The best photo race? Ten nominees in search of a love story

Something is missing from the nominees for the best picture of the year.

Oh dear, The queen of women, To And Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. We know that films with a black theme are unregistered.

But something even more fundamental than race was left out of the nominations for Hollywood’s top honor, the Best Picture Oscar. There was no love story. No great romance. We never got any closer than the obligatory romantic subplot Top Gun: Maverickor the shattered blue idyll within Avatar: The Way of Wateror the predators of tar.

Maybe there weren’t many love stories to choose from. Maybe the film school voters just weren’t in the mood. In any case, they will have marked 2022/23 as a largely loveless season in the upper echelon of the film world – which is a departure.

For the last decade, Best Picture nominees have always included a love story or two (but usually not three — the Oscars tend to be more important than that). headlightor smart design, as in parasitethan to a simple romance).

Granted, 2020 was close. This year’s nominees were exceptionally thoughtful: The sound of metal, Judas and the Black Messiah, Promising young woman, The trial of the Chicago Seven and such. But the winner land of the nomadsOn closer inspection, it turns out to be a love story. Without her missing, deceased husband’s hideout, Frances McDormand would have been going in circles.

In 2016, two romantic fables from the previous year got along well. at the very last moment moonlightsnatched from Oscar’s hands about two men who found each other after years apart the country, about two lovers who break up after their Hollywood moment together. It was a good year for love.

Likewise in 2019. A star is born not won But by the end of the season, it was hard to separate fact from fiction, Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga, Jackson and Ally Maine.

The shape of the water was a winner in 2018 when cross-species love took over. marriage story kept the fire burning nearly two years later. The already mentioned ten year run started with Love And silver lining playbook in 2013, and continue with American rush And His, The theory of everything, Brooklyn, Call me by your name, West side story.

Admittedly, it wasn’t usually romantic in the biggest ways, like titanic or The English patient or Shakespeare in love.

But they kept the romance alive. They have given the Oscars a beating heart that unfortunately seems to be missing this year.