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“Everything Everywhere All at Once” is the exception to the industry’s worrisome trends, which makes it all the more appealing to the Academy. Photograph by Allyson Riggs / A24 / Everett |
In a parallel reality, Steven Spielberg will celebrate his late career with a win for Best Director and Best Picture at the 95th Academy Awards with "The Fabelmans," which is expected to win both categories for the first time since "Schindler's List." The movie "Top Gun: Maverick," said to have saved moviegoing after the shutdown, is poised to add a trophy to its dominating box office take in another branch of the multiverse. When "The Woman King" wins Best Picture, Best Director (Gina Prince-Bythewood), and Best Actress, it will usher in a new era of Black female empowerment in Hollywood, ushering in yet another reality that we most certainly do not live in (Viola Davis). Andrea Riseborough of "To Leslie" will accept her Best Actress award with fingers made of hot dogs and is located elsewhere in the limitless universe of possibilities.
We don't, however, reside in those universes. The era in which "Everything Everywhere All at Once" is the clear favorite to win Best Picture is the one we currently live in. The Oscars are usually a multiverse tale, with the many possibilities of potential winners becoming increasingly limited as the evening progresses. Even though we presumably do not exist in that universe, there is still a possibility that "Everything Everywhere" does not win any of the eleven prizes for which it has been nominated. The picture has just won four awards from guilds with members who also belong to the main branches of the Academy: the D.G.A.s, the P.G.A.s, the sags, and the W.G.A.s. Ke Huy Quan won the Best Supporting Actor award, and it also has two other acting awards (Best Actress for Michelle Yeoh, and Best Supporting Actress for Jamie Lee Curtis) that are in striking distance. Its eccentric directors, Daniels (Kwan and Scheinert), may even surpass Spielberg. A film with such widespread acclaim as "Everything Everywhere" is even better positioned with the ranked-choice ballot for Best Picture since it may gain from second-choice votes as well.
On one level, it is quite improbable that "Everything Everywhere" will succeed. The movie had its debut a full year ago at South by Southwest, a venue unusual for Oscar candidates. Late in March, it had a restricted release and slowly but surely gained ground at the box office. It had become A24's most successful film ever by June. The autumn and winter saw the release of a flurry of Oscar-worthy movies, including Cate Blanchett's "Tár," Brendan Fraser's "The Whale," banshees, Fabelmans, and Black Panther, which diverted attention away from the Oscars. A middle-aged Chinese American woman who runs a laundromat is the subject of "Everything Everywhere," a sci-fi comedy with subplots involving talking rocks, an enchanted everything bagel, and butt plugs. The Academy tends to ignore these genres and the film's premise, which is best understood by philosophers and comic book geeks (verse-jumping?).
Yet "Everything Everywhere" did more than just survive; it thrived. Why? A simple answer is that people enjoy the film. One Academy member and veteran awards manager told me, "I've adored it since it came out. The subject of "a lady attempting to deal with her life" appealed to one voter, who chose "Everything Everywhere" for Best Picture. They also noted that the movie has a happier conclusion than many of its rivals: "As we've seen with the Oscars in previous years, the winning film is the one that leaves you feeling the happiest. Although the film has the spectacle of a superhero blockbuster and the eccentric flair of an indie dramedy, its central story is a touching one about a woman who finds her calling, mends her broken marriage, and reunites with her LGBT daughter. Contrast that with "Tár," a chillier, satirical film that causes audience members to feel ambivalent about its disgraced antiheroine. In that regard, "Everything Everywhere Success "is similar to "CODA's" triumph against "The Power of the Dog," a colder, murkier film, which occurred the previous year. Both films are emotional family dramas.
But, as every Oscar watcher is aware, a trophy is the result of several other variables. Hollywood's current mood must be captured by the Best Picture winner. No other films this year "felt that expansive," according to one screenwriter. A remake of "All Quiet on the Western Front" that nobody watched. However, for some reason, nobody freaked out over "The Fabelmans." So, this has a young, trendy, and diversified vibe, and no one really understands what it's about. Yet the movie could address larger concerns afflicting the business. A quick glance at the 10 Best Picture nominations reveals a divided Hollywood, with independent films like "Triangle of Sorrow" and "Women Talking" on one side and blockbuster sequels like "Top Gun: Maverick" and "Avatar: The Way of Water" on the other. The types of movies that often do well around Oscar season have recently struggled at the box office, as Richard Brody has documented. The only films that draw large crowds to theatres are I.P.-driven blockbusters, especially those starring superheroes, with the general public content to download all other films. Adult dramas, rom-com, and star-studded comedies are no longer common mid-budget studio movies. After "Kramer vs. Kramer," "Terms of Endearment," and "The English Patient," are the films that have traditionally cemented the Oscars in popular culture. Yet "Everything Everywhere" is the year's unicorn: a deliberately bizarre, non-franchise crowd-pleaser with a worldwide total of over $100 million. It stands out from the industry's worrying tendencies, which makes the Academy find it even more alluring.
