And the winner is: The best intentions

There is a good chance you didn’t see the best movie released in 2017. There’s a good chance that I didn’t see it either — and I’ve seen all of this year’s best picture nominees.

I don’t know whether my excuse is better than yours; you likely aren’t professionally obligated to see any movies at all. I used to consider it my duty to see as many films as I could, to monitor the progress of the motion picture industry and the art of filmmaking. I still feel guilty that I haven’t seen Ceyda Torun’s Kedi, a documentary about seven streetcars that roam Istanbul that I hear is excellent, but no one has discovered a way to manufacture more time. Kedi will have to wait; maybe I’ll show it to a class this summer.

(Though I just discovered an interesting option on one of the proprietary apps that some studios provide critics to allow them to screen their movies, a little tab in the bottom left-hand corner of the screener where you can change the rate at which it plays. After experimenting, I discovered it’s not too difficult to follow a movie playing at 1.25 times its normal speed, and not completely impossible to watch one playing at double its normal speed. Obviously this is not a critical best practice, but I wonder if it’s substantially different from watching a movie that’s meant to be projected on a wall on a 10.5-inch screen while listening to its soundtrack through earbuds.)

The best movie of 2017 could

well be Cristian Mungiu’s Graduation, or something made by a teenage African auteur who was unable to secure any distribution. I’m willing to entertain the idea that there are probably people who make remarkable movies they never intend to exhibit to the world — especially these days, when the tools required to produce something we would recognize as a “movie” can be tucked in a shirt pocket.

I don’t know that there’s any art that has been so thoroughly democratized as filmmaking. All of us have had an accidental education in learning how to frame shots and how cameras interact with character; we see the world differently depending on the films we’ve seen. Our movies and TV shows provide us surrogate and supplemental parents, teaching us how to present ourselves to the world and what poses to adopt, how to smoke a cigarette and hold a handgun.

The movies we argue over and honor are exemplars of certain kinds of movies — arguably the fittest of a competitive strain. The Oscars most often honor movies that display earnest craft, aspiration and good intentions on the part of established Hollywood qualities. It is an awards ceremony for a certain kind of Hollywood entertainment product, not an interrogation of how moving pictures might illuminate some aspect of the human experience. Oscar is about fashion and glamour and beautiful rich people granting and receiving validation.

And that’s fun, for however long you hold out. You can make Oscar picks, you can root and jeer and deliver your take on how James Franco’s career will ultimately be affected by the allegations of sexual misbehavior that emerged after he won the Golden Globe for best actor in a musical or comedy. (Franco won’t be attending the Academy Awards tonight, although the film he produced, directed and starred in, The Disaster Artist, is up for a best adapted screenplay award.)

I’ll probably watch the Oscars too. (At least most of it.) I’ll enjoy it.

Then I’ll forget all about it forever.

Why? Because the Oscars are like the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. Obviously movies don’t compete against each other the way athletes do; there’s no way to arrive at a clear objective decision. Get Out doesn’t play Dunkirk, just as the Bichon Frise doesn’t play the Borzoi. They are judged, which means the verdict is subjective.

But there’s an important way the Oscars is not like the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. Because the Oscars are voted on by a big group, the 6,687 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. These are people connected to the industry who presumably have some expertise. But as with any group some are more engaged with their responsibilities than others. Some of them reflexively vote for their own projects or their friends’ projects and against their rivals’ projects. Some of them neglect to vote in some categories. Some of them neglect to vote at all. Some of them outsource their ballot to their spouse or kids or someone who seems more interested than themselves.

This isn’t a scandal, this is human behavior. Most members of AMPAS have a lot of things to worry about. They have to make a living; they may not have time to watch all the movies or think very deeply about their vote. Contrary to what some people seem to expect, I’m not a member of the AMPAS and I don’t vote on the Oscars. (And given the chance, I like to think I wouldn’t. I don’t really see what the Oscars have to do with my job any more than I understand why the Baseball Writers’ Association of America elects Hall of Famers and picks the sport’s Most Valuable Player. Sportswriters and critics are supposed to be journalists, not power players.)

I do fill out an end-ofthe-year ballot for my critics group’s movie poll. I know how much time I took in deciding what the third best original screenplay of 2017 was. I know that while I can tell you what film I listed as No. 1 on my ballot (Jordan Peele’s Get Out) I couldn’t re-create the rest of it without searching this newspaper’s archives. I have no illusion that my ballot — or our critics’ poll — is genuinely important. It exists so the studios can use it in their advertising, and so they’ll keep providing us with “for your consideration” links and screeners which help us do our job of writing about the movies.

And because I was president of that critics group for a few years, I got to see all of the ballots from our members. And I can tell you people are strange. People who have a professional interest in movies sometimes wouldn’t vote in the animated or foreign language sections of the poll because they had no interest in watching cartoons or reading subtitles. I suspect some of our members voted for movies they hadn’t been able to see because of the film’s reputation. Often I saw ballots that

reflected tastes violently different from my own.

I bet the people who tabulate the Oscar ballots see some weird things too.

At least at the Westminster Dog Show, the dogs have met certain standards, and the judge who eventually selects the winner knows a lot about dogs. Just like the Academy Awards, all those pooches have a certain pedigree. And the world’s best dog is probably sitting somewhere on someone’s lap pretending to be interested in the colors flashing on that noisy box thing.

Which is what I mostly try to do during the Oscar broadcast. Stay interested in the colors flashing on the noisy box.

Occasionally, something cool happens — La La Land doesn’t win and we witness heartbroken producers mustering the generous grace to acknowledge Moonlight. Occasionally someone says something provocative. Mostly it’s nice to look at pretty people all dressed up. It’s nice to participate in an electronic ritual with millions of other people.

And I like this year’s best picture nominees. I hope Get Out wins, but I understand why so many people might be rooting for Call Me By Your Name, Phantom Thread, The Shape of Water or Lady Bird. I was enthusiastic about Three Billboards. I admire so much about Dunkirk. The Post and Darkest Hour represent a certain class of high-powered upmarket movie — the sort that win Oscars.

I will be happy to see any of them win.

At the same time, films that still haunt me from last year

are A Ghost Story and Personal Shopper; I don’t know that I enjoyed any movie more than I, Tonya. If I have a rooting interest at all, it is for Roger Deakins to finally win a best cinematography Oscar, but I hope that every year because he’s so consistently excellent.

But I don’t for a minute take any of it seriously and don’t have a brief for the superiority of the current, maybe crumbling, Hollywood model over what things may come.

I’m so tired of effects-driven blockbusters, putative and otherwise, and the institutionalized overtness of Hollywood films that assume we know next to nothing about how the world really works. I worry about losing cinemas, but love the migration of serious grown-up drama to on-demand channels. I don’t think of myself as platform neutral, but when the studios themselves insist on presenting me with their movies via an iPad app I have to accept the idea of holding a movie in one’s hand as a legitimate way of going to the show.

I’m excited about what we’re going to see next, and rather less interested in deciding whether Tom Hanks or Jason Robards made a better Ben Bradlee. Movies exist for us to enjoy and any way you want to enjoy them is fine. Some people never have to see another new release, for there’s an inexhaustible richness in the history of film.

But the future is unwritten, and the stories are out there. It’s up to us to find the best pictures.

Daniel Kaluuya and Allison Williams star in Get Out. The film is nominated for best picture and Kaluuya for best actor at the Academy Awards.

The film Dunkirk is a best picture nominee at the Academy Awards.