Oscar 2012: Extremely Surprising and Incredibly Unexpected
How Stephen Daldry's poorly reviewed drama Crashed the Best Picture race
By Tom Houseman
January 31, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
But now that I've taken some time to think about it and look back and see the path of this year's precursor season, well, I'm still totally baffled. How did Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close go from being a massive critical disappointment to being a Best Picture nominee? In a normal year it would never happen, and it certainly doesn't make any sense.
At the beginning of the season, back before any of the precursors had had their say, ELIC was a strong contender to be nominated. It had the highest profile director in the race after Spielberg, Scorsese and Fincher, and it's based on an acclaimed novel. Plus, it featured four previous Oscar nominees in the cast, in addition to a former Kids Jeopardy Champion (considering I don't think that Sandra Bullock could win on Kids Jeopardy now, that's quite a feat). In my first breakdown of the Best Picture contenders I had ELIC as a frontrunner, but with a caveat: “right now it has a lot of potential, but because it hasn't been seen by anyone, we have no idea how receptive the Academy will be to it.” It was the big question mark in the race.
So when it was overlooked by the National Board of Review it immediately found itself on unsteady ground. While Hugo and The Tree of Life made their first pushes into serious contention, and The Artist, The Descendants and War Horse solidified their frontrunner status, ELIC's absence was a bad omen, especially since Drive, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and The Ides of March put themselves into position to steal its momentum. When the critic's awards started to come in, the storm clouds gathered over ELIC's party. Suspicions that the film would be too shmaltzy seemed to be confirmed.
But there was still the Golden Globes, where the sentimentality of the film would most likely be appreciated. I predicted four nominations for ELIC, including Picture and Supporting Actor for von Sydow, but I would not have been surprised if the film had also scored nods for Daldry's direction and Roth's script. Instead it received none of those, getting completely shut out by the HFPA. The Broadcast Film Critics gave the film a boost by nominating it for Picture, Director, and Screenplay, and giving star Thomas Horn the award for Best Young Actor (beating out Hugo's Asa Butterfield and The Descendants' Shailene Woodley), but this was seen as an anomaly rather than a harbinger.
And then the reviews came out, and the film's chances went from “slim to none” to “none.” ELIC didn't break 50% on Rotten Tomatoes, and the consensus summary declares that Jonathan Safran Foer's novel “deserves better than the treacly and pretentious treatment director Stephen Daldry gives it.” In the course of a month ELIC had gone from having a question mark next to its Oscar chances to having several exclamation marks following a “no” instead.
Almost every year there is a film that comes into the race a frontrunner based on the prestige of its director, cast, and usually source material, and gets hit by a hammer once it is finally seen, combining lack of critical acclaim with lack of guild and precursor recognition. By the time the Oscars are announced, these films are considered dead in the water, amusing anecdotes of “remember when that film was considered an Oscar contender” by people in top hats and monocles who usually add a “how droll” for emphasis. The remarkable thing is that a lot of those films do better than ELIC did in terms of critical support and precursor success.
Consider four films from the last decade: The Shipping News, The Kite Runner, Charlie Wilson's War, and The Lovely Bones. Each of them was directed by an Oscar nominee (Lasse Halstrom, Marc Forster, Mike Nichol, and Peter Jackson) and except for The Kite Runner, each of them had at least on Oscar winner in the cast. Each of them came into the Oscar race as a serious contender, with most people predicting them to be nominated for Best Picture. But when reviews came in, and the precursors were announced, each of them plummeted from the ranks of the contenders into the pool of also-rans and could-have-beens. Let's compare these four films' roads to disaster with ELIC's path to Best Picture.
