More stories

  • in

    ‘Three Minutes: A Lengthening’ Review: A Ghost Story

    Using footage from a three-minute amateur movie shot in 1938, this rousing documentary about a Jewish town in Poland is a haunting meditation on the memory of the Holocaust.In 2009, the writer Glenn Kurtz discovered a badly-degraded three-minute film in the attic of his parents’ Florida home. That film, a kind of vacation home-movie shot in 1938 by Kurtz’s grandfather, David Kurtz, contains seemingly innocuous footage of the Polish town of Nasielsk — David’s birthplace as well as one of the hundreds of Jewish communities eventually devastated by the Holocaust.Not that the majority of us would be able to discern the film’s menacing context. Silent and grainy, it shows children crowding around the camera, bearded elders staring from a distance, people spilling out of a building that you might recognize is a synagogue — if you look carefully.“Three Minutes: A Lengthening,” by the Dutch filmmaker Bianca Stigter, is committed to just that: looking carefully. The images from David’s three-minute film — at first shown from beginning to end, then chopped, screwed and colorized, with several moments rewound and played over and over again — comprise the entirety of Stigter’s stirring documentary.“Three Minutes” draws from Kurtz’s book, “Three Minutes in Poland,” which chronicles the author’s efforts to identify the people in the film, many of whom ultimately perished in concentration camps. Stigter’s documentary unfolds using voice-over narration by Helena Bonham Carter as well as voice-over testimony from Kurtz and some of the individuals who assisted his research.David’s three-minute film gives us access to a reality that hasn’t really been captured on camera, one of a regular Polish town during that prewar period when life was still normal and danger remained in the shadows. Stigter and Kurtz guide our gazes, revealing the vast universes contained in each frame — from neighborhood politics to the background of a local grocery store. “Three Minutes” is more than a documentary about the Holocaust — it is an investigative drama, a meditation on the ethics of moving images and a ghost story about people who might be forgotten should we take those images for granted.Three Minutes: A LengtheningRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 9 minutes. In theaters. More

  • in

    ‘Orphan: First Kill’ Review: Still Slashing After All These Years

    Isabelle Fuhrman, who in “Orphan” had to be convincing as a child of age 9, reprises her role 13 years later in this prequel set two years earlier.While no classic, “Orphan” (2009), starring Vera Farmiga and Peter Sarsgaard as parents to a homicidal adoptee, deserves a place in the pantheon of bad-seed thrillers, both for Farmiga’s commitment to the assignment and one jolt so outrageously fatuous it somehow plays as brilliant.Now there is “Orphan: First Kill,” a belated prequel with a different director (the flat-footed William Brent Bell instead of the first movie’s Jaume Collet-Serra). Looking like it was shot on a cheap video format, it lacks the original’s scares and suavity, apart from an early escape set piece designed to resemble a fluid take. But the sheer derangement of its plot and a bizarre casting gambit make it more interesting than standard straight-to-streaming schlock.Start with the casting: How could Isabelle Fuhrman, who 13 years ago had to be convincing as a child of age 9, reprise the role in her 20s, on the heels of her acclaimed turn as a monomaniacal college rower in “The Novice”? Through a combination of doubles, stagecraft and sly tricks with framing and optics — Fuhrman’s face and feet are almost never clearly seen in the same shot — the filmmakers have metamorphosed her within license.The actress’s resurrection of her murderous character — who here sometimes edges into camp, playing piano with bloody hands or swigging vodka in an airplane lavatory — may be the movie’s most grounded aspect. The plot, set in 2007, follows Leena (as her real name turned out to be) as she worms her way from Estonia to Connecticut, where she impersonates the missing child of an affluent couple (Julia Stiles and Rossif Sutherland).If “Orphan” was an unlikely showcase for Farmiga, “Orphan: First Kill” gives red meat to Stiles, who plays a protective mother with surprising gusto.Orphan: First KillRated R. Kills, none of them Leena’s first. Running time: 1 hour 39 minutes. Watch on Paramount+. More

