In a victory that was starting to feel inevitable even though traditional Oscar statistics said it was impossible, Apple Studios’ “CODA”The Academy Award for Best Picture went to Sunday’s winner. And in doing so, it proved that most of the usual metrics by which we measure the Oscars just don’t work anymore.
The surprise victory also suggested that in a year in which we’re all surrounded by bad news, Oscar voters were inescapably drawn to the feel-good movie about a deaf family with a hearing daughter.
The “CODA”The win was at the end a strange and stormy Oscars show. It was supposed to be a more mainstream Oscars, faster, funnier, better hostier, and more mainstream. It took 20 minutes. longer than last year’s show, which unlike this one presented all 23 categories live. The producers’ mainstream tendencies peaked with “fan favorite” “best moments”Zack Snyder fans hijacked Twitter polls to take them in a direction the Academy never imagined (which is why they were such a bad idea).
The jokes were made even more hilarious by the fact Will Smith took exception at a Chris Rock puntline directed at Jada Pinkett Smith and went on stage in an attempt to strike Rock then shout obscenities at him.
Those things turned an Oscars show that came in with high stakes into an awkward and confusing affair that had some great moments but didn’t solve any of the problems it was supposed to be tackling. (We’ll see how it did with solving the ratings problem on Monday.)
But it was also a historic win. “CODA” was the first Sundance movie to take the top prize, the first to not be nominated in either the Best Director or Best Film Editing categories at the Oscars, the second in which the film’s director was not even nominated by the Directors Guild of America and the first winner since 1932 to have less than four total nominations.
Statistic after statistic said that Sian Heder’s crowd-pleasing drama about a child of deaf parents who wants to become a singer could not bring down “The Power of the Dog,” “Belfast,” “West Side Story”These films were among the Best Picture nominees. However, after remaining under the radar for a whole year, “CODA”The film made a sudden surge and won the Screen Actors Guild Award. It continued to win the Producers Guild Award last weekend and the Writers Guild Award.
Along the way, the film acquired the patina of being the Oscar race’s scrappy little underdog, a remarkable trick when you consider that it sold for a record $25 million at 2021’s Sundance — and that it was bought by Apple, which happens to be the most valuable company on the planet.
So Goliath backed David to take down Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog.” Campion’s Netflix film was a presumed front runner for most of awards season, but one that always had nagging doubts hanging over it: Do voters really like it as much as critics do, and is it too divisive to win?
When “The Power of the Dog”It received the most Oscar nominations, and it appeared to be in good health. But even before Sam Elliott mouthed off with an ill-considered rant about how he didn’t like the gay cowboys or the fact that it was shot in New Zealand rather than Montana, anecdotal evidence suggested that support for the film wasn’t as widespread in the Academy as it was with critics. The Best Picture category uses a ranked-choice voting system, which looks for consensus favorites. “The Power of the Dog”Never had it the air of a strong front runner as the statistics suggest.
Like a Muhammad Ali rope-a-dope, Apple’s campaign was patient and opportunistic, not kicking into high gear until “CODA”It was awarded the SAG ensemble prize and has established itself as the premier alternative. “Power.”That was when it happened. “CODA” became a must-see for awards voters who hadn’t caught up to it yet – and since there seemed to be a lot of those people, it had an element of surprise that other films didn’t.
The “CODA” win dealt a real blow to Netflix, which came into the show with the most nominations but only won a single award, for Campion’s directing, and delivered a huge victory for Apple, which got into the movie business only recently and now has claimed its biggest prize.
It began as a tribute. “Dune,”It was awarded four of the five categories of feature-film before the live broadcast, and immediately added cinematography to the show. Those six wins sealed its status as the night’s biggest winner within the first 45 minutes of the show, although it wouldn’t win anything else for the rest of the night.
But “Who won the most?”This is not the question that people ask about Oscars. The Academy has admitted that the Academy is focusing on Best Picture, Best Director, and the writing and performing categories. All the way to the final “CODA”Campion was awarded for director. “CODA” “Belfast”Ariana DeBose, screenwriter (“West Side Story”) and Troy Kotsur (“CODA”Will Smith (“King Richard”) and Jessica Chastain (“The Eyes of Tammy Faye”) for actor and actress.
These were the results. “The Power of the Dog” became the first film since 1968’s “The Graduate”To win Best Director, and nothing else, and to be made “CODA”This is the fifth Best Picture Winner in the last decade and the first to win a trio Oscars. (“Green Book,” “Moonlight,” “12 Years a Slave” “Argo”These were the four other ones, “Spotlight”Despite winning two Oscars, it was the only movie that won less.
Now comes a tough moment of reckoning for the Academy, which has seen an Oscars show that was supposed to save it go off the rails in a few different ways, from Smith’s fisticuffs to the almost unanimously panned experiment of handing out those eight awards ahead of time.
While the Academy was awarded a historic winner for this show, the Oscar show needs to be improved.
