The six-day Oscar voting period begins tomorrow (Thursday, 3.17) and ends the following Tuesday (3.22) at 5 p.m. This. Is. It. And here’s how the the Best Picture situation seems as we speak.
Jane Campion‘s The Power of the Dog hasn’t a prayer, of course, although her Best Director Oscar is assured. The top two contenders (i.e., the ones most likely to take the prize) are Reinaldo Marcus Green and Zach Baylin‘s King Richard and Sian Heder‘s CODA. So what will it be? The tennis movie or the singing-and-signing movie?
On 2.27.22 (two and a half weeks ago) the Best Picture Oscar odds shifted dramatically. The Screen Actors Guild handed its Best Ensemble Award (“Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture”) to CODA, and suddenly this low-budget, musically-driven family film had the heat. And yet, many reminded, CODA‘s lack of a Best Editing nomination suggested it may not win, as the correlation between Best Picture and Best Editing Oscars stretches back decades.
And then, six days after the SAG awards (3.5.22), King Richard‘s Pam Martin won the ACE Eddie Award for Best Edited Feature Film — Dramatic. Suddenly the narrative switched again — the Best Picture race was now a neck-and-neck between King Richard and CODA. Because of the merits, of course, but also because no one really likes The Power of the Dog. We know that.
It is noteworthy and coincidental that CODA and King Richard are about families engaged in tough struggles — the determined and pugnacious Richard Williams (Will Smith) pushing his athletically gifted daughters, Venus and Serena Williams (Saniyya Sidney, Demi Singleton), to succeed as professional tennis players, and CODA‘s Ruby Rossi (Emilia Jones) trying to overcome her own hang-ups and ambivalence in order to go her own way as a singer, the final goal being to gain admission to Boston’s Berklee School of Music.
Question: Which is the more fully engaged family film? Which is more realistic and less fanciful? Which is more reflective of the hard-nosed world the way it actually is than the way it seems by the terms and language of a sentimental fable?
King Richard is no sentimental fable — it’s a family film that never quits, never fiddles around, never loses focus, doesn’t know from serendipity.