Team Experience is discussing the various Oscar categories. Here's Baby Clyde, Elisa Giudici, Abe Friedtanzer and Eric Blume to discuss Best Picture. We're not saving it for last. This conversation began BEFORE the PGA went to CODA but ends afterwards...
the five films with the most nominations this year.
ABE FRIEDTANZER: I'm thrilled to be talking the top Oscar prize with my esteemed colleagues Eric, Elisa, and Baby Clyde. I do think there's plenty to discuss here, but I believe that one film is very far out in front. That's The Power of the Dog, of course, which some may doubt after it missed out on an ensemble nomination from SAG. There is absolutely momentum for CODA after its win there and its triumph the night after that with the Hollywood Critics Association. But Dog also underperformed with nominations from the latter group, so the comparison isn't all that helpful. There just isn't enough going against Jane Campion's western for it to lose, in my opinion. But there are nine other nominees, and at least a few of those will siphon votes. Aside from CODA, King Richard gets a boost from its ACE Eddie win, and Drive My Car is worth considering since it hasn't been in competition with many other groups. What films do you think are still in the mix?
ERIC BLUME: Part of me still can't believe a film as remarkable as Campion's latest is actually going to win Best Picture, but I feel like the "new Academy" is changing the big award from its history of middle-of-the-road crowd-pleasers to honoring actual achievements of the form. Over the past five years, we've had really only one boner Best Picture (Green Book), and instead got Moonlight, The Shape of Water, Parasite, and Nomadland...which are all unusual, challenging, original pictures not shaped for commercial compromise...
A win for The Power of the Dog adds to that trend, and quite frankly I feel "the Academy" is starting to have better taste than most of the other awards bodies. I also could see The Power of the Dog possibly losing if there were ANY film close to it, but despite Twitterland trying to drum up false narratives, nothing else feels like it comes close. The attempt to make CODA seem like it could win feels silly: SAG voters often give the big award to light films that allow them to feel good about themselves (see Trial of the Chicago 7, Hidden Figures, Black Panther, The Help, Little Miss Sunshine). And I feel confident that for every person who loves CODA, there is at least one other person who thinks it is not good filmmaking. I fall in the latter camp (the writing and directing are...not good), and I think most people see it for the sweet afterschool special it is. I feel the same case is true for King Richard, which would have had a better shot thirty years ago when those kind of movies went on to win big awards, but we feel past that these days. I just don't see any other movie that is a legit threat to ...Dog. Elisa and Baby Clyde, argue with me!!!
ELISA GIUDICI: Eric, I think we are in that very particular moment quite close to the Oscar Night when we are inclined to take for granted Academy voters’ good faith and taste. I think The Power of the Dog will have some big wins, but I am not sure the Best Picture statuette is locked. What concerns me the most is the fragmentation of voting groups. I hope Campion’s movie fanbase inside the Academy is as big as we suppose it is.
Three contenders trouble me: Belfast, CODA, and King Richard. CODA is my nightmare since the original French movie came out in 2014. I hated La Famille Bélier with passion for years, naming it “the proof that French cinema is remarkable even when making terrible movies.” I still cannot believe that 8 years later I am here, writing about a remake of that movie being nominated in the Best Picture category at the Oscars. Like Belfast, CODA has this enchanting element of bitter-sweet stories about families without a real conflict. It works as comfort for the soul of some viewers / voters. As for Belfast, I thought it didn't have enough consensus to grab multiple nominations, and yet here we are.
Branagh’s movie was an early bird, but it collected a surprising amount of nods. Its momentum seemed to end well before the nominations, yet Belfast scored in Best Director, which is a tough category to land in even for big names and big movies. I think there is a silent, solid fanbase ready to shake our expectations. The contender that worries me the most is actually King Richard. I still don’t get the love for a movie in which a man and a father with such a peculiar approach to education and life is presented almost as a 100% positive figure. The interesting bits of the movie for me were the ones quickly pointing the grey areas of his "method". Will Smith’s leading performance, the African-American cast, the racism in America theme: King Richard is the only palatable movie for voters who care deeply about these points.
Baby, are you in The Power of the Dog fanbase, too?
BABY CLYDE: Ok. Here we go. I just didn’t like The Power of the Dog very much. Don’t get me wrong I didn’t dislike it, but I would say it’s a film I admired rather than enjoyed. I was lucky enough to see it on a big screen back in October at The London Film Festival and went in with really high hopes. I got the twists. I understood the ending. I wasn’t confused or bored, but I would describe my overall feeling as frustrated. To my mind it should have been a thriller, with the tension ratcheting up as the story unfolds. There are moments where we should all have been on the edge of our seats, but Campion decided to make a mood piece and instead of a shock, it ends with a whimper.
