Will ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’ be Wes Anderson’s First Best Picture Nomination?

It’s sad to think that one of the greatest filmmakers of our time has a lowly three Oscar nominations to his name. Wes Anderson has delivered such memorable films as Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Moonrise Kingdom, the latter of which was his most recent chance to win that piece of hardware that Hollywood is so hung up on.

Moonrise Kingdom had an interesting path to its eventual snub at the Academy Awards. The film premiered in competition at Cannes Film Festival that year in May before being released the next week. Upon its release the film earned critical acclaim with many calling it Wes Anderson’s best film and through the summer it seemed like an early contender for Best Picture.

The usual timeframe for Oscar films is October to December. To use the 2013 Oscars as an example, every film nominated for Best Picture was released in this time period except for Beasts of the Southern Wild, which was premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and released nationally in June, and the eventual winner for Best Foreign Film Amour, which premiered at Cannes and did not receive a wide release in the US.

So, to determine whether The Grand Budapest Hotel can be nominated purely from the current factors (essentially everything except the other contenders) we can look at these three aforementioned films. Why were Beasts of the Southern Wild and Amour able to obtain nominations and not Moonrise Kingdom?

In my opinion, you have to look at the films themselves. In 2013, there were nine nominees. Under the Academy rules there can be anywhere from 5 to 10 nominees, however for a film to be nominated it has to have at least 5% of the vote. Assuming Django Unchained, Les Misérables, Life of Pi, Lincoln, Silver Linings Playbook, Zero Dark Thirty, and eventual winner Argo were safe, I would say Moonrise Kingdom, The Master, Amour, and Beasts of the Southern Wild were the next contenders. It is no coincidence that all of these films premiered outside the usual Oscar timeframe.

The Master was too divisive. Despite its passionate supporters, there were others who simply didn’t get the movie. I think with its lack of nominations outside those for its actors that it was probably the least likely to get in.

Amour was always a dark horse for me. It was one of my favorite movies of the year and probably the most heartbreaking. However, for most people unaware of the Oscar race it was a shock to see it among the nominees, but it did make sense. First of all, it won the Palme d’Or, which isn’t a guarantee by any means, but it gave it the buzz to get the ball rolling. Second of all, Emmanuelle Riva was receiving raves for her performance and naturally that brings attention to the film. Third, it had the international support. It was the clear frontrunner for Foreign Language Film that year and catered to a very European audience, which I think carried it along. So, let’s say it was 8th that year.

Now, we’re left with Beasts and Moonrise Kingdom. Both films were the two earliest releases among the contenders and both had more or less limited distribution, but the reason I think Beasts of the Southern Wild ended up nabbing that last spot was because of its “cool factor.” Everyone was talking about it, even President Obama and Megan Fox. It was an indie lite movie. Although I thought Moonrise was more accessible, I don’t think enough people understood his world yet.

So, after this rant about the 2013 race, what does this mean for the 2015 Oscars and more specifically The Grand Budapest Hotel. I think as of now it nabs the nomination. It’s going to have two very important factors that I mentioned above: (1)the European flavor and (2)the cool factor. I think that it has become that indie lite choice. It had enough deeper meaning to please film geeks, but enough thrills to sustain a regular cinematic audience.

Does this guarantee it a spot? No. Not by a long shot. We still have the rest of the contenders to consider. However, I think that there are going to be very few films to rival Grand Budapest if it comes down to those last few slots.