And the Winner (Still) Is…

    What do a bat-man and a robot have in common?

    Apparently both have enough champions some rules are about to be changed on their behalf. This week, the Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Masters of the Universe behind the whole Oscar hoo-ha, decided the model of nominating five movies for its Best Picture award is outdated and has upped the ante to, no, not six. Not seven. Ten. Ten movies this year will be graced as Best Picture nominees. This isn't completely unheard of- it was done a couple of times in the Thirties, however the five-film-formula has held steady ever since.

    Popularly, most people put the reasoning with the uproar from last year's contest when The Dark Knight and Wall-E were snubbed from top prize consideration. Now my own feelings about this are pretty complex. I liked The Dark Knight, but when I heard the Best Picture talk in late summer of last year I thought, "No. Good movie, not a great one." But by February when the lot of Best Picture nominees had been announced, I felt a palpable apathy. It was easier to admire Slumdog Millionaire than to like it. Frost/Nixon took a fiery topic and awkwardly tried to mold it into a Rocky clone. And I admired the workmanship of Benjamin Button, but from a director as fiercly creative as David Fincher, it was a let down. In short, The Dark Knight arguments suddenly made sense, because if it had been included it would have been the only one of the lot I could have gotten myself excited about.

    But would it have won? No, there's the reason why the Academy's decision is, at best, short-sighted and at worst reflects a fundamental lack of self-understanding. The more strident cynics have argued the only benefit sought and received from this change goes to the studios and independent film companies who can now label more titles in their catalog as Best Picture nominees. Defenders say this gives movies that would normally not thought to fit in the narrow presupposition of what a Best Picture should be a chance. This is a mistake, because widening the field doesn't do anything to change the biases or limited modes of thinking that go into selecting these films. I can't even remember a year in which I've felt there was such a glut of remarkable movies that the Academy's top 5 would be bursting at the seams, and there's also the fact that what constitutes my top favorites isn't necessarily, and in fact proves rarely, in line with what Academy voters think.

    The Oscars have always had to walk a tightrope- wanting to be a serious reward for cinematic artistic endeavor on one hand, and a commercially-accessible institution on the other. As a result, the "Best Picture" rarely is. Look at any year, then look at the top 10 lists of major critics and you'll often find that even if the Best Picture film is even on the list, it's often beat out by several other titles for the upper tier slots. So Best Picture really isn't the best movie of the year- it's the best of what's popular. Box office numbers don't really play a part in choosing a winner, but failure to reach a wide audience is anathema since it means that a winner may potentially face a lack of relevance to the mass movie-going population. This middle ground puts the Oscars in unusual straits. If it wanted pure artistic credibility its nominees would be a far more interesting lot and would more accurately reflect what is felt to be the "best" of the year among scholars, film professionals, and critics, but the institution as a whole would lose out in wide public appeal and the opportunity to demand four hours of network programming on a Sunday night. Go the other way, make it about public opinion and nothing else, like the People's Choice Awards, and you get a show that may attract viewers, but whose awards carry little weight in the industry.

    This dodging between artistic and popular has often boxed Oscar into patterns of behavior that, supposedly, this widening of the Best Picture category is supposed to remedy. The argument goes that The Dark Knight and Wall-E didn't make the cut because mass-market, escapist movies have strikes against them when they go before the Academy. Give me a moment to laugh while I ask, what then were Gladiator, Titanic, and Forrest Gump? If what was probably the best written, best directed, best acted popcorn movie in years, as well as an animated film that often rivaled Kubrick and Spielberg in its vision couldn't break into a top slot of mediocre movies, what does that mean? It means that in its pursuit to be all things to all people, the Oscars are more about finding the appearance of a great movie, than finding a great movie in and of itself. The five Best Picture nominees this year ran a gamut of an uplifting rags to riches story, a historical fantasy, and a political drama, themes seemingly chiseled into Oscar's mantra. If the category would have been widened, The Dark Knight might have found a slot, but more as a salve to more populist voters. Will ten movies to pick from radically change the outcome of future contests? Yes- if only because one cant' deny adding Ralph Nader to the mix in the 2000 presidential election impacted its outcome, just not in Nader's favor.

    It's a bit overly hopeful to think the additional five nominees are going to have much of an effect save for watering down the respect a nomination can bring. Deeper lines of misthinking dictate why certain movies aren't able to break into this rank. Just like The Dark Knight and Wall-E, if there had been ten rather than five nomination slots this year, Sam Mendes' Revolutionary Road might have found a place, but this, the only drama I saw this year that actually stuck in my gut, wouldn't have done much for its chances. Go back to last year. My favorite movie was David Fincher's true crime epic Zodiac, a movie that earned some of the best reviews of Fincher's career (even better than he would get from Benjamin Button) but flamed out hard in theaters. Zodiac was such a flop it would be hard to picture it making an Academy top 10 as opposed to a top 5 despite it landing on many critics end of the year favorites lists. In 2006 Paul Greengrass' searing chronicle of September 11^th, United 93, failed to make the Best Picture cut, but landed Greengrass a Best Director nomination, a sign the Academy wants to give an artistic nod to a movie not popular enough or too controversial to make a run for Best Picture.

    Maybe the cynics are right and this move is much like the "everyone gets a trophy!" attitude in little league, that we're going to reward movies, now ten of them, for just showing up. What it isn't going to do is reorientate the Academy in regards to who it decides to reward, its preconceived notions are too entrenched to be uprooted by something this superficial. Five slots narrows the field, which is what an award is supposed to do. There will always be many (me included) whose favorites end up on the killing floor, but this can be appreciated if the competition takes less visible qualities to heart. Besides, this is supposed to be a horse race, and you can't make a horse race out of a stampede.