I took the overnight train from Baltimore back to Atlanta when returning from winter break. I had my own adaptable, private sleeper car that comprised two train seats facing each other that would later become my twin bed. There was a well-camouflaged toilet that doubled as a coffee table, and a row of lights I could control like a soundboard that gave the room various tones of lighting: one harsh, one harsher, one dim, one black.
I kept my room dark and watched through the wide window at the shadows that were Virginia, the Carolinas and rural, sprawling Georgia. The only light coming from my space was the glow of my laptop; it was the night of the 71st Golden Globe Awards, and I sat there with eyes keen and mind focused, my soul sold to Hollywood. I watched as Cate Blanchett and Matthew McConaughey and Alfonso Cuarón thanked the Hollywood Foreign Press gods and laughed along with those clad in Versace as Tina Fey and Amy Poehler made their dutiful jabs at what it means to be alive in 2014.
I place a high premium on Awards Season, a premium higher than the first day of school, possibly higher than my birthday weekend. Like the NCAA is to my Duke-devoted dad, it's something in which I can invest myself. I can memorize stats and make brackets and follow who is who, who is with whom and who is wearing whom. It's a different kind of March Madness that's in part about legs stepping out of limousines, and the ever-narrowing evolution of the skinny tie; but it's also a madness that requires an appreciation of art, a celebration of creative minds and the obligation to leave our homes and share a communal experience up high on the screen, deep down in the maze-like multiplexes.
When I was home this winter, I tried to verse myself in this year's films as well as I possibly could. I frequented four different movie theaters, saw six films on the Hollywood Foreign Press's list of nominees for the Academy Award for Best Picture and substituted around eight home-cooked dinners for airy, yellow popcorn.
This exploration of film, which I shared with friends and parents and strangers in the rows of the theater, was one that was actually deeply personal. Martin Scorsese's "The Wolf of Wall Street," the Coen brothers' "Inside Llewyn Davis" and Spike Jonze's "Her," despite their artistic disparities, kept me up at night thinking about the characters I'd met and the slices of their lives I had intruded upon and what it all meant about the big stuff like power and love and self-actualization. No film changed me in any long-term way, but each time, I entered the theater in one emotional state and left in another.
Since the world of movies can have such a profound and often subliminal effect on how we feel and perceive the world, I find that each year at this time, I grow attached to one film in particular, that I start to view as my own and root for with everything in me. In the past few years, I've adopted "No Country for Old Men," "The Fighter," "The King's Speech" and "The Descendants" and have watched closely as big names open little envelopes.
This year, my heart is with "Nebraska," directed by the infamous Alexander Payne, who directed the brilliant family dynamic piece "The Descendants" (2011) and older works like "Sideways" (2004) and "Election," (1999) the latter featuring a pre-"Legally Blonde" Reese Witherspoon. "Nebraska" is a film everyone should see on the big screen. It's consciously filmed in a clear, 35-mm black and white and illustrates a portrait of a sprawling, empty and wintery Nebraska, a place I've never visited or even seen on a fake ID.
The piece introduces us to Woody (Bruce Dern, "Monster"), a deranged man non-accepting of his old age who is convinced he's on his way to winning $1 million dollars in a magazine sweepstakes. His son David (Will Forte, "Saturday Night Live"), out of love, drives him from their home in Missouri all the way to Nebraska to collect his fortune. I thought about my own parents for days after watching this film and realized how beautiful and real this piece is. It's about caring, and being cared for, and knowing that sometimes, what happens when driving someone somewhere for something is more important than the somewhere and the something.
The 86th Academy Awards, which will air live on Sunday, March 2, will be a night everyone should experience from their apartments, or dorms or overnight train sleeper car twin beds, regardless of what films we've all seen or not seen, loved or despised. It's a night for the industry to celebrate the world, but also a night for the world to celebrate the industry, and I'll be the first to say that it's one that deserves some serious celebrating.
– Contact Ellie Kahn
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