A mere nine hours from now, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences will have awarded Argo its top prize, making it statistically one of the weakest winners in the history of the Oscar ceremony. It heads into the Best Picture race without a foreground position in other key categories, most notably without a Best Director nomination.
Only three other films in the 85-year history of the Oscars have reigned supreme over their respective year without a Best Director nomination; Wings (1927/28), Grand Hotel (1931/32) and–most recently–Driving Miss Daisy (1989/90). Argo will become only the fourth exception to the Director nomination/Picture win rule, but lacks the cultural relevance and staying power of those it joins the ranks of. By next week, after Argo‘s rental profits are raked into their respective hawker’s pockets, the film will fall into obscurity, becoming notable only for the reasons it won Best Picture versus its legs as a quality film. Argo‘s legacy is already sealed as a film that made a late-season sweep at the biggest industry pity-party on record. The “snubbing” of the film’s helmer, Ben Affleck, has unfortunately translated into industry backlash against the Academy’s Director’s Branch, which simply didn’t think his work was strong enough to warrant a nomination. If he’d made it into the category, would Argo still win Best Picture? The 2012/2013 Awards Season would appear vastly different if so, with Lincoln likely taking top honors at precursor ceremonies and guild awards alike. This year’s Oscar race is reaffirming only in the sense that Ben Affleck’s likability within the industry, strong enough to guarantee his subpar film the industry’s top honors, will prove beneficial to continuing his transition from mega-star to definitive auteur. Affleck’s skills as a director are undeniable. The Town and Gone Baby Gone reek of quality craftsmanship which, to some degree, is partially why Argo is such a disappointment. Where the two Boston-set pictures reflect a director with a keen sense for location (Affleck is personally connected to the city), culture, and dramatics, Argo feels like a massive exercise in painting-by-numbers, with easily interchangeable direction without a personal mark. Argo will be forever known as the procedural that could, a film with merits based only on the misfortune of its director, who really didn’t deserve anything in the first place. The film’s successes tonight will be empty, remembered only for the pitiful circumstances surrounding them.
What we must remember, however, is that the Academy’s decision is not binding–at least in a cultural sense. Crash might have trumped Brokeback Mountain in 2005, but where the latter gave a nation perspective, the former gave us a Showtime series cancelled after the first season. The Kings Speech might have been the perfect frame for its actors to shine, but The Social Network held a mirror to a generation. The Academy has a tendency to make in-the-moment decisions that don’t necessarily highlight the “important” films of their respective eras. Audiences and academia have embraced such films as the “better” offerings of their respective years, making them the unofficial “Best Picture” in their own right. We remember Brokeback Mountain and The Social Network–hell, even Black Swan, Juno, There Will Be Blood, Mulholland Drive, etc. have all taken on more prestige and cultural prevalence than their respective year’s Academy-designated Best Picture.
Which films from 2012 will we have to look for to fortify the year’s presence for future generations? Films like Beasts of the Southern Wild and Amour are too small-scale with little commercial appeal, as they’re difficult to grasp in many ways (Beasts for its artistic oddities, Amour for its insistence on eliciting negative reactions combined with a complex structure). Django Unchained will be remembered as an interesting blip on Tarantino’s map, but withstanding little beyond that. Lincoln is a film drawing more on an audience’s affections for its real-life subjects than its strengths as a film, and Les Miserables is eye and ear candy with built-in nostalgia, forgotten beyond the late-night rooms of aspiring drama majors until the next incarnation of the it-needs-to-die-already musical comes along in 15 years. This leaves us with Silver Linings Playbook, Zero Dark Thirty, and Life of Pi. Silver Linings Playbook and Life of Pi are both based on previous works of fiction, already with built-in audiences. Both films offer fresh takes on their source material (crafting “cinematic” casings for them) and yielding high box-office returns (both grossing over $100 million domestically). They’re quality productions and will prove popular at retailers after their DVD releases, but Zero Dark Thirty will emerge as 2012’s crowning achievement as future generations look back. The film is notorious for its depiction of our government using torture as a means to gain information, but it doesn’t lead to much. The only thing the death of Osama bin Laden proves–at least in the world of Zero Dark Thirty–is that steady enduring unrest doesn’t have a solution solvable by putting a bullet into human flesh. So, then, where you “want” to go (as a nation, as a society, as a world power) becomes an issue, as there is no foreseeable place to go. The next target gives us no time for celebration, and the uncertainty of the United States’ position in the world is a questionable state of reality future generations will be living as they reflect back on Kathryn Bigelow’s film.