Themes so oblique as to be meaningless. Plot points so vague that they lose all their power. A slow burn that stubbornly refuses to catch fire. I bumped into a film critic friend of mine outside the theatre afterwards and we spent half an hour unspooling what we had just seen. We hadn’t missed anything but neither of us could understand why a story with all the ingredients to be so dramatic chose to be so muted. I’ve had the exact same discussion with numerous people since. I’ll always remember the two woman I followed down the stairs after the screening……
‘So, what happened at the end?’ one of them asked the other. ‘I’m not sure dear, but it looked nice’ she replied.
They saw it on a gigantic screen in a 2,500-seater cinema. I can only imagine the amount of people left bewildered whilst watching on their laptops between making cups of coffee and going to the toilet.
I’m currently reading the book. I wanted to know if the restrained tone came from the original source or was a Campion invention. So far it seems that Thomas Savage is equally averse to dramatic effect. I’ll watch it again by the end of the week. I may have a different reaction second time round.
Having said all of that, there is lots to appreciate. It does look nice and the performances are first rate (Other than a miscast Cumberbatch, but that’s for another discussion). Smit-McPhee should be winning ALL the awards. You may be surprised to hear that I’ll be more than happy if it comes up trumps on Oscar night. That’s less to do with the quality of this film and more to do with my apathy towards most of the other contenders. The Power of the Dog ranks #3 for me which says all you need to know about my feelings concerning the rest of the list.
Basic bitch that I am, my easy favourite is King Richard. I’m not arguing that it’s the best film but it’s certainly the one I enjoyed the most and ultimately that’s what I’m judging the movies on. I fully agree that TPOTD is a more suitable Best Picture winner, but if I had a vote Will Smith’s old fashioned, middle of the road, crowd pleaser would get it. Come at me.
ABE : Baby Clyde, I totally respect your take and that you're putting it out there. I saw King Richard at a drive-in screening at a festival and enjoyed it, but it doesn't make my list. I was also very impressed with TPOTD but it's not among my favorites of the year. I actually think I'm doing a good job this year of something I routinely fail to do well, which is to separate my preferences from my predictions. Unlike Eric and Elisa, I did love CODA and think it's the best film of the year. Belfast is a close runner-up for me, and Licorice Pizza is actually number three. But the ship has certainly sailed for the latter two. What I keep going back to is statistics, which I know many (including Eric) have argued are no longer relevant with new voting rules. Still, I look at Best Director. The three instances in modern history where a film won Best Picture without a Best Director nod were all special cases. Driving Miss Daisy won precursors without Bruce Beresford being nominated. Argo was ahead of the pack and Ben Affleck's snub didn't matter much since he would have won had he been nominated. Green Book's breakthrough was more about Roma not being strong enough to win, in my opinion, though fortunately the next year gave us Parasite, hopefully the first of many foreign films to win the top prize. 2018 was also a weird year - I wrote a piece for TFE about how every film had a reason it couldn't win Best Picture.
The fact that only a handful of films have ever managed to win Best Picture without an accompanying Best Director nomination means it's a steep uphill battle for the two films that some of us are clamoring for and predicting. I would actually argue that, statistically, King Richard may have better odds than CODA. Its film editing nomination is a big get, not to mention its win at the ACE Eddie Awards, where it defeated The Power of the Dog and Dune. CODA only managed two nominations aside from BP, which suggests it doesn't have enough support. While we're talking about films without directing nods that could still go the distance, what about Dune? That Denis Villeneuve snub hurts, but is there another film that's as equally critically acclaimed and audience beloved? It's likely to dominate the tech categories. Is there a chance it could take home the top award, too, if voters feel like Baby Clyde about our expected frontrunner?
ERIC: Abe, our deeply passionate love affair will need to come to an abrupt stop due to your affection for CODA. But that's what's fun about these volleys: showing the breadth of different passions amongst us. And lord knows I could be wrong: I never thought Green Book was going to win a few years back, either, and I think so much is indeed about Abe's claim to separate your personal preferences from predictions. Abe, your question about Dune is a good one, and it's strange that it never crossed a hump to become a front-runner in any way, as it is the bridge between big commercial studio filmmaking and one artist's unique vision. I personally think Dune is a far, far better made film than CODA and King Richard, but while I think it's a major achievement, I also feel a lack of passion to push for it. There's just a lack of excitement around it?
One of the hardest things to assess when talking about Best Picture is trying to wrap your head around why voters vote the way they do. If I were voting, I'd be trying to project which film we'd be proud of having given the award to twenty years ago. In twenty years, The Power of the Dog is still going to look magnificent, like a major artistic achievement, and its acting and craftsmanship stirling in an evergreen way. But many voters don't frame their thinking that way and vote very in-the-moment. So it's a crapshoot.
Elisa, do you see any other challengers or have better insight than I do into the minds of voters for this category?
ELISA: You ask for an enthusiastic take on Dune, here I am. It’s a magnificent genre movie caught in "the first chapter of an SFF duo/trilogy" trap, wounded by the wrong assumption that a couple of victories in technical categories (against other strong contenders) will suffice, fatally ignored in heavier ones in a spiral that reminds me The Lord of the Rings relationship with The Academy.
