How The Oscars Fail Movies

In film commentary circles outside of those dedicated to the arcane craft of awards prognosis and coverage, like our own Awards Campaign, it is pretty much standard to disdain the Oscars. We might discuss them, dissect them and analyze them for the sociological trends they mark (or run counter to), but lurking at the end of most such sentences, like a terms-and-conditions asterisk, is an implicit but it’s the Oscars, so¯\_(ツ)_/¯.  It’s become such an instinctive attitude that it’s very possible half of us don’t even realize why we’re doing it anymore — the Oscars Eyeroll is as involuntary a reflex as recoiling from fire or punching a Nazi. Put on the spot to justify the reaction, most of us will fumble through a list of objections ranging from the broadly philosophical (the devaluation of art when you commodify it into winners and losers) to the more irritably specific (the wrong films always win).

But perhaps the real issue (or at least the more pressing one) is not as sweeping as “award ceremonies = bad,” because, whether we agree with them or not the Oscars do capture the public’s imagination in a way that nothing else in the industry compares to. Given that dose of realpolitik, surely we must be able to mobilize the Awards for the betterment of the industry in general, and moments like the triumphant crowning of a small, personal film like “Moonlight” as an eight-time Oscar nominee, haloing not just its director and cast in peer approval, but also rewarding Force For Good A24 for its vision and commitment in producing and promoting it, point to how the Oscar system can sometimes work. “Moonlight” will never make blockbuster cash for A24–another common cynical rejoinder about the Oscars is that it’s all about the money, but the hard fact is that if these production houses were really in it for the greenbacks, these are not the sort of films they’d be making. For every “American Sniper” that parlays its nomination into an enormous spike in box office receipts there’s a “Moneyball” or a “The Departed” for which the post-nomination boost is negligible. In any case, post-nomination percentages are much more a factor of how many theaters it’s re-released into, or how long it was on release prior (this is a very interesting, totally inconclusive chart from Box Office Mojo all about that very phenomenon).

In many ways, the Oscar race is just as crass as the Blockbuster race, just less honest

However, nor is the issue as granular as “the Oscars suck because X film should have won/been nominated over Y.” Or even that the Academy should make it a priority to recognize more diverse types of film than the traditionally accepted “Oscar bait” (horrible term, kind of unavoidable). This avenue tends to get us into the treacherous territory of stacking up all the times Oscar got it right vs wrong and pretty soon we dissolve into a mire of subjectivity. Take this recent article from The Ringer: in it, Sean Fennessey argues cogently for why he believes a Best Picture nomination for “Deadpool” (which, in the event, didn’t happen) would have been a good thing, before cogently arguing off a cliff that sees him put forward “The Accountant” and “Jason Bourne” as similarly worthy contenders.

For my money, the issue lies in between these two approaches, and it’s neatly exemplified by two films that, on Tuesday, got one nomination apiece: Jeff Nichols‘ “Loving,” nominated in Best Actress for Ruth Negga‘s performance, and Mike Mills‘ “20th Century Women,” which received a Best Original Screenplay nod for Mills. Interestingly, in the lore of Oscar commentary, the outstanding Negga is widely felt to have usurped the fifth Best Actress slot either from Amy Adams for “Arrival, or from Annette Bening for her turn in “20th Century Women.” But even that debate, which pits equally deserving performances against each other and scarcely issues a murmur of complaint at the obvious legacy nod for Meryl Streep who “needs” a 2017 Oscar nomination less than any other living person, is not the most irksome thing.  In fact, the issue would have remained had “Loving” picked up its predicted zero nods and had Bening taken that coveted fifth slot. It’s not even that since neither of them got on the Best Picture ballot, they’re effectively out of “the conversation” altogether. It’s that, through no fault or lack of quality of their own (they’re both absolutely wonderful films — prove me wrong, please and go see them) they represent that ignominious category of hopeful that tried for Oscar glory but ended up in the Oscar doldrums.