Why Roma Will Win Best Picture
'Tis the week before the Oscars, and 8 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 a few films have won any of the top prizes on the awards circuit, and one of those [Alfonso Cuarón's Roma] is a notable step ahead in the sweepstakes. However, many have called this one of the most wide-open Best Picture races in recent memory. Not only is no contender is a traditional winner, none 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 2016, and Moonlight's stunner in 2017 dared us to expect the unexpected, so we're here to give fans of all 8 nominated films reason to believe they might win the top honors on Sunday night.
Alfonso Cuarón is a beloved director, and his latest film Roma is one of his best. An autobiographical story, set amidst Mexico City in the 1970s, Roma masterfully captures that time and place in a way that only Cuarón can.
Not only is the film directed by Cuarón, he is the credited cinematographer as well - taking ownership in a way that esteemed peers like Paul Thomas Anderson never have. Though tonally different from any of his previous work, there is no doubt the film is fully Cuarón, whose filmography has already been awarded by the Academy (Gravity brought him a Best Director award in 2014).
Roma is already the odds-on favorite to win a number of awards, including Directing and Cinematography, as well as Best Foreign Film. It, of course, has a chance at others, but according to most oddsmakers, those are the categories the Mexican film will most likely take home. The virtual lock in individual categories for Cuarón shows how the academy feels towards him and gives us insight into the likelihood that Roma might win Best Picture.
In a crowded Best Picture field, and controversy surrounding some of the nominees, including two of the more popular nominees in Green Book and Bohemian Rhapsody, the hope for Roma is that the goodwill for its director and the way he put himself into this film will push this nominee over the top.
Netflix is the complicating factor. While Roma did release in theatres to satisfy Academy guidelines, its main method of distribution was through Netflix, a fact that could turn some segments of voters off to it, and take away first place votes. With that said, it’s not hard to imagine a scenario where Roma, in the Academy’s system of preferential balloting for Best Picture, despite being beat out for first-choice because of the Netflix factor, would secure a good number of second and third place votes, and could use those to propel it over the top and secure a win. Any streaming backlash Roma has received hasn’t prevented it from scoring victories at the BAFTAs, Critics Choice Awards, and Director’s Guild Awards, but the Oscars are a different beast. Soon we’ll see whether the most prestigious awards of all fall in line with the majority of the circuit.