Danielle Deadwyler and Jalyn Hall in Till.
Arnold Gorlick saw one of the best leading-actress performances on the screen — then was outraged not to see it acknowledged Sunday night at the Oscars.
Westvillean Gorlick, who founded and for two decades ran Madison Art Cinemas, offered his take on this year’s Oscars during a conversation Monday morning on WNHH FM.
He noted that the movie Till failed to be nominated for any of the top awards — not even for best actress, despite an historic performance by Danielle Deadwyler as Mamie Till, mother of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old whose brutal murder (for allegedly whistling at a white girl) in 1955 provoked national outrage over unchecked deadly Southern racism.
“That truly is one of the greatest on-screen performances I’ve ever seen,” Gorlick said. “There was a moment where she was in the courthouse in Mississippi and was on a platform. And of course, the racism was filling the courtroom, how she was treated, how people talked to her, her lawyers, her entourage, and so on. The camera was looking up at her. She was testifying as they were asking provocative questions like: ‘How do you know that’s your son.’ Most of us know the story of Emmett Till. He was disfigured beyond recognition by his beating.
“In about 10 minutes with an unbroken camera, you could see the contortions in the woman’s face, her fluttering eyes, her eyes rolling, her grief, her authenticity in talking about what it meant to see her son in that state and who he was and what her relationship with him was. For that 10 minutes alone it was one full take. It took my breath away, was one of the great performances truly this year. That she was not nominated for best actress, I think is a crime.”
Gorlick’s theory on how Deadwyler and Till failed to make the cut Sunday night: a critical mass of Academy judges failed to view the film.
Click on the above video to watch the full post-Oscars conversation Monday with Arnold Gorlick.
Meanwhile, if you’re looking for something fun to do Tuesday night, you can show up at the revived biweekly “Yale-New Haven Regular Singing” session, held at 469 College St. Room 106 Tuesday from 7 – 9 p.m. (Attendees are asked to wear masks and to have received Covid-19 vaccinations.)
These communal sacred harp/shape-note singing sessions have started up again after a pandemic pause: You don’t need to know anything about music to participate, learning a part to sing along with a dozen or more other New Haveners in the New England hymn tradition. Yale Department of Music Chair Ian Quinn, a prime mover in the sessions, spoke about the tradition and its New Haven incarnation on WNHH Monday morning; click on the above video to watch the interview and hear some of the music.
Also on WNHH Monday morning, a newcomer to New Haven’s jobs-of-the-future team, Ryan Diggs, spoke about plans for Climate Haven, the climate-tech incubator that has opened under his direction at 770 Chapel St. Click on the above video to watch the interview; click here to read a previous article on the town-gown effort.
It seems apparent that the Oscars have a racial quota. While a number of white movies and actors can and will be nominated and awarded each year. Only one race other than white can have the spotlight, if at all, for the major categories.
The "Everything Everywhere All at Once," an Asian-American movie, overwhelmed the racial quota this year, bumping out Best-Supporting Actress Angela Bassett for a well-deserved win and leaving "Till" and Danielle Deadwyler off the list altogether.
The Oscar Committee (or whatever they are called) seems to protect themselves from criticism by trading one so-called minority race for another. At the same time, no such protection is needed for white entertainers and white-led movies.
Samuel T. Ross-Lee