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Love is the biggest winner at Oscars 2018

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Kaveree Bamzai
Kaveree BamzaiMar 05, 2018 | 18:43

Love is the biggest winner at Oscars 2018

The Oscars 2018 were definitely about women — about their power and finally the acceptance of their commercial viability (Wonder Woman, anyone?). But more than that, the Oscars this year were about love in the age of hate. Not just the winners but the nominees. Whether it was The Shape of Water, Guillermo del Toro's monster fantasy where the love of a good sea creature saves a deaf-mute woman from savage loneliness or Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri where the fierce love of a mother sees her refusing to give up on finding her daughter's rapist and killer, love trumped hate. Love in all its diversity — not just romantic love but all sorts of love.

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So love could redeem the racist police officer played so well by the underrated Sam Rockwell in Three Billboards. Love was the reason Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer got time out in James Ivory's screenplay for the sun dappled beauty Call Me By Your Name.

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Love chokes in Phantom Thread.

Love was why Laurie Metcalf's mother could let her daughter Saoirse Ronan go in Greta Gerwig's gorgeous coming-of-age movie Lady Bird. Love pushed Allison Janney's monster mother to ensure Margot Robbie's Tonya Harding kept training to become a world champion skater in I, Tonya. Love got Daniel Kaluuya entwined in the strange goings on in Get Out. And love was what kept Daniel Day Lewis wedded to a woman who so clearly set his teeth on edge in the exquisite but suffocating Phantom Thread.

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Greta Gerwig's gorgeous coming-of-age movie Lady Bird was about love and letting go. 

The air is so thick with issues that add to the paranoia of the moment. The world is in the midst of a hate wave. Relations between men and women are on the cusp of a dramatic transformation as women rise up to speak up for themselves, declaring #MeToo and #TimesUp. Guns are so easily available in the United States that president Donald Trump can actually suggest that school teachers be armed to make schools safe spaces. Religious divisions are splitting societies while caste and racial politics are rearing their ugly heads. Rahul Gandhi may speak of the politics of love but few seem to be willing to listen to him, and even fewer seem to want to vote for his party given the results in the three northeastern states recently. Toxicity rules on social media and in the real world.

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Is it any surprise that movies want to transport us to a time when people are good — as in Black Panther, when mythical countries like Wakanda can declare the wise want to build bridges and the foolish want to build walls. Or in Wonder Woman, where a tribe of women warriors can keep the hateful world at bay at the idyllic island of Themyscira. And these are just the blockbusters.

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Love in The Shape of Water.

At the parade of worthier movies that perhaps don't bring in so much cash but much critical acclaim, cinema is celebrating a more heroic era. So one has the extraordinary spectacle of Dunkirk and The Darkest Hour being made in the same year, giving the world two aspects of the same event, both showing the courage that saw the Allies eventually winning World War II, when stunning sacrifices were demanded of and given by men in circumstances that were unimaginably trying.

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Frances McDormand won her second Oscar for best actress 21 years after her first.

So thank the Oscars not just for Frances McDormand who won her second Academy Award for best actress 21 long years after her first - showing that it is possible to have a long lasting career in the movies if you have the talent, determination, and a story to tell, no matter which gender, colour, ethnicity you belong to.

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The huddled masses will always be yearning to breathe free, and as the #MeToo movement has shown, change is possible. Love is all you need.

Last updated: March 06, 2018 | 20:06
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