The Way of Awards (Oscars 2023)

“We are just doing our bit and I hope people try doing theirs. We can together make the world a better place.”

-Nadeem Shehzad (featured in All that Breathes)

“Art will give you crowns in heaven and laurels on Earth, but also, it will tear your heart out and leave you lonely.”

-Uncle Boris (Judd Hirsch) in The Fabelmans

For the past few years now, I print out the Oscar nominations from The Gold Knight and use it as a guide for catching up on the movies I didn’t see. It’s a fun little checklist and a more enjoyable way of tracking films I’ve seen and want to see than my other methods (an XL spreadsheet, multiple note lists in my phone). Yet there’s always a point in my viewing when I wonder about not just the snubbed flicks, but the consistent trend in those snubbed from year to year. Recognizing performers from beyond the cis white world is certainly one aspect, but also types of movies- horror, comedy, action, animated, and most movies that can’t be classified as a type of drama, biopic, or dark comedy. This mostly holds true for the 2023 Best Picture nominees, with Everything Everywhere All at Once, Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water being the exceptions (although Top Gun and Avatar have dramatic, old-fashioned Hollywood elements in their cinematic DNA).

So why do I, why do we bother? Declining ratings show a general trend to disinterest, and while I enjoy the show I’m not sure I’m as passionate about the results as I used to be (striking movies and performances have value in and of themselves (and long live The Northman!)). For me, the Oscar winners serve as a way to mark time, giving signposts to years that may be subjective but are still reflective of how we commemorate works of art. And when you travel back in time and explore these years, it can be a starting point, but by no means a final destination, and perhaps even a misleading sign that sends you adrift all for the better. Maybe seeing these imperfections and flaws can be a reminder to seek out those in the shadows, to keep searching and looking for things that are different and dazzling in unexpected ways…In other words, to go beyond the borders of the map you need the markings in the first place. Or just have a nice little checklist. Onto my 2023 Alternative Oscar picks, with a few award categories from last year and a few new ones:

