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Oscar Best Picture Films Have a History Highlighting Social Issues
The Academy Awards' best picture category often spotlights films illuminating social issues — and sometimes, even ways to solve them.
Notable best picture nominees that have also raised awareness of living with disabilities and the myriad challenges facing this community include Hal Ashby’s “Coming Home” (1978) and Randa Haines’ “Children of a Lesser God” (1986). Since antisemitism is sadly enough, once again a dangerous, damaging blight on the social landscape, it’s important to credit Kazan’s 1947 film “Gentleman’s Agreement” with its unflinching depiction of the insidious ways that anti-Jewish prejudice poisons the societal well. Decades before the widespread awareness and treatment of addictions was an open subject of talk shows and self-help books, Billy Wilder’s 1945 best picture winner “The Lost Weekend” provided a frank, personal study of a “normal” citizen who becomes powerless to fight against the alcoholism destroying his world.
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