| The Shipping News | The Kite Runner | Charlie Wilson's War | The Lovely Bones | Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close | |
| Rotten Tomatoes Score | 56% | 65% | 81% | 33% | 47% |
| Guild Nominations | SAG Best Supporting Actress- Judi Dench ADG Best Art Direction-Contemporary | ADG Best Art Direction-Contemporary VES Best Supporting Visual Effects | Nada | SAG Best Supportng Actor- Stanley Tucci ADG Best Art Direction-Contemporary | ADG Best Art Direction-Contemporary |
| NBR Nominations | Best Supporting Actress- Cate Blanchett | Top Ten Films Best Score | Zip | Zilch | Nuthin' |
| BAFTA Nominations | Best Supporting Actress- Judi Dench | Best Foreign Language Film Best Adapted Screenplay Best Original Score | Best Supporting Actor- Philip Seymour Hoffman | Best Actress- Saiorse Ronan Best Supporting Actor- Stanley Tucci | Nope |
| BFCA Nominations | Best Picture Best Score | Best Picture Best Young Actor- Ahmad Khan Mahmoodzada | Best Supporting Actor- Philip Seymour Hoffman Best Screenplay | Best Actress- Saiorse Ronan Best Young Actor/Actress- Saiorse Ronan Best Supporting Actor- Stanley Tucci Best Art Direction Best Cinematography Best Visual Effects | Best Picture Best Director Best Adapted Screenplay Best Young Actor/Actress- Thomas Horn |
| Golden Globe Nominations | Best Actor-Drama- Kevin Spacey Best Score | Best Foreign Language Film Best Original Score | Best Picture-Musical/Comedy Best Actor-Musical/Comedy- Tom Hanks Best Supporting Actor- Philip Seymour Hoffman Best Supporting Actress- Julia Roberts Best Screenplay | Best Supporting Actor- Stanley Tucci | Zero |
| Oscar Nominations | None | Best Original Score | Best Supporting Actor- Philip Seymour Hoffman | Best Supporting Actor- Stanley Tucci | Best Picture Best Supporting Actor- Max von Sydow |
Each of those four other films had more nominations - between the guilds and the other major precursors - than ELIC. On top of that, the only guild nomination that ELIC got was one that three of the others also received (Charlie Wilson's War was a period film, which is a much more competitive ADG category). The BFCA announces their nominations very early in the race, which means they are very likely to be swayed by a film's hype, leading to them nominating both The Kite Runner and The Shipping News for Best Picture. As a result, neither of those precursors could be trusted if anyone were to point to them as indicators of secret support for ELIC.
It is abundantly clear that ELIC benefited from the new voting system, which allows up to ten films to be nominated if they get enough number one votes. Which of these four other films would have sneaked into a Best Picture nomination in the same voting system? Charlie Wilson's War almost certainly would have, and The Kite Runner would have been in a decent position as well. The Shipping News is doubtful, partially because it received no other nominations, while each of the other films received at least one. As for The Lovely Bones? It came out in a year when there were ten nominations, and never really had a chance. It is also by far the worst reviewed film of the five.
Now, it has happened before that films have snuck into Best Picture despite lackluster guild and precursor showings. Two recent memorable instances of this are Munich and Letters from Iwo Jima. However, both of those films received very strong reviews reviews, with a 78% and a 91% on Rotten Tomatoes, and were made by two of the most respected directors of all time, Spielberg and Eastwood. There is clearly a lot of love for Stephen Daldry, as evidenced by his perfect record of making Best Picture nominated movies, but he is not at their level.
So after all this blathering on about how there is no way that ELIC could have possibly gotten nominated for Best Picture, we're left with just one question: how the heck did it? There is one theory that's being floated around the Internet, and that makes some sense, is that it was a matter of timing. Due to its very late release it was one of the last movies that most voters saw, which helped it stick with them. Obviously there is a reason why movies angling for Oscar are released in December, and it is to ensure that they are remembered by voters. Being the freshest in the minds of Academy members was probably a boon. So why didn't it help any of those films?
My personal theory is to blame it all on the actors. Only two of the nine Best Picture nominees received no “below the line” nominations: The Help and ELIC. What do both of these films have in common? Okay, yes, they both feature the beautiful and insanely talented Viola Davis, but that's not what I'm talking about. No, the point I am trying to make is that these films are all about the actors. With a cast like Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Max von Sydow John Goodman, the breathtaking and brilliant Davis, and the crazy cheesehead guy who makes fun of Aaron Rodgers in those State Farm commercials (not even joking a little bit) this is a movie that actors were going to be drawn to.
And remember, this year the nominees didn't have to have the broadest base of support, they just had to have their fans be extremely passionate. Actors were already predisposed to liking ELIC, and those that fell for the film were likely to put it at number one. It had more of an Oscar feel to it than Bridesmaids and was much less dark than The Ides of March, Tinker Tailor, or Dragon Tattoo. This is a film that sets its sights on the heartstrings, and anyone who fell under their spell likely put it at number one.
Might knowledge of the new voting system have played a part in it as well? It is likely that the people who loved ELIC also loved War Horse, Hugo, and The Help, all of which are typical dramatic Oscar fare. But everybody knew that those three films were almost guaranteed Oscar spots. Were voters clever enough to champion the less sure-footed film, putting ELIC at number one simply to help its chances, rather than because they actually believed it was better than any of that trio? I try not to give Oscar voters any credit when it comes to intelligence, but it's a possibility.
Regardless of how it happened, it happened. And regardless of what happens from here on out, there is absolutely no way that ELIC will win Best Picture. So I guess the real question is why is everyone so obsessed with it? That's an easy one: because it doesn't make sense. Oscar predictors believe that with enough knowledge and analysis you can predict the voting patterns of the Academy. Hell, some think that with enough knowledge and analysis they can predict the bowel movements of the Academy. So when something totally unexpected happens, it fascinates us. And then we try and work backwards, looking for an explanation in the footprints of the precursors. But sometimes it just comes down to that famous William Goldman quote that has become the mantra of many an Oscar predictor: “nobody knows anything.”