It’s been three years since the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided to abandon the long-standing Best Picture category limit of five nominees. (The limit was first instituted in 1944.) The reason behind this decision has never been explicitly stated, but it seems obvious that the Academy wanted more mainstream attention directed at not only the films but also its ABC telecast.
For this year’s awards, the rule was changed again, from “the 10 films with the highest percentage of first-place votes” to “no less than five and no more than 10, but a film must receive at least five percent of first-place votes to make the cut.” Sound confusing? That’s probably because it makes very little practical sense.
The Benefits of Category Limits
The first lesson any journalist learns is that it’s much more difficult to write an article with strict word-count limitations than it is to write a sprawling epic. There’s simply less space to express the article’s most salient points. Oscar categories follow a similar concept.
In a field of five films, there is literally no room for filler-flicks, like “The Blind Side” or this year’s “The Help.” In 1939, long before the Academy limited the nominees to five, 10 deserving films were nominated for the night’s top award. Since nominee re-expansion in 2009, the inclusion of many of the nominated films ends up being more surprising than justified.
Watering-Down the Field
With movies like the manipulative “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” tarnishing the category, the prestige associated with being nominated is also tarnished. The best of this year’s nominated films — “The Artist,” “The Descendants,” “Hugo,” “Moneyball,” and (probably) “Midnight in Paris” — become bogged down by the other four nominees, three of which are entirely dismissible.
In reality, only one or two films have a shot at winning anyway: Last year it was a dead-heat between eventual-winner “The King’s Speech” and “The Social Network,” which means eight movies had no chance. This year is no different since “The Artist” is the runaway favorite, with “The Descendants” and “Hugo” both having slim outside chances. That leaves six films completely out of the race, which really makes you wonder why they’re there in the first place.
It’s gotten to the point where being nominated is the real victory, since home video and box office sales surge for a film after it’s nominated. This undermines the concept of good filmmaking the same way a grading curve undermines scholastic achievement; if so many films are among the best of the year, the definition of what makes a film worthy is unavoidably diminished.
And while we’re on the subject, why don’t other categories get the “at least five, but no more than 10″ treatment? Is the Academy seriously saying “War Horse” absolutely had to get a Best Picture nod, but there wasn’t room in the Best Actor category for Ryan Gosling (for either “Drive” or “The Ides of March”)? It doesn’t really make sense that exclusivity is only ignored in what should be the night’s most exclusive award.
All or Nothing
The bottom line is that either every category should have the same limit or every eligible film and performance should automatically be nominated. The winners could then be determined by the same “first-place percentage” system currently used to select the nominees. It might sound crazy, but on some level it feels less dirty to call garbage like “Jack and Jill” one of 300 or so Best Picture nominees than it does to claim that “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” is one of the year’s best nine films.
Check out coverage of the 84th Academy Awards on Yahoo! Movies