  • in

    ‘Learn to Swim’ Review: A Tooth Ache and All This Jazz

    The feature directing debut of Thyrone Tommy is a fractured romance between a young saxophonist and a chanteuse.At the start of “Learn to Swim,” Dezi (Thomas Antony Olajide) trembles slightly as puts his saxophone to his lips. The Canadian director Thyrone Tommy cuts from that opening image to a quintet flowing in beautiful sync at a club. The scene grooves. The band’s trumpet-playing leader, Sid (Christef Desir), and Dezi ply their onstage chemistry. A guest vocalist, Selma (Emma Ferreira), takes the microphone promising “I see you. I see you” in a spoken-word riff. And isn’t that the spark of many a romance: Being seen?Selma and Dezi begin an affair. Although begin is a tricky matter. Because their relationship is recounted through Dezi’s memories, which are themselves refracted through a prism of pain caused by heartbreak and the most mundane of ailments: a tooth ache.Dezi’s abscess and his swollen jaw signal when he is in the sullen present or occupies the potent, volatile past. Some of this drama’s hurts go beyond the romantic, carrying the weight of the African diaspora. Others come from mourning: Dezi shares a disquieting anecdote with Selma about his deceased mother. And the living, no-nonsense Black women here — Selma’s friend Jesse (Khadijah Salawu); neighbor Sal (Andrea Davis) — hint at a protagonist in need of nurturing.In this feature directing debut, with a screenplay he co-wrote with Marnie Van Dyk, Tommy works well with his ensemble and is clearly intrigued by emotional states. Or at least the idea of them. “Learn to Swim” is lovely to behold, but the sullen artist at the center feels too often like he’s drowning in melancholia and might take us down with him.Learn to SwimNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

  • in

    John Boyega Won’t Let Go of ‘Star Wars’ or ‘Coming to America’

