In one sense, the past no longer matters when we’re talking about the Oscar race. The preferential ballot plus the new members has put past precedents into question and made predicting Best Picture more difficult. For instance, Moonlight didn’t win a single major guild — except the WGA. You could not have used stats to predict it. The only way I did was by running a poll that turned out to be accurate in measuring how people were ranking the nominees. Stats have been so consistently reliable when predicting the Oscars that we’ve become dependent upon them.
From another angle, we have one of those rules that hold true until it doesn’t: the fact that no foreign language film has ever won Best Picture. But has any ever gotten close? Sure. Next year will be our official 20 year anniversary. That year, I ended up predicting Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to win Best Picture, over Gladiator. I know, not very smart. Gladiator had it in the bag, even though its director, Ridley Scott, did not. Best Director turned out to be a toss-up between Ang Lee for Crouching Tiger, and Steven Soderbergh for Traffic — who ended up winning. Starting out my first year of Oscar coverage with that year taught me a pretty big lesson in predicting Best Picture. I came away thinking if a masterpiece like Crouching Tiger couldn’t win, no foreign language film could.
Other films not in English that have gotten close include Life is Beautiful — though Roberto Benigni ended up winning Best Actor. In the era of the preferential ballot, however, no foreign language film except for Amour in 2012 has even been nominated, let alone won. Although the “Three Amigos” have taken Oscar by storm, winning Best Director and Picture — none of those have been in their own language, in Spanish, until Roma. And that makes Roma a powerful thing indeed. It also announces Netflix’ presence with authority. With the two acting nominations, how can it lose? Well, there is the thing of it also being nominated in the Foreign language category. Remember, if voters only had five choices for Best Picture, they might split and say Cold War for foreign language and Roma for Picture. With the preferential, it doesn’t quite work that way. Might they go Cuaron for Best Director, Roma for foreign language? They might. So why might they?
While they might award Cold War somewhere, with cinematography maybe — they probably will give Roma foreign language, though that could also win cinematography. Two black and white films in a foreign language could present a bit of a split vote scenario.
Still, I’m not 100% sold on Roma as your slam dunk Best Picture winner. There are just too many weird variables to factor in. It does appear to have the best shot right now but it’s also true that often critics’ darlings don’t end up winning and you have to wonder — why didn’t it win in Toronto? Why didn’t it win the PGA? If it was such a slam dunk with the industry, how come it missed touching those bases? The Oscar juggernauts tend to win more than critics awards.
So if Green Book is knocked out, is Roma the second in line? I’m not so sure. I think SAG will help a bit there in terms of clearing things up, as will the BAFTA. Though, remember, with BAFTA they have five slots, and don’t have the pesky preferential ballot to deal with.
So let’s do a quickie Oscar predictions before the SAG awards shall we? Just the major categories.
Best Picture
PGA winner = Green Book, or SAG winner [TBD], or Roma
In contention: A Star is Born, BlacKkKlansman
*Moonlight won just the WGA, and that’s all so there’s that.
Probably not:
Black Panther
The Favourite
Bohemian Rhapsody
Vice
Best Actor
*SAG winner [TDB]
Christian Bale, Vice vs. Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody
Best Actress
*SAG winner [TDB]
Glenn Close, The Wife or Lady Gaga, A Star is Born or Olivia Colman, The Favourite
Supporting Actor
*SAG winner [TDB]
Mahershala Ali, Green Book vs. Richard E. Grant, Can You Ever Forgive Me
Supporting Actress
*SAG winner [TBD] or Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk
Best Director
*DGA winner [TBD] but looking like Alfonso Cuaron for Roma vs. Spike Lee for BlacKkKlansman
Original Screenplay
*WGA winner [tbd]
Green Book vs. Roma vs. The Favourite
*Whatever wins Best Picture is likely winning here.
Adapted Screenplay
*WGA winner [tbd]
BlacKkKlansman vs. If Beale Street Could Talk
It’s a predictor’s catastrophe, friends. We’re almost to the Oscars and we still have absolutely no idea where this is going. Yes, you can put your eggs in Roma’s basket. That’s the safe choice for sure. But — stay frosty. I have a feeling things are going to shift yet again.