"1917" wins the PGA
Sunday, January 19, 2020 at 7:34AM 
Though 1917 fever didn't immediately take after its buzzy first screenings on each coast, it was apparently just on time-delay. That's happy news for the film's supporters and campaigners though less so for those who are hoping for Parasite or Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to win the big kahuna of movie awards on February 9th, 2020... and terrible news for those (raises hand) who are always hoping that Christmas releases don't win so that we can train distributors to stop with the Christmas glut each year since it's so bad for the health of adult films to bunch them all up in just one or two months.
With 1917's triumph at the PGA (and the box office), we can safely call the film the putative 'frontrunner' though the race is far from over. Other winners and more comments after the jump...
Picture 1917
There's still the DGA and SAG announcements to come, one of which 1917 can't win so it's not over until it's over. Not every PGA winner repeats at the Oscar, though the majority of them do. The PGA has been giving out prizes since 1989 and 70% of their winners also win the Oscar.
Animated Feature Toy Story 4
This PGA category has only been around since 2005 but they have very similar taste to Oscar voters. The winner here goes on to win the Oscar 71% of the time. They've only named one winner that wasn't also an Oscar nominee (The Lego Movie).
Documentary Apollo 11
This one can't repeat at the Oscars since it wasn't nominated for Best Documentary. This is the third year in a row that the winner has been a box office hit that wasn't nominated for the parallel Oscar following Jane, and Won't You Be My Neighbor?
Drama Series Succession (Season 2)
Comedy Series Fleabag (Season 2)
Limited Series Chernobyl
TV Movie Apollo: Missions to the Moon
Non Fiction Television: Leaving Neverland
Live Entertainment & Talk Show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
Game & Competition Television RuPaul's Drag Race (Season 11)
Children's Program Sesame Stret (Season 49)
Sports Program What's My Name Muhammad Ali
Short-Form Program Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee (Season 11)
Reader Comments (35)
Amen to all of this.
There’s some irony in many bemoaning the negative impact streaming will have on the cinema, whilst casually missing that a film essentially shot and experienced like a video game will now likely take best picture.
I'm usually with you on the "lets squeeze all the adult movies into two months" theme, but I think its worked out for a lot of them, this year. FvF and Knives out are over $100m, 1917 and Little Women will be at that mark soon, Uncut Gems is poised to be A24's biggest movie yet, both Queen & Slim and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood has doubled its budget, and of course the unprecedented success of Parasite has been quite a story. Even Harriet has quietly made a good bit of money. There's been a few disappointments(Dark Waters, Richard Jewell spring to mind), but I've actually been pleasantly surprised with how many non-IP/blockbuster original films have found audiences this year.
As for Best Picture, its not over yet, but 1917 is without question the frontrunner. GG, PGA, BAFTA, DGA, ASC. Not too much can stop that momentum, especially in a shortened season. There's an outside chance that Parasite pulls a Moonlight style upset, but it would be just that, an upset.
Film Twitter really thought it was going to be Parasite. You gotta love them!
I don't have a problem with 1917 winning BP, should that happen. It's a good movie, and I honestly think the academy hasn't made a good choice w/ BP since Moonlight. Green Book was super-unfortunate and I think Shape of Water simply won w/ the academy being in a particular state of flux in that year; it almost seems to have won by default - I think history will prove it to have been a strange, off-putting choice (what it was actually about and/or trying to say is still a big muddle to me). But I'd much rather Parasite get BP this year b/c I think it's the best, most interesting and innovative movie of the nominees. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood would be my 3rd choice (that uncomfortable, gleefully sadistic violence at the climax notwithstanding). Just please no Joker win here, please please please.
What is especially wrong with Joker, Rob?
Well 1917 is the not best film of the year for sure But it’s way better than joker and definitely better than last year’s green book !
And god there’s still hope for parasite
To Rob ^^^
I happen to think The Shape of Water was an exquisite choice. A true auteur film that was grand in its cinematic scope, movie-theatre experience and with a transcending message of empathy and love. I’m sorry for you that you didn’t get it. History will keep TSOW as one of those few movies with cult status and having won the “big” prize rightly.
At least Joker made a significant impact on the culture this year. A 1917 BP win is reminiscent of the win for The King's Speech - a toothless choice and a forgettable movie for such a great year.
I don't get all the hate out there for 1917. I was dazzled and in a way I imagine people were dazzled by THE BIG PARADE and even COME AND SEE upon their first release. People keep complaining that the one-take effect is a gimmick, but these same people never seemed to complain that RUSSIAN ARK and BIRDMAN were even more gimmick movies in this regard. I've never played a computer animated video game. Maybe if I had, I'd think less of this film due to the similarities. But the screening I attended had everyone dazzled, and in an old silent movie sort of way. It might as well have been opening night for INTOLERANCE.
