The Best Picture Winner Can Come From Anywhere

Near the end of the Oscar-winning Pixar animated feature, Ratatouille (2007), the steely, affluent food critic, Anton Ego, ends his transcendent remark in his restaurant review by stating, “Not everyone can be a great cook. But a great cook can come from anywhere.” I can’t help but think of this quote in the context of the last several years, where films have managed to upend industry and cinephiles’ expectations and cinch the coveted Best Picture Oscar. And it’s so fitting that with the ceremony over and the highly-acclaimed Everything, Everywhere, All At Once (2022) has walked away with seven Oscar wins—the most awards for a Best Picture winner since Slumdog Millionaire (2008)-and think of the journey this film has taken.

It was only a year ago that Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert premiered their science-fiction absurdist comedy at the 2022 SXSW film festival to rapturous acclaim and enthusiasm. Their distributor, A24, had plans to release the film in a month before another Multiverse-adjacent franchise film would dominate multiplexes—Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness (2022) –in the hopes that the modestly budgeted film (ranging from $14 million to $25 million) could make a dent in a theatrical market that was desperate for innovative films. The kind of films that would compel audiences to leave the comforts of their homes and venture into a movie theater to bask in the awe-inspired vision of two music video directors releasing their second feature film.

It began in a limited run by the end of March on ten screens, typical of most independent films hoping to make headlines by making the most money per theater before expanding to a wider theatrical market. Slowly, week by week, as the film expanded to more screens (jumping from ten screens to thirty-eight, to 1,250, to a height of 2,200 by the end of April), the film managed to stay in the top ten box office. Going up in percentage points to dipping no less than 12% up until it was overshadowed by the newly released Marvel film by May 6. The film became a financial hit with a domestic haul of $41 million, easily making back its budget while managing to have tremendous legs with audiences spreading positive word of mouth. More glowing critical reactions kept the film’s momentum strong.

That in of itself would have been a success story. Two idiosyncratic filmmakers, whose previous film was about a farting corpse, made a sprawling genre-bending film that made the case for original storytelling. The film was a box office success and sparked a gigantic online wave for the it to be kept in consideration for awards pertaining to the performances of Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, and the film’s screenplay and direction with notable technical accomplishments. Yet, it didn’t stop there.

All throughout the summer and going into the Fall festival season, the film maintained a level of recognition and awareness while the majority of awards films had yet to screen and begin their campaigning efforts. By the time highly anticipated films like The Banshees of Inisherin, Tár, and The Fabelmans would make their debuts, the early Spring film would begin its incredible critical awards dominance that fueled its Oscar prospects.

This is a trend that I believe most industry pundits and cinephiles alike believed to be the case when another unlikely film from an independent studio, Neon, managed to drop a bombshell in peoples’ preconceptions of what the Best Picture winner is. Suppose we were to go back to just a few years. Who would have expected a South Korean film from a propulsive genre filmmaker like Bong Joon Ho not only win the Best Picture prize but to become the first international film to do so in a year dominated by highly recognizable American filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Greta Gerwig, and Todd Phillips.

The win speaks to the cultural shifts happening within the Academy and the entertainment industry. This was a year in which 1917, a WWI film from a previous Oscar winner, made most of the industry expect it to win Best Director and Picture after its huge dominance from the Golden Globes, The BAFTAs, the PGA and DGA awards. It seemed inevitable that Sam Mendes would once again walk away with Director and Picture Oscars, just twenty years prior when his American Beauty dominated with five wins at the 2000 Oscars ceremony. Yet, that proved not to be the case. Not only would South Korea be recognized (some may say, “finally”) for a nomination in the newly named Best International Feature, but it landed coveted above-the-line nominations like Director and Picture.

It almost seemed too good to be true, as we all remember another International contender seemed almost certain to win Best Picture a year prior, Alfonso Cauron‘s Roma (2018). Some of us didn’t want to get our hopes dashed at the prospects of the Academy as a whole reinventing itself with a unique Best Picture win. Yet, it came to be, as Bong Joon Ho found himself back on the Oscars stage, not once, twice, or three times, but four separate times to his own amazement and surprise that an American institution like the Oscars managed to recognize a film outside of its borders. It was a true awakening for us movie fans and a declaration that this was not your father’s Academy Awards; this was not a continuation of the tired and typical trend of “safe” and “baity” awards films prevailing, but something inspired by a slightly dark edge that was less interested in being conforming and bolder and more exciting. 

Regarding films for the 2024 Oscars, it’s clear many major contenders are in play from the major studios. Some of these include Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), Barbie (2023), The Color Purple (2023), Oppenheimer (2023), Maestro (2023), Rustin (2023), Poor Things (2023), May December (2023), Saltburn (2023), The Holdovers (2023), and so many other films from celebrated filmmakers that we’ll be talking about for the year. I am more interested in looking at films we may be underestimating to creep to the status of being Oscar contenders or what other smaller studios have in play. If the last few years have taught us, in this new era of the Academy, we can’t solely rely on the tradition of Oscar players to tell us where the Academy is going. And so comes with that a grayish area of what outside-the-box film that wouldn’t fit within the traditional mode of Oscar winners that a lot of prognostication and statistics have been built upon. 

