CHAMPIONING CAMPION
Despite some hiccups, the Netflix Oscar campaign for The Power of the Dog has made Jane Campion a sure bet at this year’s ceremony.
In the likely event that Dame Jane Campion lassos her second – and possibly a third and fourth – Academy Award on March 28 New Zealand time, it will mark more than yet another career milestone for the film-maker. It will also mark the end of a victory lap for her The Power of the Dog, which is up for 11 Oscars, with Campion nominated for best adapted screenplay, best director and best picture.
Of those, she’s almost assured of winning best director – she’s won almost every best director trophy of the pre-Oscar awards runup, including a Bafta, Golden Globe and a Directors’ Guild of America award.
She was last at the Academy Awards in 1994 when her breakthrough film The Piano took three Oscars – one for her ( best original screenplay) and for actresses Holly Hunter and the then 11-year-old Anna Paquin.
Campion was also nominated for best director, only the second woman to figure in the category. Now she’s the first woman to be nominated twice.
The Netflix campaign behind The Power of the Dog kicked in when it premiered in Venice in September. Despite it having been on the streaming platform since early December, after a limited cinema run, it will roll until at least Oscar voting finishes on March 22. It’s likely the company has spent at least as much in its push for awards as it did on making the film, which had a budget of US$30-$40 million.
But it’s a race that has struck some strange hurdles on the home straight. Campion sparked a social media kerfuffle over her winner’s speech at the Critics’ Choice Awards, one of many in recent weeks in the lead-up to the Oscars, where hers has been the name in the envelope.
While praising tennis superstars Venus and Serena Williams – “you’re such marvels” – who were present in support of King Richard, the movie starring Will Smith as their father, Campion then added: “However, you don’t play against the guys, like I have to.”
The Washington Post labelled the comment “misguided” while it exercised many on social media, including prominent writer-commentator Roxane Gay: “In addition to the racism of it all, Campion is suggesting that competing against men is more difficult/legitimate than competing against women. Has she met women?”
Campion apologised in a statement the following day, describing it as a “thoughtless comment” equating what she did in film with the sisters’ sporting achievements.
It had already been a big weekend for her on the awards and media circuit. The previous night she had won best director at the Directors’ Guild of America Awards, a fairly reliable bellwether to Oscar success. There, she had also addressed a curious backlash against the film.
Actor Sam Elliott, a man who has played many cowboys including the Marlboro Man himself, had disparaged Campion and her film, which is set on a Montana ranch during the 1920s, during a chat with prominent podcaster Marc Maron. He called out the film for its “allusions of homosexuality” and questioned Campion’s knowledge of the genre.
“What the f--- does this woman from down there know about the American west? Why the f--- did she shoot this movie in New Zealand and call it Montana? And say this is the way it was? That f---ing rubbed me the wrong way.”
Campion responded to Elliott’s views before the DGA Awards: “I’m sorry, he was being a little bit of a B-I-T-C-H. He’s not a cowboy; he’s an actor. The west is a mythic space and there’s a lot of room on the range. I think it’s a little bit sexist.”
The comments also lit up social media a day before the Williams sisters gaffe.
If it seems Campion has been campaigning like a politician, she has the backing of the substantial Netflix publicity machine.
Driving it is awards strategist Lisa Taback, who previously worked for the notorious Harvey Weinstein and his brother, Bob, and reportedly played an instrumental role in campaigns that resulted in best picture Oscars for The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love, Chicago, The King’s Speech and The Artist. More recently, she worked on La La Land and Moonlight.
In past years, Netflix has had its sights set on an elusive best picture win to add to the kudos the company has gained at the
Emmys. In 2019, the streamer spent many times the modest budget of the movie Roma in a campaign that successfully won it three Oscars, including best director for Alfonso Cuarón, but lost best picture to the largely unfancied Green Book.
The following year, Netflix backed Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, as well as Marriage Story and The Two Popes, to a modest showing. Last year, it was Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Mank and The Trial of the Chicago 7, which also became also-rans. This year, The Power of the Dog is Netflix’s best bet, ahead of Don’t Look Up (another best picture contender), The Hand of God and Tick, Tick … Boom!
Netflix also has competition in the prestige movie territory from streamers Amazon Prime and Apple TV+. Both make far fewer original films but have had a decent hit rate of awards success. This year, Apple’s CODA – an American remake of a French film about a “child of deaf adults” – is up for best picture, while Amazon’s
Being the Ricardos figures in the acting nominations.
When Campion was last at the Oscars, she was the outsider. With its three wins, The Piano essentially got second place to Steven Spielberg’s
Schindler’s List. A film by a Hollywood giant at his artistic peak taking on a Holocaust story was always going to be unbeatable back then.
The Piano had already won the Palme d’Or, making Campion the first woman to win the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize.
Just three features into her career, her trophy collection was off to a very good start. But Campion’s subsequent films weren’t to trouble the Academy again, neither the repressed period dramas nor the confronting tales of sexuality. The outsider, it seemed, had had her time in the mainstream Hollywood spotlight.
But now, 28 years later – including a decade in which she made no films – the outsider is the frontrunner with her gothic western, which is both a repressed period drama and
a confronting tale of sexuality and toxic masculinity, has made her the favourite to take the best director Oscar and has every chance at taking the best picture award, too. The 9000-plus membership of the Academy has become increasingly diverse in past decades.
Since 2000, the best director Oscar has been won by an American male six times. In the 20 years before that, the dudes dominated with 16 wins. Among the four men Campion is up against in the best director category is Spielberg, for his remake of West Side Story.
Given the performance of his film in the awards season so far, he’s unlikely to spoil Campion’s party this time. ▮
The 94th Academy Awards screens live on TVNZ 2 and TVNZ OnDemand from 11.30am, Monday, March 28.