    The star of “Breaking” talks about Fela Kuti, Hans Zimmer, Cha Cha Chicken and other sources of inspiration.John Boyega was born in London to parents who grew up in Nigeria and raised their children in a house that felt like a piece of their home country inside the United Kingdom.“When we got into our house, that was Lagos to us, that was Nigeria,” Boyega said in a recent interview. “The way we were disciplined and the lessons that we learned were all in direct link to Nigeria.”That meant he was always told he was going to work hard, education was a priority, bible study was on Tuesday and church was on Sunday. At services, he played the drums, his sister played keyboard, and his father was the minister.“Other ministers would say the story of Noah’s Ark in a way that was kind of simple,” he said. “But my dad would give the animals characters and break the story down so you could relate and he would act out things.”Boyega inherited his father’s flair for storytelling and was drawn to acting. Hollywood, however, seemed remote. “Growing up in inner-city London, American movies felt worlds away,” he said. “We didn’t even have the same accents.”American films don’t get any bigger than the Star Wars franchise, which carried Boyega to international stardom when he was cast as Finn — the stormtrooper turned resistance fighter — in the most recent trilogy, culminating with 2019’s “The Rise of Skywalker.” This month, Boyega stars in the movie “Breaking,” as a father and former Marine who robs a bank to avoid homelessness.Here, he talks about the films that inspired his career, the music that brings him closer to home and the chicken he takes extra-spicy. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Burna Boy He’s one of the most prolific leaders in bringing Afro beats to the forefront. The lyrics, melody, soul and spirit of his music includes what we know as African and what we know as Nigerian. His song, “Time Flies,” is almost like an emotional letter for me. I just love his music.2. “MJ the Musical” I think Michael Jackson was one of the main factors that motivated me to act. It was the music videos for me, the imagination, the dance moves, the energy of the performance. Going to see “MJ the Musical” on Broadway recently was mind-blowing. The lead actor, Myles Frost, was an absolute standout.3. “Coming to America” This movie is a lifelong classic in my family. The first time we watched it, my dad walked in during the scene where the woman tells him: “The royal penis is clean, your highness.” That was real awkward. I watch it at least once a year just to get a little giggle on. There’s always something new I find.4. Young Vic Theater Especially for me growing up in the theater scene, the Young Vic in London has always been a place where you can see new writers and directors come in and do some really great plays. The last time I went there, I was actually working at the Old Vic, just a few yards away.5. New Afrika Shrine: I first visited Fela Kuti’s venue in 2017 to see a concert by his son, Seun Kuti. It was my first time being with my boys in Nigeria. We had a great night. Now I go back every time I go to Nigeria. For me, it’s one of the most prolific cultural hubs, especially if you are into Afro beats and if you want to hear music from the same lineage from the king of Afro beats, which is the great Fela Kuti.6. “Half of a Yellow Sun” I read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel, which takes place against the backdrop of the Nigerian civil war, after I was offered to play a role in the movie. Knowing that I was going to star in the feature film while I was reading it brought me closer to a history that I didn’t know about my own culture.7. Hans Zimmer I’ll listen to any of Hans Zimmer’s movie scores. I don’t always listen to music that tells me what to think. I find that with movie scores, especially if you’re an avid listener, the songs can change up on you and mean something completely different. Also, I like to work out to a song of his called “I Don’t Think Now Is the Best Time” off the “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” score. It’s more than 10 minutes long and it gets me through a lot of my workouts.8. “Kidulthood” I never considered that I would exist in American movies. But when I watched “Kidulthood,” which had Black Brits in it, I thought: wow, you can be an actor. The accents that are in it, I’m sure that they were local, from places I knew in London. It kind of opened my eyes that there was British film and there were opportunities in British film for Black actors.9. Cha Cha Chicken This is one of my favorite places to go in Santa Monica. It’s a really grounded, Jamaican/Caribbean-inspired restaurant. I literally just took my mom and nephews down there. The food is delicious. I get the half Cha Cha chicken — extra spicy — plantains, rice and beans, and the salad on the side.10. “Star Wars: Battlefront” This is the video game that I play the most. I started playing it before Finn was an idea, long before I was cast in the films. Now, sometimes I play as Finn against people I don’t know. So, being a fan of it and now being on it, that’s something that I’ve always kept private. More

  • in

    ‘Look Both Ways’ Review: To Be and Not to Be

    This Netflix drama stages a delusion of young womanhood by tracking its heroine down forking paths: one in which she gets pregnant, and one in which she pursues a career.Natalie (Lili Reinhart) is an ambitious college senior with her future mapped out. But after a one-night stand leads to vomiting, she decides to take a pregnancy test.“Look Both Ways,” a deluded Netflix drama, stages this moment as a crossroads. It envisions divergent futures for our heroine: one in which her test is negative and another in which it is positive.Mimicking the thought experiment conducted in “Sliding Doors,” the movie intercuts scenes from these two fates. The first finds Natalie on a road trip to Los Angeles with her bestie, Cara (Aisha Dee), where she pursues a job in animation. At the same time, a parallel Natalie grimly resigns herself to motherhood and moves home to raise the baby alongside her chagrined parents (Andrea Savage and Luke Wilson).In a handy cinematic shorthand, the director, Wanuri Kahiu, distinguishes between the two realms through color, applying reds to the set design of Natalie’s exhilarating Hollywood adventures and blues to that of her lonelier mommy time in Texas.That an accessible third course of action — an abortion — goes essentially ignored by both Natalie and the screenwriter, April Prosser, is a mind-boggling factor in this otherwise predictable movie. It’s jarring to see Natalie’s unplanned pregnancy introduced as a cool dose of reality rather than decision to be made, and the movie’s post-Roe release only adds insult to injury.Never mind that “Look Both Ways” seems to posit that, for women, child rearing and a career are in relative opposition — when Natalie comes to a fork in the road, the movie hardly lets her look both ways. It bulldozes her down one path, and then the other.Look Both WaysNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes. Watch on Netflix. More

