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| (Sony Pictures Classics) |
Can
Mr. Turner crack the Best Picture
race?
I’ll
admit, the question rings louder having just seen Mike Leigh’s extraordinary
biopic. But it remains a valid one. Dating back to 1999, with the exception of
his more-divisive All or Nothing,
Leigh has received at least one individual Oscar nomination for his last four
films. None match the critical acclaim meeting Mr. Turner – his best-reviewed film to date – and the movie’s
sizable scope feels more like something Oscar would want to honor.
It’s
also showing up on most every crucial top ten list. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times ranked it first; it’s
also placed among the favorites of Peter Bradshaw at The Guardian, all three major film critics (A.O. Scott, Stephen
Holden, Manhola Dargis) at the New York
Times; David Denby at The New Yorker;
Justin Chang at Variety; David
Edelstein at New York Magazine; and
many others. Films generating that kind of broad enthusiasm tend to fare very
well with the Academy, but Mr. Turner has
been utterly absent in awards conversations so far.
With
classically-gorgeous cinematography, agreeable period stylings and art as its
subject matter, Mr. Turner also seems
to be a more Oscar-friendly contender than many other “frontrunners.” Foxcatcher and Gone Girl are cold and bleak; Unbroken
and Into the Woods aren’t
well-liked by a fair amount; and The
Grand Budapest Hotel comes from Wes Anderson, who inexplicably is, in 2014,
without a single nomination for Best Picture or Director. Yet Mike Leigh is
beloved, with a film far more Oscar-y than his slice-of-life Another Year or the strange concoction
that was Happy-Go-Lucky, both of
which were embraced to some degree.
And
I do wonder about precursors. This was not going to a prominent challenger at
SAG, and was ineligible for the Indie Spirits and the AFI Awards. Some Globe
recognition would have gone a long way, but again, it’s a small organization
with no crossover membership. Given the disparate state of things, predicting
Leigh to receive a DGA nod is absolutely not out of the question. The film
could easily show up on the PGA’s Top 10. And it’s guaranteed to be a BAFTA
smash – recognition there vaulted Philomena
in prominence, and also bolstered the individual chances of eventual Oscar
nominees Sally Hawkins, Leonardo DiCaprio and Amy Adams. All of this means to
say: there’s really no indication that Mr.
Turner is out of this thing.
There’s
also been speculation (as there is every year) that the list of Best Picture
nominees might be down from nine, precisely because of that aforementioned
reason – there just isn’t that much to choose from. Can you imagine Foxcatcher, despite the critical acclaim
and strong specialty box office performance, really rousing enough Academy
members? What about Gone Girl, a box
office hit already ignored by both AFI and SAG? Is this finally the year a Wes
Anderson film gets through? This isn’t 2013, a year so full of easily-imagined
Best Picture nominees that a Coen Brothers critical darling and a Disney-Emma
Thompson collaboration couldn’t even crack the top nine. This is a strange,
thin (again, not in quality, but in Oscar terms) year that’s bound to throw
some surprises. I’ve read arguments for Wild,
but no one seems invested in it beyond star Reese Witherspoon (even expected
supporting contender Laura Dern has been snubbed to date). People are still
holding out hope for Interstellar,
even though it’s type-A sci-fi and the critics aren’t pulling for it the way
people expected. Unbroken is quite
literally willing itself to get through, and at this point, it probably will. Gone Girl and Foxcatcher are holding on, kind of. Grand Budapest was written off solely because of who directed it,
but, would you look at that, it’s barreling through a slate of underwhelming
bubble contenders. So is Nightcrawler,
even if its chances are likely inflated by critics swept up in its scathing
journalistic critique. Mr. Turner
hasn’t had that opportunity yet, but I’m curious and eager to see how the race
changes when, in a couple of weeks, it will have its turn to make its case.
With
the dust settling after the first wave of precursors, we’ve still got Birdman, Boyhood, The Imitation Game,
Selma and The Theory of Everything way out front. We’re still assuming Whiplash is safe. We’ve grudgingly
accepted that Unbroken’s relentless
campaign is probably enough. We’ve reluctantly realized that Grand Budapest might be too good, in a
year too easy, to be the latest Anderson film ignored. That’s eight – is that
it? Foxcatcher, Into the Woods, Gone Girl,
Nightcrawler and Clint Eastwood’s
underperforming American Sniper are
all trying to find a way in. You may not notice it, but so is Mr. Turner.
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| (IFC) |
Picking
Boyhood for Best Picture seems to be
the smart thing to do at this point – but can it really win? As I see it,
Richard Linklater’s 12-years-in-the-making indie would amass six nominations at
most – Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, Supporting Actor, Supporting
Actress, and Film Editing – which would be the lowest total in recent memory
(or ever?) for a Best Picture winner. Argo,
despite missing out on directing and cinematography, still earned seven;
otherwise, the low-end of the scale seems to be nine, characterizing recent
winners The Hurt Locker and 12 Years a Slave. And, you could easily
dismiss the idea that nomination counts matter at all – really, Boyhood doesn’t stand a chance in sound
or cinematography categories simply because it isn’t that type of movie. But,
it does matter. The Academy is a diverse group, with sound mixers and
editors voting right alongside actors and producers. A strong showing in the
nomination totals indicates broad support.