One must wonder what Neon will have up its sleeve for this coming calendar. The still relatively young distributor was catapulted to fame for their exemplary Oscar campaign for Parasite. Since then, they have carved out a unique and surprisingly unoccupied space of being one of the few ways an international film can receive a wide theatrical exhibition in movie theaters. Since Parasite, they have successfully distributed the last 4 Palme d’Or winners—Titane (2021) and Triangle of Sadness (2022), the latter of which landed three nominations, including Picture, Director, and Original Screenplay for Ruben Ostlund. While Titane failed to garner Oscar attention, Neon’s other films in contention landed nominations, such as The Worst Person in the World (2021) with two nominations, Flee (2021) which made history as the first film nominated in Best International Feature, Animated Feature, and Best Documentary, and Spencer (2021) who landed Kristen Stewart a Best Actress nomination. They are not to be underestimated in the space of a theatrical exhibition for international & documentary films, as both All The Beauty And the Bloodshed (2022) and Fire of Love (2022) were nominated for Best Documentary. In total, the indie studio has tallied up eighteen nominations. With the Cannes film festival on the horizon, it is to be expected that they will make some high-level acquisitions with filmmakers in contention, both in competition and out of competition.

With the festival lineup yet to be announced, we should look closely at films and the filmmakers associated that would fit the wheelhouse of Neon’s previous awards contenders. Many of their international acquisitions happen during the festival, so expect Neon to have a massive footprint. (And possibly take home the Palme a fourth time?) One film they do have slated to be released later this year is Duke Johnson’s The Actor (2023), starring Andre Holland in a dramatic thriller. Another film that is highly anticipated but does not have a U.S. distributor is Hayao Miyazaki‘s How Do You Live (2023). This marks Studio Ghibli’s 25th-produced animated feature film and is speculated to be Miyazaki’s last film after he retired after the release of The Wind Rises (2013) (only to come out of retirement in 2016 to work on a loose adaptation of the 1937 novel by Genzaburo Yoshino).

Part of what makes me want to speculate more on how a Japanese animated film from one of the greatest artists under the sun can join the ranks of the last three animated films to be considered for Best Picture—Beauty and the Beast (1991), Up (2009), and Toy Story 3 (2010)—is that Miyazaki is submitting a film after the Academy themselves have grown and continuously expanded their membership to be more diverse and inclusive of global artists. One could posit that Miyazaki’s influences and artistic impression go beyond the borders of western popularization and that what might be the 82-year-old filmmaker’s last film could become a focal point come awards time. Part of the problem when it comes to animated films is that they are categorically boxed in as “children’s films,” and they don’t serve a higher artistic ambition other than to entertain children. However, this previous awards season, we saw an incredible artist, Guillermo del Toro, proclaim in his speech the importance of animation. How it is not a genre but a medium to express meaningful stories and complex emotions that can’t be captured through live-action. With how much the Academy has changed in their behaviors in voting and how fragmented they can be during voting (will the actors’ branch be more appreciative of voting for an animated film than the Animation branch), the real difficulty will lie in getting the film seen by a wide and inclusive membership of the Academy. Of course, with the 95th Oscars having wrapped up, it will be a long, long road until the next Oscars. Anything can happen.

But that’s the point—as awards pundits put together their predicted contender lists that will be competing for next year, it will include a list of names with the films mentioned earlier that are too obvious to predict. How many could have predicted that in a year with Spielberg‘s most personal film, Todd Field‘s first film in sixteen years, Martin McDonagh‘s most critically-acclaimed film, or some of the highest-grossing films of the year (the sequels to Top Gun (2022) and Avatar (2022)), the film that wins Best Picture and has an astounding sweep of the top categories is made by filmmakers on their second directorial effort?

At the moment, it makes sense, but this is the most atypical kind of movie to win the top prize. So was Coda (2021) in terms of the awards trajectory it was. This was an independent film picked up for a record-making acquisition of $25 million by Apple. They released the film in August to little fanfare that it seemed like a blip on the awards radar. Something did transpire in the form of Troy Kotsur and the inspiring narrative of the industry veteran actor who got his big shot in a film that paved the way for him to win Best Supporting Actor. Little by little, awards bodies and organizations would recognize the film in some form or manner that wasn’t too overwhelming but a substantial amount that made the film a presence on the awards radar. When nominations were announced, it was nominated for three categories: Picture, Supporting Actor, and Adapted Screenplay. It seemed like Kostur would be the film’s consolation prize, as the heavy-favorite with twelve nominations, The Power Of The Dog (2021), seemed primed to become Netflix’s first Best Picture win. Instead, Coda garnered an extraordinary amount of passion and love that would later defy certain statistics and precursor expectations that journalists had relied on for so long to predict the Oscars.

Coda went on to win its two SAG nominations (including Ensemble), the PGA, WGA, and all that led to the win in its three categories, with Apple beating Netflix in their Oscar pursuit to be the first streaming service to win Best Picture. Early on, one would’ve suspected a small film like Coda to beat the odds and prevail over the films headed by enormous talents like Jane Campion, Steven Spielberg, Paul Thomas Anderson, or Kenneth Branagh, but it proved that any unsuspecting film could be built up to win based on passion and enthusiastic responses by Academy members. Parasite made literal history. That in itself was unprecedented. All of this is not to say that a Studio Ghibli film can mount the campaign to win Best Picture (the film only has a dated release in Japan on July 14), but if we have learned something from the past few years, these films can come from anywhere. Suppose a film from South Korea, or one with a mostly deaf cast, or Moonlight (2016) being the first LGBTQ-themed film with an all-black cast, and a multiverse science-fiction action comedy/drama with hot dog fingers, a taxidermist raccoon, butt-plugs can surprise us to win Best Picture. What’s there to prevent any film or filmmaker from surprising us come Oscar night? In this era, I choose to believe that the Best Picture winner can come from anywhere, best of all from someone outside the Hollywood system.

Article Courtesy of Paul Rai