RobUK: I mean...hmm. Well, I mean, Birdman kind of ALSO did the single shot thing. But, if we're comparing Best Picture winning single shot movies to video games? Birdman is to a Psychonauts level as 1917 is to...Call of Duty 1/2. Y'know, back when they were real games that you could mostly take seriously? And not absurd plastic set-piece hallways?
" People keep complaining that the one-take effect is a gimmick, but these same people never seemed to complain that RUSSIAN ARK and BIRDMAN were even more gimmick movies in this regard."
*raises hand*
Russian Ark may have been a gimmick, but it actually WAS one take. Although there was at least one restaging done while the camera lingers on a painting, IIRC.
Always with the video games, yeesh. Volvagia, I know a previous commenter mentioned it, but IGN and Gamespot are missing your sparkling contributions. Maybe leave the waterfalls of TFE and stick to the aforementioned rivers and lakes that you are used to and cannot stop spurting.
There are too many film lovers who only love the films they came to love.
I didn't feel too pressed by the Christmas release. Only LW and 1917 felt like the big holiday Oscar players and it was just a matter of seeing when 17 would play in my town. Other, smaller films could easily have been scheduled in October and November and I would've made time to see them (Uncut Gems, for one). I am still up in the air about streaming and Oscars, but the majority of those films I saw in my own home and, at the very least, it's made it possible to see most of the films up for awards before the ceremony.
Have not seen this yet- but it is the sort of classic historical drama the Academy likes to pick for best picture
You say 1917 can’t win one of DGA and SAG s. Which one can’t it win?
polly: Hi. That was just rude. I was trying to constructively counterpoint (but not insult) the initial comparison, and you basically just went "Waaaah! Don't mention any other medium here!"...while (accidentally?) quoting TLC, so...yeah, please: Shut up.
@mark 1917 isn't nominated for SAG ensemble.
Birdman had quite a few people commenting that the style was vary gimmicky (I thought it worked to create a really propulsive energy for the film. It felt like exercise). Re: Russian Ark, it barely made over 3 million dollars and didn't make a dent in the oscar race. Plus it was pre-Twitter/social media, so I don't think it's a reasonable comparison.
The difference is "Russian Ark" and "Birdman" actually do interesting, thematically resonant, and intellectually pertinent things with their long takes; they're formal conceits absolutely integral to the films' projects of interrogating historical time and channeling an erratic subjectivity, respectively. The aesthetic of "1917" just feels... unnecessary. It didn't add to my experience in any significant way, phenomenologically or intellectually.
Volvagia telling it like it is.
That's ok, Jonathan.
What’s wrong with video games? And what do you expect from somebody named after the dragon in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time?
Anyways 1917 is a fine film, but I feel like the Academy has deviated from the PGA in recent years, so all is not lost for Parasite.
@jonathan, I don't know what "thematically resonant" means in the context of those two films, let alone "intellectually pertinent". They just sound like ticks in a graduate student's term paper. The notion of history as an unbroken flow is just a poetic metaphor, and hardly a deep one. And I can't understand why an erratic sensibility should be expressed in a long take. If anything, it should have been expressed in jagged editing. It was just Iñárritu showing off and trying to one-up Cuarón's long takes in CHILDREN OF MEN. On the other hand, in 1917 the "one-shot" cinematography puts one very nearly in the shoes of a soldier traveling along with the main characters and creates a much more intense connection between the two. @whunk, it hardly matters if it was really one shot or not. The fact that it was one shot just adds to the sense that it was a gimmick (or a stunt). "Look how hard we worked!" It was also the reactionary, nationalist Sokurov's FU to Eisenstein: Pushing Russian nationalism and long takes in opposition to Eisenstein's internationalism and montage editing. In that way it was necessary: but only if you like one middling director's take down of a film giant who's in the grave and can't respond.
Look, I get it. 1917 is a big cinematic swing which following the cheap and basic Green Book is a win. I’d prefer Parasite or OUATIH, obvs, but I at least understand the appeal of this one (although I do not count myself as a fan).
Russian Ark is probably not the film you wanna be talking about when discussing 1917 as a technical achievement.
Daniella, I think "Russian Ark" is doing more than just rendering history an "unbroken flow," it's using the long take to detach historical time from space, really to deform and condense it, providing a whole other way of reading and interpreting national-historical events.
Also, the "Birdman" aesthetic works because that film is dealing with multiple, unstable levels of reality, and by refusing edits it pushes all those possible perceptions onto one continuous plane that can't be understood as either real or simulated. It's totally effective, and puts us in the subjectivity of a guy who can't distinguish them, either.
They gave an award to Leaving Neverland with all of that bullshit that was in the film?