This
does not mean to say Boyhood would be
disliked by a sound editor simply because it’s not doing anything substantial
in that area. But the correlation between high nomination totals and who wins
is undeniable, and indicates broadly that people vote what they know. And
unlike Argo, which grossed hundreds
of millions of dollars domestically, Boyhood
is an extremely small film with a campaigner in IFC that is very new at this “awards”
game. So I wonder: can Boyhood
sustain its frontrunner status?
This
Best Picture race is incredibly complex. Let’s consider the chances of The Imitation Game, which will in all
likelihood reach a substantially larger nomination total (I’d say, at minimum,
seven). Let’s get this out of the way: Morten Tyldum is not winning Best
Director. Not over Richard Linklater, whose gargantuan achievement is too
heavily-discussed and admired. Not over Ava DuVernay, charming the pants off everyone
in town and presenting an opportunity to bring a little history to the Oscars
(she’d be the first black person, let alone black woman, to win Best Director).
And that’s a huge problem – never in Oscar history have Picture and Director failed
to match-up three years in a row. And this just isn’t 2013, when Alfonso Cuaron
was an utter lock to win for Gravity
regardless of how the film fared, or 2012, when the stiff Academy Directors’
Branch decided Ben Affleck wasn’t quite in-enough to get nominated (and I’d
wager that if he were nominated, he would have won). And that’s not the end of The Imitation Game’s problems. It’d be the worst-reviewed movie to win Best
Picture since Crash, which triumphed
in a most-anomalous year. It’s a prestige pic without the robust box office of
similarly-appealing films like The King’s
Speech.
It
also hasn’t generated much chatter in a year in which, for several films, talk
has been deafening. One of those movies is Selma,
whose position in this race is exceedingly unpredictable. It’s a critical hit.
It was a smash at the Globes and the Critics’ Choice Awards. And it is timely.
But is it banging the relevancy drum a little too hard? Pete Hammond, pundit for
Deadline (and fan of the film), reported today that its very overt campaign (tying
the film’s message to erupting racial tensions in the country) might be generating
some backlash. Attendance at its formal Los Angeles Academy screening was
underwhelming – the Into the Woods
screening immediately after drew double the crowd – and yesterday’s murder of
two New York City cops indicates that the situation is getting uglier, one that
Selma has stuck itself in firmly for
better or worse.
I
also wonder if the movie peaked too early. Controversy notwithstanding, 2012’s Zero Dark Thirty came out of nowhere to
pick up a slew of critics’ prizes and stood as a legitimate threat to eventual
winner Argo before it rapidly faded. Selma’s AFI Festival premiere was a
massive hit, and each subsequent screening has gone about as well as a
screening can go. But the Oscars are a marathon, not a sprint. Selma will still need to play well to audiences
and do solid business. The guilds will need to show it some love – unlike Boyhood and The Imitation Game, not to mention Birdman and the Theory of
Everything, Selma was snubbed
from SAG (mainly because it hadn’t been seen by enough people) – seeing as we
have no indication as to what the industry thinks of it. Once DuVernay gets in
at DGA, and the film gets cited by PGA – BAFTA recognition would be especially
indicative – then its staying power and winning potential will be evident.
Right now, it’s isolated talk without enough to back it up.
It’s
also worth noting that Selma’s
nomination total is going to hover around only 6-8. Reasonably assured are
Picture, Director, Editing and Song, and from there are a lot of unknowns. David
Oyelowo has a very good shot at Best Actor, even in a year this competitive. Bradford
Young’s cinematography has generated attention, but competition this year is
stiff. Tom Wilkinson is a legitimate late-break contender for Best Supporting
Actor; BAFTA recognition will be imperative. Paul Webb’s script is in the thick
of a credit controversy, which when competing against Boyhood and Whiplash and Birdman and The Grand Budapest Hotel and Mike Leigh (a mainstay in the
category) isn’t the greatest thing in the world. And that’s about it. Selma may appeal to more groups than Boyhood, but it’s still hampered by the
fact that it isn’t big, in the obvious sense of the word.
I’ve
talked about why the road to an Imitation
Game victory is an awful long one. And beyond it, the only film that’s been
performing well that will earn substantial nominations is Birdman. It’s a technical achievement with a deep cast – Michael
Keaton, Edward Norton and Emma Stone all appear good for a nomination – and an
inventive screenplay. But it’s also weird and atypical. No Oscar pundit is betting
on Birdman for exactly what it is – a
tone- and genre-defying mash-up rooted in satire. That doesn’t scream “Oscar!”
but, then again, in this year’s climate not much does. Maybe Boyhood gets the win it deserves,
defying conventional wisdom. Maybe Selma’s
prescience and aggressive campaign carries it through. Or maybe Birdman flies. As the end of the year
approaches, this puzzle remains gloriously unsolved.