Awards Season: Where Does Best Picture Stand Now?

Even after the nominations were announced, it was looking like 12 Years a Slave would only be taking a maximum of four awards, but now that Best Actor has slipped out of Ejiofor’s grasp, it’s left with a maximum of three, and not even those are guaranteed. Besides the chance of Gravity taking Best Picture from it, there’s always the chance that the Academy could do something stupid like giving Best Supporting Actress to Jennifer Lawrence because they may feel the need to award American Hustle a pity Oscar given that it’s in the lead for zero of its ten nominations. However, I’ve also heard disturbing rumblings of the pity Oscar coming to it from the Best Original Screenplay category, sacrificing the far-superior Her. I cringe at the thought.

However, that’s neither here nor there. The point is, it seems like Gravity has much more support, especially from the technical branches (Directors, Cinematography, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Sound), but 12 Years a Slave may have more of the Actors Branch (the largest branch of the Academy) on its side, with the film having received three acting nominations. That being said, American Hustle could do tremendous damage to it there given that it too was a film with lots of acting support. Then, of course, you always have to consider the possibility that the actors enjoyed Gravity much more, but didn’t really have much to nominate it for in that regard. However, they DID nominate Sandra Bullock, who carries the entire film for most of the runtime, so there’s also a pretty big sign right there that they liked it.

We should also take a look at some of the obstacles that Gravity will have to overcome to take the big prize. One of its biggest is the fact that it failed to get a nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Even if a Best Picture winner doesn’t win for its screenplay, it usually at least gets the nomination (even the silent film The Artist managed a nod here for its 40-page script). Of course, there have been exceptions. Titanic won 11 Oscars including Best Picture without the screenplay nomination and The Sound of Music won five, again including Best Picture, without getting a nod for its screenplay.

The second obstacle is that Gravity didn’t get a nod for Best Ensemble from SAG. As many of you probably already know, there has only been one instance of a Best Picture winner not getting a SAG Ensemble nomination (Braveheart) in all the years they’ve been giving out the award. However, as I’ve pointed out before, Gravity isn’t an ensemble film, so why would SAG nominate it for an award that it isn’t eligible for? It’s a similar predicament to the Actors Branch not having much to nominate from the film, but they too liked Bullock’s performance enough to nominated her for Best Actress, so there’s clearly support there.

Going back to Titanic for a second, I think this is the best precedent for Gravity winning Best Picture. Titanic was an amazing technical achievement that didn’t take any acting awards (it had a pair of nominations) and had no screenplay nomination, but swept through the technical awards, which was enough to catapult it to Best Picture. On top of that, it was a big money-maker, which Gravity has been as well, showing that every once in a while, the Academy does salute films that are popular with the public.