The least interesting thing about the Oscar telecast – less interesting even than the ad breaks, but only marginally so – is the moment the accountants are wheeled onto the stage to explain the arcane voting process that got us all, sweating and heaving, to the awards season finish line.
Their speech, usually delivered deadpan with briefcases handcuffed to their wrists, conjures images of pristine winners’ envelopes, carefully stacked and gathering dust inside a water-filled basement vault guarded by a hungry shiver of sharks.
Jane Campion accepting the award for best director for The Power of the Dog at Monday’s Critics Choice Awards in Los Angeles.Credit: AP
In truth, it’s a mad rush to the last minute. The final round of voting in the Oscars’ 23 Academy member-voted categories only opened this past Thursday and will close this coming Tuesday. A Boxing Day sale would not be an inaccurate mental picture to conjure.
It explains why, for example, so many A-list actors and directors chose to remain in Los Angeles for last weekend’s Critic’s Choice Awards rather than fly to London to attend the slightly grander BAFTAs. After all, nothing helps your Oscar campaign like a verklempt TV acceptance speech on American prime-time television.
It is why Jane Campion, the frontrunner for best director, was not at the BAFTAs. And is why, after her clumsy Critics Choice Awards speech (and subsequent apology), there was a ripple of unrest in Los Angeles last week as many wondered out loud whether the micro-scandal it generated could cost the 67-year-old New Zealand filmmaker what looked like imminent Oscars glory.
Oscar winners are not always easy to predict, though this year there feels like an unusually stronger-than-usual sense of clarity. Based on the award season trend, best picture will likely go to Campion’s The Power of the Dog, and best director to Campion herself.
The well-oiled campaign machine wobbled briefly this week, however, when Campion carelessly worded a valid point while making her acceptance speech.
She was right in one regard: female directors do compete against their male counterparts in an industry machine generally tilted against them.
But suggesting Serena and Venus Williams somehow had it easier, however, was an acceptance speech choke. “You do not play against the guys, like I have to,” Campion said. The Williams sisters seemed to take no offence, and Campion apologised the next morning, no doubt aware that two weeks is two minutes when you’re on the final length of a race to the Oscars.
Venus and Serena Williams at the Critics Choice Awards this week.Credit: AP
“I made a thoughtless comment equating what I do in the film world with all that Serena Williams and Venus Williams have achieved,” Campion said. “I did not intend to devalue these two legendary black women and world-class athletes. The last thing I would ever want to do is minimise remarkable women.”
The twist in the tale is that her gaffe came after a tornado of positive media noise after Campion called out American actor Sam Elliot for his criticism of The Power of The Dog. “What the f--- does this woman know about the American West?” Elliot asked. “Sorry, he was being a little bit of a B-I-T-C-H,” Campion shot back.
But what remains to be seen is whether the gaffe and subsequent burst of media noise it created proves costly in the longer run. After all, hell hath no fury like a woke Academy voter peeved that Jane Campion seemed to diminish two women of colour in what looked like a white-lady-privilege moment.
There are more than 9000 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. They are broken up into 17 disciplines – actors, directors, animators, cinematographers and so on. Actors, notably, are the biggest slice of the pie, numbering at around 1500. And the Academy generally adds between 300 and 800 new members every year.
Campion’s The Power of the Dog, which stars Kirsten Dunst and Benedict Cumberbatch, has plenty of Oscars buzz - so much so, the best director Oscar seems like hers to lose. Credit: AP
Each discipline nominates people for Oscars relevant to it. That’s how the nominations are compiled. And everybody gets to nominate films for best picture. Then, in the final round of voting, which is taking place at the moment, members of all disciplines – the entire membership, that is – vote in all categories.
In every category but best picture, voters select one winner. But in the best picture category they rank films preferentially. And if Campion’s comments cut – and the social media noise seems to suggest they did – voters might punish the film with a lower preference placement, which could scuttle its lock on the Oscar. And that, folks, is why the final voting window is so critical.
The turn into the final length of 2022’s award season has been unusual to say the least. With the scandal-plagued Golden Globes off the broadcast playing field, the Critics Choice Awards enjoyed a studio-and-publicist-powered pump up to the front line.
And because of COVID-19, the event got nudged from early in awards season to a position just days shy of the final Oscars voting window. As bump-and-skid date changes go, the Critics Choice Awards could not have asked for a better audition.
At the same time, off the back of two years in which cinemas were largely closed, the Oscars have delivered a field of winning candidates. The Power of the Dog has the season’s momentum behind it, but Belfast, Coda and King Richard also arguably have the Oscar within arm’s reach.
Similarly – and this is where the last week got very complicated – the buzz suggests the best director Oscar is Campion’s to lose. And there are legitimate alternatives with one foot on the dais. Kenneth Branagh for Belfast. Paul Thomas Anderson for Licorice Pizza. Even favourite son Steven Spielberg for West Side Story.
Not bad given most years the field is usually dominated by films few people have seen.
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