It is Oscar season.
Let the discussions begin; the think pieces raging at the poor choices made in the nominations, and the Twitter rants bemoaning the missed opportunities. The conversations write themselves. How did Darkest Hour sneak into the Best Picture race? What happened to The Florida Project? How did so few prognosticators see Phantom Thread creeping up? Now that Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri failed to secure a Best Director nomination, can we stop calling it the frontrunner? Does the strong showing for Mudbound signal Netflix as a strong future competitor?
Of course, there is a tendency to overinflate the importance of Oscar season, to treat these lists of films as categorical and canonical referenda on the objective worth of the past year in film. It may be more honest to assess these nominations as the verdict of six-odd thousand members of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, just as it might be constructive to consider the Golden Globes as the opinion of ninety random journalists from around the world. Who can properly assess the objective and timeless value of a piece of cinema in the moment, without the comfort of distance? It seems trite to complain about “snubs” and “mistakes” when reviewing the judgement of an institution that famously thought How Green Was My Valley would age better than Citizen Kane.
Every person reading this article will have their own opinion of the nominees, of the omissions and the oversights. Some people will feel that certain films got too much love, that they have been overrated and overvalued by an establishment out of touch with modern cinema. Others will be glad to see their favourites recognised across a wide range of categories. The Academy Awards perhaps work best as a springboard for discussion rather than a referendum on quality, inviting the reader to assess the list of nominees on their own term and maybe to compare their own verdict on the cinematic year that has been.
22 CinÉireann / February 2018
Words:
Darren Mooney