*I am writing this out in a rather freeform manner. I have a lot of random thoughts about this topic, so I just want to ramble and go on a journey with this...but I promise it won't be THAT chaotic!*
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As we enter the thick of the 2023/24 Movie Award season, I felt compelled to talk about the topic of films that would be stereotypically classified as "Oscar Bait".
As one might expect, this is a term based on films that seem tailormade to win awards but might be seen by some as pretentious or stuffy or made with a lot of immense grandeur.
Going back through all of Oscar history would take far too long so I am going to give myself a timeline from 1960 to the present day because this will give me enough of a scope to show changing tides in the types of films that get nominated or rewarded.
With the 1960s, we see a rather big surge of rewarding movie musicals which also wasn't uncommon for them to do in the decades prior to that. In the 60s alone, they rewarded West Side Story, My Fair Lady, The Sound of Music, and Oliver!
Once you get to the 70s, you get a shift in what they honor that coincided with both the shift in Academy membership and the shift in Hollywood. This led to wins by films such as The Godfather I and II, The French Connection, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest...but there was still enough of the "old guard" that propelled films like Patton and The Sting to the win over "new" films like Five Easy Pieces or The Exorcist.
Once the 80s came along, it seemed more like grandeur was coming back into play and we saw an embrace of sweeping epics like Out of Africa and The Last Emperor. It was more common over the decades for certain years to have a film that would sweep the ceremony with 8+ wins.
The fact that Everything Everywhere All at Once even won 7 Oscars is practically unheard of any more.
And speaking of that film, I think nearly every avid film goer would willingly admit that if you approached them just a few years ago and said that a film about a multi-verse in which we get scenes with Michelle Yeoh and Jamie Lee Curtis as lesbian lovers with hot dog fingers and trophies that resemble butt plugs would end up making one of the most prolific sweeps in Oscar history, we would question their sanity.
In some ways, there is a shift of sorts as to what is being deemed "Oscar bait" these days...at least in terms of what will actually go on to win the prize or, at the very least, gets high praise and multiple nominations.
This recent shift reminds me a lot the late 60s/early 70s in terms of looking at the films that were awarded/being nominated. I know I have referenced some of these stories in various ways in other posts I have made, but I want to detail the journey of these eras a little better.
Actor Gregory Peck served as President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences in the late 60s and unlike many of his colleagues, he was very willing to see the cultural shifts and wanted to embrace the future of cinema. Not only did he want to see more foreign cinema recognized, but he wanted to hear more of a voice from younger artists and artists of color.
He was actually a big champion of animation and felt that The Jungle Book was worthy of a Best Picture nomination...and despite his efforts, it never materialized. Even to this day, only 3 animated films have received the honor of a Best Picture nomination...which is even more insane when you take into account that we've had an expanded number of Best Picture nominees since 2010...and that nominee expansion is a topic I will return to shortly.
Only Beauty & the Beast managed to get a Best Picture nomination when the nomination tally was stalled at 5.
Peck's efforts at the Academy did signal some significant change, but what is fascinating at that time is seeing the give and take of the "old guard" and "new guard".
Let's take a look at the 3 years in which Peck was at the helm and notice what kind of films made the cut. WINNER IN BOLD.
1967:
Bonnie & Clyde
Doctor Doolittle
The Graduate
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?
In the Heat of the Night
______________________
1968:
Funny Girl
The Lion in Winter
Oliver!
Rachel, Rachel
Romeo & Juliet
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1969:
Anne of a Thousand Days
Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
Hello, Dolly!
Midnight Cowboy
Z
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Going in order, you see them opting for a film involving a murder mystery/racial tension in the South only to follow up the following year with a movie musical based on a popular Broadway show, only to follow that with the only X-Rated film to ever win the Oscar.
Even looking at the nominees, it feels incredibly jarring to see the likes of Anne of a Thousand Days and Hello, Dolly! in a lineup with Midnight Cowboy...and this isn't to say that I don't want variety amongst the nominations but these are films that don't stand the test of time and weren't even that well received by critics in 1969.
It is just interesting to see the back and forth between the bold and conventional choices...and that heavily mirrors what has been happening over the past 15 years with the Oscars.
As I mentioned earlier, the Academy expanded the Best Picture nomination total to 10 in 2009 and this was after a very heated and passionate protest occurred when The Dark Knight and even Wall-E were snubbed in favor of a movie like The Reader, which some deemed as a very droll and not particularly compelling film adaptation of what was otherwise a highly acclaimed novel...BUT...that film fit the mold of "Oscar bait". It had that air of prestige. It felt adult. It wasn't a movie based on a comic book or an animated film about robots.
With the change to the higher tally, this gave birth to the preferential ballot system. Whereas other years simply allowed the film with the most votes to win, the winner would now be chosen based on how well did in terms of its placement not just with #1 votes, but #2 and #3 as well. Essentially, as the other films get eliminated.
