone

everywhere can identify with.

The British war epic

Dunkirk did well, winning

three trophies in sound

and film editing categories.

The Oscars was not

without omissions or snubs.

Lady Bird, a strongly

liked coming-of-age story

starring Saoirse Ronan,

had five nominations.

The film, which marked

the directorial debut

of Greta Gerwig, was seen as a big

success story but it

the Oscars empty-handed.

Overall it was an Academy Awards

ceremony with few surprises

with the big prizes generally

going the way Oscar experts

had been predicting.

For Guillermo del Toro the Oscars

provided a great night.

Not only did his film win the best

picture trophy but he also

won for best director.

So let's hear from the man himself

and take a look at his Oscar-winning

picture in greater depth.

If I told you about her,

the princess without

voice, what would I say?

The Shape of Water is set

in Baltimore in 1962.

Much of the action taking place

in a top-secret government

laboratory where a mute cleaning

lady played by Sally Hawkins falls

in love with an aquatic creature

from South America being held

in captivity at the facility.

Part of the reason for the film's

Oscar successes is its ambition.

It draws from many different genres.

Fantasy, horror, Cold War,

noir thriller, science-fiction.

Guillermo del Toro

welcomed the challenge

of bringing it all together.

I thought the movie could be very

risky because it combined,

comedy, melodrama, musical theatre,

creature feature, you know.

It is all these things

at the same time and I thought,

that's difficult but that's why

you should make it.

Is she deaf?

Mute, sir, she can hear you.

The film's silent star attraction

is Sally Hawkins who,

except for one singing scene,

doesn't utter a word

in this two-hour film.

Del Toro wanted his leading lady

in this romance to be

a complex and real character.

She's not a pure princess

waiting for the prince

to kiss her for the first time.

She has a life.

Sally is a woman that is beautiful

and luminous but at the same time

you can find her on the street.

Inspiration for The Shape of Water

came from the 1954 film

Creature From The Black Lagoon.

Part of Del Toro's

childhood memories.

That movie had an amphibious

humanoid monster.

The director wanted his monster

to be a more developed,

multidimensional being.

If you do a monster monster,

all you need is for it to be scary

or creepy in one or two scenes.

But here you have a guy

who is going to be sad,

vulnerable, innocent,

brutal, fierce, an animal, a god,

all these things he needs to be.

You need to give the tools to your

actor to create this creature.

The Shape of Water provides

a critique of militaristic Cold War

era America and its patriarchal

culture, which is seen

to marginalise women,

African Americans and gay people.

By contrast, Del Toro has put

together a very inclusive work.

The idea was to make a movie

about love, and cinema.

So I wanted about loving the other

because right now everybody

says the other is guilty

of your unhappiness.

The immigrant, whatever

you want to call it,

they point fingers and I find

it very difficult.

Compared to his previous films such

as Pan's Labyrinth or Crimson Tide,

Guillermo del Toro strikes a more

optimistic tone in The Shape

of Water with a powerful love story,

one that clearly satisfied

Oscar voters.

The movies I've done,

nine movies before this,

are movies about nostalgia and loss.

They are tinged with a sadness.

This movie is the first movie

that is almost life affirming,

you know, it like full of beauty.

You come out of the movie energised

to face the real world

as opposed to sort of heartbroken

and destroyed because the real world

destroyed something precious.

I think it's the first time

I dared to be hopeful.

Eliza, honey.

He's coming for you.

What's it like to be a nominee

from a distant land and come

to Los Angeles to participate

in Hollywood's biggest

night of the year?

Well, to find out, we asked

two German film-makers

and their Kenyan production team

to document their trip

to the Oscars.

They have been nominated

for the live short action film

Watu Wote, All Of Us.

My name is Katja Benrath,

I'm from Hamburg, Germany and I'm

here in LA because we got nominated

for an Oscar for our short film,

Watu Wote, for the short film Oscar.

The story is about about

a terrorist attack.

A bus was travelling to the border

region of Kenya to Somalia

and the al-Shabab attacked the bus

with the aim to kill the Christian

passengers on the bus.

