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To be sure, at first viewing I never saw Birdman as a serious Best Picture threat, ironically, for the same reason Boyhood could lose: Birdman does not feel like an Academy movie either. It is weird, the ending is ambiguous, and the characters are crazy. Nothing of this ilk has ever won Best Picture - most of the movies that win have very traditional story arcs. Birdman is divisive at least in some circles - it is not universally loved by audiences. That could spell trouble for it with the preferential ballot. The real shocker, indeed, is not that Boyhood ran out of steam, but that it was Birdman and not The Imitation Game that stole its thunder.

In the end, I believe that any good theory of why a movie will win should be based not on silly statistics like the lack or presence if this or that nomination. Argo, 12 Years of Slave, etc., show that the old rules based on stats are going out the window. Instead, a good theory should be based on why the movie fits into the Academy paradigm of what wins. Here’s mine:

The Academy choices tend to be emotional, pull-at-the-heart-strings sorts of movies such as The Artist, Slumdog Millionaire, or The King’s Speech. Those movies defeat darker, more cynical movies, like Moneyball, Benjamin Button and The Social Network. But the rule that the emotional movie wins is broken under two circumstances. The first is when there is no clear, respected emotional movie. The Departed won against Babel, No Country for Old Men against There Will be Blood, and The Hurt Locker against Avatar. They essentially had no choice but to go for something darker. The second is when the emotional movies are splitting the vote. That’s my theory as to what is happening here. Boyhood pulls at the heartstrings, but at least two movies that are respected - The Theory of Everything and The Imitation Game - are pulling votes away from it. Indeed, you may even argue that American Sniper is an emotional movie in that sense. Birdman is essentially the lone dark, cynical movie of the bunch, and that may be what is putting it on top.

In the end it will come down to the preferential ballot. Remember, voters are asked to rank their picks for Best Picture from 1 to 8, and then stacks are made. The movie with the fewest #1 votes gets its ballot redistributed to the voters’ #2 choice, and the process is repeated until one movie has an absolute majority of ballots. So, in the last round, assume Boyhood/Birdman are essentially tied, and in third place is Grand Budapest or Whiplash. Where will those ballots likely go? I think Birdman - Grand Budapest is quirky and Whiplash is artistic and sinister. I wager those voters will pick Birdman higher than Boyhood and the redistribution of their ballots will put it over the top.

Under all of these theories, right now it’s Birdman’s Oscar to lose. And with that much precursor support, a win by Boyhood would be essentially an upset victory.

I’ll close with another Boyhood quote that seems quite applicable to the Oscars race. “So what’s the point? Of any of this? Of everything?” Mason asks his father at some point.

“I sure as shit don’t know. We are all just winging it.”

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