Harvey Weinstein is a monstrous producer. To recount the reasons why Miramax was one of the most influential independent studios of the 1990s and into the 2000s is something I don't really have time for, but please, look it up.
Suffice to say, Weinstein saw that the Oscars were how he could make money off his films. He could use them as a way to advertise, and in campaigning to win them for his films and his films' actors, he could win allies, industry respect, and let his movie studio grow and attract more actors and filmmakers who want to win Oscars. He engineered the 1998 coup of Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan, one of the perennial "Oscar shockers." He campaigned relentlessly for The Reader in 2008, netting it surprise Oscar nominations for Picture and Director (at the expense of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight) and his work invariably helped Kate Winslet earn her Best Actress Oscar.
I'm not saying this as a way to devalue the films themselves. I'm saying it because, it's true. Weinstein made the Oscars a game, one that involved careful plotting, human appeals, and a bit of cunning. This year, Weinstein returns with The King's Speech.
Harvey Weinstein is an executive producer on The King's Speech, meaning he's more responsible for finance and distribution than the actual production; as such, he won't be holding a stage if the film wins Best Picture. But, given the film's recent ad campaign, I can't help but feel he's going to pull all the stops for a win.
"Some movies you see. Others you feel." On the one hand, it's a pretty ridiculous tagline. You see every film, and chances are you feel something about every film. But choosing this as the "awards tagline" for The King's Speech has a certain bit of ingenuity -- it separates it. We shouldn't sugarcoat the situation -- The Social Network is a cold movie. It's cynical, brooding, contemplative, at times emotionally remote and almost repulsive. The King's Speech is stacked with likable characters learning to like each other and, in the words of Charlie Kaufman, "overcoming obstacles to succeed in the end."
At Awards Daily, they call that an "Oscar movie." And I implore you to read Sasha Stone's analysis of The King's Speech in the race, which I would much rather redirect you to than try and paraphrase. The point is that it leads the Oscar field, followed closely by True Grit. They are emblematic of solid, "traditional" filmmaking, despite the flairs and quirks of their creators (indeed, I can make the argument that Grit is equally concerned with mythology and demythology; much like The King's Speech). We can imagine an "Oscar movie" as Shakespeare in Love, A Beautiful Mind, Chicago, Million Dollar Baby. Analysts and bloggers have tried to ascribe particular semantics and syntax (fancy genre writing words for content and structure) to better understand it, but I think it all goes back to that ingenious little tagline: they are movies that accumulate an emotional rather than an intellectual response.
That's why No Country for Old Men and The Hurt Locker are so peculiar -- they're very smart, almost unconventional reworkings of form and idea -- and so regularly called "not Oscar movies."
The King's Speech is kind of imploring voters to see it as traditional, see it as moving, bolstered by pleasant visuals, great acting, and solid writing. And with 12 nominations, it's hard not to see them being swayed. Then again -- The Fellowship of the Ring had 13 nominations (it lost to A Beautiful Mind, which had eight); The Aviator had 11 nominations (it lost to Million Dollar Baby, which had seven); The Curious Case of Benjamin Button had 13 nominations (Slumdog Millionaire had 10).
The overarching statistic is that the movie with the most nominations is the frontrunner. There are always exceptions to this rule, which is why I don't agree with the people who reacted this morning in a fervor of "the race has turned around for good!" Did anyone think The Social Network would be the nomination leader? As I said this morning, it just can't earn the nominations Speech can, if only because it's not a period movie. I know that's silly; the Oscars can be pretty silly. It's part of their charm.
Let's all hold our breath and see what happens in the Guilds this weekend -- Could anyone but David Fincher win the Directors Guild? Will The Fighter lose the SAG Ensemble to The King's Speech? The Oscar nominations are not the awards themselves.
But that doesn't mean Harvey Weinstein isn't campaigning as hard as he can.
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