And the Sun’s Oscar Goes to….

The 97th Academy Awards will be presented Sunday evening, and the pundits are predicting a photographic finish. Among the frontrunners for Best Picture are “Conclave,” a drama about the selection of a new pontiff, and “A Complete Unknown,” a coming of age tale of the young Bob Dylan. The Academy has already voted, but let us put in an absentee ballot for “A Complete Unknown” — a film with politics as memorable as its music.“A Complete Unknown” is as compelling a case as can be found for moving on from the left-wing doctrines that captured the generation of folk musicians who ruled the roost before Mr. Dylan (Timothée Chalamet in the movie) showed up. His fellow singer and sometimes lover, Joan Baez (Monica Barbaro) describes him in her own hit song “Diamonds and Rust” as coming “on the scene already a legend, an unwashed phenomenon.”That phenomenon slid into the orbit of Pete Seeger, played by Edward Norton. Messrs. Chalamet and Norton, as well as Ms. Barbaro, are all nominated for Oscars in their own right. “A Complete Unknown” tracks Mr. Dylan’s growth as a musician, which was also a journey away from Seeger’s brand of leftist politics. For seven years, between 1942 and 1949, Seeger was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party.That Seeger eventually regretted his Stalinists susceptibilities was a scoop of the Sun’s correspondent Ron Radosh. Mr. Radosh had written an article critical of the old leftist, and was astonished when Seeger responded, writing “I think you’re right — I should have asked to see the gulags when I was in [the] USSR.” He even wrote a song about his disillusionment with Stalin, who “ruled with an iron hand / He put an end to the dreams / Of so many in every land.”“A Complete Unknown” succeeds on the strength of its acting, its writing, and most of all its music. When Mr. Dylan — spoiler alert — goes electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, it feels like an artistic Rubicon has been crossed even as personal bonds have been sundered. Seeger and his camarilla insist that music be bent to a leftist political program. Mr. Dylan pursued his own Muse. If he was prophetic, it was in the service of no program.As he would when, decades later, he wrote “Neighborhood Bully,” as trenchant a political ballad as has ever been composed. His was about the double standard by which Israel is judged. One stanza goes “The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land / He’s wandered the earth an exiled man / Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn / He’s always on trial for just being born/ He’s the neighborhood bully.”If “A Complete Unknown” is Oscar-worthy, our Razzie goes to “Conclave.” No disrespect to Ralph Fiennes and Isabella Rossellini, who put in fine performances and are themselves nominated for high honors. Yet “Conclave” mocks the Church with a sacrilegious ending. And while the real-life Bishop of Rome lays on his sickbed, no less. For best picture, the academy can give Best Picture to “A Complete Unknown” — and won’t need to “think twice.”

And the Sun’s Oscar Goes to….

And the Sun’s Oscar Goes to….

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