  • in

    Wolfgang Petersen, Director of ‘Das Boot,’ Is Dead at 81

    He made it big in Hollywood with box-office hits, but he’s best remembered for a harrowing, Oscar-nominated German film set inside a U-boat in World War II.Wolfgang Petersen, one of a handful of foreign directors to make it big in Hollywood, whose harrowing 1981 war film, “Das Boot,” was nominated for six Academy Awards and became one of Germany’s top-grossing films, died on Friday at his home in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles. He was 81.The cause was pancreatic cancer, according to Michelle Bega, a publicist at the agency Rogers & Cowan PMK in Los Angeles. His death was announced on Tuesday.Mr. Petersen was the most commercially successful member of a generation of filmmakers active in West Germany from the 1960s to the ’80s, whose leading lights included Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders and Werner Herzog. But he was equally known in Hollywood.Over five decades Mr. Petersen toggled between his native Germany and the United States, directing 29 films, many of them box-office hits like the 1990s political thrillers “In the Line of Fire,” with Clint Eastwood, and “Air Force One,” with Harrison Ford.With a knack for genre filmmaking — action films were another strong suit — he also made forays into fantasy “(The NeverEnding Story”), sword-and-sandal epic (“Troy’) and science fiction — all while attracting marquee names to star in them, like Dustin Hoffman in “Outbreak,” Brad Pitt in “Troy” and George Clooney in “The Perfect Storm.”Jürgen Prochnow, right, played a U-boat captain in “Das Boot.” It’s considered among the finest antiwar films ever made.Columbia PicturesFor all his success in Hollywood, however, “Das Boot,” a tense drama about sailors on a German U-boat during World War II, is the work for which Mr. Petersen will mostly likely be remembered. In the English-speaking world, that frequently mispronounced title alone (“Boot” is spoken exactly like the English “boat”) has attained a kind of pop-cultural status, thanks to references on “The Simpsons” and other TV shows.“‘Das Boot’ isn’t just a German film about World War II; it’s a German naval adventure epic that has already been a hit in West Germany,” Janet Maslin wrote in her review in The New York Times when the film opened in the U.S. in early 1982.The movie won high praise for its historical accuracy and the clammy, claustrophobic effect achieved by the cinematographer Jost Vacano, who shot most of the interior scenes with a small hand-held Arriflex camera. Although the critical response in Germany was divided, with some accusing the film of glorifying war, it encountered a more uniformly positive response abroad. Nowadays it is considered among the finest antiwar films ever made.“Das Boot” (also titled “The Boat” in English-speaking countries) grossed over $80 million worldwide, and though it did not win an Academy Award, its six Oscar nominations — including two for Mr. Petersen, for direction and screenplay, and one for Mr. Vacano, for cinematography — remain a record for a German film production. (It was not nominated in the best-foreign-language-film category; West Germany’s submission that year was Mr. Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo,” which did not make the Academy’s short list for the Oscar).Mr. Petersen in 1997 with the director’s cut of “Das Boot.”Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesMr. Petersen prepared various versions of “Das Boot” over the next decade and a half. In 1985, German TV broadcast a 300-minute version (twice as long as the theatrical release), which Mr. Petersen claimed was closer to his original vision but commercially unfeasible at the time.After “Das Boot,” he teamed up with the producer Bernd Eichinger, whose fledgling studio, Constantin Film, co-produced the English-language “The NeverEnding Story,” an adaptation of a 1979 fantasy novel by the best-selling German children’s author Michael Ende.Released in 1984, “The NeverEnding Story,” about a bullied boy who enters into an enchanted book, was another-box office hit in Germany and abroad — although it, too, received its share of negative reviews, including from The Times’s film critic Vincent Canby, who called it “graceless” and “humorless.”Despite a tepid U.S. box-office return, which Mr. Petersen chalked up to the film’s being “too European,” “The NeverEnding Story” became a cult favorite over the decades, for its trippy production design, scrappy special effects and synth-heavy theme song, written by Giorgio Moroder and sung by the British pop singer Limahl.The film was mostly shot at Bavaria Film Studio, near Munich, where present-day visitors can ride Falcor, the “luck dragon” that Mr. Canby compared to “an impractical bath mat.” (The studio’s theme park, Bavaria FilmStadt, also offers tours of the submarine from “Das Boot.”)Mr. Petersen with Clint Eastwood on the set of “In the Line of Fire,” in which Mr. Eastwood played a Secret Service agent trying to prevent a presidential assassination. Bruce McBroom/Sygma via Getty ImagesWolfgang Petersen was born on March 14, 1941, in Emden, in Northern Germany. His father was a naval lieutenant in World War II who later worked for a shipping company in Hamburg.Growing up in the immediate postwar period, the young Mr. Petersen idolized America and American movies. On Sundays he would go to matinee screenings for children at the local cinema to see westerns directed by Howard Hawks and John Ford and starring Gary Cooper and John Wayne.