Sing Sing: Everything the Academy Fails to Uphold
As the 2024-25 film award season finally comes to an end, I can’t help but reflect the feelings of disappointment that many other self-proclaimed cinephiles have experienced. Aside from the usual yearly discourse and controversy regarding movies that didn’t get nominated for certain categories (Challengers score, I will avenge you), this season clearly showed a disconnect between the major governing film bodies and film audiences . From the absolute dumpster fire that is the entirety of Emilia Perez to performance-altering AI usage in multiple productions and voting members of the Academy admitting that they either did not finish or completely ignored the nominated films they are expected to critically engage with,these just barely scratch the surface of the commotion and drama surrounding this award season.
It begs a variety of questions: have these award ceremonies that claim to be the beacon of absolute success and objective taste lost their legitimacy? Should filmmakers be expected to focus on award-bait movies of hyper-specific genres just for the possibility of being acknowledged and MAYBE being given adequate funding and support to develop future projects? What does this microcosm of the societal devaluation of art do for the perceptions and productions of artistic work as a whole? What is the future of film?
While certainly every year there are movies and actors I personally love that get overlooked during award season, one particular Oscar snubbing hit me particularly hard: Greg Kwedar’s Sing Sing. Despite Sing Sing’s lack of nomination for Best Picture, I found it to be one of the strongest and most powerful films of the cycle. Combining professional actors such as Colman Domingo with formerly incarcerated actors, Sing Sing tells the story of incarcerated men putting on a play through the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts program at Sing Sing Correctional Facility.
Beyond the expected themes of resilience and hope, the theme of trust from both an interpersonal and systemic perspective in particular stuck out to me. From the interpersonal, Divine Eye’s reluctance within the RTA show eventually allows him to be vulnerable and begin not only to trust the show process, but his fellow inmates and performers as well. On the systemic side, we see that despite being incarcerated in a maximum-security prison for a crime that he didn’t commit, Divine G trusts that the system will prove his innocence. So when the system inevitably doubts and questions him to the point of rejection, it reminds us of the ways in which these institutions not only erode our trust in them and one another, but seek to strip us of our humanity.
Coming out of the movie theatre with my friend, I felt a spark of hope and a newfound reminder of how art serves as a bridge between different people, but also a liberatory purpose: showing us that better futures and a better world for humanity are possible. People can change and deserve the opportunity to thrive despite their worst circumstances, and it reaffirms that systems whichonly seek to exacerbate the worst parts of ourselves must be destroyed.
In a sea of slop and controversy, Sing Sing shined as a reminder of what art should be, not what is commercially and socially acceptable to a particular class of people that only care about business and profit. So as corny as it sounds, watching Coleman Domingo’s heartfelt performance lose felt like a slap in the face to art itself, reaffirming that these institutions only seek to uphold normative conventions of art and profit, even if that means eroding the trust and faith of the very people who engage with and create these works.
Despite its losses on the big stage, Sing Sing ultimately reminds us of what art is supposed to be and mean to us while illuminating the failures of these large institutions.