Pattern Matching in the Oscar Race

We at The Times are big movie fans. We're 100% in support of them. We also take the Oscars very seriously, trying to read everything from trends in movies to cultural zeitgeists in how the awards are dished out. Is this a productive use of our time? Hell no! But it does make us interesting at parties. Sometimes.

When the nominations were announced this week, there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the inclusion of the The Reader and the exclusion of The Dark Night. We felt that The Dark Night was deserving of a nod for either best picture or best director, but we also knew going in that it would get either one, or the other, or neither, but never both. After thinking about it for a few more minutes, we knew that the end result would either be best director or neither, simply because all the slots were filled.

We don't mean that all five nomination slots were filled. What we mean is that as we looked at the list of movies that were likely candidates, we knew inclusion of The Dark Night did not allow for the normal pattern of nomination distribution in Oscar picks to be satisfied.

Confused? There are two main points to consider about the Academy and how it hands out nominations

1. The Academy does not vote as a block, so one should never think of the nominations in terms of "The Academy honoured this film, so it could feel this way". As tempting as it is, never think that a majority vote or a plurality vote can be treated as a unified voice.
2. When individuals make their vote, they are choosing between many movies in conflicting genres, so they have to use another quick binary metric to determine their choice. We have called those choices they make Categories. These categories shift over the years, but by understanding how they are ranked and how they accumulate can help you pick, more often than not, what films will and will not be nominated.

For the Academy Awards, all films compete together, regardless of genre (except for documentary and animated films). So what you get is five films that represent underlying larger themes, as opposed to "the best comedy" etc.

Let's take a look at this year's nominees

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - This is a prestige film, a large, broad canvas themed movie that represents some Greater Idea. The Prestige film is a standard category every year: even in the more "independent" years, there is a prestige film (The English Patient). It gives an actor and director a chance to stretch and be serious, because they are talking about Important Things. It gives a chance for a director to break out of his/her established genre and be so very very earnest.

Frost/Nixon - This is the history category. This deals with an event (as opposed to a person's life) and dramatizes it, often providing a revisionist slant to it. Often it will produce one, and only one, acting nomination. These are often great Academy bait movies because they focus in on one event, and not consider other people's motivations, or development over their lives (Apollo 13, JFK, The Insider are all best picture nominees who have been historical.

Milk - This is the biopic, often told in either a non-linear or shorthand format. It will try to tell a complete life story, often reducing turning points in a person's life to one or two incidents. Often these will produce a screenwriting and acting nomination as well, though it will often produce two nominations for acting, as it did this year. Shine is a great example.

The Reader - This is the important movie. It takes a heme central to almost all movies, such as love, and casts it against some larger background. They are often, like this year, where the left field picks come from, and are often the best ones to stump people with at trivia contests because people will have forgotten them. Often the important movie will carry another category with it, so you get the important war movie, or the important crime movie, or the important biopic. The Dresser, Michael Clayton, Good Night and Good Luck are all important movies.

Slumdog Millionaire - This is a category gaining prevalence in this decade - the little movie. This is a sliding scale, meaning that it often might have one or two names associated with it, and then either a bunch of people either unheard of, or playing against type. Juno, of course, Little Miss Sunshine.

So we have identified five categories that a movie can fill. But, we hear you say, what about Lord of the Rings, or Jaws, or Star Wars, which were all huge money makers and nominated for the best picture. What about those?

There are five nomination slots, but more than five categories. Some of those categories go in and out of vogue. For example. in the 50s and 60s that was often a slot for musicals, and in the 1970s there were foreign films that routinely got nominated, as well as blockbusters (Star Wars, The Exorcist). In the 1980s it was the sweeping biographical film, like Amadeus or The Last Emperor.

So...how does all of this mean that it was easy to tell that The Dark Knight was not going to get nominated? It's what happens when you combine the categories. The more times a film can fit into a category, the better it will do. So let's take a list at those categories again, and expand on the list.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Prestige film, History, Important Film, Actor playing against type, Director becoming serious

Frost/Nixon - History, Biopic, Actor Tour De Force (an actor who falls so completely into the role as to define all other interpretations of it), Legacy (former Oscar winner)

Milk - History, Biopic, Actor Tour de Force, Legacy, Current Event

The Reader - Important movie, History, Dues (Actor or directory who has been nominated multiple times and not won, both Winslet and Daldry), Holocaust (this, as Ricky Gervais pointed out long before this movie, become a category).

Slumdog Millionaire - Little Movie, Genre picture (represents a commercially viable vision of an entire film industry), Comedy (movie is pleasing or funny, often there is only ONE of these picked), Dues.

So what categories did The Dark Knight have: Actor tour de Force, Blockbuster, and the very minor Drama in getting made which is nomally only effective when combined with Dues (see Gangs of New York). It did not have enough powerful categories to jump into the top five for best picture.  There was no way it could compete with the other (Dues will always trump Drama in Getting Made, and Blockbuster often needs to be combined with at least two other categories: Lord of the Rings had Blockbuster, Drama Getting Made, Audatious Achievement, Epic, and Genre film.)

This left best director, where often only one or two categories need to be met to be a contender (this is why often the list of best picture and best director do not match up). All it really had going for it here was Dues, and Drama in getting made, which Slumdog Millionaire and The Reader also had. There was no way it could pull down best picture and not best director (pulling a Baz Lurhman), nor could it do the same for best director and not best picture (pulling a David Lynch). No matter how it was sliced, it didn't fill in enough categories to match with the others, so when filling out their ballots it was easier for it to fall down the list.

In this post we have listed most of the categories that films fall in when it comes to Oscar time. There is a hierarchy to them that we won't go into here, but which you can probably figure out on your own. And the more categories a film falls into come award time, the better its chances are. 

Coming soon: we'll take the same categories and use that to predict who will win in the major categories.