The State of the Race: A Tale of Two Oscars

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.” – Charles Dickens

The Oscar year started out with a handful of Oscar pundits choosing preordained “Oscar movies” to land in the Best Picture race. Though no one really reported on it in any serious way, some questioned how they could pick movies for Best Picture no one had even seen. On paper, these films all had what it takes to be an “Oscar movie,” that is, they seemed designated not just for Oscar voters but for the public.

The prominent pundits in the field faithfully put alternating titles in the number one spot based just on the concept art, the subject matter, the studios and the stars involved. To make room for these films they would mostly shut out other films that were actually doing well in the year, films that could be called best by anyone’s standards, but they were considered not Oscar-y enough and thus, out they went to make room for films people had not yet seen.

On the flipside of that, Indiewire’s Anne Thompson heroically stood, taking a stand against what Oscar pundits were doing. The notoriously ethical Thompson said she wasn’t going to predict films that hadn’t been seen and would instead work from a list of films that had been seen and were good enough to get in. In so doing, she single-handedly kept alive the season’s big surprise, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and the season’s other big surprise, Whiplash.

The pundits did not let go of their claim that these big year-end movies would make it in. In years past, their mixed to bad reviews might have kept them out of the race when they were finally seen but instead, the studios managed to hold off the critics just enough to get the movies to the public and once that happened, the money started flowing in, the films suddenly look like viable contenders after all and no one seems to notice that they were poorly reviewed. The system confirms itself. The system works.

2014 might indeed mark the moment the Oscar race once again stopped caring about the critics. When the National Society of Film Critics themselves don’t care about critics, how can anyone expect anyone else to care? The NSFC picked Goodbye to Language, which just edged out Boyhood, to win. They picked a film that has a 72% rating on Metacritic, which is on the way low end of the films they’ve chosen in years prior:

Inside Llewyn Davis–92
Amour — 94
Melancholia–80
The Social Network — 95
Hurt Locker–94
Waltz with Bachir –91
There will be Blood — 92
Pan’s Labyrinth–98
Capote–88
Million Dollar Baby — 86
American Splendour–90
The Pianist –85
Mulholland Drive — 81
Yi Yi — 92

That choice is so utterly balls-out off the charts of the awards race it reads, to me, like a revolutionary battle cry to never want to be in the chokehold of the yucky Oscar race ever again. It also tells me that the face of film criticism has been greatly altered in the past few years as the best film critics have been shunted aside and replaced by people who really aren’t film critics.

With the critics mostly out of the way, the Oscar brand can get back to the business of being the Oscar brand – a mirror reflection of a bygone era that exists only to reflect back at itself. The Oscar Movie is a concept the public both buys into and utterly dismisses the way they would a playlist handed to them by their grandparents of groovy tunes to play on the airplane.

What people think of when they think about the Oscar brand is a typical year like 1980, when Kramer vs. Kramer beat Apocalypse Now. There is no question which film has stood the test of time, which was the work of a visionary genius, and which one, when you look up ‘great’ in the dictionary, there’s its picture. There’s Robert Duvall crouched over a field of napalm. There’s the Dallas Cowboy cheerleader strutting onto the stage. There’s crazy General Kurtz, a transformed god. But the Oscars and the public were far more inclined towards the movie about the single dad and the feminist mother who felt suffocated in the confines of her domestic life. It was the movie for the year where the public was concerned. The Academy rewarded it for that.

Coming out of the 1970s, the era of the auteur director and truly mind-blowing cinema that bled into the Oscar race, was really the last time the Academy hummed. The feminist movement, the sexual revolution, the Manson family, Richard Nixon – it was all bleeding into what the artists were doing, the changing of the guards, as it were. But the 1980s and into the 1990s, things started to look very different. Steven Spielberg and George Lucas redefined the ways movies were made, seen, and rolled out. The blockbuster was born and it would change everything about Hollywood.

Where before, the Oscars cared much more about whether the public liked a movie, the public began flocking to movies that had numbers after their titles and were based on brands and comic books. Fan sites were born in worship of these films and slowly but surely those fan sites took over the dialogue about film and pretty soon there wasn’t a lot of difference between fandom and film criticism. The Oscars had no choice but to reject what the public was mostly buying tickets for and to grapple for anything resembling the Oscar brand. They got their wish in the form of independent cinema and foreign film directors making films Oscar voters can tolerate. The catch — movies like that really need the critics standing behind them.

Years like 2010 and 2012 are rare – when the studios are putting out movies the public and the critics and the Oscar voters like. Movies like Gravity and Zero Dark Thirty and Argo and American Hustle and Lincoln and Life of Pi. There was harmony in that and thus, awards consensus was a no-brainer. But this year, there is a dramatic splintering between what the public liked (Guardians of the Galaxy, Hunger Games) and what the critics liked (Boyhood, Grand Budapest, Goodbye to Language, The Immigrant) and the Oscar brand (Unbroken, American Sniper, Into the Woods, Interstellar). There isn’t much harmony across all of them with the possible exception of Gone Girl, not a critics darling, not quite an Oscar brand but kind of, sort of in the ballpark of hitting all three notes.

But even Gone Girl, at this rate, seems destined to be shoved aside for the Oscar brand. Those movies are making money. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be regarded as successes and they wouldn’t be worthy for Best Picture nominations. But when films that the critics don’t think are best are declared best by the public and the Oscar brand you invite criticism for a group that supposedly rewards highest achievements in cinema, not just movies the public bought tickets for.

