On March 4th, the 90th Academy Awards celebrated the year’s achievements in filmmaking. The Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Actress and Best Director were just some of the awards handed out at the ceremony honoring excellence in the film industry.
During the show, the Academy showed a video montage of some of the best moments, clips and memorable scenes from the past 90 years of filmmaking. Everything from To Kill A Mockingbird to Tropic Thunder was included and highlighted just why we watch movies in the first place. We go to the movies to laugh, cry and enjoy movie making at its finest, but also to be drawn into a story and to lose ourselves in a world that a collection of writers, directors, actors, composers and countless others have crafted for our enjoyment.
Sure, for every Goodfellas or Get Out we get to watch, we are also given an Emoji Movie. Not every movie is going to be an artistic masterpiece worthy of the Oscar for Best Picture, but not every release has to be. There is something seriously enjoyable about being able to sit down for two hours and enjoy a movie like The Fast and The Furious, where you can simply unplug your brain and have some fun.
The montage shown by the Academy was set to some of the best scores that we’ve listened to over the course of the past 90 years, music that is almost as important as the acting is when it comes to getting you drawn into a scene. Think about it, could you imagine not having John Williams’ “Imperial March” in Star Wars? Iconic doesn’t even begin to do that composition justice, and we are all the better for having heard it.
The quote from the legendary critic Roger Ebert is at the center of this montage and describes perfectly why we go to the movies:
“The purpose of civilization is to be able to empathize with other people and for me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy. It lets you understand a little bit more about different hopes, aspirations, dreams and fears.”
Check out the Oscars montage video below:
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