And on the bus there

were Christians and Muslims.

During the attack the Muslims just

gave hijabs to the Christian women

and clothes to the Christian men

so that they could not

be divided any more.

And they said to the terrorists,

kill all of us or none of us.

Until the terrorists

fled at the end.

You know, when we found out

we were nominated for an Oscar

we were showing the short film

for the first time in Kenya,

a lot of the cast members

were there and we watched

the announcement together

and what was the reaction?

I think it was screaming,

jumping, flipping!

It was crazy and it was amazing

because there were so many people

in the room who were part of this

and it was a challenging process.

Congratulations, congratulations.

For me it means to be nominated

for an Oscar that it's especially

an honour to the whole team and crew

who worked on the project.

The time we spent here

in LA is like we...

It's the craziest time

I've ever experienced.

We had a lot of interviews,

you have to promote your film,

you have to do campaigning.

I also have a few appointments

because some companies want to speak

with me because they liked

the short film.

The film already opened doors for us

where we never ever thought

about knocking on them before.

Now they are open and going

to the Oscars now, mainly for us

it is kind of really a great honour,

especially to the team.

It was just amazing

being there on the red carpet.

Really experiencing everything.

It was great.

Also the preparations before

were amazing because we had a lot

of fun with hair and make-up

and so many people running around,

very chaotic but great.

Despite not having won the Oscar

it's great being nominated,

it's just winning as well.

The one thing I realised

during the last days,

it's totally possible,

it totally possible to just make

good films and tell good stories

to receive that honour

because people are interested

in films like that and stories

like that so just think

about the next story,

the next film.

I was a little bit surprised how

little at all I was disappointed.

It's just, I'm the same Katja

as before and it's great

we were nominated and I will be

a nominated director

for my whole life.

The Chilean film A Fantastic Woman

made history at the Academy Awards

by becoming the first Oscar-winning

picture to be led by

a transgender actress.

It also marked the first time that

Chile won in the best

foreign-language film category.

Tristan Daily reports.

Set in Santiago in Chile, Marina

is at the centre of this picture.

Her older boyfriend

has died suddenly.

As a transgender woman,

she faces hostility

from doctors and the police.

Her partner's family rejects her,

they don't want her at the funeral.

She retains her dignity,

she holds her ground

and she doesn't give in.

Marina is portrayed

by the transgender Chilean

actress Daniela Vega.

She plays a woman who inhabits

a world very different from her own.

Of course I'm transgender but my

life it's completely different.

I have the opportunity to study.

My family supports me,

my friends support me.

And I have a lot of love around me.

And I think it's

completely different.

Not only has A Fantastic Woman won

an Oscar and received

accolades from critics,

but it's brought inspiration to

the transgender community as well.

To see a trans identified woman

portraying a trans identified

character in a movie that took

the storyline seriously

is ground-breaking.

Honestly, I related from it I think

right from the beginning and that's

just one of many experiences

of trans women out there.

To be able to sit in a movie theatre

and watch a movie with a trans woman

about a trans woman and be able

to connect with it right away, yes.

Daniela Vega sees the movie

as asking more questions than it

does supply answers.

Who is normal and what is normal?

What kind of bodies you can inhabit?

And what kind of love you can live

and what kind of love you cannot

and who says that or not?

While A Fantastic Woman may pose

questions, it also presents

audiences with a piece of cinema

that is hard to categorise.

There are moments of

fantasy amid reality.

Admirers see it as a

very satisfying film.

I like to think as a trans-genre

film about a transgender character.

So the film flirts with...

It's like a romantic film that

becomes a thriller that

becomes a ghost story,

it has moments of fantasy and it

sounds like a musical.

And then it's a character study,

something about a woman,

a film about humiliation and revenge

but at the heart of everything

it is a document of someone real.

In recent years the box office

takings of films that win best

picture at the Oscars have

been relatively small.

The Academy seems

to shun blockbusters.

What is driving this

trend and does it matter?

