Why Licorice Pizza Will Win Best Picture
'Tis the week before the Oscars, and a field of 10 films-- the highest number since 2011! --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 [Jane Campion's The Power Of The Dog] is a notable step ahead in the sweepstakes. However, no frontrunner is a traditional winner, nor is without its detractors; those facts, as well as the Oscars' less predictable preferential voting system means that no nominee can be counted out of the race. Spotlight's and Moonlight's back-to-back upsets in 2016 and 2017, and Parasite's stunner in 2020 taught us to expect the unexpected, so we're here to give fans of all 10 nominees reason to believe on Sunday the 27th.
The next Best Picture nominee in our preview series is Paul Thomas Anderson's Licorice Pizza.
Movies work when they make you feel something. Whether we realize it or not, this is the core element that we are chasing when we go to the theatre or fire up a streaming service and spend our time trying to find the perfect story to watch. This is an essential piece of what makes for a successful movie or TV show. Licorice Pizza does this in some of the best ways.
In a field of incredibly worthy films, Licorice Pizza is a standout nominee that deserves to win Best Picture at the 2022 Academy Awards. The film follows much of director Paul Thomas Anderson’s previous work in that it is more of a tone poem of a specific place and time, rather than a straightforward three act narrative. This departure leads to a magical experience about young love and a summer that never seems to end.
Licorice Pizza follows the relationship between Alana Kane (Alana Haim) and Gary Valentine (Cooper Hoffman) over the course of the summer of 1973. What starts out as a flirtatious back and forth at Gary’s school picture day becomes a more complex yo-yo as they grow closer and further apart throughout the summer. Like any relationship, there are ebbs and flows, but gravity seems to keep Alana and Gary in the same orbit.
The energy of the San Fernando Valley and the warm, California glow are familiar in Anderson films, but the innocence and energy that is carried throughout Licorice Pizza is very different from the darkness in Boogie Nights or Magnolia. Anderson’s last film, Phantom Thread, features characters who mainly hold their emotions at an arm's length until they are unable to contain what has been festering. In Licorice Pizza, characters wear their emotions on their sleeve like a badge of honor. Gary is unapologetically in love with Alana and Alana is unapologetically herself in a brash, self-confident mode at almost all times. Even Bradley Cooper’s portrayal of producer Jon Peters is taken to the max, but he is always himself, no matter the situation.
Licorice Pizza excels at making you feel the excitement of the whole summer, with its ups and downs, heartache and heartbreak. It is quintessential Paul Thomas Anderson in all the best ways. His films are spectacles of human emotion, and specifically the joy that comes out of Licorice Pizza is something to be celebrated and embraced.
Nominees for Best Picture are often representative of some of the best storytelling and emotional resonance of the year. Sometimes the Academy gets it wrong, and sometimes the definition of “Best Picture” held by the Academy doesn’t quite square with the realities of what has been emotionally resonant in the past year. The feeling of seeing Andrew Garfield and then Tobey Maguire show up in Spiderman: No Way Home or the portals opening in Avengers: Endgame were not enough to prop those films up in the eyes of the Academy, but they were successful moments and movies nonetheless.
On top of that, moody and dour films that tell hard stories tend to be at the top of the food chain when it comes to Best Picture nominees. There is little room for sunny Los Angeles and a feel good story. Conflict is essential to good storytelling, but darkness is pervasive in Best Picture nominees.
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