“I got to know the medium of film when I was 8 years old, and I was immediately enthusiastic about it,” he told Elfriede Jelinek, a future Nobel Prize winner for literature, in a 1985 interview for German Playboy. “When I was 11, I decided I wanted to become a film director.”In 1950, his family moved to Hamburg, and when Wolfgang was 14, his father gave him an eight-millimeter film camera for Christmas.After graduating from high school, Mr. Petersen was exempted from compulsive military service because of a spine curvature. In the early 1960s, he worked as an assistant director at the Junges Theater (now the Ernst Deutsch Theater) in Hamburg. He then studied theater in Hamburg and Berlin for several semesters before enrolling at the German Film and Television Academy Berlin, West Germany’s first film school, which opened in 1966.In 1970, his graduation film, “I Will Kill You, Wolf,” was picked up by West German television, and this led to a directing offer for the long-running German crime series “Tatort.”Mr. Petersen, right, on the set of “Poseidon,” a 2006 remake of the 1972 movie “The Poseidon Adventure.” Claudette Barius/Warner Brothers PicturesOver the next decade, Mr. Petersen worked at a feverish pace, directing for both television and the big screen, starting in 1974 with the psychological thriller “One or the Other of Us.”From the beginning, audience approval was of central importance to him. “I crouched in the cinema to see how the audience would react” to one particular film, he recalled in the Playboy interview. “And what happened? People walked out of the film. I was devastated. Because I’m obsessed with making films for everyone.”He often succeeded, with popular early-career thrillers that tackled thorny political and social issues. “Smog” (1972) dealt with the effects of pollution in the Ruhr, the industrial region in Northwest Germany. “The Consequence” (1977) was controversial for its frank depiction of homosexuality, a taboo topic at the time.He was married to the German actress Ursula Sieg from 1970 to 1978. He later married Maria-Antoinette Borgel, whom he had met on the set of “Smog,” where she worked as a script supervisor.He is survived by his wife as well as a son from his first marriage, Daniel, a filmmaker, and two grandchildren.Mr. Petersen had nearly 20 films to his credit by the time he made “Das Boot.” A triumph that few, if any, could have predicted, the movie established his international reputation and opened the door to Hollywood.Mr. Petersen with the cast of “Troy” at the Cannes International Film Festival in 2004. With him, from left, were Eric Bana; Saffron Burrows; Sean Bean; Mr. Petersen’s wife, Maria-Antoinette Petersen; Brad Pitt; Jennifer Aniston, who was Mr. Pitt’s wife at the time (and not in the film); Orlando Bloom; and Diane Kruger.Pascal Guyot/AFP via Getty ImagesIn his autobiography, “I Love Big Stories” (1997, written with Ulrich Greiwe), Mr. Petersen recalled the first American test screening of “Das Boot” in Los Angeles. At the beginning, the audience of 1,500 applauded when the screen flashed with the statistic that 30,000 Germans onboard U-boats were killed during the war. “I thought: This is going to be a catastrophe!” Mr. Petersen wrote. Two and a half hours later, the film received a thunderous ovation.After “The NeverEnding Story,” Mr. Petersen made “Enemy Mine” (1985), a science fiction film starring Dennis Quaid about a fighter pilot forced to cooperate with a reptilian enemy after they both land on a hostile alien planet. Ms. Maslin called it “a costly, awful-looking science-fiction epic with one of the weirdest story lines ever to hit the screen.”A year later, Mr. Petersen moved to Los Angeles, where he would remain for two decades, working with big stars in a string of mainstream successes that included the political dramas “In the Line of Fire” (1993), about a Secret Service agent’s efforts to prevent a presidential assassination, and “Air Force One” (1997), about the hijacking of the presidential jetliner. There were also the disaster films “Outbreak” (1995), about a deadly virus, “The Perfect Storm” (2000), about commercial New England fishermen caught in a terrifying tempest, and “Poseidon” (2006), a remake of “The Poseidon Adventure,” the 1972 blockbuster about a capsized luxury liner.Mr. Petersen accepted applause during a 25th anniversary celebration of “Das Boot” in Berlin in early 2007. Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesEven at their most commercial, Mr. Petersen’s films often had undercurrents of political commentary. Discussing the “Iliad”-inspired “Troy” (2004), Mr. Petersen drew parallels between Homer’s epic and the reign of George W. Bush. “Power-hungry Agamemnons who want to create a new world order — that is absolutely current,” he told the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.His film career seemed to come full circle in 2016 with “Vier gegen die Bank,” a remake of his 1976 comedy-heist film based on an American novel, “The Nixon Recession Caper,” by Ralph Maloney. It was Mr. Petersen’s first German-language film since “Das Boot” a quarter-century earlier.Throughout his career, he seemed unconcerned by critics who called his artistic merit into question.“If someone asked me whether I felt like an artist, I would have a strange feeling, because I don’t really know,” he once said. “What is an artist? Maybe it’s someone who produces something much more intimate than film, more like a composer or writer or painter.”“My passion,” he added, “is telling a story.” More

