General Pinochet falls. The French uprising falls. The Iranian mullahs fall. The Danish monarchy almost falls. Bin Laden, naturally, because this is Hollywood, falls. The Democrats, up against Lincoln savvy, fall. Constitutional slavery also falls.
While we admire low-cut dresses, tearful speeches and the blood-red carpet, come Monday morning when the envelopes are torn and the Oscars announced, some of these fallers will rise to collect the dolls. History is written by the winner. History is also written (mostly) by American movies and sometimes vindicated by 3.7-kg nude statuettes handed out to a fanfare of trumpet blasts and overly-long applause.
Not that I mind. Like everyone else, I dig a hot spy (Zero Dark Thirty, or ZDT), a conspicuously overstretched Iranian hostage crisis (Argo), a romantic revolt (Les Miserables) and the preternatural brood of Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln). But what I dig more is how politics and history - straight or twisted, sombre or triumphalist - pack the Oscar nomination list this year.
Even better, the way politics and history have been debated through the lens of cinema in the past few months has been enriching. But make sure to look beyond the all-American (except French film Amour) Best Picture category. Whether Spielberg's Lincoln understands the 13th amendment as little, or as much, as Tarantino's's Django Unchained does, the circumstances around slavery will remain hotly disputed.
Instead, try to catch a Best Foreign Language Film nominee from Chile called No, a clever film about a historic plebiscite that invalidates General Pinochet's dictatorial rule. In Chile, people are divided over the same issue that has split Lincoln, ZDT and Argo audiences in the US - has the filmmakers' poetic licence intruded upon the sanctity of truth?
Further comes A Royal Affair from Denmark, an account of an 18-century thinker who usurps political thunder from a totalitarian palace.
Things are hairier in in the documentary section where harsh truth is more unforgiving. To begin with, French-Israeli film The Gatekeepers, about the internal workings and dirty misdeeds of the Israeli spy agency, has already stirred up controversy at home.
Even hairier, look beyond the glitz of the televised bash. One of the most telling pre-Oscar stories last week was when Emad Burmat, the Palestinian director of the nominated documentary Five Broken Cameras, was threatened to be sent back home by airport immigration unless he could show proof that he really was an Oscar nominee - I mean, why didn't they just call Ben Affleck or Jessica Chastain, both experts on terrorism?
In the end, Burnat was rescued by Michael Moore. And yet Burnat's movie embodies complex politics on and off the screen: Five Broken Cameras - the title refers to the number of cameras broken by Israeli soldiers to prevent its filming - details a struggle by residents of a Palestinian village to claim their land back from Israel. The film was co-directed by an Israeli and was partly supported by an Israeli film fund.
The world is complicated, and with or without Burnat's immigration mishap, we root for his inspiring film this Monday.
The fact that Lincoln was shown to the Congress with Spielberg and Day-Lewis doing a Q&A with congressmen, and that ZDT was vehemently disapproved of by some senators and glorified by others, shows how the movies are recognised by the political institution, if not as a beacon, then as being indispensable.
Debates about distortions of reality, of the various versions of truth and the interpretation of history that surround nearly every Best Picture nominee show a post-censorship society where thorny, risky, highly sensitive issues can be polemically discussed - not like, say, here, because someone who wanted to make a film called "Pridi" with the same level of historical scrutiny as Lincoln would sweat from every orifice before deciding to stop looking for a needle in a haystack full of vipers.
And yet at the same time, beware: Oscar night is an annual confirmation of Hollywood's influence. Regardless of its topicality or openness, the might of American cinema remains an issue in other polemics about cultural monopoly. A story about Bin Laden made by a Middle Eastern director would be totally different from the disturbing monomania of ZDT, while the Argo anecdote told from the Iranian side would be unlike what Affleck has brought to the screen.
Come Monday, watch the dresses, hear the speeches, cheer the winners - and then look around, because history is being written elsewhere beyond the blood-red carpet of the Kodak Theatre, too.
Kong Rithdee is Deputy Life Editor, Bangkok Post.