by Nathaniel R
News of the World is the only movie with exactly four Oscar nominations this year. That quartet of nods for Best Cinematography, Best Production Design, Best Sound, and Best Original Score, places the movie squarely in the greatly admired but not-quite-loved camp we see each year. Ma Rainey's Black Bottom met a similar fate with five nominations; both movies stood a reasonable chance in a few other categories but missed suggesting solid support but perhaps not passion. We'd argue that Paul Greengrass' western is easily the least discussed of the dozen most nominated movies this year (that would be the 8 Best Picture nominees plus News, One Night in Miami, Ma Rainey and Soul). That's true even here despite the film landing in my personal top 20. Why was that exactly?
We'd guess there are probably three reasons...
1. Pandemic Circumstances. The movie went with a more traditional route for distribution, playing only in theaters and then VOD. In a season so thoroughly dominated by streaming due to the pandemic that surely hurt "discussability". This pattern didn't hurt Promising Young Woman or Minari which also chose the non-streaming-for-free route but people have limited budgets and with so many of the contenders available for free there were only a handful that people would have splurged for. We should note that News of the World did well for itself given the dire circumstances. It was the 9th biggest box office hit domestically among films released theatrically in 2020 during the pandemic. (Movies released theatrically in 2021 have been doing better but movie theaters in the biggest markets have now reopened). It's easy to imagine it being a much bigger hit in normal circumstances given that Tom Hanks is a reliable draw and his young co-star Helena Zengel might have become a more familiar presence in media coverage if the traditional ways of promoting a movie had still been in place.
2. No Narrative? Apologies to whoever said this in the comments (we've forgotten who but it was insightful!). News of the World had no narrative for awards, the only reason to vote for it being that it was a good movie. Before getting ruffled about that consider the truth: even in a perfect world, quality might not be enough because a lot of fims have that AND a narrative hook to vote for them. All that said, one of the things that's been unfortunately lost in the lack of discussion around the movie and perhaps this is on its campaign team, is that it does have modern resonance, and quite a surprising amount. Perhaps the movie will be rediscovered in 10 years and people will be like "why wasn't this a bigger deal?". Several of its vignettes -- in some ways it's a 'road trip' movie -- include gripping takes on "fake news", racism, and nationalism. Set in the aftermath of the Civil War, Captain Kidd (Tom Hanks) meets many people who are hanging on to the Confederacy, illustrating future fault lines quite well; it's one of the first movies we can ever recall seeing that really got across the complexity of what the US was going through in that seldom depicted period (most movies dealing with the Civil War take place before or during the war). How do you control a populace with that much post war fatigue (and probably PTSD), racism, and anymosity for each other... especially when they're spread out for thousands of miles, there is no mass media, news travels very slowly, and so many citizens are illiterate.
3. Western / Older Demographic Appeal. In our entirel lifetime, the western has never been a "cool" genre. Popular filmmakers are always trying to revive it and some have had impressive Oscar runs (Dances with Wolves, Unforgiven, The Revenant) but it's never become a dominant genre in the way it was in earlier decades. Even the musical, arguably, has had better luck about becoming a regular presence again. Appealing to older demographics is in no way a natural obstacle to Oscar nominations but sometimes it does mean less oxygen for the movie since the mainstream media tends to focus on the films that social media is buzzing about. And those are usually the edgier youth appeal movies (like Promising Young Woman) movies with more obvious politics (Judas and the Black Messiah, Trial of the Chicago 7) or whatever is brand new to streaming -- which we think will help also adult-skewing Nomadland in the crucial home stretch.
Have you seen News of the World and would you have given it fewer or more nominations?