By Laurie Baron
SAN DIEGO−It’s always risky to prognosticate the winners of the Academy Awards. While the nominees usually exemplify excellent filmmaking, which ones will garner the gold statuettes often reflect contemporary politics, personality issues, and studio lobbying. My predictions are based more on monitoring entertainment and trade publications than on my own tastes.
BEST PICTURE: La La Land
With nominations in fourteen categories, tying the record for the most ever received by one film, La La Land appears to be the Academy’s favorite movie of the year. Beautifully filmed and innovatively choreographed and directed, its musical and visual homage to Hollywood’s Golden Age and Los Angeles will be hard for the voting members of the Academy to resist. Moonlight might upset it if the Academy has been chastened by the criticism leveled at it last year for snubbing African-American actors, filmmakers, and films. It deserves the award for tackling the topic of growing up black and gay in urban America so sensitively. That it manages to do this is all the more remarkable considering its budget of five million dollars pales in comparison to La La Land’s thirty million. Frankly, I wish the Oscars would emulate the Golden Globes and have a separate category for best comedy or musical.
BEST DIRECTOR: Damien Chazelle, La La Land It is not automatic that the director of the Best Picture receives the award for Best Director. It looks like Chazelle’s night, but don’t surprised if the Academy splits the ticket and gives Barry Jenkins the Oscar in this category for Moonlight.
BEST ACTOR: Casey Affleck, Manchester by the Sea Affleck has been the frontrunner for this award ever since he captured the Golden Globe for Best Actor. His performance in Manchester by the Sea was carefully calibrated to reveal a wounded but compassionate soul who internalizes his guilt so much that he is prone to occasional eruptions of rage. Revelations about allegations of sexual harassment in 2008 have eroded his lock on the Oscar. The Hollywood press has reported a shift to Denzel Washington for his outstanding performance in Fences in the past month, but it may have happened too late to beat out Affleck.
BEST ACTRESS: Emma Stone, La La Land Emma Stone is clearly the favorite in the category. She not only did a superb job of acting, but of dancing and singing as well (which is more than can be said of her co-star Ryan Gosling). Natalie Portman for Jackie and Isabelle Huppert for Elle have been mentioned as possible longshots. If it goes that way, then Huppert will probably garner the award.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Mahershala Ali, Moonlight Ali’s portrayal of Juan, a drug dealer with a paternal side, was the most memorable role in a film filled with strong performances. Dev Patel from Lion could be, though it is highly unlikely, the spoiler in this category.
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Viola Davis, Fences Although she should have been nominated in the Best Actress category given how meaty her role in Fences was, Davis seems positioned to overwhelm her competition. Michelle Williams from Manchester by the Sea might have had a better chance if she had more screen time in the picture.
BEST FEATURE LENGTH DOCUMENTARY: O.J.: Made In America
Considering that this seven and a half hour documentary about the OJ Simpson trial was produced and broadcast by ESPN, it might be expected that it would be nominated for an Emmy rather than an Oscar. But it was given a limited theatrical release at Sundance and in Los Angeles to circumvent the rules. The film exposes how celebrity, media, race, and wealth influenced the outcome of the “trial of the century.” I’m more partial to Netflix’s 13th which cogently examines how racism, law and order crackdowns, the war on drugs, mandatory minimum sentencing, and three strikes punishments have resulted in the disproportionate mass incarceration of African-Americans. In either case the Academy will acknowledge that some of the best filmmaking today is done under the auspices of cable streaming and television networks.
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM: The Salesman
Iranian director Asghar Farhadi may benefit from refusing to attend the Oscars ceremony to protest Donald Trump’s obsession with extreme vetting for Islamic terrorists. The Academy could send a message to the Donald by conferring the award to his film about a couple who become estranged from one another while acting in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. Another film that could pick up support is the Swedish film A Man Called Ove, a dramedy about a curmudgeonly widower who ends up befriending an Iranian family that moves across the street from him.
The only possibility of a “Jewish” film winning an Oscar is Joe’s Violin for the Best Live Action Short. It recounts how a Holocaust survivor donated a violin he purchase while in a DP camp to an a school in the Bronx and his meeting with the young woman who was given his instrument. It came in second place for the audience awards for the Joyce Shorts at the San Diego Jewish Film Festival. I expect, however, it will lose to The White Helmets, a harrowing but inspirational account of the first responder volunteers who rescue survivors from the rubble of bombed out Syrian cities.
*
Baron is a professor emeritus of history at San Diego State University. He may be contacted at lawrence.baron@sdjewishworld.com.