For example, let's say someone voted for Elvis as their #1 film last year (for some ungodly reason) and for #2, they voted Everything Everyhwere All At Once. It was obvious that the love for the latter was undeniable...and considering that Elvis went home empty handed at the ceremony, it seems likely that it didn't score as well in the final voting for Best Picture. Once that film got eliminated, that #2 vote for EEAAO becomes a lot more viable.
In the first few years of this system, we still saw some mini sweeps like The Artist or films that kept winning at precursors all season like Argo but over time, it became more common for winners to go in multiple directions.
2015 was a major example of this.
The Big Short won the PGA and The Revenant won the DGA...while Spotlight won at WGA and SAG.
You truly could make a case for any of them winning...but thanks to what likely seemed like strong support from both the writing and acting branches, Spotlight won and only walked away from that ceremony with its wins for Picture and Original Screenplay; the smallest tally for a Best Picture winner since the 1930s.
Then the following year, it seemed like La La Land was going to steamroll its way to an Oscar win after all the rapturous praise it received...not to mention a record 14 Oscar nominations which tied it with All About Eve and Titanic. There was even a time where the stat of being the film with the most nominations made you the very likely frontrunner...but instead, the backlash from some towards La La Land gave it inevitable voter fatigue and that led to critical darling Moonlight to win and many deemed that thanks to the preferential ballot (although I still think Moonlight was the worthy winner).
Moonlight winning was followed the next year by The Shape of Water and while not as insane as something like EEAAO, a fantasy/romance about a mute woman falling in love with a fish man does not seem like your typical Oscar fare...and yet it won and seemed like a likely victor despite close competition from films like Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.
However, this is where I think the comparison to the Academy of the late 60s comes into play.
After showing a willingness to acknowledge a film about a woman having sex with a fish man and a film chronicling the life of an LGBT black person from the ghettos of Miami, the Academy then honored Green Book, a whitewashed and mawkish race film that felt as backwards and banal as any film of a similar ilk that had been made in the last 40 years prior to it.
Although, some may argue that it won out mainly due to the fact that the frontrunner was Roma, a slow-moving foreign film from Netflix and that many voters didn't want to give a streaming service that kind of victory. In fact, Steven Spielberg flat out said in an interview that he voted for Green Book for that very reason.
Is that petty? Yes.
However, I don't say that as a fan of Roma. I actually found it a bit overpraised and was fully in support of The Favourite that season.
But even with the next few years to follow, you see a bit of a back and forth.
2019 gave us our very first foreign language Best Picture winner with Parasite, a film that seemed to have such widespread adoration and universal acclaim that it seemed undeniable despite the fact that a lot of the industry guilds kept honoring a more typical "Oscar bait" film: 1917.
2020 was a bit more unusual due to COVID, but that year led to Nomadland performing a strong sweep at the precursors prior to Oscar night leaving its victory seemingly a foregone conclusion which, to me, still seemed mildly surprising.
I kind of felt like that film was a very unique choice and that the circumstances of the year led it to being consistently crowned more out of "sheep mentality" than anything else...but I also feel like I wasn't as enamored with the film as some were so that could be my own bias talking.
Then comes 2021, a year in which the overwhelming critical darlings were a 3-hour moody Japanese film: Drive My Car and a very slow-paced western: The Power of the Dog.
While I absolutely adored the former, it didn't seem to have enough industry support to propel it to victory but I LOVED the fact that it managed to get into Picture, Director, and Screenplay.
As for The Power of the Dog, its audience scores were not particularly strong and the film did suffer from that as it didn't exactly garner a lot of passion.
It went from being a film that many thought could win Picture, Director, Actor, Supporting Actor, and Screenplay to only winning Director for Jane Campion on Oscar night.
What film ended up winning?
Coda, the sentimental heartwarming film bought by Apple out of Sundance that no awards pundit seemed to take seriously until the very last minute. By Oscar night, I did predict it would win but its win felt more like a desperate attempt to crown something other than The Power of the Dog.
And as I have mentioned, Everything Everywhere All at Once managed to win last year and thanks to a relative lackluster group of nominees, its passion carried the day and it became what is easily the most bonkers film to ever take the prize to date.
With all this in mind, let's discuss the state of this current Oscar season.
There are only a small handful of films that seem to be in the running for a Best Picture nomination currently and while the tide could change, I sort of feel inclined to say that Oppenheimer is the frontrunner to win Best Picture at this point.
I am coming to this opinion with a positive bias as I was pleasantly surprised by how much I loved the film, but it seems like a perfect winner on paper thanks to the high acclaimed it received from both critics and audiences. The fact that a 3-hour biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer managed to gross nearly $1 billion worldwide is absolutely remarkable...and sure, a lot of that has to do with the general respect that Christopher Nolan has and the fact that Oppenheimer is forever linked to Barbenheimer zeitgeist with Barbie.
And speaking of Barbie, it is the highest grossing film of the year and is not in the slightest what one might consider to be typical Oscar fare, and yet here it is, rightly being discussed for a nomination and frankly, it is performing very well with nominations in the precursors.
