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'A Quiet Place's Disingenuous Oscar Campaign Is Worth It To Get Emily Blunt a Nomination
The Shape of Water triumphed in the closest Best Picture race in years to take the top prize at the 90th Academy Awards.
Guillermo Del Toro’s gorgeously envisioned and assembled film about a mute woman whose job ends up putting her in contact with a sea creature kept in captivity by shade government officials, only to befriend and ultimately fall in love with said creature, put Academy voters under its genre-blending, Old Hollywood-evoking spell.
Del Toro quoted Steven Spielberg from the podium, saying that the Oscar-winning director told him, “If you find yourself at the podium, remember that you are part of a legacy […] a world of filmmakers, and be proud of it.”
Del Toro dedicated the Best Picture win to young filmmakers around the world, saying, “Everyone that is dreaming of a parable, of using genre and fantasy to tell the stories about the things that are real in the world today, you can do it. This is a door — kick it open and come in.”
Going into Sunday night’s Academy Awards, while the acting races were all but sewn up, Best Picture was perhaps as wide open as it’s ever been. The Shape of Water entered with the most nominations (13), while Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri had triumphed at the Golden Globes, SAG Awards, and BAFTA, but director Martin McDonagh was surprisingly left off of Oscar’s Best Director ballot, opening the door for any number of possibilities.
In a reprise — or perhaps more accurately an exorcism — of last year’s Best Picture wrong-envelope-opening disaster, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway emerged to once again present the Best Picture award. “It’s so nice seeing you again,” Beatty said to a crowd of nervous and wary A-listers. This time, nothing was left to chance.
With this win, The Shape of Water becomes the first film since Braveheart in 1995 to win Best Picture without so much as a nomination from the Screen Actors Guild in their Best Ensemble category. Despite some early defeats in the craft categories, Shape picked up awards for Production Design and Original Score before Del Toro took the Best Director trophy that pretty much everyone was predicting he would.
