Why Darkest Hour Will Win Best Picture
Tis the week before the Oscars, and 9 films are ramping up their campaigns in a last-minute push for the top prize of them all, Best Picture. The biggest award has the potential to be either one of the most anticlimactic or most surprising result in recent years. The former is true, because really only two films have won any of the prizes on the awards circuit, and one of those [Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water] is a notable step ahead in the sweepstakes. However, neither frontrunner is a traditional winner, nor is without controversy; those facts, as well as the Oscars' less predictable preferential voting system means that no nominee can be counted out of the race. Birdman's and Spotlight's upsets in 2015 and 16, and Moonlight's stunner last year taught us to expect the unexpected, so we're here to give fans of all 9 nominees reason to believe on Sunday.
Let’s get this out of the way: Darkest Hour probably— no, definitely, won’t win Best Picture. At least that’s the common knowledge, as we inch closer to the announcement on Sunday night. It had the weakest critical reception of the nominees, and its comparative box office performance wasn’t much better. But, first of all, there is a reason we’re doing this series: anybody who claims they know beyond a doubt who will and will not win this year is lying. Basically, this whole series is a short-form version of the ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ emoji. Secondly, and more specific to the film at hand: Darkest Hour wasn’t even supposed to be a nominee for Best Picture, so in that regard it’s already over-performing. There are a couple reasons to believe it actually is capable of pulling off one of the bigger Oscar shocks.
For starters, it boasts the Best Actor frontrunner, which is never a bad sign. Not every Best Picture nominee even has a nominated actor or actress, so for Darkest Hour’s banner to be carried by legendary actor and likely first-time winner Gary Oldman is a unique advantage for them.
Besides, and I know this was touched on in Tuesday’s piece, but it really can’t be overstated: the Academy loves British movies made impressively by British people. (Maybe Oldman and Darkest Hour land the one-two punch that Colin Firth and The King’s Speech did in 2011.) There’s a fascinating crossover between this film and fellow nominee Dunkirk, in that the event that takes up the entirety of the latter is also a large part of the former’s storyline, as Oldman’s Winston Churchill weighs just how to manage the seemingly impossible situation. The two movies are so different in focus and in style both that it’s difficult to imagine them cancelling each other out, so to speak. However, if the Academy can’t help but compare the two, there may be a large contingent that prefer the traditional plot development and frontman-led performances of Darkest Hour.
In that vein, Darkest Hour may appear a dull choice to many, but is also one that the still-many older and, ahem, whiter members of the Academy favor enough to keep closer to the top of preferential ballots. If voting goes multiple rounds in, and the movie hangs on as a contender, who knows? Perhaps the natural presence of Trump will mean that Darkest Hour matches up favorably with other nominees, in its portrayal of a leader whose bombast and bloviation would have been rendered meaningless without compassion and conviction.