What Makes a Best Picture winner and other random musings….

[Greg]

If, somehow, a studio managed to create a Best Years of Our Lives, Godfather, or Schindler’s List…would it go on to win the Oscar? Or would it fall to a flavor-of-the-month that people found a hipper choice, or just an easier/quicker living-room watch?

Or, what if a writer-director and a studio were able to successfully merge non-traditional/traditional Oscar genres and make a big-budget-box-office-sci-fi extravaganza that was also a deeply moving human drama with pertinent social content?

[Mister Tee]

My lingering ague has kept me from responding to several threads, including this thoughtful one. I don’t have time to respond to all of okri’s salient points (or Sabin’s rejoinders). But I did want to address the central question posed by the thread title, as a set-up for discussing this year’s race.

Because myy answer to What Makes a Best Picture Winner?, is, honestly, right now, I don't have a clue. Which is odd because, for much of my life, I very much did. When I first started following this behemoth award complex, the answer was pretty straightforward: Oscar voters are looking for a film of stature. That could mean serious history (Lawrence of Arabia, A Man for All Seasons, The Deer Hunter), a vast musical (West Side Story, My Fair Lady), or deeply moving human drama…with extra points for pertinent social content (Midnight Cowboy, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Kramer vs. Kramer). Oh, and length didn’t hurt: a huge percentage of best picture winners ran from 2 1/2-3 hours long. There were occasional exceptions, some of which irritated me (The Sting, Rocky), others of which delighted me (Annie Hall). But this pattern played out for most of my time on-scene, certainly through much of the 80s and 90s -- though critics would sometimes expand the contours: overwhelming raves for Annie Hall and Silence of the Lambs pushed them into acceptable winner range, despite their anomalous content.

This long-running paradigm was first shattered in 1998, when Shakespeare in Love defeated Saving Private Ryan. I actually think Shakespeare fell closer to normal best picture range than is generally credited -- intelligent period piece, believable human characters -- but its Oscar-ness paled next to a searing 3-hour WWII epic that both won over the critics (best picture from both NY/LA) and topped the US box-office that year. Spielberg whined too much about it, and Harvey was overly demonized for it...but it's undeniable that something in the long-term Oscar pattern seemed to break when this happened.

Yet, normal enough Oscar pictures won in the years following -- Chicago had a far scarier ride getting there than anticipated, but it brought the musical back to the top; American Beauty and Million Dollar Baby stood up for the human drama thing; and Gladiator/Return of the King joined the list of long-runtime epics. The Departed and No Country for Old Men were a bit wobbly as traditional Oscar pictures went, but not so far out of their lane that there was cause for alarm (and they, too, were helped by critics).

The crucial next step in upending traditional Oscar consensus occurred when the nominees list was expanded to 10 (then up-to-10, then back to 10), and a preferential ballot was introduced. Getting the most votes in a field of five, it turned out, was a whole different game from lasting through elimination rounds/ending up least-disliked film on the ballot. The difference may not have immediately shown up – The Hurt Locker and The King’s Speech were serious dramas with heft, and 12 Years a Slave and Spotlight measured up to familiar Academy tropes. But the latter two stumbled across the finish lines – failing in most lead-up categories, including best director. And other winners of this decade seem considerably tinier than their forebears, compared to their competition. 2012 featured two films – Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty – that, by seriousness-quotient and run-time, were far more typical Oscar films than a mid-level thriller like Argo. Moonlight was an affecting human drama, but a wee one; far more atypical a choice than the wide-ranging musical it defeated. The Shape of Water represented a genre (fantasy) long studiously avoided by the Oscars – while Dunkirk, or maybe Three Billboards, seemed more typical choices. Parasite leaped over numerous barriers to win, not least of which the fact that The Irishman, Marriage Story, and maybe 1917 were far more traditional picks. I’m not making arguments for or against any of these films (or their competitors) – some I think are exciting choices, some less so. I’m simply pointing out how they, as a group, diverged from long-established Academy patterns.

And then, as if the system needed a bit more damage, we had the pandemic come along and throw everything out of whack. Not only are Nomadland and CODA deeply unusual best picture choices, I can’t point to any nominated losing efforts that would have made more normal choices. The same applies this year: I’d argue (and will at greater length, in a separate thread) that, thanks to one auteur after another failing to nail ambitious projects, 2022’s pack of contenders is as lacking in classic Oscar-friendly movies as any year I can recall. I’m not ready to say this is a permanent situation, but, just now, the system appears to have run dry in producing those movies that voters used to thrive on …and the well-publicized attendance-collapse among adult audiences suggest this situation may get worse.

A question I have: are Oscar voters becoming so used to choosing among off-the-beaten-track options that they no longer crave the old-school stuff? If a classic Oscar movie were to come along, would it even win today? Put aside how difficult it is for such a film to get made in contemporary Hollywood. If, somehow, a studio managed to create a Best Years of Our Lives, Godfather, or Schindler’s List…would it go on to win the Oscar? Or would it fall to a flavor-of-the-month that people found a hipper choice, or just an easier/quicker living-room watch?

