Academy Award Gripes and Predictions
Back in 1996, my hometown paper, the Des Moines Register, held an Academy Award contest asking readers to predict the winners in the six major categories — Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress. As a sophomore in high school, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I ended up being one of only two people in the entire state who accurately selected all six winners. Although I wish I could say there was some level of expertise involved at the time, the reality is that I won because the Academy violated one of its longstanding rules.
The trend is typically referred to as “it’s their time” or awarding someone less for their individual performance that year than as a career capstone or lifetime achievement. It’s why Henry Fonda won for On Golden Pond, Paul Newman for The Color of Money, Al Pacino for Scent of a Woman or Martin Scorsese for The Departed. All four without question deserved Oscars, but not for these particular contributions.
That year, most observers thought Lauren Bacall would win for Best Supporting Actress. With the ceremony falling 50 years after her performance alongside Humphrey Bogart in the The Big Sleep, there seemed to be quite a bit of nostalgia behind the desire to recognize Bacall even though she was nominated for the truly atrocious The Mirror Has Two Faces. Defying predictions, Juliette Binoche won for The English Patient. For whatever reason, I was one of only a handful of people who predicted Binoche would win, maybe because I was naive enough to think the best performance would always be awarded.
We are seeing a bit of that trend in this year’s award ceremony as well. With four prior nominations, virtually everyone is predicting Leonardo DiCaprio will win Best Actor this year for his performance in The Revenant. To be clear, no one, myself included, is arguing that it’s a bad performance necessarily. Only that he would be unlikely to win for this movie without the 20-year history of respected but unrecognized work factoring into the underlying narrative. Of course, going with the “it’s his turn” standard makes it a bit easier for the voting members of the Academy. It is nearly impossible to compare DiCaprio’s virtually silent performance to Michael Fassbender’s mastery of the rapid, complicated dialogue of Steve Jobs. On the other hand, by overlooking Fassbender this year, the Academy will almost certainly need to give him a makeup call down the road.
The other longstanding reality of the Academy Awards is that the ceremony does not recognize the best movies, performances, and contributions of the year. It recognizes the best movies, performances, and contributions of a certain type. Animated, action, and comedic films, and especially films that challenge conventions, are rarely given serious consideration to win the top prize. Forrest Gump beat Pulp Fiction, The King’s Speech beat The Social Network, Chicago beat Gangs of New York, and Chariots of Fire beat Raiders of the Lost Ark.
However, the trend extends even further. In 2008, the Bourne Ultimatum failed to win nominations in any major category even though it was one of the best action films ever produced and addressed many of the emerging national security issues of that moment. In the following year, maybe the two best films of the year of the year were WALL-E and the Dark Knight. Neither was even nominated and the outcry led the Academy to expand the number of Best Picture nominees from five to a maximum of ten. Through that decision, these types of films may now get nominated but it’s hard to believe they will come out on top. Maybe Mad Max will prove me wrong this year, but I doubt it.
This is a long way of saying the awards are far from perfect, but any celebration of movies is one I’ll welcome. Here are my predictions for who will win and who should win this year.
Best Picture
Will win: The Revenant
Should win: Spotlight
Best Director
Will win: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, The Revenant
Should win: George Miller, Mad Max: Fury Road
Best Actor
Will win: Leonardo DiCaprio, The Revenant
Should win: Michael Fassbender, Steve Jobs
Best Actress
Will win: Brie Larson, Room
Should win: Brie Larson, Room
Best Supporting Actor
Will win: Sylvester Stallone, Creed
Should win: Tom Hardy, The Revenant
Best Supporting Actress
Will win: Alicia Vikrander, The Danish Girl
Should win: Jennifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight
Bonus! Best Cinematography
Forget my earlier criticism of the “it’s their turn” philosophy. Please give this to Roger Deakins who has never won despite 12 previous nominations. He’s the best in the business. But it looks like he will lose to Emmauel Lubezki who filmed The Revenant.
