What is the theme of this year's Oscar nominees?

In the New York Times article announcing 2014’s lineup of Academy Award nominees, Brooks Barnes and Michael Cieply described the current award’s season as “puzzling,” stating that while 2012 was largely defined by political films, the top Oscar nominees of 2013 lacked a thematic pattern.

It is true that the years most lauded films were all over the map (and, in the case of ten-times-nominated Gravity, way off of it) in terms of setting, time period, mood and plot. But in the more general, between-the-lines sense, a number of the top contenders did have something in common. That thing is evoked in the title of one of the Academy’s noted “snubs”: All is Lost.

All is Lost pits the human will to survive against the apparent certainty of failure. The interplay of those two forces – external oblivion , internal perseverance - worked its way into most of this year’s best films. Life is full of obstacles, and every awards season is full of movies about people overcoming adversity. But this year didn’t just give us your garden-variety setbacks. This year gave us insane hope in the face of total despair. And more often than not, hope won. Here are some more examples:

An astronaut, cut loose from her spacecraft, hurtles through the bottomless void.
A captain is taken prisoner after his ship is boarded by armed Somali pirates.
A rodeo hero is diagnosed with a deadly new virus that has no known cure.  
A young Catholic mother has her young son taken away from her and sent to a foreign country. 
A musician is abducted and sold as a slave to sadistic plantation owners. 
Two con artists are busted by the FBI and forced to work under the thumb of the law.
An elderly alcoholic travels across an American wasteland in pursuit of an empty promise.

All of the characters described above pass through the “abandon all hope” gateway, convinced that they can maneuver their way out of hell. All of their stories are nominated for Best Picture.

2012, with frontrunners like Argo, Zero Dark Thirty, and Lincoln, was a big year for political movies. It was also a big year for politics, with Obama’s reelection roughly coinciding with the time most studios release their Oscar hopefuls. Pretty straightforward.

So, what happened this year that made Americans want to watch movies about overcoming hopelessness? Headline-wise, 2013 was an ego bruiser for America. We found that our own security agency was spying on us. We waffled about our involvement with crises in Syria and Egypt. We saw horrendous violence in Iraq following a deadly and expensive occupation that was supposed to promote stability. We slipped further in global education rankings. The implementation of our president’s signature health care law was a disaster. And let’s not forget the week in October when we didn’t have a functioning government.

When America is threatened by an outside foe, we unite and shine. We imagine ourselves standing tall, chins in the air and fists on our hips. This year we were our own worst enemy, which left us shuffling our feet, heads down, avoiding eye contact. This year was embarrassing.

America was founded on the belief that anyone can succeed if they try hard enough. So it is fitting that the nation’s onscreen avatar is an everyman with secret powers. An Average Joe who becomes extraordinary when faced with extraordinary circumstances. Be it a comic book vigilante, a small-town hero, or just a dude who’s been pushed too far, this guy’s job is to remind us that being down-and-out is nothing but a prelude to greatness. The more powerless he becomes, the more inspiring and morale-boosting it is to see him gain that power back. In this humbling year, we needed Joe to work overtime.