They Shoot Oscar Prognosticators, Don't They?
The BAFTAs Speak, We Listen
By J Don Birnam
February 17, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
To start, it is clear that the BAFTA split results for Gravity and Slave cement a pattern you can count on to repeat itself on Oscar night. Voting group after voting group has showered Gravity with praise across the board, including as high as Best Director, but has simultaneously been unwilling to pull the trigger and allow Gravity to take the top prize. As we have discussed all season long, it really does seem like we are headed into a Godfather/Cabaret scenario, with the more showy movie winning multiple Oscars, including Best Director, but the more serious-looking movie winning an award or two, and then Best Picture.
This voting pattern is somewhat remarkable and arguably frustrating. How it is that a movie (Gravity) is the best across the board, including the best directed movie of the year, but is not the Best Picture of the year and the more “important” sounding movie is? With no disrespect meant to the magnificent 12 Years A Slave, if Gravity is such an achievement in so many categories, then it is fair to wonder why even the PGA could not outright name it the best movie of the year, or why the Golden Globes gave a lone prize - the top prize - to 12 Years a Slave after showering Gravity with praise. Reducing “Best Picture” to “Most Important Story” or “Best Script” in this way, in my opinion, almost trivializes the entire process and at the same time ghettoizes the technical aspect of movie-making. Worse, it sends the clear message that science fiction movies are not welcome into the “it” club of respectability, a callous message for the film industry to send in this day when such movies consistently dominate the box office and satisfy audiences. In hindsight, of course, the Academy breathes a sigh of relief that they picked The Godfather, given the phenomenon that film became. That experience, I suspect, will drive them to deliver a similar split this year among the top two films.
Let’s leave a more complete editorializing of these results aside for now and wait to see how the chips actually fall at the Oscars. For now, however, anyone predicting anything other than a 12 Years a Slave and Alfonso Cuarón split is asking for trouble.
The BAFTAs also delivered an expected victory alongside a couple of surprises in the acting races. Cate Blanchett won for her undeniable performance in Blue Jasmine and I expect her performance to carry her all the way. I am sure that in recent days you have seen the best attempts of the blogosphere to use the Woody Allen/Mia Farrow controversy to stir up rumors of an upset in this category and add excitement to an otherwise predictable year in acting categories. But Blanchett’s victory, alongside one surprising acting result at the BAFTAs, should hopefully put that issue to rest.
The Brits’ selection for Best Supporting Actress, Jennifer Lawrence for American Hustle, will provide sufficient fodder for discussion of an actually possible upset at the Oscars. J-Law now has a Golden Globe and a BAFTA for her movie-stealing performance in Hustle, and all of a sudden Best Supporting Actress seems again wide open at the Oscars. Sure, Lupita Nyong’o won at SAG for 12 Years a Slave, but so did Viola Davis two years ago before BAFTA and Globe wins carried Meryl Streep across the Oscar finish line. On the other hand, J-Law had not won at BAFTA before, so this may have just been their way of jumping on the bandwagon of the immensely popular superstar. Still, with the prospect of American Hustle going home empty-handed and, given J-Law’s strong performance both on screen and in the awards circuit, do not think for one minute that this race is over or predictable.
The results of the male acting categories at the BAFTAs are a little less telling because the Brits completely ignored Dallas Buyers Club, so the Oscar-front runner performances of Jared Leto and Matthew McConaughey were not nominated there. Best Actor, instead, went to Chiwetel Ejiofor for 12 Years a Slave, and Best Supporting Actor went to Barkhad Abdi for Captain Phillips, which continues to show resilience and simply refuses to go away quietly.
The award for Ejiofor all but ends any serious conversation that Leonardo DiCaprio could upset McConaughey in the lead acting category. If the Brits could not bring themselves to reward Leo’s turn as a wholly unlikable character, do not count on the Oscars to do so either. The question now becomes whether Ejiofor can play the spoiler role on March 2nd if a “slap down the stud” factor overwhelms McConaughey’s campaign. If so, and if Jennifer Lawrence really does manage to steal the victory away from Lupita Nyong’o, we could end up with a true Godfather situation, with 12 Years a Slave winning the exact same three Oscars Francis Ford Coppola’s movie won: Best Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Picture. For now, however, I am sticking with McConaughey. He delivers the type of performance the Academy has rewarded over and over again: a real life character that is at first unlikable but that you grow to love as he redeems himself and becomes a good guy. Although Best Picture winners are consistently vehicles for Best Actor wins (think The King’s Speech and The Artist), I do not think Ejiofor’s performance is as multi-faceted, or as widely praised, as McConaughey’s is.
Nor would I read much into Abdi’s Supporting Actor win as I think Jared Leto has this one safely in the bag. Again, corners of the Internet are trying to make this race interesting by wondering whether a transphobic “ick” factor could play a role in derailing Leto. I doubt it. Yes, Felicity Huffman lost after giving an unbelievable performance in Transamerica, but I would chalk that up to the fact that the movie was impossibly tiny and seen by very few, and to the fact that Huffman was up against the younger, prettier Reese Witherspoon. The Best Actress category is undoubtedly infuriating when the Academy members cannot control their libido in selecting winners, but I would read old man horniness and not transphobia from those results. Indeed, Hilary Swank’s win for portraying a transgendered woman in Boys Don’t Cry belies any theory of transphobia.
Turning to the writing awards, the BAFTAs screenplay selections arguably offer the Brits’ most interesting picks of the year. They went for American Hustle in Original Screenplay and the impossibly British Philomena for Adapted. Again, if members are looking for some place to reward Hustle, screenplay seems like the prime opportunity to do so (and to give a first Oscar to David O. Russell in the process). Her seems to be beloved by many (including by our own staff), so I am still predicting that to win, but keep an eye out for a surprise there on Oscar night.
The same goes for the Adapted Screenplay race. Although 12 Years a Slave’s impending Best Picture win suggests that it will take this prize as well (again, as the Academy seems to frustratingly tie best story or best writing to Best Picture), Philomena has been very well received on this side of the Atlantic, and it is the most obvious place to reward the Harvey Weinstein production.
Finally, it is worth noting that The Great Gatsby took prizes both for Art Direction (Production Design) and Costumes, and that Gravity won for sound, cinematography, and visual effects. I fully expect these results to repeat at the Oscars. In the editing category, the action movie Rush defeated Gravity. Once more, barring an absolute technical sweep, I expect something other than Alfonso Cuarón’s movie to win that prize at the Oscars. The Great Beauty took home the BAFTA for best foreign film, defeating even Blue is the Warmest Color, a very good sign for Italy in the Best Foreign Language Film race.
So, this is it folks, the home stretch. The Oscars are less than two weeks away and Academy voting is well underway. In the next two weeks I will give a primer on the Preferential Ballot voting system the Academy uses to select Best Picture, handicap the documentary categories as I finally get around to seeing them all, and revisit this year’s confusing yet scintillating Best Picture race. After that, it is final predictions time.