On the surface last weekend’s two days, three-show-sweeps for “Anora” seemed like an unlikely wave for a movie that had lost momentum as an Oscar favorite.
But in reality, what happened is probably less of a case of “Anora” collection than it is a simple question about Oscar Watkers who learn more about what voters probably have thought all the time.
On Friday night, the lesson began about 18:55 with an award left to go to Critics Choice Awards, “Anora” seemed to be about fourth or fifth on the list of probable best image winners. It had been 0-for-5 on the Golden Globes in early January and had gone 0-for-6 with criticism voters who entered the night’s final award-and not only had “evil” director Jon M. Chu just won just won The Best Director Award in an upset that gave one of the best rivals to “Anora” a seemingly boost, it was up against the statistics that no movie had ever been named best picture on CCA without winning in another category.
But then it won. And what I noticed in the room was that everyone was shocked, started with “Anora” director Sean Baker and all the people at his table – but also that almost everyone was really happy, including a couple of directors for rival movies that enthusiastically told me If they had to lose, they were happy that it was to “Anora.”
Earlier in the evening I had a conversation with a veteran -TV and radio reporter who thanked me for recommending Baker’s movie when I was going to encounter him at the Golden Globes a few weeks earlier. He said it was not the kind of movie he normally, and he decided it was a Downer after seeing about 15 or 20 minutes – but he held it and was surprised at how fun it was.
The critic’s voting had ended in early January, long before the assumed frontnunner “Emilia Pérez” had taken a hit because star Karla Sofía Gascón’s racist and anti-Muslim tweets, so that the show’s results came from votes when that movie did not have a Black cloud hanging over it. After the exhibition on Friday night and conversations with the reporter and directors, I began to wonder if “Anora” might be broader appealing than I had realized – perhaps even voting to win on The Producers Guild, the only other voting body it uses the same Ranked electoral voting systems like Oscars in the best image category.
Despite this, I thought and many others that the producers might go for a more mainstream movie like “A Complete Unknown” awards, where the top prize probably seemed to go to Brady Corbet for “The Brutalist” or Jacques Audiard for “Emilia Pérez.” (Audiard could have been beaten by the fact that the last voting took place after the Gascón tube, but the first three weeks of voting had taken place before that.)
But Baker won DGA and “Anora” won PGA, who also voted too early to be affected by Gascón. And while that blanket As a huge wave for that movie, what it really meant is that while Pundits and Oscar viewers assumed that “Emilia Pérez” was Frontrunner, voters actually threw votes for “Anora”-and that a rough, nudity filled, filled, indie with Low budget with an unknown role was so fun and also so moving that it justified a place with “everything everywhere at once” and “coda” as a movie that doesn’t feel like it should be an Oscar favorite, but is a .
Keep in mind that Director Guild-Producer’s Guild One-Two Punch is not infallible: Of the 26 films that have won both awards since PGA started handing out their 1989 award, 20 have gone on to win the best image Oscar, five do not and one years took the strange situation where “gravity” won DGA, “Gravity” and “12 years a slave” bound to due to and “12 years a slave” won Oscar.
“Apollo 13”, “Saving Private Ryan”, “Brokeback Mountain”, “La La Land” and “1917” were the films that won both DGA and because and lost on Oscars. But it is not worthwhile to except maybe “Apollo 13”, all these films lost on movies with smaller budgets, most recently when “La La Land” lost to “Moonlight” and “1917” to “Parasite.” For the most part, when a movie that seems to be on a role is unexpectedly taken down at Oscars, it is in the hands of a sneaky little indie – in other words, Oscar uprising does not happen to Movies like “Anora”, they happen in the hands Movies like “Anora.”
It puts Baker’s film in good form, especially since Producers Guild would have been the best opportunity for “Wicked”, “A Completely Unknown”, “Conclave” or even “Emilia Pérez” to show that they could build that kind of Consensus required for win Oscar. Instead, the trio of events showed that with the Oscar vote that began on Tuesday, maybe “Anora” has already built up that consensus.
Of course, in recent years, the usual Oscar rules have been taught us to have a habit of being crumbled for the new, International Academy. The past week has taught us a lot of lessons about this Oscar season, but that does not mean that there are no more lessons that have not yet taught.