Tomorrow the Producers Guild will announce their ten choices for Best Picture of 2014. We don’t know which Oscar tale it will tell. We don’t even know if the Oscars will follow suit. The Screen Actors Guild, Editors Society, and now the Producers Guild, are the only major guilds that will announce while Oscar ballots are still outstanding. The most important, or certainly what used to be the most important, the Directors Guild, doesn’t announce until after Oscar ballots are turned in.

What won’t have an impact on Oscar voting for nominations this year?
The DGA
The WGA
The BAFTA

Here is how the films break down so far. I’ve bolded the nominees I think most likely–but honestly, any of these could get in. We just don’t know yet how it will finish.

Films that, so far, unite the public, the critics and the industry:
Gone Girl ($166 mil)
The Grand Budapest Hotel ($59 mil)
Nightcrawler ($31 mil)

Films that unite the critics and the industry but don’t seem to need the public (so far anyway) — in limited release:
Birdman ($25 mil)
Boyhood ($24 mil)
Foxcatcher ($7 mil)
Whiplash ($5 mil)
Selma ($2 mil)
Mr. Turner ($983k)
A Most Violent Year ($300k)

Films that are strong with public, maybe strong with industry, not as strong with critics – OSCAR BRAND:
Interstellar ($182 mil)
Into the Woods ($91 mil)
Unbroken ($87 mil)
The Theory of Everything ($24 mil)
Wild ($24 mil)
The Imitation Game ($7.9 mil)
American Sniper ($2 mil so far)

It should be said that some of these films have vastly different stories to tell, critics wise, depending on which site you visit. I am not quite sure where to put them. Here is how they break down:

Wild – Rotten Tomatoes = 91% Rotten Tomatoes, 72% Metacritic
The Theory of Everything = 81% Rotten Tomatoes, 72% Metaticic
The Imitation Game = 91% Rotten Tomatoes, 72% Metacritic

So you see, 2014 is a strange year. To my mind, it marks the first time I’ve seen in a long while that the preordained Oscar movies are probably going to be in the race, whether they are good enough or not. The only reason that matters from my perspective is that I can no longer make the argument that Anne Thompson was right in not predicting films she nor anyone else had yet seen. I think she is morally right. I think it’s better for film overall, better for the Oscars — but it isn’t right. The more cynical approach by the pundits that the Oscar brand will prevail no matter what. And so it goes.

But we’re still talking about only the nominees. The Best Picture winner will likely not be decided by any one thing. It will be decided by what film stands apart from the others and unites the consensus. Though Boyhood is a “small” film, it is an extraordinary film that, when people finally do see it, they will marvel at. A film like that doesn’t come around very often and won’t likely be forgotten any time soon.

Predictions

Best Picture
Boyhood
Birdman
The Imitation Game
Selma
Gone Girl
The Grand Budapest Hotel
American Sniper
Whiplash
The Theory of Everything
Alts — Nightcrawler , Unbroken

My thing is, I feel like American Sniper and Unbroken might get in. I just don’t know which film gets bumped. Oh, probably Gone Girl but that’s a reality I just can’t face yet. I can’t face a Best Picture lineup that is 100% about the male protagonist, as the AFI foretold. I can’t see women being obliterated from the Oscar race. I just can’t. Not yet.

Best Actor
Michael Keaton, Birdman
Eddie Redmayne, The Theory of Everything
Jake Gyllenhaal, Nightcrawler
Benedict Cumberbatch, The Imitation Game
David Oyelowo, Selma
Alts–Bradley Cooper, American Sniper

Best Actress
Julianne Moore, Still Alice
Reese Witherspoon, Wild
Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl
Felicity Jones, The Theory of Everything
Jennifer Aniston, Cake
Alt. Hilary Swank, The Homesman

Supporting Actor
JK Simmons, Whiplash
Edward Norton, Birdman
Mark Ruffalo, Foxcatcher
Robert Duvall, The Judge
Ethan Hawke, Boyhood
Alt. Josh Brolin, Inherent Vice

Supporting Actress
Patricia Arquette, Boyhood
Jessica Chastain, A Most Violent Year
Emma Stone, Birdman
Keira Knightley, The Imitation Game
Meryl Streep, Into the Woods
Alt. Tilda Swinton, Snowpiercer

Director
Richard Linklater, Boyhood
Alejandro G. Inarritu, Birdman
Ava DuVernay, Selma
David Fincher, Gone Girl
Clint Eastwood, American Sniper
Alt. Wes Anderson, Grand Budapest Hotel, Damien Chazelle, Whiplash, Bennett Miller, Foxcatcher

Original Screenplay
Wes Anderson, Grand Budapest Hotel
Alejandro Inarritu et al, Birdman
Richard Linklater, Boyhood
Damien Chazelle, Whiplash
Paul Webb, Selma
Alt. Phil Lord & Christopher Miller (The LEGO Movie) *

Adapted Screenplay
Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl
Graham Moore, The Imitation Game
Paul Thoman Anderson, Inherent Vice
Anthony McCarten, The Thoery of Everything
Nick Hornby, Wild

Editing
Boyhood
Birdman
Gone Girl
Whiplash
The Imitation Game

Cinematography
Birdman
Mr. Turner
Grand Budapest Hotel
Unbroken
Interstellar

Production Design
Interstellar
Grand Budapest Hotel
Mr. Turner
The Imitation Game
Into the Woods
Alt. Unbroken

Sound Mixing
Into the Woods
American Sniper
Get on Up
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes
Guardians of the Galaxy

Sound Editing
Whiplash
American Sniper
Big Hero Six
The Lego Movie
Guardians of the Galaxy

Costume Design
Into the Woods
Grand Budapest Hotel
The Imitation Game
Mr. Turner
Selma

Original Score
Gone Girl
Interstellar
Theory of everything
The Imitation Game
Mr. Turner