We have been finding out.

The Shape of Water.

In handing out the best picture

Oscar to The Shape of Water,

the Academy has perpetuated a trend

of often giving the top Academy

Academy Award not to a big,

commercial hit,

but to a less well seen,

independent or arthouse film.

The Shape of Water's

takings have been modest

compared to a blockbuster.

Less than $60 million in the US.

Moonlight, which won best picture

last year, took in just

$28 million domestically.

The year before it was Spotlight

which grossed $45 million

at the US box office.

None of these films

are blockbusters, they are movies

with modest box office ambitions

made on small budgets.

I think that movies that do really

well at the Oscars are original

movies and original movies are risky

and risky movies tend

to get low budgets.

So small budgeted films tend

to do well at the Oscars.

The last time the Academy gave

the best picture prize to a true

Hollywood blockbuster

was with The Lord Of The Rings

The Return Of The King back in 2004.

Many Academy voters work

on Hollywood blockbusters

but perhaps one reason they tend

to vote for smaller films

is because these movies

conform to the image

of what an Oscar-winning

film should be.

It's always best to look

at the awards as a reflection

of Hollywood, as how it wants

to think of itself.

It wants to see itself as socially

and politically engaged.

It wants to see itself

as doing serious acting,

sometimes in all quotes!

It wants to see itself as making

films that will last through time.

Some believe Oscar voters

even harbour a prejudice

towards commercial blockbusters.

They cite Wonder Woman,

critically acclaimed,

it made millions, but failed to get

a single nomination.

The film's detractors would argue

that it just did not

merit Oscar recognition.

But not everyone agrees.

Wonder Woman was the big commercial

movie that should have been

nominated for best picture this year

but it got skunked because it

didn't have snob appeal.

In recent years movies

like Interstellar, The Hunger Games,

should have been nominated for best

picture but they missed out

because voters are still going

for the little snob movies

even though the race has been

expanded to eight, nine, ten films.

The Academy is often accused

of being elitist with its best

picture picks but there are other

reasons why it may not give its top

award to big commercial hits.

I think that it's not necessarily

that there is a prejudice

against commercial fair so much

as when you look at a lot

of the commercial films

of the last few years,

the last decade even,

they have been a lot of franchise

films and sequels and reboots

and they have been mostly action.

And I think that, for a lot

of people, that is a separate

category than the best film

of the year in terms of an award is.

The Academy's favouring of less

widely seen pictures creates

a problem in generating ratings

for the Oscars telecast,

vital to its livelihood.

More viewers will tune

in if blockbusters

have been nominated.

I think the Academy would love

to have more popular

films be nominated.

The Academy, the people who run it,

have no control over that

because it's up to the voters.

In their democratic institution,

the people, the films that get

the most votes are the ones that

are selected and they have

no control over that.

Is the Academy going to continue

to bestow best picture honours

on relatively low profile movies?

Industry economics dictate that

to maximise profits and reach

a broad global audience,

blockbusters need to be

artistically cautious.

In other words, films

unlikely to win Oscars.

So as long as that is the case,

more original, smaller movies

will probably continue to take home

Oscars biggest award.

Well, that brings our

programme to a close.

We hope you have enjoyed the show.

Please remember you can

always reach us online

at bbc.com/talkingmovies and you can

find us on Facebook too.

So, from me, Tom Brook,

and the rest of the Talking Movies

production team here in Los Angeles,

it is goodbye as we leave

you with this year's Oscar-winning

best original song.

# If you close your eyes

and let the music play

# Keep our love alive,

I'll never fade away

# If you close your eyes

and let the music play

# Keep our love alive,

I'll never fade away

# Remember me

# For I will soon be gone

# Remember me

# And let the love we have live on

# And know that I'm

with you the only way that I can be

# So, until you're in my arms again

# Remember me

# Que nuestra cancion

no deje de latir

# Solo con tu amor yo

puedo existir

# Remember me

# Que nuestra cancion

no deje de latir

# Solo con tu amor

yo puedo existir

# Remember me #.