by Nathaniel R
The Grolsch People's Choice Awards at TIFF has always been a strong omen for good Oscar fortunes. Last year Green Book was a surprise winner (it wasn't even on most Best Picture prediction charts before the screenings started, it's sudden popularity in the Oscar race came via festival debut with little pre-release buzz). This year's winner is less of a shock to the Oscar system (TFE has at least been predicting it in multiple categories since the April Foolish predictions). The winner for 2019 is Taiki Waititi's "anti-hate satire" JoJo Rabbit about a young boy and his imaginary friend "Adolf Hitler". Noah Baumbach's moving and surprisingly funny Marriage Story and Bong Joon-Ho's brilliant Parasite, which both played to packed satisfied houses, were the runners-up. Both of those pictures are also gunning for Best Picture citations come Oscar time, though obviously Parasite has a steeper hill to climb to get there given its subtitles as Oscar's hesitancy in embracing Asian cinema. Most of the people I spoke with in Canada were actually predicting that Parasite would take the win as TIFF had to keep adding screenings. But JoJo Rabbit it is...
Though the folks at Fox Searchlight are surely celebrating JoJo Rabbit's win the road to Oscar will be much more difficult...
Thomas McKenzie co-stars as the Jewish girl hiding in a little Nazi's attack in "JoJo Rabbit"
Not only is the film a comedy but it's a very goofy satire and one with a tricky tone at that, encompassing both very broad physical comedy and dark dramatic beats in its World War II story. Despite the familiar "awards friendly" subject matter not a single Best Picture winner in history is remotely as (intentionally) silly.
The following bit of stats is amended from what we wrote last year when Green Book was the surprise winner...
In the entire 41 year history of this prize, stretching From Girlfriends (1978) through Green Book (2018), 17 of the winners went on to Best Picture nominations at the Oscars. The 41 winners also include 8 future Best Picture winners, 6 future Best Foreign Language Film winners, and 2 future Best Documentary Feature winners.
The Oscar correlation is getting stronger. In the past 12 years only 1 of the winners (the Lebanese musical Where Do We Go Now? a surprise snub in the foreign film category at the Oscars that year) was not Best Picture nominated and 4 of the 12 won Best Picture. A 33% sign that you'll win the Best Picture Oscar is pretty damn good.
Before we unleash our own "awards" portion of our TIFF experience and a couple more review posts as wrap-ups, I would like to draw your attention, briefly, to the six best films I personally screened at TIFF that didn't get written up here (oops). It's a good time to share it as my six favourites actually include all three People's Choice citations (no Green Book problems this year).
NATHANIEL'S 6 FAVOURITES FROM TIFF IN ALPHA ORDER
Scarlett Johansson is wonderful and Adam Driver delivers career best work in "Marriage Story"
- A Beautiful Day in the Neighorbhood (Marielle Heller) -humane, creative, lovely
- JoJo Rabbit (Taiki Waititi) - somehow it works
- Marriage Story (Noah Baumbach) - a complete stunner from start to finish
- Pain and Glory (Pedro Almodóvar) - wistful, smart, gorgeous
- Parasite (Bong Joon-ho) - perfectly constructed, wildly entertaining
- Portrait of a Lady on Fire (Celine Sciamma) - ingenious and provocative
The write-ups on these six terrific movies are delayed due to a complex yet boring mix of fatigue, intimidation, internet outtages, time crunch, sickness, and the knowledge that we'll have plentiful opportunities to talk about ALL of these pictures very soon. We will probably have a great excuse to keep talking about them all the way through Oscar season. The only "if" in this equation is really Portrait of a Lady on Fire (review half-written!) as we don't know yet know if France will submit it as their representative film in the Best International Feature competition but the rest of the titles are good for at least one nomination and probably more.
Thoughts? Are you looking forward to JoJo Rabbit?