Italian
Will “Challengers” nab a best picture nomination at this year’s Academy Awards? The question might seem trivial to anyone who’s not a “Challengers” superfan — and, full disclosure, I am one, having chosen it as my number one movie of the year. But I assure you I’m not merely asking this out of some defensive personal passion for Luca Guadagnino’s supremely tricky and immersive tennis love-triangle movie. I’m asking it because the kind of movie that “Challengers” is makes this a larger question.
Remember the shrewdly crafted, seductively entertaining, unabashedly accessible mid-budget drama for adults? (The thing we used to call…a movie?) It’s become a fading form. But it was once the meat and potatoes, the bread and butter, the hallowed centerpiece of the Oscars. Movies. For adults (and maybe teenagers too). That audiences showed up for in impressive numbers. Are we willing to say that that’s now a ghost of awards seasons past?
There are a host of reasons why “Challengers” deserves a best picture nomination (and other nominations besides). The film is cunningly written, hypnotically structured, brilliantly directed, dazzlingly shot, and features some of the finest acting of the year. It’s a film with romance and mystery and excitement and heart. And it’s one that connected decisively, earning $50 million at the domestic box office (a beyond-solid figure for a mid-budget adult drama these days). If the Oscars don’t have room for this movie, then it’s worth asking: What movies do they have room for?
Popular on Variety We know the answer. “The Brutalist.” “Anora.” “Emilia Pérez.” “Nickel Boys.” “A Real Pain.” “A Different Man.” “September 5.” By the time the Oscar nominations are announced on Jan. 17, we’ll be able to say with metaphysical certitude that some people will have seen some of those movies. But not many people.
I’m not saying that the films themselves aren’t worthy. I love “A Real Pain,” and genuinely like a few of the others. But a number of them, I’m sorry, have been overpraised. The way that these films are now anointed as “Oscar movies” from the moment they premiere at festivals, only to get released three to six months later and find their way to very small audiences (since “Emilia Pérez” is playing in the Bermuda Triangle that is Netflix, we’ll never know how many people aren’t quite watching it)…all of that lends the movies a certain chosen-by-the-Star-Chamber quality. It adds up to this year’s boutique bubble of cinema. And what I’m saying is that this system, now firmly in place, acts almost as a conspiracy to make fewer and fewer people care about the Oscars or feel that essential addictive connection to them.
The films listed above could easily be the best picture slate of the Independent Spirit Awards. Why isn’t “Challengers,” despite its Golden Globe nominations, among them? Because it possesses a quality that’s increasingly anathema to the new art-conscious Oscar-industrial complex.
“Challengers,” in a word, is fun. And that is now close to the Oscar kiss of death.
Ah, you say, but what about “Barbie”? That was fun, and it was nominated. “Wicked” is fun, and it will surely be nominated. So where’s the problem? The problem is that that those lavish mega-blockbusters, one or two of them a year, have become the exception that proves the rule. “Barbie,” like “Oppenheimer,” had an aura of being too big to ignore, and so does “Wicked.” You could say that “Dune: Part Two” will claim the “Lord of the Rings” slot. No objection; all fine.
But what of the once-revered middle? There has to be room at the Oscars for something between large-scale mostly fantasy spectacle and the kind of precious self-serious art parable that less than a million people will actually go to see in a movie theater.
Let’s assume that “Challengers” doesn’t receive a best picture nomination. Why does that matter? The film has been successful; a lot of people love it; it has made its mark. But I’m sorry, that’s not good enough. One of the key purposes of the Academy Awards is to define and honor what is of value to the film industry. “Challengers” is exactly the kind of movie — a smart crowd-pleaser with soul — that Hollywood should be making more of in order to save its future. The film incarnates the art of movies every bit as much, I would argue more so, than a dourly engrossing, self-consciously allegorical ersatz masterpiece like “The Brutalist.” If a movie like “Challengers” is nudged aside by the Oscars, that becomes a way of devaluing it. “Oh, a dazzlingly fun movie that was popular? That’s not up to our standards.”
Over the years, the Oscars have been accused of many things, from vulgarity to irrelevance. The last thing the Oscars should leave themselves open to being accused of is snobbery.