Consider this my prelude to a survey of this year’s best picture hopefuls, which I’ll cover in another thread.

[Sabin]

A lot of good ruminations on some of the questions that we're all trying to figure out.

Okri wrote
II. As a corollary to that, there also seems to be a bit of a divorce from the nominations in general and the winners. When The Power of the Dog and The Revenant scored their twelve nominations, I thought they were the likely best picture winners. Especially since their nomination hauls included a surprise supporting actor nomination each (for Hardy and Plemons). 1917 with the original screenplay nomination. Roma with its supporting actress nomination. All got nominations that they could’ve missed out on.

I mostly agree with you, although there are a few exceptions to that rule. How many of us expected The Shape of Water to be one nomination shy of Titanic / All About Eve territory? And its robust nomination total likely carried the day for it as all of those technicians likely put it near the top of their ballots over the relatively tech lite Get Out, Lady Bird, and Three Billboards...

I'll make two points:
1) I think it's a divorce from the nominations in general but it's also a divorce from nominations day. They're like two separate entities, akin to polling for party primaries a year in advance where name recognition and flash-in-the-pans are overvalued compared to when the rubber meets the road and people actually vote.

2) I think a high nomination total can actually be misleading. Year after year, we look at high nomination totals as an indication of the film's strength and rarely of the fact that they didn't watch enough movies. Breaking ten nominations used to feel like a very big deal, back before cinema stopped being the dominant art-form and back when there was a thriving cinematic middle class. 2019 broke the record for four films up for double-digit nominations. So, a more crucial followup question needs to be asked whenever a film gets a big nomination total, which is did it elbow out anything meaningful?

It's easy to point to Jesse Plemons' nomination last year to which the answer was a defiant "No." He's a well-liked character actor cruising to his first nomination over a very weird roster of contender including a cameo performance (Cooper, Licorice Pizza), a Razzie winning performance (Leto, House of Gucci), and a performance in a film nobody saw (Affleck, Tender Bar). But a better example of this might be La La Land, which scored more nominations than any Lord of the Rings film. La La Land vs. Moonlight is going to be written about for years to come as a changing of the cultural tides that bore out in real-time during Oscar voting, like 1967 and 1994. What isn't going to be written about is that La La Land's deceptive largess is another product of a hollowed out cinematic middle-class. What did La La Land beat out for Best Film Editing? Best Costume Design? Best Sound Editing? Best Actor even. Obviously, there are examples but not many films in the Best Picture race, which means they were less seen overall. As it was, they were several weird one-shot nominations in each category and La La Land still reaped the benefits of a "soft" fourteen nomination.

For a film like La La Land, we should ask in a competitive field, how many of its fourteen nominations would it get? I'd say maybe half its nominations are in question. Same with The Power of the Dog, for which you could say, yes, it got a nomination for Production Design but over films like Cyrano, The French Dispatch, House of Gucci, and I suppose Belfast.

On the other hand, a film like The Shape of Water may have thirteen nominations and it's conceivable that a few nominations might miss out, but it would be a formidable contender for most of its down ballot nominations any year (Score, Cinematography, Production Design, Costume). It can also boast a Film Editing nomination over a strong field.

I could keep going. There are many factors as to why certain films get the totals and wins that they do pertaining to awards campaigning budgets, political winds, and more. The strongest indication of a Best Picture winner for me still relies on whether it provides a strong and clear emotional through-line for the audience (do they know what to feel at the end?), is it not slow (not fast, but not slow), would actors call their agents to say "find me the next [that]?", and what's it up against. These contenders generally show up in the form of a screenplay nomination, an editing nomination, as well as acting nominations (or in the case of Parasite, a SAG win). When 1917 scored a screenplay nomination, I inappropriately took it as an indicator of viability rather than "Oh, it beat out Booksmart, how nice?" When Nomadland showed up for Best Film Editing (something I doubted would happen beforehand), it triumphed over a stronger field of Best Picture contenders which I appropriately took as an indicator of overall viability.

I have no idea what a Best Picture winner is. I think it changes every year, which I'm not opposed to. This is just an overall rumination on how to read the tea leaves.

[Big Magilla]

Good article, Okri, and, yes, do do a series of polls on Foreign Language/International Film.

Score might be interesting as well, but foreign language films are overdue for discussion.

[Okri]

…that may or may not pertain to this year (or even be that coherent) [I started this like two months ago, so I figured I'd better post it before it's completely fishwrap]

I. Since the expansion and the introduction of the ranked ballot, it’s become more common for the best picture winner to win nothing below the line. Of the 13 best picture winners, only five have won awards below the line (The Hurt Locker, The Artist, Argo, Birdman, The Shape of Water) and only two have won more than one below the line (The Hurt Locker, The Shape of Water). Prior, to find 8 best picture winners without a below the line award, you’d stretch back 30 years (Kramer vs Kramer, Ordinary People, Terms of Endearment, Rain Man, The Silence of the Lambs, A Beautiful Mind, Million Dollar Baby, No Country for Old Men).