  • in

    ‘Le Temps Perdu’ Review: Proust Club

    This cozy documentary sits in with a group of older readers in Buenos Aires who gather at a cafe to savor Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time.”At the very least, María Álvarez’s “Le Temps Perdu” might give hope to anyone who has always meant to finish — or start — Proust. Shot almost entirely in a Buenos Aires cafe, the cozy black-and-white documentary sits in with a group of seniors who gather to savor “In Search of Lost Time” in Spanish translation. They’ve gone through the novel a few times, meeting for nearly two decades.Seated around a table, the men and women read aloud from what look like laminated printouts from the beloved multivolume book. They muse over certain passages and share echoes with their daily lives: the enduring memory of a late husband’s smile, or a hospital visit where madeleines were on the menu. One man keeps explaining that his daughter is named Albertine, like the key character in the book who is the narrator’s romantic obsession.The film, perhaps like a certain writer, seeks out the nexus between the quotidian and the transcendent in the group’s activity, book ended by poetic montages and liberal use of Debussy’s “Syrinx.” There’s some poignancy and amusement in how the experiences of time and love transpire in the novel and in the readers’ lives. (The movie is probably best seen in a cinema, another communal space.)You couldn’t ask for richer reading material, even if the film doesn’t quite live up to the promise of its premise. Believe it or not, there’s already stiff competition: a similar documentary from 2013, “The Joycean Society,” tackles “Finnegans Wake” in just under an hour.Le Temps PerduNot rated. In Spanish with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. In theaters. More

