Related
The Best Picture winner of the 91st Academy Awards wasGreen Book , and here ’s why . In what has been a very long , pregnant and at times puzzling awards time of year , theBest Picture raceproved to be especially intriguing . While the top prize at theOscarsis often view the safest bet in terms of predictions , the past X or so has done much to disprove that laying claim . There was the timeThe King ’s SpeechbeatThe Social Networkin 2011 , then12 Year a Slave ’s surprisal winnings over the assumed victorGravity . Spotlightwon in 2016 , even thoughThe Revenantwas easily the favorite , and then , of course , there was the fiasco withLa La LandandMoonlight . Last yr ’s winner , The Shape of Water , was considered a safe choice , but it was still a movie about a romance with a fish - man . Suffice to say , the past few years of Oscar confab has see the biz alter greatly , and nowhere was that more apparent than in this year ’s race . Even before the Academy ’s interminable dress circle of tough decisions and uranium - turn made it all the more difficult to watch , it felt like there was a lot riding on 2019 ’s Best Picture : do the Academy move with the times or stick with the status quo ?
It turn out that , much to the surprisal of everyone there , the Academy choose the latter , as Peter Farrelly ’s biographical dramaGreen Booktook home top prize , as well as Best Original Screenplay and Best support Actor for Mahershala Ali . The pick was an obvious shock going by the reaction to those in the room and on social media .
Related : Oscars 2019 Was Great With No horde - So There Should n’t Be One Next Year
In what was assumed to be a subspecies to the top betweenRomaandBlack Panther , the Academy claim a decidedly more middlebrow approach withGreen Bookwinning . Really , this should n’t have been as big a surprisal was it was . In realism , Green Bookis the most Oscar - ish movie of 2018 .
Green Book is Pure Oscar Bait
Green Bookticks so many boxes in term of Oscar - favorable film - making : it ’s a biopic ; it ’s a historical patch ; it stars two darling actors ; it ’s directed by something of an industry darling ; it ’s very honest-to-god - school in its film - fashioning and authorship ; and it ’s the sort of great approach to the tortuous emergence of racism that has always play well to the majority white Academy . There ’s a grounds people hold open compare the movie toDriving Miss Daisy , which win Best Picture in 1990.Green Bookfelt especially archaic in a yr where motion picture press so many boundaries across budget , genres , and philosophies . For better or worse , that seemed to aid it .
Green Book Appealed to Older Oscar Voters
As evidenced by the many “ brutally honest Oscar ballot ” pieces that fulfil the awards conversation this year , Green Bookwas popular with older Academy member , many of whom push back against the conversation surrounding the movie and its creative squad . Despite great steps made to broaden the Academy ’s membership , the pool of Oscar voters remain heavy white , heavily male , and aged in eld . This block were less potential to vote for something as barbellate and esoteric as Yorgos Lanthimos’sThe Favourite , a period play that eschews so many of the genre ’s conventions , orBlacKkKlansman , Spike Lee ’s most mainstream moving picture in over a decade but still one that forces audience to face up the current political climate and their own culpability in it .
The perceied two - way battle betweenRomaandBlack Panthermay have been too mussy for some voters who did not like to repay Disney or Netflix , despite both moving-picture show being hugely democratic , critically celebrated and part of a cultural zeitgeist that shout out out to be rewarded . Green Bookfits , however sideways or falsely , into that “ underdog ” narrative in the vestige of those two giants , and that has always appeal to the Academy ( recollect howShakespeare in LovebeatSaving individual Ryanin part because Miramax played up the angle that they were the indie sinister horse compare to Dreamworks ’s might ) .
touch : The Oscars ’ Most Shocking Moment Is Still Crash ( Not La La Land )
The Preferential Ballot Helped Green Book’s Oscar Chances
Since 2009 , the Best Picture accolade has been decided on by apreferential voting organization , wherein Academy phallus are tasked with rank the candidate . All the number one votes are count up , and if a celluloid does not encounter over 50 % of the vote after this first round , then the motion-picture show with the lowest number of one votes is removed and the ballots move onto who got the most number two vote . It ’s a crafty organization , but considered one that offers a more interesting backwash than first past the C. W. Post ( one vote , one movie ) . This can leave divisive films in the dust while a safer consensus selection can storm to the victory by getting just the right-hand amount of votes across the panel .
In 2019,RomaandBlack Panthermay have been stiff passion picks but it seems they did n’t have enough of those elector in their quoin . Many thoughtGreen Bookwould prove too divisive to succeed on these damage but it proved to be just right for this blemished system . It ’s improbable the film would have won in first round votes , but was likable enough to pose gamy in second and third place .
-
As always , the Best Picture winnings is no indication of merit and plenty of terrible movies have taken home the top prize in the Academy ’s decades of employment . Still , in a year where Hollywood and the Oscars had such immense chance to carve forward a extremist new path that would have prepared them for the future tense , it seems like such a barren thatGreen Bookproved at long last winning .
NEXT:Green Book’s True Story: What The Movie Controversially Changed
