The Oscars: Final Predictions

In less than three days from now, this year's Oscar ceremony will take place. I predicted the nominations well, I got 94% right. Let's see how I will do with what's even more important - the actual awards. Having seen all but four of the nominees (except the shorts, but we won't go into those), the judgment will be more personal. By the way, the four that I haven't yet seen (and their nominations) are: Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Score, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Visual Effects), All The Money In The World (Supporting Actor), The Greatest Showman (Song), and The Insult (Foreign Language).

The Oscar-winners come in all shapes and sizes: prestige small-scale dramas and epic blockbusters, veterans and newcomers, consensus winners, as well as divisive ones. What usually makes the difference is the narrative surrounding each win or loss. For instance, last year's narrative was sending a message of opposition to Trump: what better way to do it than elect a film whose central hero was a black, gay, drug-dealing man. That Moonlight was an amazing movie didn't hurt either, but it was the prevailing narrative that helped it over the line. Another example is Argo. The moment the Academy failed to place Ben Affleck among the five nominees for Best Director, his "unfair" omission became the prevailing narrative. Since the couldn't award him as a director, the awarded him as a producer instead, by making Argo that year's Best Picture, which, in my humble opinion, it wasn't.

This year there are two conflicting narratives and either one could prevail: there's the politically correct narrative, that says that The Shape Of Water should win Best Picture. It has thirteen nominations, across the board. The critics speak highly of it. Guillermo Del Toro is loved and respected among the industry people. It has no major controversies surrounding it... Well, perhaps one: the movie has hit some stumbling blocks on the path to Oscar glory, in the form of multiple allegations of plagiarism. The accusations focus on a 2015 Dutch short film (The Space Between Us made by a film student in the Netherlands named Marc S. Nollkaemper) and a play from 1969 (Let Me Hear You Whisper by Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Zindel, who died in 2003). While the former was dropped, the latter has resulted in a lawsuit, the claims in which del Toro and Fox Searchlight vehemently deny.

Plagiarism or not, my issue is that The Shape Of Water is definitely a good film, but certainly not the best among the nine nominees. I watched it twice, just to make sure: For me, it's the seventh best among the nine. I will dare predict that The Shape Of Water will not take the Best Picture trophy. To compensate, the Academy will award Guillermo Del Toro with the Best Director Oscar. Alexandre Desplat will probably win Best Score for the second time, and The Shape Of Water will collect a third Oscar for Art Direction.

Call Me By Your Name may be my favorite of the nine, but I know very well that it stands no chance of winning; not enough people saw it, and the Academy voters will figure that by awarding it for Best Adapted Screenplay, they will have done their duty. A Fantastic Woman, which features a transgender lead, will probably be awarded for Best Foreign Language Film, so with two awards going to gay-themed movies, there will be no room for accusations of homophobic voting.

My second favorite Best Picture nominee, however, is my proposal for Best Picture winner. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is staggeringly entertaining - its script performs a series of hairpin turns with a mastery that leaves you agog. Writer-director Martin McDonagh has long coaxed comedy from the friction between the idiotic, the unthinkably painful and the banal. But in this scorching, luminous tragicomedy, the sadness is sadder, the jokes more outrageous, and the space between the two smaller. It's a film designed to make you feel before you think.

Not all those feelings are nice ones, however, and McDonagh's film has suffered a bigger backlash than the rest of the best picture nominees put together. The criticism centres partly on the Peter Dinklage character, whose dwarfism is a frequent catalyst for humor, as well as what has been perceived as a redemption arc for Dixon (the racist cop), who we are lead to believe has tortured a black man in custody, and is treated by the film with both derision and affection. McDonagh has responded, contesting the idea that Dixon is redeemed and describing his film as "deliberately messy and difficult."

Three Billboards is not a medieval morality play: it's an unblinking depiction of (largely) white working-class America. As with unblinking depictions of anywhere, it contains unsavory things, but it's not in the business of simplifying or sanitizing reality, or of sorting it into right and wrong. In a society that is creeping towards social media-policed moral absolutism, it preserves fiction's right to nuance and complexity, to portray characters who are bad, but whose humanity extends beyond their wrongness.

A slightly thornier issue is the humor derived from this cruelty. But Three Billboards is the polar opposite of the mindless Frat Pack fare its jokes sometimes resemble. McDonagh has spent his career making people laugh at things that are not amusing - mainly physical violence, but also the violence of language - and then forcing them to question why they have been entertained.

The film has been loved by most, but not all critics; it has been a big hit with the public, as well as the various precursors to the Oscars - the SAG Awards, the Golden Globes, the BAFTAs, the AACTAs, etc. What is more, the African-American Film Critics Association called it the second best movie of the year, also giving Frances McDormand their Best Actress award. If the prevailing narrative is that the Academy supports edgier movies, then the Best Picture Oscar will go to Three Billboards.

Speaking of, Frances McDormand is all but certain to win the Best Actress Oscar and so is Sam Rockwell as far as the Best Supporting Actor award is concerned. So that makes three Oscars for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

My third favorite nominee is Dunkirk. It would be a worthy Best Director and Best Score winner, but these awards will probably go to The Shape Of Water. However, Dunkirk will win three awards (Best Film Editing, Sound Editing, and Sound Mixing).

My fourth favorite nominee, Get Out, will not walk away empty-handed either. It will receive the Best Original Screenplay award for Jordan Peele's groundbreaking work. If it weren't considered a genre film, it would probably have a shot at Best Picture, but horror movies don't get Best Picture, The Silence Of The Lambs being the notable exception.

I expect Darkest Hour to win two Oscars - one for Best Makeup and one for Best Actor. The appeal of veteran and respected British thespian Gary Oldman as Winston Churchill is too great for most Academy members, which is a pity because Timothee Chalamet's visceral and vital performance in Call Me By Your Name shouldn't have gone unrewarded. However, the prevailing narrative is that he's still so young - and therefore will have plenty of chances to win in the future.

The other acting award (Supporting Actress) will probably go to I, Tonya and Allison Janney unless enough Academy members want to give something to Lady Bird, in which case Laurie Metcalf will win. The favorite, however, is Allison Janney.

Roger Deakins is the most nominated cinematographer without a win, with fourteen nominations. There are only three cinematographers with more nominations and they all have Oscars. Plus, they've all been long-dead. I believe that this year it's Deakins' turn to win, for his work in Blade Runner 2049. The Phantom Thread will probably win for its costumes, and the Oscar for Best Visual Effects will probably go to War For The Planet Of The Apes. Agnes Varda & JR's Faces Places is the favorite to win Best Documentary Feature, while the Best Animated movie of the year, Coco, will win the Best Animated Feature Oscar, as well as (most probably) the Best Song Oscar for the nostalgic Remember Me. If there's a spoiler here, it will be the extremely popular and epic This Is Me from The Greatest Showman.

These are my predictions. If you have your own opinion, please share in the comments. In less than three days, we'll know whether we're good prognosticators or not...