  • in

    An Oscars Apology for Sacheen Littlefeather, 50 Years After Brando Protest

    The Apache activist and actress was booed onstage in 1973 after she refused the best actor award on Marlon Brando’s behalf and criticized Hollywood for its depictions of Native Americans.The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has apologized to Sacheen Littlefeather, an Apache and Yaqui actress and activist who was booed onstage at the Oscars in 1973 after she refused the best actor award on behalf of Marlon Brando.The Academy said in a statement on Monday that it had apologized to Ms. Littlefeather, 75, in June, nearly 50 years after Ms. Littlefeather pierced through the Academy Awards facade of shiny statues and bright lights in 1973 and injected the ceremony with criticism about Native American stereotypes in media.Her appearance at the ceremony, the first time a Native American woman stood onstage at the Academy Awards, is perhaps one of the best-known disruptive moments in the history of the award ceremony.When Ms. Littlefeather, then 26, spoke, some of the audience cheered her and others jeered. One actor, John Wayne, was so unsettled that a show producer, Marty Pasetta, said security guards had to restrain him so that he would not storm the stage.Ms. Littlefeather said she was “stunned” by the apology in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “I never thought I’d live to see the day I would be hearing this, experiencing this,” she said.“When I was at the podium in 1973, I stood there alone,” she added.Ms. Littlefeather also brought attention to the federal government’s standoff at Wounded Knee with Native Americans in the 1973 speech, which she came up with shortly before being called onstage on behalf of Mr. Brando, who was to receive the best actor award for his performance as Vito Corleone in “The Godfather.”Ms. Littlefeather said in an interview with the Academy, which was published on Monday, that she had been planning to watch the 45th Academy Awards on television like everyone else when she received a call the night before the ceremony from Mr. Brando. The two had become friends through her neighbor, the director Francis Ford Coppola. Mr. Brando asked her to refuse the award on his behalf if he won.Ms. Littlefeather arrived at the ceremony with only about 15 minutes left of the official program, wearing a glimmering buckskin dress, moccasins and hair ties. Ms. Littlefeather said she had little information about how the night would work, but Mr. Brando had given her a speech to read if he won.That plan evaporated when a producer for the Oscars saw the pages in her hand and told he she would be arrested if her comments lasted more than 60 seconds, she said.She introduced herself, then explained that Mr. Brando would not be accepting the award because of his concerns about the image of Native American people in film and television and by the government. She paused when a mix of boos and cheers erupted from the audience.“And I focused in on the mouths and the jaws that were dropping open in the audience, and there were quite a few,” she told the Academy. “But it was like looking into a sea of Clorox, you know, there were very few people of color in the audience.”The crowd quieted, and Ms. Littlefeather mentioned the Wounded Knee standoff and then left the stage without touching the golden Oscars statue. She said some audience members did the so-called “tomahawk chop” at her and that when she went to Mr. Brando’s house later, people shot at the doorway where she was standing.“When I went back to Marlon’s house, there was an incident with people shooting at me,” she said. “And there were two bullet holes that came through the doorway of where I was standing, and I was on the other side of it.”Ms. Littlefeather, who was not available for an interview on Tuesday, told the Academy that speaking about these events in 2022 “felt like a big cleanse.”“It feels like the sacred circle is completing itself before I go in this life,” said Ms. Littlefeather, who told The Guardian in June 2021 that she had terminal breast cancer.The former president of the Academy, David Rubin, wrote in the apology to Ms. Littlefeather that the abuse she faced because of the speech was “unwarranted and unjustified.”“For too long the courage you showed has been unacknowledged,” Mr. Rubin wrote. “For this, we offer both our deepest apologies and our sincere admiration.”Mr. Rubin’s letter will be read next month at a program at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, “An Evening with Sacheen Littlefeather.”The Academy described it as an event of “conversation, reflection, healing and celebration.” Ms. Littlefeather said in a statement that she was looking forward to the Native American performers and speakers at the event, including Calina Lawrence, a Suquamish singer, and Bird Runningwater, the co-chair of the Academy’s Indigenous Alliance, who is Cheyenne and Mescalero Apache.“It is profoundly heartening to see how much has changed since I did not accept the Academy Award 50 years ago,” she said. “I am so proud of each and every person who will appear onstage.” More