An Optimistic Viewpoint of This Oscar Season

Scene from The Favourite

Ladies and gentlemen, we are less than a week away from the beloved Oscar Sunday. For many, it's one of the greatest nights to celebrate all things film. With that said, the past few months have been mired in controversy for reasons ranging from "Why is Bohemian Rhapsody so popular?" to "Present All 24." It's been a rough year for those who like the tried and true formula. However, in an attempt to make the final days of prognostication fun, I thought that I would try and open this week by looking at the positive. For as much as this year feels like a series of unfortunate events, it has produced one of the most exciting Oscar races in years. Even days out, there's so much that's left unclear, and that will make everything all the more exciting.

It's true that I've bagged on John Bailey in the past few months, sometimes in an unhealthy and cynical manner. To be honest, it's the most upset I've been by the Oscars since the 2012 campaign for Silver Linings Playbook which, to put it politely, was not my favorite movie. It felt like an obvious thing. Bailey should've just kept his mouth shut and let things play out like they normally did. To some extent, I could get the exodus of Kevin Hart (though ABC's track record in 2018 of firing people for controversial pasts should've given them more foresight). However, the Best Popular Film category and the short-lived choice to not air four categories resulted in tensions coming out and revealing just how much we care about The Oscars as an institution. After all, we are coming off of two of the most exciting Oscar years in recent memory and one could only hope that the trend of radical and different cinema continues to dominate. What could be on par with Moonlight and The Shape of Water? 

As someone who has followed and covered The Academy Awards for seven years, I am well aware at how these things can go. I've seen great years and middling years in equal measure, and nobody wants the latter. It's been exciting to look through the history and see the change unfold, predominantly under former Academy President Cheryl Boone Isaacs. Sure, not everything she did was perfect (the prerecorded nominations package didn't go over well), but she listened to Oscars So White and intended to make a difference. It's only been a few years since she did that, and I think that Moonlight is the perfect evidence that what she did mattered. I'm aware change is gradual and not always obvious, but it's hard to judge Bailey as doing the right thing because what he's doing is making The Oscars more "viral." Where Isaacs wanted to make a younger and more diverse collective, Bailey is negotiating with ABC in attempts to get a bigger name out there.

To avoid going into the familiar talking points, it does seem a little excessive given that The Academy Awards are in general the highest viewed awards show annually. It does suggest that there's an insecurity of keeping things traditional. Why should there be? The voting body has grown younger and the winners reflect that. Considering that nominations are presented via YouTube streams, it does suggest that there's a push to make things more vital in an age where everything can be accessed within minutes. If you only wanted to know who won what, just wait a few seconds while Wikipedia updates their page. I get that it's hard to be relevant when information is so readily available and listening to Twitter pundits crack jokes is a far more appealing use of your time. I get that there needs to be change, and that's tough to take when the team doing it is constantly lobbied as not loving movies.

I suppose that's been a great thing about this year's awards season. It's caused us to question what exactly makes us love movies in the first place. Does popular film deserve to be segregated from "film"? I still argue that Bohemian Rhapsody is a byproduct of the Best Popular Film category's brief existence. What value is there in seeing the Oscar-nominated songs performed live? Luckily people like Lady Gaga cared enough to stand up for it. At every turn, there has been concern for change. It's true that there needs to be tweaks every now and then. Having a public conversation about what does and doesn't matter may lead to some mucky moments, but what inevitably comes out is a sense of progress. Things only change through compromise, and this year has been a sign of attempts to compromise a more viral representation for the Oscars.

Do I like what they came up with? My history has suggested that I don't. I admit that it's driven me crazier than it should've. However, I think that the constant reality that people are out there fighting the good fight at least suggests that things aren't going to change too radically without a passionate offense critiquing the mistakes. Every year has a few fiascos in The Academy's rules and regulations, and this year just happened to have a bunch of them. We're never going to agree on everything, and that's fine. Should Boyhood have beat Birdman for Best Picture? I personally think that the patterns always suggested the latter was always going to get it, though the art crowd in me thinks the former would've had a grander statement. To have films like Moonlight win show that future Boyhood's aren't as locked out of the conversation as we think.

Which brings me to what makes this year especially exciting. While some prognosticators will have you believe that there's a clear front runner, this year doesn't have much focus at all. While some would call that a bad thing, it's actually among the most exciting twists in recent years. Sure, Bohemian Rhapsody and Vice still may be controversial nominees, but so was Dallas Buyers Club four years ago (and that movie hasn't aged much better since). We're always going to get a few weak Best Picture nominees. However, the fact that the PGA, WGA, DGA, SAG, and other guilds have all voted differently on major categories at least suggests that there's nothing definitive about this year's winners. Given how avant garde The Shape of Water still feels as a Best Picture winner, there's nothing to say that a genre film won't win Best Picture.

In fact, there's a lot to suggest a series of different paths that a Best Picture winner could go. It's a year where Spike Lee can fathomably win not only for his legacy, but because of the politically charged text of BlacKkKlansman. Roma would not only be the first foreign language Best Picture winner, but would be a triumphant boost to Netflix and streaming services everywhere. With that said, if The Academy wants to divvy up votes it could give Roma Best Picture and Cold War a Best Foreign Film win (the Best Director nomination for Pawel Pawlikowski suggests a certain level of love). Of course many find Green Book to be the vanilla choice, but I still argue it's a halfway decent movie. While I personally would love to see A Star is Born shine through, I do feel like it's a long shot (an exciting one, but still a long shot). Oh yeah, and what if Black Panther wins on the grounds that it is the Best Popular Film that went even further? There's so many symbolic wins that could be far more interesting than we're giving credit for.

Sure, many other categories have been locked in for some time. Glenn Close's Best Actress nomination for The Wife feels like a shoe-in after that memorable Golden Globes speech. Mahershala Ali's win for Green Book may lead to another rousing speech. Beyond that, it's hard to really say that the year is predictable. It's exciting in all of the best ways, and it's important to remember that it's cinema. If we didn't disagree about who won, why would we watch? While many disliked Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, I still think it struck enough of a nerve to matter. It also lead to one of last year's best speeches (two words: inclusion rider). Sometimes the best speeches don't come from the best film, and it's one of the few bright spots in Rami Malek's potential Oscar win for Bohemian Rhapsody. As much as it feels like a caricature, there's still room to suggest that he'll use the platform to say something thought-provoking about treatment in the industry. That, or we'll just wait for Taron Egerton in Rocketman to show us how to depict flamboyant rock stars.

I know that I have been bitter in recent weeks because of every decision, and I apologize for being so negative. This isn't what this time of year should be, and what I say has generally come from places of concern. It's in conversation that we've learned what an Oscars ceremony should and shouldn't be. I'll confess that I like the old model and don't care to see it change. I recognize that there's room for improvement, and maybe starting earlier in the day would solve issues with broadcasting on the east coast. I don't have any of the answers, but I think that in the final week, it's important to remember how exciting the Oscar season should be and how we're taking so much for granted this year. It's not like there's been any true boondoggle that hasn't been course corrected in time. Sure, we still have to live with Oscar-nominated Bohemian Rhapsody, but is that worse than Oscar-winning Dallas Buyers Club? We will have unpopular mistakes every year, and it's important to just live with them. Better movies could've been nominated, and that's the reality every year. I'm not saying we're wrong to be mad. I still think that Bailey is a tad incompetent. What I'm saying instead is that we can't one bad year of press stop us from having fun. So please, do your best to join with me in making the final week of Oscars prognostication as fun as we can. We'll make fun of that Queen and Adam Lambert performance later.