• Best film debut: Frankie Corio and Charlotte Wells for Aftersun
• Nominees for the Nicolas Cage award for actor best expressing the qualities of Nouveau Shamanic: Nicolas Cage (The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent), Pedro Pascal (also in said movie), Harry Melling (Pale Blue Eye), Mia Goth (Pearl and X), Aaron Taylor-Johnson in Bullet Train, Alexander Skarsgard (The Northman), Stephen Lang in Avatar: the Way of Water, Ralph Fiennes in The Menu, and Woody Harrelson in Triangle of Sadness.
• Winner for the Nicolas Cage award for actor best expressing the qualities of Nouveau Shamanic: It’s very close, but the twin bill from Mia Goth gives her the edge over a severely underrated turn from Harry Melling and classic gonzo Woody.
• Best relationship with donkey I vicariously lived through: Also a tie! This time between Colin Farrel and Jenny the Donkey in the Banshees of Inisherin and Sandra Drzymalska and EO in EO (can I have a carrot muffin too? I loved everything about this movie).
• Best fictional art I wish was real: Puss in Boots on guitar (sorry Trey, but this is the cat I would travel cross-country to see).
• Best bad idea for an award: Hey people, I think we were a little harsh on the Popular Film Oscar. Let’s make amends. Or go on complaining about the lack of popular movies at the Oscars… This year you could have Top Gun: Maverick square off against Avatar, RRR, Puss in Boots, and Nope or Pearl.
• Best why is Guillermo del Toro winning another Oscar award: Puss in Boots or Marcel the Shell were way better than Pinnochio, which has some of the most annoying songs I’ve ever heard on film (also, read the book Guillermo!)
• Best stock crash: Why did Avatar: The Way of Water’s best pic stock go down so much? I get the story is relatively simple, but that movie is Nuts (you are literally transported to another planet. For Avatar 3: The Voluptuousness of Volcanoes don’t be surprised if you have the option of becoming a Na’vi (that’s what they’re called, Quentin Tarantino)). Also the award isn’t called Best Movie, it’s Best Picture and in my humble opinion the highest quality photographs this year are all from Pandora.
• Most gratuitous use of italics in hopeless argument: Me.
• Best movies that made me care about politics again: Navalny and All Quiet on the Western Front. Navalny was as gripping a documentary as I’ve seen in a while– a political thriller that felt like a fictional movie at times, and just a compelling portrait of a man who symbolizes a different side of Russia. The footage in Fire of Love was remarkable, but I found the narration a little pretentious at times (note to self: mute it next time and play a mixture of Air, which is featured at times in the film, and ambient lava flow). All Quiet on the Western Front may seem to just be another war movie, but I haven’t been hit in the gut as much as I was from this one since maybe Saving Private Ryan (maybe we still need antiwar films until we don’t have fucking wars anymore).
• Best short films: Haulout (not for those who fear a huddle of walruses), Night Train (the quintessential punchy short film in my humble opinion), Le Pupille (like Everything Everywhere all at Once both weird and endearing) and The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse.
• Best underrated overrated film: The more I thought on it, the more I appreciated The Fabelmans. There is a messy human drama at its heart and it gives a deeper reason for how Stevem Spielberg’s enduring films are both far off moving dreams and relatable modern parables. Watching the film I couldn’t also help but wonder why Michelle Williams wasn’t in the mix for winning best actress. Cate Blanchett is strong per usual, and I’d love to see Michelle Yeoh get some overdue recognition, but Williams had me on the edge of my seat– there was a strange, lyrical, hypnotic quality to her performance and is maybe the finest turn by one of the best out there. Paul Dano also gives a textured, nuanced performance- it’s a quieter role for him but he acutely embodies the tragically hopeful and steadfast core at the heart of his character (for point of comparison, see his early turn in There Will Be Blood).
• Best underrated nominated performance: Causeway hasn’t gotten much buzz, but see it for Brian Tyree Henry’s subdued, gripping performance. His character felt very real and honest to me, and I’m looking forward to seeing him more.
• Best nominated movie that still feels anonymous: Living is a quiet little gem of a film, it doesn’t seem too likely to win anything, but I’m glad it was nominated (I also thought it just looked really good on the big screen– more credence to how I think theaters are to TV what records are to mp3s).
• Best…Actor?: I thought The Whale was pretty wild. Almost all of the movie is set in the protagonist, Charlie’s, apartment…Brendan Fraser is so magnetic in the role he almost creates a whole environment unto himself. He also brought a whole lot of empathy to the performance and made me feel for this man who is in such a chasm of pain. Still, I appreciate the actor who does it without any sort of physical transformation so I think the winner here should be Colin Farrell, whose performance embodies and heightens the artistic debates and haunting nature of the Banshees of Inisheran. But I think it will be Austin Butler who, although he does capture the magnetic energy of Elvis Presley (no small feat), doesn’t really have many scenes where he’s having those back and forth acting tete a tetes that I think are necessary for truly great performances (and you know, Best Actor ones). Farrell bounces off Kerry Condon, Brendan Gleeson and Barry Keoghan, who are all nominated for their Banshees performance and have even won a few major awards this season (Condon and Keoghan for the BAFTAs). Butler squares off with, as much as it pains me to say…a truly terrible Tom Hanks.
• Best…picture?: When I saw it in theaters, I thought the Banshees of Inisherin was an easy choice. Even though Top Gun: Maverick was my favorite of 2022, I thought Banshees had that dramatic and life reconfiguring edge I think makes a good Best Picture winner. This held for a while until I saw All Quiet on the Western Front. Then I rewatched Everything Everywhere All at Once and thought that would be worthy for its sheer uniqueness, strangness, and Ke Huy Quaness. Then I saw Triangle of Sadness and well, that movie’s simply something else. Whatever happens I dug this past year in movies and am excited to see how the awards play out.
• Best movie that gives me hope for humanity: All that Breathes. Imagine living in a war-torn, poverty-stricken city and working an incredibly boring manufacturing job in a creaky facility that occasionally floods, and dedicating your life to saving birds, particularly a bird that no one cares about (but harms in large numbers), and preserving a fragile ecosystem going through volatile changes; all the while the planet is melting and the clock is ticking ever closer to nuclear armageddon. It makes me feel bad that I live in a selfish bubble, yet it makes me feel better that there are people out there who will not go quietly into that good night.

Enjoy Oscar night everyone, and may the force be with Jedi Master John Williams…and the Deakins!