A week ago, Hollywood patted itself on the back, handing out gold statuettes at the film industry’s prestigious awards show. It’s a big night for cinephiles, entertainment pundits, film history buffs, and the whole pomp and circumstance of stars walking the red carpet looking dapper and dashing, regal and gorgeous wearing (insert fashion designer here).
As someone whose earliest Oscar memory was seeing Billy Crystal wheeled on to stage in 1992 in a Hannibal Lecter get-up tied to a dolly, watching the ceremony has become an annual tradition. It wasn’t until the 1997 race when I started making predictions, telling a high school teacher I was confident Matt Damon and Ben Affleck would win for Best Original Screenplay (Good Will Hunting). It did, but the big winner of the evening would be Titanic sailing to victory with 11 awards. It was nominated for 14.
Nowadays, a single film walking away with that many Oscars seems like fantasy. Coincidentally, the last film to win ten or more was the fantasy epic The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003). The Oscars like spreading the wealth. At the 97th Academy Awards five films walked away with at least two Oscars. But while some category winners were forgone conclusions (Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress – though both were co-leads in their perspective films, let’s be honest), this year’s ceremony still had some surprises.
The Best: Flow winning for Best Animated Feature Film. Here we have a Latvian animated feature with no dialogue that beat what was the highest-grossing animated feature of all time (Inside Out 2) and the well-received The Wild Robot from DreamWorks Animation, a studio that is still winless after winning for 2001’s Shrek (the inaugural winner for Best Animated Feature Film).
The Biggest Winner: Sean Baker and Anora. Prior to the telecast, I indicated Baker had a chance to make history joining Walt Disney as the only person to win four Oscars in a single night. Baker did, but unlike Disney, he did so with just one feature. A dozen other filmmakers have won three for their works, including Billy Wilder (The Apartment), Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather Part II), and Joel & Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men). When I saw Baker get recognized by the Producers Guild, Writers Guild, and Directors Guild, picking up accolades on the way to the Oscars like he was collecting Infinity Stones, I just had a feeling Baker and Anora would be the big winner of the evening.
The Biggest Loser: Emilia Perez with 13 nominations, the most ever for a foreign language feature, and only winning two awards. Both of its wins were expected, but the mud-flinging that occurred during this Oscar race hadn’t been seen since the crap Harvey Weinstein pulled during his Miramax days.
One of the most interesting stats I learned prior to this year’s telecast was that since The Return of the King’s win, only five Best Picture winners have had a domestic box office of $100 million or more. That is a little disconcerting. After The Dark Knight failed to get a Best Picture nomination, the Academy instituted what I call “The Dark Knight Rule” in expanding the Best Picture category from five nominees to what is now an even ten. This was supposed to allow parity but all it really does is illustrate how much audiences and Oscars have drifted apart. Television doesn’t seem to have this problem. Some of the most popular television programs get nominated and win each year. In the 1970s, every Best Picture winner was a top 10 hit at the box office. Forty plus years later, Anora surpasses The Hurt Locker as the least successful domestic box office performer to win best picture.
Last year’s Oppenheimer seems like an outlier to the recent trend of Best Picture winners. Perhaps the Academy is hoping to reward Denis Villeneuve and Dune like they did with Peter Jackson and The Lord of the Rings. But considering how rare it is for genres like horror, science fiction, and fantasy to be honored with the top prize I would not hold my breath.
More promising is how global the Oscars have become. We’ve had three consecutive years where the Best Picture field has had two foreign language features. Brazil won its first Oscar with I’m Still There. Parasite (2019) broke the glass ceiling becoming the first foreign language feature to win Best Picture, and it seems to have caused a ripple effect where a non-English language film will also appear in categories like screenplay, direction, and acting in addition to Best International Feature Film. Expect the trend to continue.
Also exciting is seeing five, first-time nominees up for the Best Director including the current king of “Dad Cinema” James Mangold (A Complete Unknown) and Coralie Fargeat for making body horror prestigious with The Substance.
I have no early predictions for next year’s race – I honestly watch the telecast for the entertainment value (“Your move, Estonia.”). I just want a healthy release schedule with films that entertain, push boundaries, and maybe find the sweet spot to be popular, profitable, and profound.
After all, we have new works from Paul Thomas Anderson, Lynne Ramsey, Park Chan-wook, Richard Linklater, Celine Song, Spike Lee, Chloe Zhao, dueling Frankenstein features from Maggie Gyllenhaal and Guillermo Del Toro, and the Safdies doing individual projects to look forward to see.
See you at the movies.
– Travis Leamons
President, Houston Film Critics Society