The campaign is another. The ultra-hip studio A24, known for "Room," "Moonlight," and "Minari," didn't anticipate "Everything Everywhere" would become its awards-season breakout heading into 2022. In advance of the pandemic, on March 13, 2020, the movie's production came to an end. The firm started planning the release date in the summer of 2021, reasoning that it would be wise to wait until moviegoers were back in theatres in greater numbers. South by Southwest was the logical pick for the international premiere. One A24 executive remarked, "It's popular with a youthful audience, and screenings there are electrifying," in part because it was one of the first sizable live events following the Omicron wave. When the movie was released in theatres, viewers were still enthused and kept coming back. The movie was compared to "The Matrix" by critics, and by April, A24 executives were speculating that it might serve as inspiration for Halloween costumes.
The producers quickly realized they had a winning formula: a film that audiences adored; Michelle Yeoh, who served as the film's winning ambassador and spoke movingly in interviews about the obstacles she had to overcome in show business as an Asian woman; and a cast and creative team that exuded an infectious sense of camaraderie. So how do you maintain the momentum? With its premiere at the Venice International Film Festival in September and its move to Toronto a week later, A24's "The Whale" had a more conventional awards season. Yeoh also participated in the autumn festival circuit, attending Toronto for an honorary award and Telluride for a special showing of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon". "How do you get past that early phase with all the new flashy objects?" the A24 executive added, recalling the packed autumn season. You begin with Michelle because she is the subject of the film. By October, The Times was writing on its odd persistence. Like its hapless lead, the film was a charming underdog.
It was risky to be the Oscar front-runner when I first watched "The Fabelmans" in Toronto since there were still several months until tiredness would set in. As winter approached, "Everything Everywhere" gained traction at "precursor" awards, demonstrating that Yeoh wasn't acting alone in his charm offensive. There was Ke Huy Quan, who spoke about the years following his breakthrough performance as a child actor in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," when he watched his white co-stars get the steady work that he did not; accepting a Golden Globe award, he thanked his "Temple of Doom" director, Spielberg. A quirky and vocal candidate named Jamie Lee Curtis reframed the "no baby" debate by expressing her pride in her well-known parents, Anthony Curtis and Janet Leigh. The Daniels were also there, portraying a hipster-nerd bromance on red carpets. The top brass at A24 sat in the same conference room seating configuration as on prior Oscar mornings, as they were not immune to superstition. More than any other movie of the year, nominations descended.
Now that "Everything Everywhere" had to deal with the F-word, "front-runner," it was at its best. Unavoidably, there have been rumblings of opposition. One seasoned strategist, who is, admittedly, working on a rival film, told me, "I have yet to discover anyone who tells me they genuinely enjoy it. "All I heard when it first came out was, 'It's complicated. It's draining. It is 2.5 hours of complete garbage. That's homework, not watching a movie! Concerned about the violence committed towards Asian Americans during the epidemic, this critic cited "Asian-representation hectoring" as the reason for its effectiveness. The consultant continued, calling the presumed victory a means of "showing the world that Hollywood isn't what the rest of the U.S. has become."
Apart from racial issues, it's probable that some older Academy voters haven't related to the Marvel-like features that come naturally to younger viewers. In light of the violence in Ukraine, "All Quiet on the Western Front," a German antiwar film that was recently released on Netflix and won the Bafta, may be the one to shock audiences. With nine nominations, the Academy, which is now far more international than it ever was, helped "All Quiet" escape the international cinema bubble. Yet it's unlikely to surpass "Everything Everywhere," which seems like a confident and forward-thinking pick. The Best Picture winner serves as the industry's favored reflection in the mirror that is the Oscars. The Marvel Cinematic Universe and "Avatar" are only two examples of the current trend in filmmaking that entails creating entire fictional worlds. Academy members witness a representation of what Yeoh and company "verse-jump": whisk viewers into another reality. The multiverse is more than simply a theoretical idea; it is a storytelling technique that exemplifies the movies' largest influence on popular culture today.
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