Why Maestro Will Win Best Picture
'Tis the week before the Oscars, and no less than 10 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 one film has won the vast majority of the top prizes on the awards circuit thus far, the gargantuan Oppenheimer. However, not only would the 3+ hour, half black-and-white, half color biopic be a wildly abnormal winner, few if any other top contenders are traditional 'Oscar bait,' and none also are without its detractors.
Those facts, as well as the Oscars' less predictable preferential voting system means that no nominee can truly be counted out of the race. Spotlight's and Moonlight's back-to-back upsets in 2016 and 2017, Parasite's stunner in 2020, and CODA's late surge in 2022 all taught us to expect the unexpected, so we're here to give fans of all 10 nominees reason to believe on Sunday the 10th.
The next nominee we're highlighting in this series is a sweeping, epic biopic about a Jewish American man who was a famous figure in his time-- although a grand movie about him in the year 2023 may seem a bit odd --one that toys with different timelines simultaneously, and alternates between color and black-and-white. Ohhhh, wait a minute, haha-- no no, not that movie. It's Bradley Cooper's Maestro, which tells the story of famed American composer and Leonard Bernstein amidst his rise to prominence, with special attention to his relationship with his wife Felicia Montealegre.
Even before it came out, Maestro had detractors, with corners of the Internet turned off by what was seen as the latest edition of clear "Oscar bait," and more seriously, with accusations that Cooper was employing 'Jewface' with his unmistakably accentuated prosthetic nose. Yet, despite what could be described as a bump initial reception, it went on to do quite well for itself. The film appears to be Netflix’s most successful theater debut since 2019 (they don’t publicly release figures, but IndieWire reports it made about $300,000 in its limited theater release), and while it does have the most mixed reviews of any Best Picture nominee this year, that says more about the quality of the field at the 2024 Oscars than it does the quality of the movie itself. Maestro still has a highly respectable score of 77 on Metacritic, and Cooper’s turn as both director and lead actor has earned consistent acclaim. He has been a constant fixture on the awards circuit, and his...bizarre, shall we say, press tour has made him the butt of many jokes, but the fact of the matter is, this movie is bigger than just him. It’s earned 7 nominations at these awards, a figure bettered by only three films. As has so often been discussed in this series, constantly being in the conversation automatically makes you a contender, and though Cooper and co. have been largely striking out on the awards circuit, they have been in the field at just about every major awards show dating back to last year.
I was tongue-and-cheek about it in my introduction, but truly (and perhaps unexpectedly), it's hard not to see the many parallels with Oscar frontrunner Oppenhiemer, even down to how grand musical sequences are used to punctuate the most impactful and emotional scenes. I bring this up because I wonder- might Maestro win some ‘spite votes’ from the Academy members who don’t want Oppenheimer to win and rally behind this film as the most obvious alternative candidate? It may be a natural alternative; it could be considered a more generally enjoyable biopic, about a central figure less divisive, and that general broad appeal might be enough to edge out the favorite in the ranked choice voting.
I do think it's worthwhile to mention also that despite the initial controversy over Cooper, a non-Jewish actor, using the aformentioned prosthetic, it emerged pretty unscathed thanks in large part to the support of the Anti-Defamation League. Could this in fact come all the away around and gain momentum as a positive portrayal of a famous Jewish figure in a year that saw a sharp rise in anti-semitism? I think it's highly possible.
But really, the strength of this film is in its two central players, Cooper and Carey Mulligan. Both are beloved, respected actors who turn in formidable performances in this film and have yet to win at these awards. Given that both are likely to lose out yet again, and Bradley is likely to once again see his seemingly grand slam Director-Actor Gouble go kaput (just as it did with A Star Is Born in 2019), it would not stun me to see a segment of the Academy rally together to gift them the mother of all consolation prizes.
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