They Shoot Oscar Prognosticators, Don't They?
Best Actor and Director: Birdman Bellwethers?
By J. Don Birnam
February 18, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Best Actor
Obtaining a nomination in this category was, for the second year in a row, extremely competitive, as male-dominated films once more led the charge during awards season. Many worthy contenders didn’t make it, including Jake Gyllenhaal’s chilling portrayal of a sociopath in Nightcrawler, and what was, in my opinion, the best performance by an actor this year, David Oyelowo in Selma. But while last year the race was decided after the nominations were announced, with Matthew McConnaughey the unchallenged favorite, this year the race has provided the lone intriguing question among the acting races.
Let’s get rid of the two that are unquestionably out of contention. First, discard Steve Carell, who I believe gives the best performance of the five. The other performances come from Best Picture favorites, and Carell has no accolades this season so far. I was glad to see him recognized (comedic actors turned serious are gaining traction here) but he will not win. Second, say goodbye to the versatile Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays the troubled genius Alan Turing. Benedict will surely earn more nods - his work is diverse and non-ending - but this is not the nomination that is going to get it for him. Cumberbatch has been missing from the awards and campaign circuit, occupied with other affairs in London. If he couldn’t even pull out a win at British-heavy BAFTA, you know he has no chance at the Oscars.
The two that have led the charge so far are Eddie Redmayne for his moving portrayal of the afflicted genius Steven Hawking in The Theory of Everything and Michael Keaton for his career-reviving role as the struggling actor of superhero fame in Birdman. Bradley Cooper is the other nominee with a chance for a win thanks to his lauded portrayal of war veteran Chris Kyle in American Sniper. Let’s set aside Cooper for a second and focus on the two leading the race.
The lead has changed a few times: Redmayne seemed the obvious choice at first, given the showiness of the performance. But, after his Globes speech, Keaton seemed to pull ahead. Then, Redmayne won the SAG and the BAFTA, and now he is in the lead. Let’s analyze this. Redmayne also won a Globe (for drama), and it is extremely rare to win the Globe/SAG/BAFTA trifecta and lose. That said, BAFTA was obviously going to go to local kid Redmayne as the American-centric Birdman clearly did not resonate there. And SAG wins can be fickle friends. Just ask Viola Davis or Mickey Rourke, both of whom won SAG only to lose the Oscar (to past winners, no less). Nor is BAFTA a great acting bellwether, if you ask me - just last year Chiwetel Ejiofor took the prize for 12 Years a Slave, only to lose to McConaughey on Oscar night.
Keaton plays an actor, struggling with a fading career in a world of hyper-commercialization of the industry, surely a theme many in the Academy (not just actors) will identify with. And Keaton is the lynchpin of the Best Picture favorite, and gives the most emotionally complex performance of the two. If it’s between those two on quality, I would predict Keaton.
But not so fast. They love portrayals of real-life characters, and they love afflicted and gimmicky performances (think My Left Foot). Redmayne has both, and is also much more likable (some would say adorable) than Keaton has been throughout the campaign. Moreover, it is strange that SAG would award Birdman for Best Ensemble and not Keaton for Best Actor (or that may just show that Birdman is not as strong as one thinks).
And what of Bradley Cooper? Although the movie has received a mixed reception, his performance is uniformly lauded. He transformed his body by gaining several pounds (which they love), and this is his third nomination in a row. The last time this happened, Russell Crowe did it in 1999-2001 and netted one win. The movie is obviously popular with the Academy, and because Cooper wasn’t nominated for SAG or the Globe, it’s hard to gauge just how popular he is when directly competing against Redmayne and Keaton. But there is little precedent for an actor winning the Oscar after not receiving at least nominations from the precursors, so Cooper has strong headwinds against him.
What can we learn from past, close, Best Actor races? In the 2002 race, Adrien Brody stunned the Oscar world by stealing Best Actor out from under beloved past-winners Daniel Day-Lewis and Jack Nicholson for his moving performance in The Pianist. Vote-splitting between the two was the ex-post rationalization for that outcome. That scenario is plausible here and would favor Cooper, but in 2002 the two leaders were past winners. Then, in the 2008 race, Sean Penn and Mickey Rourke battled it out until the end but Penn earned his second Oscar for playing Harvey Milk. General distaste of Rourke’s checkered-past was the explanation there. Rourke won the SAG after the two split the Globes, despite Penn already having an Oscar at that point. This probably favors the more well-liked Redmayne.
In the end, when predicting winners, you would do well to remember this: there have been few real surprises in any category in the Oscars for years now. When The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo won Best Editing in 2011, that was a big surprise. Literally, that’s it. There have been close races like Meryl Streep vs. Viola Davis, but one of the expected always emerges victorious. And while sometimes pundits get nervous and wonder, “Is it going to be Lupita N’Yongo or Jennifer Lawrence,” after the envelope is opened it becomes clear (with hindsight) that the race was never really that in doubt. This leads me both to discard Cooper and to settle on Redmayne. He’s won the most precursors, he’s the consensus pick, he plays a real-life character you root for, and he himself is someone you root for. Keaton could win, but I expect that if/when Redmayne does, everyone will look back and think: “That was obvious.”