It saddens me no one (starting from Warner Bros) thought Dune was a fight worth fighting. Yes, it is a blockbuster, yes it is aimed at a mainstream audience (such as King Richard and CODA), but it is really easy to see that it's adapting the source material with an eye and a hand that is artistically mature and fully authorial.
The nominations for Nightmare Alley and Don’t Look Up left me indifferent and I presume they'll be inconsequential. I think West Side Story, Drive My Car and Licorice Pizza all require a little commentary. I’ll take the second one because Licorice Pizza and Dune are the 2021 titles that fill me with regrets in a “what if" scenario. As the latecomer to the party, Licorice Pizza gained a lot more attention than I expected. Plus, it has a “feeling good” approach, a nostalgic groove not that common in later Anderson’s movies that even more traditional voters might like. If Paul Thomas Anderson's movie had been released earlier, would it have been a stronger contender?
When I try to predict how voters will choose the winner, I try to keep in mind that they have favorites, strong aversions, and quirks, too. I think it is easier trying to sense every movie’s share of “secured votes”, trying to predict in which way the unsure voters will move. It is a guessing game based on pure sensation. I wish we could have more data and statistics from previous editions. Maybe I am predicting a certain movie will win because that type of story performed well a couple of years ago, ignoring that the win could have been a matter of a couple of votes!
I have another question for you all. Do you think the latest controversy surrounding Jane Campion’s comment about Williams sisters will hurt her chance in Best Director and Best Picture category? Generally speaking, do you think this kind of misstep has an impact or not?
BABY CLYDE: I don’t think anyone outside of the Twitterverse cares at all about this type of supposed misstep. I doubt even the Williams sisters care, because Campion didn’t say anything wrong. It was just a vaguely clumsy joke that was contrived into a story by those either looking to be offended or eager to create clickbait. I think it’s fair to say that whilst we all love to see some drama in these awards, that excitement is not going to come from Best Picture this year. The Power Of The Dog has been out front since it first premiered and there is nothing to indicate that is going to change any time before the 27th.
It’s obvious that The Academy would love for a more mainstream film to take top honours but unfortunately for them many of the innovation that have recently been introduced have made this less and less likely. Extending the nominations to 10 was supposed to make room for populist crowd favourites, but has in fact had the exact opposite effect. Much to my delight, instead of including superhero hero movies and other blockbusters we’ve been served up a constant stream of tiny indies and foreign language films. This has been compounded by The Academy’s long overdue diversification of the membership which has meant that a more international voting body has more unconventional tastes than ever before. Hence the recent array of weird and wonderful winners. No wonder ABC are pulling their hair out.
I’m sure they would love a King Richard or Dune surprise but I’m afraid that it’s going to take even more corporate tinkering and threats of cancellation before we get the show the powers that be and maybe the masses actually want to see. In the meantime, I kinda love that the Best Picture winner is once again likely to be a film that will enrages the fanboys (And Sam Elliot).
ABE: I think that some voters may find Campion's recent remarks off-putting, but that's more likely to be an issue in the directing category, where I don't think it will matter. Personally, I'd like to reward what I believe to be the best film, and not worry about how it's going to reflect either on the Oscars or the film years down the road. I'm writing this the morning after the PGA Awards, where a victory for The Power of the Dog would have sealed its assured win in the top race at the Oscars. BUT that's not what happened, which makes this all very exciting!
I've seen plenty written about how no one should jump to conclusions about this being the next Crash or Green Book, and while I don't think it's necessary to compare the quality of the films, their Oscar trajectories do remain relevant. Nathaniel listed in his PGA reactions post the 11 films that have won the PGA and then not the Oscar. What I believe is the most similar situation to this one is Green Book, when it overtook Roma at PGA, did nothing to dampen that film's Best Director changes (where it wasn't even nominated), and then ultimately won. Neither film had a SAG ensemble nomination, which helped Parasite the following year when it missed most of the other precursors and then bested 1917 at the Oscars in all the top races.
It's certainly very possible that The Power of the Dog still wins. Last year's victory for Frances McDormand in Best Actress over, for instance, Carey Mulligan or Andra Day, indicates that there's still a specific kind of movie that wins Oscar voters over. But I just think there's too much momentum for CODA at the moment, which I find to be very welcome since I love the film. The glaring potential statistic that many are citing is that TPOTD might end up with only a Best Director trophy, which would be quite unusual. But ultimately passion is what matters most, and I'll always remember two Martin Scorsese films that loaded up on nominations and went home without any - Gangs of New York and The Irishman. Enthusiasm on nominations day does not equal trophies.
That brings me to my unexpected and still tentative switch to my passion pick, CODA, with The Power of the Dog as the only other real possibility and still a likely victor. Now that we've exhausted the many stats and preferences, what do you readers think should and will win?