Why West Side Story 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 the film adaptation of the famous Broadway musical, West Side Story.
Despite being the only musical nominated for Best Picture, West Side Story actually shares some surprising similarities with some of the other nominees. Like the last two nominees we've previewed, this was adapted from source material in the 60s, albeit from a stage musical, not from a fiction novel. And like Dune, it's not the first film adaptation of it, either.
Unlike Dune, though whose first film adaptation was widely panned, West Side Story had quite a legacy to live up to. The original film adaptation, made back in 1961 and directed by Sound Of Music director Robert Wise, won 10 Oscars, including Best Picture, and is still considered one of the best musical films of all time. No pressure, right?
Yet, in the eyes of most, the 2021 iteration of the classic musical rose to the occasion and met the expectations head-on. It's received near-universal rave reviews, and is one of the most acclaimed films of any nominees (its Metacritic score of 86 is second only to Power of the Dog). It's also been a mainstay on the awards circuit, notching Best Picture nominations at essentially every major awards show, including a win at the Golden Globes. We've discussed in this space that it's rare these days for a movie to win Best Picture without a win for director or any of the acting awards, and wouldn't you know it the brilliant Ariana DeBose, who plays Anita, is the heavy favorite for Best Supporting Actress. Steven Spielberg isn't the favorite for Best Director, but he is nominated, and if anyone were to pull off a surprising upset over Jane Campion, the natural assumption would be that it would be one of the most acclaimed and adored directors in Hollywood.
There is another key reason why West Side Story, as far as 'longshots' go, is a formidable one: it's a beautiful, sentimental, easily consumable flick. In the "year of the musical," it's the sole musical Best Picture nominee, a fact that's frankly surprising, given how lauded both In The Heights and tick, tick... Boom! were. This is relevant for two reasons: one, the ol' split ballot. In the ranked-choice voting system, with no clear traditional frontrunner, it's not a stretch to imagine the most universally appealing option will be in a good position to snag the victory, and it's also not a stretch to imagine West Side Story being the most universally appealing option. But also, and perhaps more significantly, after the brutal two years people have gone through, it might just be in everyone's nature to opt for the simple, nostalgic option. And who could fault them?
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