Best Director
If you thought Best Actor was tough (a category where over 75% of experts are predicting Redmayne), wait until you dive into the hyper-competitive Best Director race. Again, the list of potential contenders was long and varied, and earning the nomination was the hardest part. The big story of those who missed, of course, is the absence of Selma’s Ava DuVarney, who would have become the first black woman to receive a nod, and the omission of Clint Eastwood, who helmed American Sniper. Eastwood’s exclusion was particularly surprising to me, given how respected and beloved he is in the Academy. I suppose two past wins is enough for now.
Of the nominees, the least deserving is Morten Tyldum for The Imitation Game. As much as I have returned to respecting that movie, I just don’t see it as a directorial achievement at all. For a branch that has of late not been afraid to think outside the box and commend daring filmmakers like those behind Amour or Beasts of the Southern Wild, the conventional nod to Tyldum is perplexing and just shows how beloved that movie was, despite how it has faded almost completely from contention. Indeed, it may go home empty-handed at this point, despite Weinstein’s best efforts, and it certainly will not triumph here.
Nor will Bennett Miller, the director of Foxcatcher, who became the first director nominated for a non-Best Picture nominee since the Best Picture expansion in 2009. For that reason alone it is obvious that he will not win this race either, but I was happy to see him here after missing out for helming Moneyball.
You can also discard Wes Anderson for The Grand Budapest Hotel. It was amazing and refreshing that he made it in. His style is not exactly in my wheelhouse, but it does show the Academy going outside of its comfort zone to recognize some of our quirkier filmmakers. Still, the race is too close between the two leading Best Picture contenders to give Anderson, who helms a comedy, space here. He will likely be rewarded in the screenplay race, but this race boils down to Linklater and Iñárritu.
Statistically, Iñárritu has the edge. He won the DGA, and the DGA winner almost always wins the Oscar. That rule didn’t hold two years ago when Ben Affleck won the DGA and Ang Lee won the Oscar, but Affleck wasn’t even nominated by the Academy. In fact, in the last 30 years, it has only happened TWO times that a director won the DGA and then lost the Oscar if he was nominated. (In 2000, Ang Lee won DGA but the Oscar went to Steven Soderbergh, and in 2003, Rob Marshall won DGA but the Oscar went to Roman Polanski). Two other years, the DGA winner was not nominated for an Oscar (the Affleck year and the ominous Apollo 13 year). That means that overall, 26 out 30 times there has been a DGA/Oscar match, and 26 of 28 when only Oscar nominated directors are counted.
Sure, statistics are only that and Linklater is beloved in Hollywood. He’s overall a popular figure. Iñárritu is admired as the visionary he is, but what I read is that he’s a more difficult person to deal with. Remember, it’s a popularity contest first and foremost. That and Linklater’s BAFTA win give me some pause. But I remember the year of The King’s Speech and The Social Network. That year, King’s Speech won the PGA/SAG/DGA trifecta, but even the Brits rewarded David Fincher for Best Director at BAFTA over Tom Hooper. No matter, because the Oscars went clear through with The King’s Speech. So I’m not sure how much Linklater’s BAFTA win really means.
The other interesting thing to note is that some are saying there will be a split again - one movie will win Best Director and the other Best Picture - and those who are predicting this are saying Iñárritu for Director and Boyhood for Picture. I guess I could see a split, although that would be the third in a row and that has never happened in the history of the Academy Awards. But if there is to be a split, I could make the argument that they may reward Linklater for the endeavor he undertook, and Birdman would win in a preferential ballot, as it did at the PGA. On the other hand, the Iñárritu win could be for the vision, with a Boyhood Best Picture win represent that it as the most popular.
I don’t buy the split argument, which I think is coming from the fact that we had it two years in a row. Two years ago it happened because Argo was the Academy clear favorite, but the Directors Branch didn’t give them the option of Ben Affleck, so a split was necessary. Last year, the split was “agreed upon” in the sense that Alfonso Cuarón consistently won directorial prizes but 12 Years a Slave consistently won Best Picture. The split was oddly predictable. The thing is, however, that Director/Picture splits are both rare and also unpredictable. Few saw it coming the year of Chicago vs. The Pianist or Crash vs. Brokeback Mountain or Gladiator vs. Traffic.
To be fair, if we consider preferential balloting for Best Picture coupled with the straight-out majority style of voting for Best Director, I suppose splits are not difficult. In any case, right now we only have to pick Best Director, and we can worry about Best Picture and a split in the next column.
Against my better judgment but in line with statistics, I’m right now predicting Iñárritu to win this (note, when I first drafted this, I wrote Linklater - that’s how fickle this race is). Iñárritu may not be popular, but the admiration for the project is apparent in both the PGA and DGA wins. Linklater is beloved for sure, and many will want to reward his project. But there are a lot of rumblings from others that the 12-year thing is just a gimmick of sorts (I don’t buy that, but that’s what some voters are saying, it seems), and Boyhood does not have as much support as Birdman among the technical branches.
To be sure, I could change my mind before the final moments. But, right now, startlingly I’m predicting Birdman to somehow lose Actor but win Director (and, in a very “Shoot me, I’m an Oscar prognosticator” moment, it feels like driving off a cliff). I suppose that leaves only one obvious choice for what I think will win Best Picture, but that is the subject of my next column.