“Gravity’’ now officially leads the Best Picture race after winning the highly predictive Directors Guild of America award over the weekend — but its triumph at the Oscars is far from a sure thing in the tightest Oscar race in recent history.
“12 Years a Slave’’ remains a highly potent threat, and “American Hustle’’ can’t be ruled out, even though it seems to be losing steam in the stretch.
The DGA awards, the last major precursor of the season, have long been the most accurate of Oscar barometers. The DGA winner has gone on to win the Best Director Oscar on all but seven occasions in the last 65 years — and all but 13 of those directors’ picture have gone on to take the Best Picture Oscar.
It’s certainly looking very good for “Gravity’’ director Alfonso Cuarón, who also won the Golden Globe for best director, to repeat when the Oscars are handed out on March 3.
The Best Picture situation is a little more clouded, though — because “Gravity’’ tied with “12 Years a Slave’’ at the previous weekend’s Producers Guild of America Awards, which also have a great track record for predicting Oscars: Both groups’ best-picture choices have matched up 17 times in the PGA’s 24-year history.
One thing we know for sure: There definitely won’t be a Best Picture tie at the Oscars.
An academy spokesman told The Wrap’s Steve Pond last week that the Oscars’ complex preferential voting system will be used to ensure that only one winner gets the top prize.
Here’s how it works: All of the 6,028 Oscar voters are asked to rank the nine nominees in order of preference. If no film captures 50 percent plus one vote on the first ballot (which seems highly likely in a tight race), then the film with the ninth-highest total is eliminated and the film chosen as No. 2 on those ballots gets redistributed.
The process is repeated — drilling down to No. 3, No. 4 and even No. 5 choices, if necessary — until a clear winner emerges with 50 percent of the vote plus one.
So why isn’t “Gravity’’ a sure thing? Perhaps the biggest obstacle is the lack of a nomination for the “Gravity’’ screenplay Cuarón wrote with his son Jonas. No film has won Best Picture without a screenwriting nomination since “Titanic’’ in 1998.
At this point, I’m inclined to think there’s a very good chance that Oscar will split its top two prizes just like last year, when “Argo’’ won Best Picture and Ang Lee won Best Director for “Life of Pi.’’
A key difference is that “Argo’’ couldn’t win Best Director because Ben Affleck wasn’t nominated — and that snub helped rally enough support for “Argo” to push it over the top.
This year, the directors of the two films widely considered to be in a tight race with “Gravity’’ — “12 Years a Slave’’ and “American Hustle’’ — both have nominations.
Also, there is absolutely no precedent for the Best Picture/Best Director split occurring twice in a row. It’s happened twice in this century, with Lee also winning Best Director for “Brokeback Mountain’’ in 2006, the year that “Crash” took the top prize, while Steven Soderbergh won in 2000 for “Traffic,’’ the year that “Gladiator’’ was awarded Best Picture.
But those splits both occurred before the preferential voting system in 2009 replaced the previous custom, in which Oscar voters were asked simply to check off their one top choice for Best Picture. (The old system remains in place for all other categories, including Best Director.)
I still think there’s a good chance that this year’s Best Picture award will go to “12 Years a Slave’’ even if Cuarón wins the Best Director prize, which seems highly likely.
The PGA tie provided much-needed momentum to “12 Years,’’ which earlier won the Golden Globe for best dramatic picture.
My gut feeling is that “12 Years’’ has finally pulled ahead of the lightweight “American Hustle,’’ which won the Screen Actors Guild Award for acting ensemble as well as the Golden Globe for best comedy.
While “Hustle’’ can’t be ruled out as a possible Best Picture winner (it has a total of 10 nominations), it may have peaked too soon, grabbing the lead in mid-December — as soon as people realized the much-hyped and late-screening “The Wolf of Wall Street’’ was too polarizing to be much of a factor in the race.
Very few films are strong enough to lead the Oscar race straight through to the finish, so this allowed “12 Years’’ to bide its time without facing the kind of backlash that front-runners usually do. Even if Oscar voters decide not to make Steve McQueen the first black Best Director winner for “12 Years,’’ giving his film the top prize would still be making history.
Of course, it’s possible that “Gravity,’’ which is expected to sweep the technical categories on Oscar night, has picked up unbeatable momentum for Best Picture even without that screenplay nomination.
This is still an unusually tight race, and balloting doesn’t even begin until Valentine’s Day. Anything can happen between now and the time it closes on Feb. 25, though we won’t know the final outcome until March 2.