A New Era in American Film

On March 23, 1973, Sacheen Littlefeather, who identified herself as Apache and President of the National Native American Affirmative Image Committee, stood at the podium on the Academy Awards stage to speak on behalf of actor Marlon Brando who had just won the Academy’s award for best actor for his performance in the 1972 film, The Godfather.  In a short speech, she told the Academy that Brando, because of Hollywood’s mistreatment of Native Americans, was refusing the award. While Ms. Littlefeather’s speech was brief,  the reaction to it was not. It opened up a torrent of negativity that accused Brando of being rude.  News sources stated that Brando made a “grandstand play cloaked in hypocrisy,” according to Michael Shulman’s piece in The New Yorker on September 27, 2022 titled: “Revisiting Sacheen Littlefeather’s Shocking Appearance at the 1973 Oscars.” Back in 1973, it appeared America was in denial of its origins and its identity.

Osage Tribal Family 1923. (Photo by Getty Images)

However forty-nine years later in 2022,  the Academy sent a formal letter to Ms. Littlefeather apologizing for the reception she had received, and in 2023 Martin Scorsese brought to the screen Journalist David Grann’s book Killers of the Flower Moon, which documents the wide ranging plan to strip indigenous people of the Osage Nation of the wealth that they had accumulated as a result of the discovery of oil wells on their lands. Scorsese approaches the detailed and complex story with purpose, compassion and respect. Filming it on Osage land, he cast in the lead, Lily Gladstone, who was raised on the Blackfeet Reservation, and included Osage tribal members in other roles.  Scorsese’s film serves as a beacon for a new era. But Scorsese was not the first to pay homage to America’s true origins and diversity departing from America’s master narrative. In 2020, Lee Isaac Chung’s  film Minari, brought to life his Korean parents’ immigration story. 

Minari became Chung’s “love letter” to all immigrant families and the struggles they face in trying to make America their home.  Minari is a leafy green vegetable, sometimes referred to as water celery, but here in the film, where the vegetable multiples in an Arkansas creek bed, it is a metaphor for settling in and establishing roots. And this is what Chung’s main character wants to do: grow Korean vegetables for the thousands of Koreans who have migrated to America. Lee Chung grew up on an Arkansas farm. Minari tells the story of his parents whose persistence yielded crops and a dream. And in the end, the characters are real; they do not represent anything or anyone. And the American Film Academy recognized this. Minari is an American film. Nominated for 6 Academy awards, Yuh Jung-Yoon, who played the grandmother, Soonja, won for best supporting actress, which was the first time a Korean-American has received the award. But Yuh Jung-Yoon is not a Korean-American, but an American, and what makes this a “break out film” is the Film Academy’s recognition of America’s heterogeneity, paving the way for other films.

Everything, Everywhere All At Once, is a 2022 “cinematic experience” described on the A24 production company website as a story about an exhausted Chinese woman, played by Malaysian born, Michelle Yeoh, who can’t seem to finish her taxes. But it is more than a sci-fi romp through a universe of cosmic battles that New York Times critic A.O. Scott calls “messy but glorious.”  It is, to reference A.O. Scott, a “metaphysical, multiverse galaxy-brain head trip” that is at its core, and on its surface, a “bittersweet” domestic drama about immigrant strivings, marital difficulties and a “hurt-filled ballad of mother-daughter love.” And it could not have spoken to its core without taking us on a rampage through an upside down universe where fingers become hot dog fingers. In the end, this predominantly Asian cast directed by the “Daniels” carries us into their world, which garnered seven Oscars including four awards for best acting recognizing that this too is America. 

But the series Shogun signals the need for real change and acceptance. Based on James Clavell’s 1975 novel, Shogun, the 1980 production, while garnering multiple awards, had cast no Japanese Americans in significant roles, if any. Instead Japanese nationals: Yoko Shimada and Toshiro Mifune were cast. However in 2024, the FX series has many Japanese-Americans in roles, one of whom is Hiroyuki Sanada, who is also one of the producers, providing a unique Japanese perspective to the history that is portrayed. In the end, Shogun reaped some 18 Emmy awards paying tribute to America’s heterogeneity, recasting America as a nation of many.