These are exactly the type of films that the Oscars are meant to champion; they might be “bait”-y but they are also extraordinarily good. And yet both are already fast on their way to footnote status. Small films like this, that look like they might have a passing shot (and let’s not forget that neither was as outside a bet as “Moonlight” on paper) often end up putting all their eggs in the Oscar basket, or having them put there for them. When “Loving” premiered in Cannes, there was a feeling (I was there, and noted it at the time) that the film was too “Oscar-y” for the Croisette. Similarly, the chatter about “20th Century Women” so quickly funnelled into a debate about whether or not Bening would get her fifth nomination, that it could easily have seemed like there wasn’t much else to say about it.
Both of these films deserved a fairer shot than being reduced immediately to their Oscar chances, and that’s especially clear now that they’ve been so eclipsed. In many ways, the Oscar race is as crass as the Blockbuster race, the only difference being one of honesty: at least with the blockbuster opening-weekend derby, the figures are there for all to see, and the almighty dollar is the bottom line. The Academy Awards purport to be about quality and prestige, and no matter how much we temper that idea with but it’s the Oscars, so¯\_(ツ)_/¯, the fact is that when a film loses the blockbuster race we get a “The Lone Ranger” or a “John Carter from Mars“: a career is harmed or a studio is hobbled, but movie culture survives. But when a worthy film (we’re not talking about the “Collateral Beauty“s of the world here) loses its Oscar gamble, we all lose out — The Movies lose out — because films like “Loving” and “20th Century Women,” not being blockbusters and not being genre movies, have nowhere else to go.
In a compelling Grantland piece from 2014, Mark Harris stated, “For movies, but also for the reputation of the Oscars, one major nomination truly is better than nothing.” But I think that’s truer for the Oscars than for the films involved. And this perhaps is my greatest bugbear about them — the Oscars purport to serve film but really the Oscars just serve themselves. It gives a gloss of flexibility and broadmindedness to the Academy to not have all the nominations in all the major categories come from the same, Best-Picture-nominated pool — this is the substance of Harris’ piece in which he paradoxically relates the narrowing number of nominated films overall, to the enlarging of the Best Picture shortlist to up to 10. It’s an interesting argument, though it feels like there may be broader factors at work than simply the expansion of the category and though the figures have rebounded a little since he wrote it: back in 2014 he complained that six “big” categories (picture, director plus all the acting sections) came from only 11 films; in 2015, by my calculations that number was 15; in 2016 it was 16 and this year it is 14. However it is significantly down from the 18.5 film average Harris cites from the decades preceding the 10-film limit change.
The Oscars purport to serve film but really the Oscars just serve themselves
That homogenisation trend especially worrisome, however, if one really believes that “one major citation,” as Harris suggests, “make[s] moviegoers say, ‘I really should catch up with that one.’.” But given the wildly inconclusive figures on even the Best Picture nomination “bump” it seems safe to say that increased numbers of bums-on-seats from a single non-Best Picture nomination is anything but a sure bet, and likely to be negligible. And even if the nudge proved stronger than that gloomy prediction, would it be strong enough to justify the money and effort spent on campaigning? Would those resources not have been better ploughed into straightforwardly marketing the film on its release, or putting it into more cinemas? Will “20th Century Women,” whose box office now stands at $2.68m after a week of wide release, benefit more from its single screenplay nod than it would have if it had released at a less overcrowded time of the year, with a bigger promotional spend, or been marketed as, say, a perfect Mother’s Day film rather than an Oscar hopeful?
We can’t know (and maybe that’s really what I dislike most about the Oscars, they’re such an irreducible part of movie culture that we simply can’t imagine what the landscape would look like without them). But in the cases of those two terrific films, their rather token nominations (it’s highly unlikely either will win in either category) will provide a boost to Negga and Mills individually in terms of profile and prestige — the currency of the Oscars — but will probably do very little for the films. And this narrative was set for a certain number of worthy titles this year, as it is every year, right from the moment it’s decided that they’re going for the Oscar gamble. At the moment it really is the only other game in town, but if the Academy Awards are going to deal such worthy players such a bum hand in the first place, it’s possible they’d be better sitting it out altogether. If only that were an option.