So it all comes down to this. After three consecutive years of nine nominees in the newly elasticated best picture category, the Academy collectively (albeit not intentionally) elected to dock this year’s field by one. (Foxcatcher, with its surprise best director bid and four nominations besides, appears to have been the unlucky #9 finisher.) This slight shrinking of the roster feels appropriate for a race that has been more closely fought than usual – at least half this year’s best picture nominees have looked like potential winners at one point or another, though it appears to have boiled down to a squeaker between two oppositely-styled independents from the same mini-major studio.
Since the expansion of the best picture category, there’s been a near-annual slot for the previous year’s big Sundance winner – a tip of the hat to the scrappier strand of “true” independent cinema that has yet to enjoy its big Oscar moment, as opposed to the polished mid-range indies that are now the Academy’s bread and butter. So it is that Whiplash follows in the footsteps of Precious, Winter’s Bone and Beasts of the Southern Wild. And while it could convert a few of its five nominations to gold – JK Simmons has it locked, though I’m betting it will nab wins for adapted screenplay and editing too – most voters will deem the sweaty, shouty drumming drama not quite their tempo in the top category.
More so, at least on paper, is The Imitation Game, the safe, polished British biopic from the Weinstein Company stable that was once widely tipped to follow The King’s Speech – another safe, polished British biopic from the Weinstein Company stable – to best picture glory. The Alan Turing drama started strong, echoing its spiritual predecessor by taking the Audience award at Toronto, but has since hit a drastic losing streak, scoring multiple nominations but coming up empty at the Globes, the Baftas, the Guild awards, even the British Independent Film awards. Master strategist Weinstein has remained bullish in interviews – claiming it will ace the Academy’s preferential balloting system because it’s the “cumulative best” – but the campaign’s desperation is showing, not least in its distasteful “Honour the Man, Honour the Film” ads. A zero-for-eight showing is quite possible.
At the start of the season, everyone assumed it was The Theory of Everything that would suffer most if the presence of two troubled-English-genius biopics in the race forced some kind of vote split in key categories. Instead, the Stephen Hawking portrait has emerged as the more quietly dominant player: Eddie Redmayne has been scooping up awards across the circuit, but it was the film’s additional wins for best British film and best adapted screenplay (both at the Turing film’s expense) at Bafta that had pundits reconsidering how deep the industry’s support for James Marsh’s film runs. If its US box office were as robust as its remarkable haul on home turf, it could have been an estimable spoiler. As it is, it’s mite too polite for the top gong – but could well win three of its five nominations.
The least-nominated film in the race might well be the most fussed-over. Around November, when Ava DuVernay’s smart, stoic, socially textured Martin Luther King biopic Selma was first unveiled, many enamoured critics declared it a frontrunner. Its subsequent slide, however, has proven that critical advocacy is no match for a mismanaged campaign. When Selma scored a paltry two nods – with DuVernay and star David Oyelowo its most prominent casualties – sensation-hungry pundits blamed the supposed racial prejudices of the predominantly Caucasian voters. (Last year’s triumph for 12 Years a Slave, meanwhile, was dismissed as a guilt-alleviating stopgap.) The truth is considerably more mundane: with Paramount having belatedly kickstarted the just-completed film’s campaign when Interstellar, the studio’s former prize priority, lost heat, screenings and screeners were arranged too late to penetrate the bulk of the Academy voting body. They were equally ill-prepared for the not-unforeseeable controversy that erupted around the film’s interpretation of Lyndon B Johnson. A few weeks’ groundwork might have made all the difference; sadly, though voters have had time to catch up with the film by now, the #OscarsSoWhite meme may have aroused more antipathy than admiration. Expect the best song Oscar to be its rather negligible reward.
If Selma proved that the recently shortened Oscar calendar has made it harder for December releases to generate the necessary momentum ahead of voting deadlines, American Sniper proved that in Hollywood, Clint Eastwood is a law unto himself. Like Million Dollar Baby and Letters from Iwo Jima, the controversial Chris Kyle biopic swooped in at the last minute to nab six nominations – despite initially split reviews that haven’t reached any greater consensus, with debate still raging over its political allegiances or lack thereof. That divisiveness counts against the film in the preferential balloting system, designed to reward the film with the broadest spread of admiration within the Academy. But as I mentioned when discussing Bradley Cooper’s best actor chances, Sniper’s stunning commercial performance – smack in the middle of the voting period, to boot – makes it a lurking threat.
No film in the lineup has played a longer Oscar game than The Grand Budapest Hotel; having premiered at the Berlin fest over a year ago and opened theatrically in March, it’s the earliest release to score a best picture nod since The Silence of the Lambs in 1991. Its awards potential wasn’t immediately obvious: despite glowing reviews, Wes Anderson’s romp was perceived as too lightweight for recognition beyond the screenplay and design categories. Yet as the film’s box office kept quietly climbing (prior to American Sniper’s surge, it was the highest grosser of the nominees), and later, loftier releases failed to register, Fox Searchlight’s stealth player held on to its industry affection, even tying with Birdman for the year’s highest nomination tally. The froth factor will likely still keep it from the top prize, but with trophies for production design, costumes, music, makeup and original screenplay all possible-to-probable, it’s likely to be the night’s biggest winner.
I doubt even Searchlight was quite prepared for their early bird’s success; like everyone else, their eyes were fixed on autumn release Birdman as (to mix metaphors rather badly) their prize pony. Some questioned the film’s potential as a frontrunner: between The Artist and Argo, the Academy has recently been sympathetic to films that reflect their own industry, but Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s backstage black comedy is a pretty sour, eccentric portrait. The stunt of its one-take conceit, meanwhile, could backfire with aesthetically conservative voters. But while the film underperformed in the early round of precursor awards, losing even the comedy Globe to The Grand Budapest Hotel, it surprisingly rallied in the all-important Guild awards, taking top honors from actors’, directors’ and producers’ collectives. All three share a significant portion of their membership with the Academy; moreover, no film has taken that trifecta and lost the Oscar since Apollo 13 in 1995.
If there’s a Braveheart in our midst, however, it hovers in the comparatively unassuming form of Boyhood. Richard Linklater’s 12-years-a-kid character study – also labelled a stunt contender in some quarters, though hardly a flashy one – was comfortably the bookies’ favourite before Birdman’s late surge, having swept the US critics’ awards and taken top honours at the not-always-indie-inclined Golden Globes. Last week’s Bafta triumph, meanwhile, proved that it hadn’t necessarily lost momentum to Inarritu’s film – simply that both leading contenders have deep pockets of passionate industry support. Certainly, Boyhood is the friendlier frontrunner: many members may not take to its casually structured narrative, but many others will respond to its bittersweet warmth and ultimate endorsement of family values. Either way, voters will feel confident they’re crowning something that doesn’t quite resemble any previous best picture winner.
Will win: Birdman
Should win: Boyhood
Hey, where’s... the rest of the world? With The Theory of Everything and US co-production The Imitation Game the only imports in the race – and hardly very exotic ones – the expansion of the Best Picture category still isn’t yielding much in the way of global diversity. (After six years and 55 nominees, Amour is only subtitled film to make the grade.) Best foreign language film nominees Leviathan, Ida and Timbuktu are just three of the international offerings that could hold their own in this field.
