They Shoot Oscar Prognosticators, Don't They?
The Best Picture Race
By J. Don Birnam
February 21, 2017
BoxOfficeProphets.com
In the last two years, where the race was slightly more in question, we looked at why this or that movie could win and why it could not win. This year, that exercise seems futile. It would be about two sentences short: La La Land can’t win because it hasn’t happened since the first year of SAG that a movie not nominated there wins Best Picture, but each of the last years has broken one of these supposedly inviolate rules about the Oscars. The truth is that the times, they are a changing. Forget what you knew from statistics.
So we know that La La Land can and will win, and that nothing else can. So here you have it:
Will win: La La Land
Could win: N/A
Still, let’s not make this the shortest BOP column ever, and look at the Best Picture race of 2016 that was. It was an interesting race at least at some times, because it landed us with nine again, after a couple of years of eight nominees. By the time the names were read out loud, however, there was no doubt that it would be these. There was no "Extremely Loud” surprise or no “Carol”-like snub. And yet, it was one of the most diverse and eclectic bunches in a long time - not just because of their themes, but because of their trajectories to get here.
The year began as it normally does these days, with the Sundance Film Festival showcasing potential nominees even before the ink was dry on the statuettes of the prior year’s Oscar winners. This time around, two movies garnered attention, but only one of them made it in. Some thought that Birth of a Nation was the early obvious winner after a second consecutive year of #OscarsSoWhite, but it was not to be. Rape allegations dogged Nate Parker over the summer and by the time the precursors started, no one wanted anything to do with the film.
Ironically enough, another Sundance movie did survive its own spate of less incendiary sexually-charged allegations, and that was Manchester by the Sea. The movie played well in Utah and then again in all the major film festivals. It was never quite a frontrunner, but it stayed in all the way, and landed nominations in all major categories.
The next of these movies to be seen and eventually end up on the list was actually Hell or High Water, which had a quiet debut in the summer and just sort of hung out through the thick of it. It never broke through with a splash, it never managed a director nod or a big guild win, but enough people liked it that it kept its way throughout. It’s like the Grand Budapest of its year in some ways, though it was a much later release.
Then the film festivals happened and it was, as usual, off to the races. Arrival and La La Land debuted side-by-side in Venice then Telluride, with one impressing audiences and the other robbing their hearts. La La Land garnered one standing ovation after another by critics and film lovers alike, ultimately taking home the coveted People’s Choice Award at The Toronto International Film Festival. From then on, it didn’t seem like it could lose, and it did not.
But you know what else had its start at Telluride? Moonlight. I was actually lucky to be in the first audience to see that film when it debuted there. I remember walking out of there with an audience (tired, it was late at night) quiet but obviously touched. Some immediately crowned it a masterpiece. I was surprisingly moved to tears by the last scene. A pin drop could be heard. I also remember thinking “No way, they will never go for this.” I have been proven wrong and pleasantly surprised. They have gone for it, showering it with eight nominations. Could they still shut it out? Sure. And it’s not going to win. But that a small movie like, with a small audience like this, with a small subject like this, could make it this far in the Best Picture race has to be endearing. It’s a sign that there are still thoughtful minds involved in this whole thing.
Lion also debuted then and was picked up by Weinstein, and it did well at TIFF, so that position plus distribution rights sort of guaranteed it a spot which it capitalized on with a surprise DGA nomination to boot.
So, at this point, there were easily six movies that were going to make it in, but, other than Jackie, nothing else was threatening. There was clearly room for more.
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So next came Mel Gibson with his throwback film Hacksaw Ridge, a film that in say, 1998, would have taken the Oscars by storm. It’s a formulaic film and I don’t mean that in a bad way. But it follows straightforward narratives of easy heroes and easily identifiable baddies. It has a clear message and it has the prowess of the technical arts. It found a quick respect among the core Academy constituency and never looked back even if it faltered a bit when it failed to land major BAFTA, SAG or DGA nods. Indeed, it still managed a Best Picture nomination, so there you go.
Then the last part of the calendar year came up, the part where movies with Oscar aspirations can surely get in to the Best Picture race, but where none has won since 2004 (that’s a long time). Even last year, The Revenant, a late release, arguably did not have enough time to be thoroughly vetted and ultimately lost the last and most important race of the night. So some wondered whether it would be Martin Scorsese’s Silence to steal the thunder from the darling, but it was not to be. That movie was mostly shut out, and nothing else happened to upend the Oscar race.
True, two other very late releases did get in, and they were Fences and Hidden Figures - the former somewhat surprisingly, at least given that it’s a play adaptation, but perhaps name recognition gave it the mettle it needed. The latter was also surprising and welcomingly so. The movie was a box office hit and audiences simply liked the feel-good story here, and, by God, a story about successful, independent women? How refreshing, to be honest.
So that rounded up the race, and we had our core group. But before these nominations could be announced in late January other groups started speaking. The Globes went for La La Land and Moonlight, the SAG somewhat surprised us, but then, after that La La Land never looked back. The rest is, or will be, history.
Twitter: @jdonbirnam
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