Best Actor, Best Cinematography, Best Film Scorethese were the three Oscars Awards Brady Corbets The Brutalist took home last night in Los Angeles. The film architecture critics love to hate came up short, however, of reeling in the big fish: Best Picture went to Sean Bakers Anora. Why didnt The Brutalist win? And did Anora really deserve the nights highest honor? To the former, it may be the controversy which marred its makers. In January, it was reported producers used generative AI to make Adrien Brodys (Lszl Tths) Hungarian accent more authentic. The Brutalistmay have also been snuffed thanks to criticism from Jewish Currents, Forward, The New Yorker, and other outlets which said Corbet warped Jewish history and trauma into an unrecognizable caricature of itself to make a Hollywood hit, a lamentation this editor is sympathetic with.Independent filmmaker Rebecca Pierce called The Brutalist an unproductive ambiguity. In conversation with Pierce, Siddhartha Mahanta said the movie felt deliberately structured to be a piece of Zionist propaganda. PIN-UPs Whitney Mallet had similar criticisms; she also said Corbets rendition was so surface level, The Brutalist feels as though it was made by someone with a Pinterest-understanding of Brutalism [].Anora is played by Mikey Madison ( NEON)Anora wasnt without its own fair share of flak either, and rightfully so. The Kyiv Independent railed against it for featuring Yuri Borisov, who had previously starred in Russian propaganda films. (Borisov is also known to have visited illegally-occupied Crimea several times, and vocalized support for Russias full-scale invasion of Ukraine.) Pjotr Sauer, writing in The Guardian, said that Russian state propagandists [are] overjoyed at Anoras Oscar triumph. Sauer critically added Anora was a victory for Russian culture.Triumphs and FailuresJudy Becker, The Brutalists production designer who conceived Tths architecture, spoke with Susan Morris for AN last December. Morris, a filmmaker and longtime AN contributor, called The Brutalists production design an alluring bricolage that collapsed multiple peoples and buildings into a single parafiction.Despite Beckers stellar work, the Oscar Award for Best Production Design went to Wicked, starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo. Wickeds production designers were Nathan Crowley and Lee Sandalesarchitecture buffs gave kudos to them for sneaking in Hans Poelzig references, namely Poelzigs Groes Schauspielhaus in Berlin. The Brutalists Lol Crawley did however come out on top for Best Cinematography. Crawley and Corbet were recognized for reviving Vista Vision, a widescreen technique of shooting horizontally rather than vertically on 35mm film stock. At a press preview attended by AN this winter, Corbet said Vista Vision was an endangered species these daysnot many people today have the knowledge to work with it, making The Brutalist that much more special.Adrien Brody as Lszl Tth, the protagonist of The Brutalist (Lol Crawley)David Lynch was sorely missed at the Oscars this year, after having passed just a few weeks ago, but not before seeing Dune: Part Two finish, which was also nominated for Best Cinematography. All in all, The Brutalist ultimately beat out Dune: Part Two, Emilia Prez, Maria, and Nosferatu for that category.Previously, Emilia Prez was a real contenderthat was until racist and Islamaphobic tweets by Karla Sofa Gascn resurfaced, sparking controversy. Emilia Prezs French writer-director Jacques Audiard caught criticism for making an inauthentic and stereotyped portrayal from a crew made up mostly of Europeans, a criticism not unlike what was hurled at The Brutalist and Anora.Making SenseIndeed, much has been said already about The Brutalists triumphs and failures, as well as that of Anoras. But what is it that threads these two films together?It could be that neither work really addresses the gargantuan elephants in their respective rooms: Corbet lets Zionism off the hook for the sake of making Brutalism punk, and Baker whitewashes Brighton Beacha.k.a. Little Odesaas a Russian enclave; he makes no mention of the catastrophic invasion thats ravaged Ukraine for over a decade now, which sparked Ukrainian filmmaker Alexander Rodnyanskys criticism on social media. All this begs the question: If a film wins an Oscar, or is even nominated for one, can it really be that radical? Mohammed El-Kurds new book, Perfect Victims, stakes such a claim against No Other Land, despite that documentarys praise by progressives at The New York Times.Another thread that connects Anora and The Brutalist is that they both deal one way or another with Jewishness. In regard to Anora, almost half of Brighton Beach is Jewish; theres that scene when the oligarchs idiotic son (played by Mark Eydelshteyn) has a menorah tossed at him during a fight.Kieran Culkin and Jesse Eisenberg in A Real Pain ( 2024 Searchlight Pictures)To this editor, the only Oscar-nominated film that really did this delicate subject justice, that of Jewish trauma and tragedy, and what it means to negotiate that hardship today, was A Real Pain, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Culkin. For his part, Culkin took home Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars.A Real Pain is far less sensational than Anora or The Brutalist. It moves much slower, and is the hardest to watch. It follows two cousins who take a trip to Poland to visit their grandmothers house, where she lived before fleeing to escape the Shoah. It deals with intergenerational trauma in a way that struck home with this writer, who also lost family in the Holocaust. Eisenberg, A Real Pains director and writer, whose family is from Krasnystaw and d, knows this feeling. What made me a true believer wasnt A Real Pains Oscar win, however, but rather a speech Eisenberg recently gave at the 2025 BAFTA Film Awards after winning Best Original Screenplay.On stage in London, Eisenberg thanked his wife, Anna, for teaching him my grief is unexceptional, compared to the rest of the world, which is what this film is about. Certainly, while works by Corbet and Baker (neither are Jewish) remain vastly superficial, only Eisenberg breaks the fourth wallhes the only one who really got it right, at at time when Jewish suffering is weaponized to justify unspeakable war crimes in Gaza by Israel, Elon Musk and Steve Bannon wave Nazi salutes, and anti-Semitism is at a record high. A Real Pain resonates on a deep level, and critically prods these painful antagonisms far more than Eisenbergs peers ever could.