Works with multiple appealing features have an advantage

The “EbbEbb” team’s excellent teamwork stood out
AP/Afro

View all images

Many people probably think that the Academy Award for Best Picture is given to the most artistically brilliant work of the year.

“Everything Everywhere All at Once” (2022), which won seven awards including Best Picture, is undoubtedly a work that symbolizes the film world in 2022. However, the question remains as to whether it was by far the best of the 10 nominated works.

Miki Konishi, a film journalist living in Los Angeles, prefaced her remarks by saying, “Many people may misunderstand this,” but added, “The Academy Award for Best Picture is not given to the best film.”

“For a long time, since 1944, the Best Picture award was chosen by the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who would select one film from the five nominees. However, in 2009, the voting method was changed to ranking the ten nominated films from 1st to 10th place. In other words, it became more difficult for films that were controversial to win the award,” said Konishi.

The 10 films nominated this time (all produced in 2022) are:

“Everything Everywhere All at Once”
“All Quiet on the Western Front”
Avatar: Way of Water
“The Spirit of Inishelin Island”
“Elvis”
“Fablemans”
“TAR”
Top Gun: Maverick
“Inverted Triangle”
“Women Talking: Our Choices”

“I think people who don’t like war movies ranked ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ low, and people who were put to sleep by the artistic atmosphere of ‘TAR’ didn’t rank it highly. It has become harder for films that can be classified as ‘people who like it will like it’ to win awards. As a result, it is ‘films that are not disliked’ that have an advantage.”

A good example is Coda (2021), which won the 2021 Best Picture award.

“I don’t think that ‘Coda’ will go down in history as a masterpiece. But it still won the Best Picture award because, first of all, it’s a really well-made coming-of-age story. And secondly, it portrays the reality of deafness. It also contains a positive message that’s so necessary in today’s world. In other words, it has multiple appeals that make it appealing. Films like that often naturally rank highly.”