This has been an Oscar season unlike any other in memory — with surprise wins at all three of the main precursor guild awards pointing to three different front-runners: “The Big Short,” “Spotlight” and “The Revenant.”
But as Oscar polls finally open on Friday, Feb. 12, few experts have considered the possible impact (if any) of the diversity crisis that has embroiled the motion picture academy’s membership since nominations were announced a month ago.
With not a single person of color among the 20 acting nominees for the second year in a row — and two black-oriented films (“Creed” and “Straight Outta Compton”) represented only by nods for a white actor (Sylvester Stallone) and white screenwriters, respectively — there were angry calls for an #OscarsSoWhite boycott of the ceremony.
The academy’s leadership responded to this public-relations fiasco by quickly announcing an aggressive campaign to diversify its membership — in part by taking away voting privileges from members who haven’t actively worked in films over the past 10 years (exceptions will be made for past nominees and members who worked on at least one film in three consecutive 10-year periods after their induction).
This has infuriated many of the academy’s older members — even those with exemptions — who have published open letters in trade publications complaining that voters of their generation, many of whom supported the civil rights movement, were unfairly being labeled racist.
That’s quite a firestorm to drop into the middle of an Oscar race, and it’s reasonable to say this has partly shifted the spotlight from the nominees and their accomplishments. The last time the academy did a mass culling of its voter rolls (335 members) — for basically the same reason — back in 1970, president Gregory Peck did not announce the changes until a week after the Oscars were safely handed out.
“The Revenant” briefly led the Best Picture race when it scored more nominations (12) than any other film on Jan. 14, but that changed when “The Big Short” pulled off a surprise upset by winning the Producers Guild of America award nine days later.
But “The Big Short” lasted as a Best Picture favorite only until “Spotlight” shocked the “experts” by winning the Screen Actors Guild ensemble award a week after that.
It was widely expected that the Directors Guild of America would anoint either “Spotlight” or “The Big Short” as the Best Picture Oscar nominee to beat this past Saturday — but like everything else this season, things didn’t go according to plan.
Instead, Alejandro Iñárritu made history as the very first back-to-back winner of the Directors Guild of America feature film award, for “The Revenant.”
In his acceptance speech, Iñárritu — a Mexican who won last year’s DGA (and the Oscars for Best Director and Best Picture) for “Birdman’’ — mocked Donald Trump, the Republican presidential front-runner who has promised to build a wall between Mexico and the United States.
The aggressive Oscar campaign for “The Revenant” has not been shy about playing the diversity card, calling attention to the fact that while it’s primarily a story about survival, it also depicts the exploitation of Native Americans (Leonardo DiCaprio’s character loses a son whose murdered Native American mother is seen in flashbacks).
By contrast, there is no significant minority presence in either “Spotlight” or “The Big Short.” All three films are of course going to draw lots of votes, but I wonder if enough members of this mostly liberal voting body of around 6,200 movie professionals would switch to “The Revenant” just to prove they’re not racist to push it over the top in what appears to be a very tight race among the three films.
Or, more darkly — since this is a closed ballot — will there be backlash against the academy purge that might help one of the other films? (Imagine the shock if “Mad Max: Fury Road,” which has a now-70-year-old director and a racially and sexually diverse cast, pulls off one of the biggest upsets in Oscar history.)
Though we’ll never really know what influences the outcome due to the academy’s lack of transparency, I’m inclined to think the diversity issue will help, rather than hurt “The Revenant,” which is well within the parameters of past Oscar winners (even if many of us think “Spotlight” is a superior, if more subtle and less diverse, movie).
Back when nominations were announced in January, I doubted “The Revenant” could go the distance because of historical precedent. For one thing, it didn’t have a screenplay nomination — and only “Titanic” has managed to win Best Picture without one over the past 50 years.
More dauntingly, Iñárritu would be the first person in the academy’s 88-year history to direct back-to-back Best Picture winners. If he wins Best Director, which now seems likely, Iñárritu would become only the third person ever to put together consecutive wins in that category. But neither of his illustrious predecessors (John Ford and Joseph L. Mankiewicz) could manage back-to-back Best Picture wins.
This Oscar race, though, has consistently flouted all of the historical models that guide modern Oscar prognosticators. So I wouldn’t be surprised if “The Revenant” wins and Alejandro Iñárritu makes history again — the DGA-winning film has won Best Picture 81 percent of the time over the past 67 years.
But I wouldn’t bet the mortgage on it happening, either.