What makes it more interesting to me is that it’s not as if the best picture winners were solely no hopers in the technical categories. Nomadland was widely predicted for cinematography. The Kings Speech could’ve won score/costume design/art direction. Parasite was competitive in editing (and should’ve been in production design). And yet it feels like the best picture coattails are shorter than ever.

II. As a corollary to that, there also seems to be a bit of a divorce from the nominations in general and the winners. When The Power of the Dog and The Revenant scored their twelve nominations, I thought they were the likely best picture winners. Especially since their nomination hauls included a surprise supporting actor nomination each (for Hardy and Plemons). 1917 with the original screenplay nomination. Roma with its supporting actress nomination. All got nominations that they could’ve missed out on.

Conversely, we also see best picture winners missing out on gettable nominations. The obvious example is Ben Affleck for best director with Argo, but 12 Years a Slave missed out on best cinematography and score. Spotlight has the kind of internally variable ensemble you can imagine getting two supporting actor nominations (Keaton missing out and Ruffalo getting in surprised me).

The race for the win and the race for the nomination have never felt further apart.

III. Has the phrase “Oscar bait” ever had as little meaning as it does right now? Mister Tee has mentioned that it feels like Oscar bloggers use the term to deride films they don’t like (and yeah, guilty) but when you look at the best picture winners of this era, how many would you feel comfortable describing as Oscar bait? Four maybe (The King’s Speech, Argo, Green Book, CODA)? Some might debate CODA, others assert Birdman, Spotlight or The Shape of Water (note, anyone who asserts TSOW as Oscar bait is crazy, but I’ve heard it).

When I make early season Oscar predictions, I generally give myself some insane/never gonna happen predictions just for the sheer fun of it. Predicting straight Oscar bait (whatever that means) isn’t going to be any more accurate, so predicting Werner Herzog for Rescue Dawn, Ken Loach for The Wind That Shakes the Barley or what have you (yes, actual predictions) is more fun. But it almost feels like that those nominations are more likely to occur now. Which I’m rather delighted by. Conversely, it also feels like bottom of the barrel nominations are more likely now too. Which… blech. But the range is fascinating.

IV. I spent last Oscar season believing that critics were more irrelevant than ever. Drive My Car’s elevation in the best picture race proved me wrong. They way the big three rallied around it meant a surprisingly competitive foreign film race was demolished and a foreign language film was “elevated” to the top category. I think the internationalization of AMPAS probably helped.

But then I wonder – 10 years earlier, could that have happened? 2011 was a soft year for mainstream film (admittedly bracketed by two very strong years). But what were the two most acclaimed films? Checking out They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They? tells us that Tree of Life and A Separation were those films – which matched my memory (hurrah). But what won the big 3 critics groups? The Artist, The Descendants and Melancholia. Not quite sure how that happened, to be honest (Michel Hazanavicius even beat Malick for director with New York. Which… wow). Is it simply the deadening of Hollywood/English language filmmaking that has narrowed the field is now complete and consequently, critics actively look elsewhere ? When you flashback to the 1980s (the first full decade of the big three critics groups), of the 30 potential best picture slots, 27 films won. 7 of 10 years had three different winners and the other three had two. In the 1990s, that dropped to 20 and barely increased again in the 2000s to 22 (21 for the 10s). Not quite sure what to make of that, to be honest, or if it actually means anything. In the 80s if you were to bisect the decade, you see far more critics best picture winners not getting nominated for the best picture Oscar in the latter half (3 from 80-84, 8 from 85-89) and I think we all believe the 80s to be the changing of the guard for American film.

But back to 2011… now, it would bit unfair of me to pretend that The Artist, The Descendants and Melancholia weren’t acclaimed. All were in a lot of top ten lists. But comparing that to the passion behind Tree of Life or A Separation, that they were sectioned off to director and foreign language film is genuinely surprising to me. I do wish they went there (even if Tree of Life did get a best picture nomination in the end). And I don’t think critics would’ve hit the ground for Drive My Car a decade earlier the way they did last season. And I’m disappointed by what I think that means.

V. 5 or six directors have been nominated for best director for making a non-English film (depending on your definition of Minari) in four-season stretch. The last time that happened was in the 70s. What’s interesting is that in the 70’s, the writers basically kept up – nominating 11 non-English screenplays (over both categories, of course) while the directors nominated six. This time, they are actually one behind (4 or 5, again Minari). Only four non-English language films have been nominated for best director but not screenplay (Another Round, Cold War, Woman in the Dunes, Fellini Satyricon). I’m assuming the fact that the director’s branch is smaller/growing more quickly in its internationalization is the cause of that, but interesting nonetheless.

VI. I was pondering trying to make Foreign Language/International film the next poll/discussion series after animated film [either that or score] and was looking at the list of nominees throughout the years and trying to see where each could be found. I’m not gonna say you can figure out the geopolitical situation of a country from this category, but I found it fascinating that Yugoslavia (former) scored 5 nominations (of the 6 in total) in a 12-year span (1958-1969), not showing up again for 20 years. All but one of the films were in Serbo-Croatian (the other was in Italian, oddly). However, since the dissolution, neither Serbia nor Croatia have received nominations (whereas Bosnia and Herzegovina and [North] Macedonia have.)