It’s difficult to accept the Academy as a cultural preservator for this reason, or maybe films that withstand years and decades have simply disappeared from production slates. When was the last time we saw a Bonnie & Clyde, a Sunset Boulevard, a Casablanca, a Psycho? Only time will tell if our spectacle-laden society has actually produced anything worthy of standing the test of time next to such classics, but Argo and its industry pity-win will be lost in the shuffle come April.
I’d also like to present my personal film awards for the prior cinematic year. Every film I’ve seen (released in the United States from January 1st through December 31, 2012) had its fair shot at breaking into one of the categories I’ve designated below. I’ve limited the number of nominees in some categories and expanded them in others (*makes jack-off motion at Academy*), but for the most part I’ve kept the numbers pretty standard. The bolded people and films are the winners. Enjoy.
Motion Picture
1 – Zero Dark Thirty
2 – Beasts of the Southern Wild
3 – The Master
4 – Silver Linings Playbook
5 – Celeste and Jesse Forever
6 – Holy Motors
7 – Seven Psychopaths
8 – Life of Pi
9 – Django Unchained
10 – The Impossible
Close Calls: Flight, Rust and Bone, Amour, Your Sister’s Sister, The Sessions, The Dark Knight Rises, Looper, Prometheus, Magic Mike, Damsels in Distress, The Grey, Pitch Perfect, The Deep Blue Sea, The Hunger Games, Les Miserables
Actress
Jennifer Lawrence – Silver Linings Playbook
Jessica Chastain – Zero Dark Thirty
Quvenzhane Wallis – Beasts of the Southern Wild
Rashida Jones – Celeste and Jesse Forever
Naomi Watts – The Impossible
Close calls: Marion Cotillard (Rust and Bone), Rachel Weisz (The Deep Blue Sea), Emmanuelle Riva (Amour)
Actor
Hugh Jackman – Les Miserables
Denzel Washington – Flight
Denis Lavant – Holy Motors
Joaquin Phoenix – The Master
Matthias Schoenaerts – Rust and Bone
Close Calls: Daniel Day-Lewis (Lincoln), Jack Black (Bernie), Colin Farrell (Seven Psychopaths), John Hawkes (The Sessions), Bradley Cooper (Silver Linings Playbook)
Supporting Actor
Phillip Seymour Hoffman – The Master
Dwight Henry – Beasts of the Southern Wild
Christoph Waltz – Django Unchained
Matthew McConoughey – Magic Mike
Tom Hiddleston – The Deep Blue Sea
Close Call: Guy Pearce (Lawless)
Supporting Actress
Sally Field – Lincoln
Kelly Reilly – Flight
Anne Hathaway – Les Miserables
Emily Blunt – Looper
Rosemarie DeWitt – Your Sister’s Sister
Close Call: Ari Graynor (For a Good Time, Call…)
Director
Benh Zeitlin – Beasts of the Southern Wild
Paul Thomas Anderson – The Master
Kathryn Bigelow – Zero Dark Thirty
Leos Carax – Holy Motors
Quentin Tarantino – Django Unchained
Close Call: Gary Ross – The Hunger Games
Screenplay
Silver Linings Playbook
Celeste and Jesse Forever
Zero Dark Thirty
Amour
Your Sister’s Sister
Seven Psychopaths
Close Calls: Flight, Django Unchained, Beasts of the Southern Wild
Cinematography
The Master
The Impossible
Rust and Bone
Life of Pi
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Close Calls: Django Unchained, The Hunger Games, Les Miserables
Production Design
Anna Karenina
Beasts of the Southern Wild
The Impossible
Les Miserables
Prometheus
Close Calls: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Lincoln
Visual Effects
Life of Pi
Prometheus
Looper
Rust and Bone
The Impossible
Costume Design
Anna Karenina
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Django Unchained
Lincoln
Les Miserables
Close Calls: The Girl, Life of Pi
Hair, Makeup, Prosthetics
Holy Motors
Hitchcock
Lincoln
Les Miserables
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Close Call: Prometheus
Editing
Silver Linings Playbook
Holy Motors
Zero Dark Thirty
The Master
Django Unchained
Foreign Film
Rust and Bone
Holy Motors
The Deep Blue Sea
Amour