Leonardo DiCaprio's The Revenant topped the Oscars nominations list with 12 nods.
(The Carpetbagger)
Quick: Name the best picture Oscar winner from two years ago, or from another two years before that. Cannot? Despair not. Some of the most lastingly resonant films have failed to land best picture Oscars, among them
Citizen Kane,
Goodfellas and
It's a Wonderful Life. Others, like
Some Like It Hot,
Blade Runner and
Thelma & Louise did not even get best picture nominations, and the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences failed to nominate
His Girl Friday for anything at all. All of which is to say that come Feb. 28, when this year's Oscars are doled out, the ultimate winners might not, in the broad scheme of things, matter a ton.
This year was a bit of a meh one from the outset, with no consensus favorite emerging from the pack. With a few weeks to go in the race, that trend continues to hold. As of now, it's looking like a three-way race, possibly with a fourth contender morosely looking on.
To recap: The early favorite,
Spotlight, lost the Golden Globe for best dramatic feature to
The Revenant, which went on to land the most Oscar nominations of the lot. Then
The Big Short won the Producers Guild Award, a telltale victory because it was bequeathed by industry folks. And the American Cinema Editors named
Mad Max: Fury Road best edited dramatic film - another bellwether because winners in that category often go on to land best picture. (
The Big Short won for comedy.) Last weekend, at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, another strong predictor,
Spotlight was anointed best ensemble cast. The Directors Guild of America is holding its ceremony Saturday, which might finally clear things up. Or not.
Accepting the Screen Actors Guild Award with his
Spotlight castmates, Michael Keaton made a clear effort to alchemize any apathy around the film into gold. He dedicated the win to victims of abuse by Catholic priests, "the disenfranchised everywhere," "every Flint, Michigan, in the world," and the powerless.
"Gun to my head, I'd guess the film that recalls our collective guilt in the most persuasive, cinematic way, so that would be
Spotlight," said an academy member and campaign watcher whose job status hinges upon staying anonymously behind the scenes. "But
The Big Short calls up our collective victimization, and that's a powerful message as well, and it's also a more entertaining, stylistic telling. So, I give up."
If the actors' race has been marked by one thing this year (aside from being dominated by white people), it is the triumph of the season's most baldly transparent narrative: Leonardo DiCaprio has been tortured enough, and not just by his director, Alejandro G. Inarritu. (Also Read:
Oscar Nominations: Leonardo DiCaprio's The Revenant Leads With 12 Nods)
It was roughly a year ago when the first tales of hardship were leaked from the set of
The Revenant, before being swiftly repurposed for the film's and DiCaprio's awards campaigns. Along the way, morsels were revealed, among them DiCaprio's intimacy with, and ingestion of, assorted mammalian innards, details that banged around the echo chamber so loudly that Tina Fey and Amy Poehler could not resist taking a stab.
"Let's all calm down about Leonardo DiCaprio and how hard it was to shoot
The Revenant, OK?" Poehler said at the SAG Awards, as Fey rolled her eyes alongside her. "So you slept in a horse and ate bison liver. Big whoop."
It is a big whoop for DiCaprio, whose thirst for the O-man statuette for best actor - denied to him four times before - seems sure to be slaked this year. As Kyle Buchanan, Vulture's awards season savant, noted, it's interesting that DiCaprio could win for this raggedy, largely wordless role, considering the Oscar-nominated parts he has played before: kitten-faced autistic teenager, Wall Street hedonist, swashbuckling Hollywood golden boy/madman-in-waiting and gunrunner. Never mind that DiCaprio has upstaged himself multiple times this season, be it by meeting the Pope, or grimacing at Lady Gaga, or sucking away on his vape pen. He has swept every important prize, with the Screen Actors Guild Award win - his first, after nine nominations - ahead of Bryan Cranston (
Trumbo) pretty much sewing this race up.
Another clincher is Brie Larson, who is the runaway lead for best actress. Two of her fellow nominees, Cate Blanchett (
Carol) and Jennifer Lawrence (
Joy), have already won Oscars, and Larson has bested Saoirse Ronan (
Brooklyn) in all the key awards. And Charlotte Rampling's ill-conceived comments about race pretty much burned through the warm fuzzies generated by her standout performance in
45 Years and subsequent academy nomination.
Larson is 26, and her inward turn in
Room might have been overlooked were it not for her astonishing young co-star, Jacob Tremblay, whose performance, although not Oscar-nominated, drew raves. Whether Larson's performance merits a prize previously denied to such multiple nominees as Glenn Close, Sigourney Weaver and Annette Bening is beside the point because, on this front, it's all but a lock.
For best supporting actress, this season's fresh-faced it girl, Alicia Vikander (
The Danish Girl), has pulled ahead of Rooney Mara, another actress who arguably was a lead in the film (
Carol) that got her nominated. Vikander, who won the SAG, has the extra benefit of getting a lift from her turn in
Ex Machina, which earned her nominations from the Golden Globes and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.
Last but not least, for supporting actor, it's looking very, very good for Sylvester Stallone, the
Creed co-star. Idris Elba, whose Oscar shutout helped ignite this year's #OscarsSoWhite outcry, nabbed the Screen Actors Guild Award ahead of Stallone's Oscar competition. (Stallone was not nominated for an SAG.) Stallone, meanwhile, is being buoyed by a ton of sentimental good will, to wit the standing ovation that followed for his Golden Globe win.
This stands in contrast to some pointed grumblings around Stallone's breakout film,
Rocky, which took the best picture Oscar nearly 40 years ago, ahead of
Taxi Driver,
All the President's Men and
Network, written by Paddy Chayefsky.
One of Stallone's longtime producers, Irwin Winkler, also a producer on
Creed, said that when
Rocky tied with
Network for best picture at the Los Angeles Film Critics Association awards that year, he extended a congratulatory hand to Chayefsky, whom he happened to be standing alongside.
Winkler said Chayefsky hissed back, "I hope you die."
And inside, Winkler said, he kind of did.
© 2016 New York Times News Service