But there is one film that I really want to discuss here, and that is Maestro.
Like The Power of the Dog and Roma, Netflix is pushing Maestro as its main awards priority this year...and at first glance, you can understand why: it is Oscar bait to the nth degree.
It's a period piece biopic about a very iconic figure in the music world which allows its lead to transform thanks to rather prominent makeup/prosthetics...easily the most discussed fake nose since Nicole Kidman in The Hours.
And much like Oppenheimer, it uses a black & white/color motif with the cinematography...although Oppenheimer primarily uses B&W when it is telling the story from Lewis Strauss played by Robert Downey Jr whereas Maestro uses it for flashbacks.
Maestro is also filmed in a way that screams "Look at me! This film is art!" and sure, there is no denying that from a visual aesthetic, Maestro is a gorgeous film to look at but it does teeter on the brink of being pretentious.
Oppenheimer is certainly a stunning film visually, but the scope of it truly felt epic to warrant it...and to further add to that, I found that despite being roughly 50 minutes LONGER than Maestro, Nolan and his editor Jennifer Lame outdid themselves as I found Oppenheimer to be one of the best paced films I have ever seen...which is even more impressive considering it is 3 hours long.
The only real slap I can give it, and it is a justifiable complaint, is that the film really short shrifts both Emily Blunt and Florence Pugh in their roles even both are truly fantastic in the time they are given...but beyond that, the pace of the film is fast. It feels like the film has no bloat to what we are seeing and that felt refreshing as so many films in recent years, including this year, could've used either a rewrite or another trip to the editing room (i.e. Killers of the Flower Moon or Maestro).
I do think critical ratings systems can be problematic at times but they can also be very telling to see certain trends.
Rotten Tomatoes is definitely the key here and can be a bit hard to gauge...but as of this writing, Maestro has a 79% rating with professional critics. To put that into perspective, Green Book has a 77% and Crash, one of the other more infamous and derided winners in Oscar history, has a 74%...BUT both of those films have higher audience scores: 91 and 88, respectively.
Meanwhile, Maestro has a 64...and it actually dropped from 69 in just a matter of a couple of days.
On the app Letterboxd, Maestro has a 3.3/5 rating...and while these ratings are primarily from film buffs and not people like Oscar voters, it does prove to be a very telling way to see how tides are turning with a film's passion level.
But through it all, Maestro has received a lot of press mainly due to how thirsty of a campaigner Bradley Cooper is and the high profile Executive Producer team which includes Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese.
Similar to his A Star is Born costar Lady Gaga, who spent the entire 2022 season using verbiage to appear like a prestigious figure talking about her acting training at the Lee Strasberg Institute, Cooper has gone on repeatedly about how much he feels like he has developed a strong kinship to Leonard Bernstein, as if his spirit was present to him on set. He even did an interview on CBS Sunday Morning with Bernstein/Felicia Montealegre's children in which he tearfully said he already missed Bernstein and how much he feels close to him despite never having met him considering he died in 1990.
Cooper has also talked about how from a young age he took an interest in the idea of conducting; even asking for a baton one Christmas. Needless to say, it was no surprise that he was drawn to the film when it was first being developed at Paramount back in 2018 with Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg attached to direct at different points. Once both dropped due to scheduling conflicts, Cooper asked Spielberg if he could be given a chance to direct as well...and considering he was just finishing up work on his debut A Star is Born, he was able to get Spielberg's blessing.
And that blessing has turned into immense adoration.
Spielberg recently held a screening for the film via Netflix in which a talkback with Cooper followed and the amount of passion he felt for Cooper's work was expressed with great fervor...and it wouldn't shock me if some of the more "traditional" voters (i.e. older white men) would flock to Maestro.
So what I will be curious to see is how much this seemingly lack of passion from general audiences and even from a lot of critics in terms of top level praise will translate when it comes to a Best Picture nomination.
There is even a case to be made that Bradley Cooper's performance could lead him to an Oscar because it too fits that mold of "Oscar bait": he ages throughout the film, using makeup/prosthetics (that damn nose yet again), and even trying to work to alter his voice based on how much the chain smoking lowered Bernstein's vocal timbre over time.
On top of that, Cooper keeps flaunting how it took him 6 years to prepare for the role...including spending that whole time trying to properly conduct an orchestra for a 6-minute scene.
Just typing in "Bradley Cooper Maestro" on Google led to me finding over a dozen articles about this very topic...and after watching the film, I found a lot of it to be showboating.
Bernstein WAS very animated as a conductor at times but he was still (it goes without saying) in tune with his orchestra. I never got the sense that Cooper was actually conducting the orchestra rather than trying to appear completely consumed about the music and wanting to show off a lot of vigor.
If you watch videos of Bernstein, he was very even tempered. In fact, just watch this clip of Bernstein conducting the NY Philharmonic through Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever:
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