Thank God ‘Anora’ Is (Probably) Going to Win Best Picture — In Review
The following article is an excerpt from the new edition of “In Review by David Ehrlich,” a biweekly newsletter in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the site’s latest reviews and muses about current events in the movie world. Subscribe here to receive the newsletter in your inbox every other Friday.
As someone who’s always taken great pride in pretending that I don’t give a shit about the Oscars, and great pleasure in rolling my eyes throughout awards season as movies like “Jojo Rabbit” and “Don’t Look Up” are exalted as supreme examples of the form, I find myself in the increasingly uncomfortable position of … being pretty at peace with the Academy’s choices over the last few years?
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Of course, that’s more than a little nauseating in and of itself; a film critic expressing any degree of approval for the Oscars is as sick and unnatural as a sports fan giving it up for the owner of their favorite team (never gonna happen, James Dolan). But the fact of the matter is that the Academy’s recent efforts to diversify its membership have displayed a profound impact on the range and quality of the nominated movies, and while the Oscars may never fully shake themselves free of pro forma prestige fare like “The Imitation Game” (great score!) or “The Theory of Everything” (another great score!), the decade since “Moonlight” has produced the strongest lineup of contenders since the mid-1970s.
I haven’t necessarily been on board with all (or many) of the Best Picture winners during that span, but following “Green Book” with “Parasite” was a real case of “two steps back and 10 steps forward.” “CODA” wasn’t exactly a canonical masterpiece, but lambasting the Academy for going with a feel-good charmer — at the height of a pandemic — in the same year when “Drive My Car” was nominated in four different categories would be a case of missing the forest for the trees.
Whatever your feelings about “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” it might be the single most eccentric, formally inventive, and un-Oscary film to ever land Hollywood’s biggest prize (also it is and has always been fantastic, sorry if you’re wrong).
“Oppenheimer” was the closest thing we’ve had to a traditional winner since Viggo Mortensen shoved an entire pizza in his mouth, but there’s no mistaking Christopher Nolan’s Promethean epic for the stuffy biopics that used to suck up all the air in the Dolby Theatre, and the fact that films like “Anatomy of a Fall” and “The Zone of Interest” were nominated alongside it bodes well for a future in which the definition of an “Oscar movie” will only continue to grow more elastic.
At a time when awards season is the only thing stopping the tech conglomerates that ate Hollywood from completely abandoning creative expression in favor of unadulterated content slop, that might be the most valuable incentive studio executives still have to fund the kind of projects that don’t fit into their algorithms. Don’t be fooled by any blithering chatter about the ratings of the annual telecast: The number of people who watch the Oscars because of the nominated films will always be less important than the number of people who watch the nominated films because of the Oscars.
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At least, that’s what I’ve been trying to keep in mind over the course of this awards season, which — for better or worse — has epitomized how the Academy Awards have come to function since the cultural death of Harvey Weinstein. Your mileage may vary, but from where I’m standing this is the most remarkable group of Best Picture nominees that we’ve ever had. Which isn’t to say that it’s the best group of Best Picture nominees that we’ve ever had (I don’t even think it lives up to last year’s lineup in that regard), but rather to suggest that it most dramatically affirms the idea that anything can be nominated for the biggest little gold man on Earth.
I love that A24 bought a three-and-a-half-hour period drama about a sad Hungarian architect knowing full well that they could spin it into a major contender. I love that Sony Pictures Classics was able to hustle a solid historical drama from Brazil into a slot that some pundits had inexplicably reserved for “September 5.” I don’t love anything about “Wicked,” but I do kind of love the idea that half of a terrible movie — or in the case of “Dune: Part Two”, half of a disappointing one — is being forced to hold space for the most radical and fully realized American film that a major studio has released so far this decade (“Nickel Boys”), and that comfort food like “A Complete Unknown” is up for the same prize as a “don’t even think about it while you eat” classic like “The Substance.”
Truth be told, I even love that something as likable as “Conclave” is squaring off against something as detestable as “Emilia Pérez,” disappointed as I was by the long-standing wisdom that one of those two movies would be walking off with the last trophy of the night. It’s always been the case that a Best Picture nominee could be anything, from a rancid piece of shit to a medium-expanding masterpiece, but never has that been so obvious in the span of a single awards season. I’m choosing to see that as a victory unto itself.
But here’s the thing: Much as I believe that what gets shortlisted for Best Picture is more important than what ultimately wins in the end … “Anora” needs to win Best Picture.
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