The 2015 Oscar race has become one of the tightest and most unpredictable contests in years. Three well-crafted films emerged over awards season as the key contenders for the 2015 Academy Award for Best Picture: Boyhood, Birdman, and The Grand Budapest Hotel. While Selma and Interstellar combined epic scale and meticulous craft, the Academy and the guilds obsessed over a few peccadilloes that kept them out of serious Oscar contention. (Only time will honor these two towering cinematic achievements.)
Birdman and Budapest received the most Oscar nominations, each honored in nine categories. Yet, Boyhood took the top prize at the Golden Globes and the British Academy’s awards. Over the past two months, momentum has shifted several times. Which movie will take home the Oscar for Best Picture and why?
Boyhood has the strongest emotional appeal, with quiet moments from a boy’s life literally flashing before our eyes. Director Richard Linklater and his cast endured a protracted twelve years of filming to complete this small-scale epic. Boyhood leans into cinema’s unique ability to compress time and space. It won a well-deserved honor from the American Cinema Editors for Sandra Adair and the story’s ability to leap over months and years in Mason Evans’ modest childhood.
Boyhood deals with divorce, alcoholism and domestic violence in remarkably understated ways. We drop into an evolving family dynamic that communicates so much about the resilience of adolescents (and their parents). Patricia Arquette will win an Oscar for portraying the one steadying constant in her children’s life. While a series of insecure and struggling men strive to exert their will upon Mason, it is the working mom, overcoming the odds, who makes the biggest daily difference.
Boyhood was the early critical favorite, garnering kudos from both the New York and Los Angeles Film Critics’ associations as the best film of 2014. It is easy to see why they admired the scope and perseverance of the cast and crew. Boyhood resonated with European minded, art-house types who hand out Golden Globes and the British Academy awards. Unfortunately, such dramatic restraint rarely translates into Oscars. Many viewers may walk away from a screening with a shrug, wondering “Is that all there is?” Boyhood will be much discussed, much admired, but definitely not be rewarded as Best Picture.
The Grand Budapest Hotel and its conscientious concierge, Gustav are both relics of olde Europe. Wes Anderson’s artfully constructed story-within-a-story-within-a-story is a valentine to faded grandeur. By drawing upon the writings of Stefan Zweig, Anderson elevated Grand Budapest above the father/son tensions that dominate his oeuvre. He won Best Original Screenplay from the Writer’s Guild and the British Academy.
Grand Budapest was cited for Excellence in Production Design by the Art Directors’ Guild. It is like a triple layer cake full of arresting flavors and surprises: a bounty of bon mots. The attention to detail in the costumes, make up, and sets make it the clear leader in production design categories at the Oscars.
The inspired comedic performances from Ralph Fiennes and Oscar winners like Adrian Brody, F. Murray Abraham, and Tilda Swinton also elevated Grand Budapest to unparalleled award attention (for a Wes Anderson movie). While I may prefer the biographical connections evident in his earlier Rushmore (or even Moonrise Kingdom), the scope of Grand Budapest has captured the Academy’s fancy in a year in which the major Oscar contenders are mostly modest in scope. Boyhood may cover over a decade, but it does so in lower middle class conditions. Grand Budapest is a comic soufflé, baked to perfection, but alas, not the winner for Best Picture. The Academy prefers the dramatic to the comedic.
Why am I certain Birdman will win the Oscar for Best Picture?
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) will take the Oscar because it is closest to the conflicted heart and tortured soul of Hollywood. It is about a well- heeled actor struggling for a semblance of significance. It is about how pompous and grandiose and fragile the egos of actors remain (even amidst massive success). As the titular character, Michael Keaton reminds us that at the end of a career, the relationships that matter the most are still those closest to us—our spouses and our children.
Birdman also wades into the entertainment industry’s bruised psyche. Director Alejandro González Iñárritu has mined his own inner struggle with the demands of 21st century Hollywood to craft this captivating critique. While actors and filmmakers may want to stage a production of Raymond Carver’s short stories, the studios need artists who are willing to step into a spandex bird suit. The industry is all about superheroes and the boffo box office they hopefully secure. Studio execs can’t concern themselves with art when they have hungry shareholders to please. (Read the finest take on Hollywood’s blind allegiance to superhero franchises here.)
Birdman’s ignorance is a wake up call, delivered by a Hollywood outsider with by a bevy of Broadway savvy actors. It is a thrilling high wire act for those in the industry. Filmmakers and actors know the risk involved in long, unedited takes. Everyone must be on the top of the game to pull off the illusion of this migraine- inducing day. Antonio Sanchez’s drumming on the soundtrack burrows into the brain until our collective head is ready to explode just like Riggan Thomson.
With a manic style and a backstage setting, Birdman is a hard film to love. The average American may not get it. Birdman wasn’t made for the flyover district. Birdman is a plea by artists for material that challenges audiences and elevates the human condition. An Oscar victory for Birdman is a repudiation of where Hollywood is headed. It is an admission of complicity and guilt and a collective plea for “the better angels of our nature” to prevail. A vote for Birdman could suggest enduring hunger for the quirky, original, human scaled films the industry formerly made (and the public once bought tickets for). We can all hope that it represents active resistance rather than an admission of defeat.
The entertainment industry’s guilds have already recognized Birdman as the most relevant and important film of 2014. It has won the top prizes from the Directors Guild, the Producers Guild, and the Screen Actors Guild. The American Society of Cinematographers recently honored Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki’s roving camerawork in Birdman as a virtuoso technical and artistic accomplishment. He will likely earn a second consecutive Oscar following his award for Gravity in 2013. Will Inarritu follow on the heels of Alfonso Cuaron (for Gravity) as the second consecutive Mexican winner of the Oscar for Best Director? Only that race remains too close to call. Best Picture has already been decided.