Well, Jonathan, you're making a good case for both of those films the more you go on. Still, they are highly intellectualized defenses of the films. Some of the greatest movies are the simple ones: INTOLERANCE comes to mind. And a movie that makes audience members feel like a soldier traveling through no-mans land in a world where war is always with us, while simple, is hardly worthless. When it comes down to it, the only intellectually coherent takeaway one gets from APOCALYPSE NOW is "was is madness." 1917 says war is hell, and it's really only about a couple of young guys making heroic choices in a time when heroism is hard to come by. That's pretty basic, but it's enough to make it a classic.
I am not convinced that 1917 can win Best Picture. Without any nominated acting performances, I think that film suffers a lack of support from the largest branch of AMPAS. When we look at Oscar history, only 11 films have won Best Picture without a single one of its actors getting a nomination.
1927 Wings
1929 All Quiet on the Western Front
1931 Grand Hotel
1951 An American in Paris
1952 The Greatest Show on Earth
1956 Around the World in 80 Days
1958 Gigi
1987 The Last Emporer
1995 Braveheart
2003 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
2008 Slumdog Millionaire
With a preferential ballot, the SAG winner will indicate if the actor's branch will coalesce around another Best Picture nominee
1917 makes sense. Not only is it an impressive production, but it was peaking at the right time. (I turned in my PGA ballot on Tuesday, after 1917 had the Globe and was #1 at the box office. And though I ranked 1917 maybe 6th place on my ballot, I was honestly cool with all of the nominees for once.)
1917 is definitely the front runner at the moment. That tide can turn if Mendes doesn’t win DGA or if the SAG ensemble win for (presumably) OUATIH or Parasite drums up excitement.
I’m half surprised there aren’t more anti-(X) hit pieces out there this year, ala last year’s campaign against Green Book. (Especially when, for example, it’s super easy to bring up all the controversies against Tarantino or OUATIH. And I say that as a big fan of the film...) Maybe this shortened season doesn’t leave time for super negative campaigns?
thevoid99 - I agree with you. As member of PGA and the Television Academy, I don’t get why my peers voted for Leaving Neverland for either award. As a piece of television (or film), I didn’t find it particularly well produced or assembled, so I have to imagine voters either picked it because it was the highest profile nominee, “felt important” or as a political stance. The PGA category is a weird grab bag of programming, but the Emmy category had Minding the Gap and Love Gilda to point to two solid documentaries.
James — And to your point, even though Slumdog Millionaire and Return of the King both failed to get any acting nominations from the Academy, they both still won Best Ensemble at the SAG awards. Should 1917 win Best Picture, it would be the first since Braveheart to not be nominated for any acting awards at SAG or the Oscars.
If we look at precursors and statistics, NOTHING can win best picture this year. Let's look at the nominees:
The Irishman:
Only one film since 1974 has won Best Picture with a running time of over 200 minutes
No film from a streaming service has ever won Best Picture
Little Women
JoJo Rabbit
Marriage Story
Ford v Ferrari
Only three films since 1932 have won Best Picture without a correspoinding Best Director nomination.
Joker:
No film based on a comic book character has won best picture. As if.
Parasite:
No foreign language film has ever won Best Picture
Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood
Help me out here. There has to be some statistical reason it can’t win.
1917:
As previously discussed….
This win makes sense because 1917 is one of those films that basically advocates for the continuation of the cinematic experience, a film that gets most of its impact from seeing it on the largest possible screen and that urges people to find the largest possible screen to experience it, so to me it makes sense that people who work in cinema gravitate toward it. It's a stunning visual achievement, though it feels akin to films like Gravity, The Revenant, James Cameron films, a film where the performances and the script play second fiddle to everything that goes into creating the experience (those are the kinds of films that have been winning Best Director as of late). As such, it's remarkable, and if it wins Best Picture, I'll be perfectly happy to call it a Best Picture winner... and yet, I do think it will be handicapped by the fact that I'm note sure actors and writers will respond to a film where their work is in service of the spectacle (if you see the latest trend, Best Picture has gone mostly to films that rely more on their writing and acting)... though 1917 does have that Original Screenplay nomination, so in the end, who knows...
You know something just hit me. There are, for the first time maybe ever, a lot of films I'd be happy to see win Best Picture on the final ballot: The Irishman, Jojo Rabbit, 1917, Little Women, Once upon a Time... in Hollywood, Parasite, even Joker. Usually there's exactly one, sometimes two and something else entirely wins. I guess I'm hoping Parasite wins just so that glass ceiling is broken once and for all and people realize the best film doesn't have to be in English, but there are a lot of good films there. Of course, it will be just my luck and Marriage Story or Ford v Ferrari will end up winning.
I think cinematic achievement of THE SHAPE OF WATER is going to hold up quite well as a BP winner, more so than middlebrow fare like THE KING'S SPEECH, SPOTLIGHT and GREEN BOOK.