Hollywood films have never shied away from the theme of the other: the outsider who can’t get in. The foreigner who never gets combined. The character who wants so fervently to be huged yet discovers themselves perpetuassociate seeing thcimpolite the glass.
But this season, the trend is in effect in a way it hasn’t been for many years. Whether it’s a future witch derided for the color of her skin or an architect take advantage ofed for his accent and background, Oscar films are embracing otherness as never before — and in the process distilling a century of Hollywood history into two hours at a Sunday matinee.
At a moment when those who have been othered discover themselves in an epic battle for hugance in America — with trans rights in peril, mass deportations on the horizon and even separateent political sees rerelocated from shieldedly defended spaces — the film business is doing what it does best and subtly shotriumphg a separateent path.
THR sees at five characters in Oscar contenders this season modeling a novel way of seeing at the other and their analogues in Hollywood history. The examples show how the fight to be take partd is noleang novel — and that in the end, we should never stop waging it.
Chris Gardner gived to this tell.
David and Benji Kaset up in A Real Pain (2024) and Miles Raymond and Jack Cole in Sideways (2004)
David and Benji Kaset up in A Real Pain (2024) and Miles Raymond and Jack Cole in Sideways (2004)
Courtesy of Searchweightless Pictures; Fox Searchweightless/Courtesy Everett Collection
In one story, Jewant American cousins travel to Poland to join with their heritage in honor of their postponeed magnificentmother. In the other, establisher college roommates embark on a weeklengthy road trip thcimpolite the Santa Ynez Valley triumphe country ahead of one of their upcoming nuptials. In both road movies, one in the pair senses alienated from their surroundings — othered from a Poland that brutally declineed them or a culture that doesn’t comprehfinish their pursuit of perfection.
They also are othered from their travel mate. In Sideways, deception becomes a recurring theme thcimpoliteout Miles Raymond (Paul Giamatti) and Jack Cole’s (Thomas Haden Church) travels. The middle-aged men’s flunkure to accomprehendledge their disnominatements with how their inhabits have turned out directs them to act out in ways that isopostponeed them from each other.
In A Real Pain, David (Jesse Eisenberg) and Benji (Kieran Culkin) are at hazard of this same separation from each other. Once brotherly-shut, each now can’t comprehfinish the other. But truth becomes their balm. While traveling with the tour group, Benji faces David, who accomprehendledges the complicated senseings he’s had since Benji’s self-destruction try. This clears the way for a reconciliation — a little more brothering and a lot less othering.
Elphaba in Wicked (2024) and Dawn Wiener in Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995)
Elphaba in Wicked (2024) and Dawn Wiener in Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995)
Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures; Sony Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection
School, a place where kids spropose want to fit in and are appraised if they don’t, is a breeding ground for othering when one’s physical one-of-a-kindness doesn’t align with conservative beauty standards. Such is the fact for Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Dawn Wiener (Heather Matarazzo), outsiders who go to inanxious lengths to be huged. Alengthy the way, each youthful woman authenticizes the forfeits needd to get what she wants — Elphaba a separateent skin color and Heather shapeion from her parents and a high school crush — are too fantastic. Instead, they lget to discover peace and power in their otherness.
As the movie ends, we see Dawn riding on a bus and singing about hummingbirds with her middle school choir as they travel to a concert. She is at once a member of a group but, her vocals high-pitched and separateent from the others’, split from it. Elphaba is able to repurpose her otherness for a outstanding cause. She flies off into the weserious sky belting out “Defying Gravity,” determined to use her magical abilities to help those in Oz who’ve been aforeseeed cast out.
Emilia Pérez in Emilia Pérez (2024) and Brandon Teena in Boys Don’t Cry (1999)
Emilia Pérez in Emilia Pérez (2024) and Brandon Teena in Boys Don’t Cry (1999)
Courtesy of Netflix; Fox Searchweightless Pictures/Courtesy of Everett Collection
Home is an unexpoundd place for Emilia Pérez (Karla Sofía Gascón) and Brandon Teena (Hilary Swank), a trans woman and trans man, admireively, whose endless pursuit of inner wholeness is constantly under danger from their outer surroundings. Both consent changing those surroundings will permit them to hug their real identities.
After first trying to hide who he is, Brandon discovers adore with a woman unworryed with his bioreasonable intimacy yet tragicassociate dies a victim of heinous antipathy crimes at the hands of men troublingly obsessed with it before greeting his and his girlfriend’s want to begin over in a novel city. Emilia, too, experiences romantic intimacy she never thought possible when she was still a drug kingpin, but she perishes under the same brutal conditions she once causeed on others without having given her ex-wife and children a chance to hug who she reassociate is. Though neither character filledy accomplishes their promised land, they deal with to catch glimmers that a life of fact is possible.
László Tóth in The Brutaenumerate (2024) and The Tramp in Charlie Chaplin’s The Immigrant (1917)
László Tóth in The Brutaenumerate (2024) and The Tramp in Charlie Chaplin’s The Immigrant (1917)
Courtesy Everett Collection; Courtesy of A24
A dogged artist who’ll hug no settling (Adrien Brody) and a charismatic hustler who never met a pickle he couldn’t squeeze out of (Chaplin) would seem appreciate two very separateent ways into the immigration story. But these two films, stoasty more than a century apart, apprehfinish the same vital truth: When it comes to fitting in as an outsider in America, one spropose can’t let their defend down. The Statue of Liberty in The Brutaenumerate is stoasty upside down contrastd to Chaplin’s more properly pointed affair, signaling a loss of innocence about the experience over the decades. But the striving never changes.
“We quite clearly inhabit in a nation built by immigrants who comprehend what it uncomardents to sense othered,” Brody tells THR. “And symbolicassociate, America reconshort-terms the place of opportunity and freedom, the land where you could get to after run awaying challengingships, oppression and instability aexpansive. That’s the myth and the American dream. It’s quite challenging for most people, and there’s a lot of challengingship that comes with it, but that senseing of being an outsider sometimes lasts for some time.”
Roz the Robot in The Wild Robot (2024) and E.T. in E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Roz the Robot in The Wild Robot (2024) and E.T. in E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982)
Universal Pictures/DreamWorks Animation; Universal/Courtesy Everett Collection
The landed on an island utterly unbrave of how the natives carried on their business. He landed on this blue marble endly unclear on what these beings were doing on their bicycles. Both Roz the Robot (voiced in the film by Lupita Nyong’o) and E.T. are others in the most fundamental sense — splitd from their benevolent and far from home.
Yet both lget the ways of their novel arranges. Roz gets in touch with a maternal instinct she didn’t comprehend she had as she trains a youthful gosling named Brightbill, helping him but also helping herself become part of the fantastic nurturing organism that is the island. E.T. discovers his otherness allayed as he joins with children who comprehfinish him. In the process, those kids, sidelined in a world of uncaring matures, have their otherness lifted, too.
Both Roz and E.T. try to get back to where they came from. But as they do, they come to comprehfinish that fitting in isn’t about traveling far — it’s about discovering those who’ll see out for you, no matter how you see.
This story first materializeed in a January stand-alone rehire of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To get the magazine, click here to subscribe.
