Last Preliminary Oscar Thoughts

I've seen nearly all of this year's Oscar nominees. I'm missing most of the shorts, most of the documentaries, and most of the foreign films. However, I've actually seen just about all the movies in all the big categories this year, including every last Best Picture contender and all the acting performances. That's pretty big for me. Last year at this point in time I couldn't bring myself to plunk down the ticket money for "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" or "War Horse" (a wise decision in retrospect), and I was missing a bunch of performances from smaller films like "My Week With Marilyn." This year, the extra voting time for Academy members meant more time to hunt down the titles already released on DVD, and I did pretty well seeking out the likeliest nominees earlier in the season.

So the Oscars are this Sunday. Who's going to win?

If you've been following the awards race, it hasn't been difficult to work out the major frontrunners: "Argo" for Best Picture, Daniel Day-Lewis, Jennifer Lawrence, Anne Hathaway, and Tommy Lee Jones for the acting awards, and since Ben Affleck wasn't nominated for Best Director, it'll probably be Steven Spielberg who ends up with the trophy. Upsets are certainly possible, as the expectation was that "Lincoln" was going to sweep everything a few weeks ago, but now "Argo" has worked up a head of steam from the various guild awards and may walk away with most of the gold. Are these the most deserving possible recipients of Academy Awards? Well, no. Probably not. A lot of my favorites from 2012 weren't even nominated, but that's not unusual in the least. Watching the Oscars and hoping for quality to win out over popularity is an exercise in futility and masochism.

So why follow the race at all? As a long-time Oscar watcher, for me it stopped really being about the movies a while ago. Now it's all about the game. It's about the timing and the volume of the controversy around "Zero Dark Thirty," positioned as a major early contender at the beginning of December. It's about comparing the acceptance speeches of Jennifer Lawrence and Jessica Chastain at the Golden Globes to see which of them was going to get a boost from her appearance. It's about the "Argo" backlash and anti-backlash. It's about the Roger Ebert factor. Remember, he picked "Argo" as the likely Best Picture way back last fall, when "The Master" was still in the race. It's about watching the studios rush to create narratives around their nominees, to build ad campaigns, and to come up with new ways of attracting attention. Some cineastes bemoan the politicking and the showboating of the Oscar race, but I think that if you're in the right mindset it can be a lot of fun.

It's important to remember that the Oscars, and all of these big, nationally televised media award ceremonies, are about marketing. It's about being able to label a movie an Oscar winner or Oscar nominee to drum up more hype and discussion about them, and drive up ticket sales, DVD rentals, and Blu-Ray purchases. The Oscars have been one big marketing gimmick since the very beginning, and Oscar night is the biggest ad of all, full of stunts and celebrities that make the event an enjoyable watch. Sure, there's no guarantee who will take home the statuettes every year, but it's understood that to participate in the Oscars is to participate in a pretty cynical popularity contest, with Academy members, who are all industry professionals, the final arbiters of who is deserving and who isn't. That means that we're always going to get very mainstream, very marketable choices, though occasionally there will be something like "The Artist" or "American Beauty" that will sneak through.

However, it's also important to realize that the Oscars are a necessary evil, especially if you enjoy these higher quality prestige pictures. Being able to sell a movie as an awards contender is an important consideration in getting some of these movies getting financed and produced. The Oscar bump, where films see an increase in box office sales after nominations are announced, is a very real thing. Maybe "Les Misérables" and "Django Unchained" would have been able to get off the ground without the help of awards buzz, but what about Ang Li's risky "Life of Pi"? Or "Zero Dark Thirty"? And though I'm little mystified by the amount of buzz around "Amour" and "Beasts of the Southern Wild," I'm very happy that the awards race has brought more attention to both of them too.

It's no surprise that some filmmakers have denounced the whole affair, and there are regularly rebels who just won't play along. However, sometimes it's to the Academy's benefit to recognize those who want nothing to do with them, which is why Jean-Luc Godard got an honorary Oscar a few years back, and why Joaquin Phoenix got a Best Actor nomination this year in spite of ragging on the awards a few months ago. The Academy Awards does have to maintain some credibility to keep their reputation intact, and frankly leaving out Phoenix, who delivered one of the most talked-about performances this year, would have been a mark against them. Phoenix might even win, giving us another potential missing Brando moment.

So sometimes quality does trump popularity. And some of those Academy voters actually do take the task seriously. But how many, and to what degree? We'll have to wait until Oscar night to find out.
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