Best Con

Before assessing the Best Picture nominees at TNR, David Thomson reminds us what the Best Picture award is:

“First of all, remind yourself that ‘Best Picture’ is not a certificate of value passed down by God. It is a construct, and a con, dreamed up by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (which never had anything to do with God or academia) as part of a suggestion that the film business has attempted to make ‘good’ pictures, or even the ‘best.’ The business was always out for profit, and these days the results of that are usually determined in the first weekend of release. Such numbers may be lied about in the short term, but generally time sorts out the real money from the paperless kind. So Gravity, a film about the most fanciful experience anyone could imagine, was a hit this year, beyond the expectations of the people selling it. If it cost $100 million, its domestic gross is already more than $250 million and climbing. Whether the picture has what we might call thematic or moral gravity is a different matter. Gravity is as much to do with space, movement, and jumping as Fred Astaire; but Fred was never nominated for Best Picture.”

So it’s about money, but it’s also about the industry reassuring itself of its high-minded commitment to art: “it welcomes the suggestion of a higher calling, and has been known to push Best Picture honors in that direction. This uncharacteristic and generally unwholesome high-mindedness has a candidate in 12 Years a Slave . By making a fuss of that film, the business may distract us and itself from the fact that slavery might have been a topic for a picture seventy or a hundred years ago.”