Oscar Best Picture Nominees Like ‘Dune’ and ‘Belfast’ Show Characters at a Crossroads

variety.com:

Todd Gilchrist The push-pull relationship between an individual developing his or her sense of self and the external forces trying to steer them — be they parental, professional, political or cultural — creates a tension that is common, and formative, to many people’s lives.

Despite the wildly different stories that they tell, many of this year’s best picture nominees vividly illustrate this universal conflict, examining the challenge of retaining or asserting one’s identity while the world around them attempts to impose pressure or exert its influence.As perhaps the most fantastical of the nominees, “Dune” sends young Paul Atreides ( Timothée Chalamet) on a journey that owes no small debt to Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, but director and co-writer Denis Villenueve weaves a complex tapestry between the lineage into which the character was born, the overlapping but sometimes dueling ambitions of his mother and father, the feudal aristocracy of the film’s futuristic setting, and the almost primal sense of home and harmony that Paul feels once he arrives on the desert planet of Arrakis. “It’s something very mysterious for me that some human beings have a very strong instinct to find elements, people or an environment that will help them to grow up,” Villenueve tells Variety. “Paul struggles with a religious heritage, and also a genetic heritage, and he gets free of them by embracing a new way of life that will allow him to confirm his identity and get stronger and become a real adult from being in contact with another culture.”The filmmaker says he wanted the narrative of “Dune” to mirror Paul’s self-discovery.