Oscars 2023: Why ‘Elvis’ should be considered Best Cinematography frontrunner following ASC win
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Now that Mandy Walker (“Elvis”) has upset Claudio Miranda (“Top Gun: Maverick”) at the 37th American Society of Cinematographers Awards, all eyes are on next week’s Oscar ceremony, where she is well-positioned to take out another frontrunner, James Friend (“All Quiet on the Western Front”), and become the first female DP to win the Academy Award for Best Cinematography.
The academy and ASC have awarded the same film only 17 times (47%), but eight of those have occurred between 2011 and 2022, giving the organizations a 66% correlation over the past 12 years. Put in perspective, that means the years since 2010 have posted practically the same amount of identical winners as the 24 preceding (nine).
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SEE ASC Awards: Mandy Walker breaks glass ceiling for women with ‘Elvis’ win
While the odds had “Top Gun: Maverick” ahead at the ASC Awards, Walker’s win isn’t nearly as shocking as some have characterized it to be. For over a month there’s been good reason to believe that “Elvis” could net both prizes. It’s the only contender to check off nominations from BAFTA, BSC, ASC, and the Oscars, after all. But the most compelling arguments for an “Elvis” victory mainly had to do with the improbability of multiple unlikely scenarios taking place in a single year.
For starters, this award cycle posted the fewest corresponding ASC-Oscar contenders since 2006/07, when only three of five nominees matched (“The Black Dahlia,” “The Illusionist” and ASC winner “Children of Men”). The following year crowned an identical winner (“There Will Be Blood”) and saw the very first instance of a one-to-one lineup (the other nominees were “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,” “Atonement,” “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” and “No Country for Old Men”). In the years since, no cycle has had fewer than four matching contenders—until this year, that is.
Secondly, Miranda’s Oscar snub would’ve made him the very first non-Oscar-nominated ASC winner. If “All Quiet” wins at the Oscars, it’ll be only the third time the Academy Award winner doesn’t have an ASC bid to its credit (the two current examples are 1989’s “Glory” and 2006’s “Pan’s Labyrinth”). Unprecedented and infrequent events happen all the time, and those already mentioned aren’t unthinkable in isolation. Multiplied, however, they produce a parlay on which you’d have to be reckless to wager any serious money.
Of the cinematography race’s five remaining possibilities, an “Elvis”/”All Quiet” split, which would be the first divergent result since the 2019 race (“Roma” won the Oscar while “Cold War” took the ASC Award), isn’t the most far-fetched, and it’s easier to rationalize than a “Top Gun”/“All Quiet” split would have been. While it does entail a hat trick’s worth of low-probability events—the precursor frontrunner being snubbed, the fewest nominees matching since 2006, and only the third movie not nominated by ASC winning the Oscar–it prevents far more remote possibilities from developing.
Infrequent isn’t the same as unprecedented, which is what a “Top Gun” victory at ASC would’ve been. And a non-ASC-nominated Oscar winner isn’t as infrequent as a lone-nominee winner, which is what “Empire of Light” or “Bardo” will be if either prevails over the odds this Sunday. Bolstering the argument is “All Quiet’s” late-breaker status and wins at BSC and BAFTA (not to mention the WWI epic’s genre edge)–factors which aren’t borne by a venn diagram of ASC-Oscar wins. In a rare but not extraordinary conclusion to the race, “All Quiet” or “Tár” could become the third Oscar winner snubbed by ASC. However, one pattern could reassert itself and favor the latter, thereby producing a unique winner.
There are several examples of BSC and BAFTA coalescing, as they have this year around “All Quiet,” and ASC going its own way. When that occurs, it’s not uncommon for Oscar voters to also break from precursors. In 1986, the British cinematography guild and BAFTA agreed on “Out of Africa,” ASC went with “Peggy Sue Got Married,” and “The Mission” ultimately won at the Oscars; in 1991, BSC and BAFTA selected “Cyrano de Bergerac,” ASC picked “Bugsy,” and “JFK” won the Oscar; In 1994, ASC awarded “The Shawshank Redemption” and the academy opted for “Legends of the Fall” following a British consensus for “Interview With a Vampire;” In 1998, “Elizabeth” impressed BSC and BAFTA, but “The Thin Red Line” and “Saving Private Ryan” prevailed over ASC and the Oscars, respectively. Finally, in 2011, “The Artist” won BSC and BAFTA, while “The Tree of Life” won the ASC Award and “Hugo” took the Oscar. The BAFTA-BSC match/Oscars-ASC split is by no means dispositive, and there are counterexamples (in the aforementioned 2018/19 race, BSC, BAFTA, and the Oscars all went with “Roma,” while “Cold War” ended up ASC’s choice) but it’s recurred enough times to merit notice.
“Tár” has six nominations and the distinction of a corresponding bid in Best Director. While it would also be only the third non-ASC-nominated Oscar winner, that conclusion is likelier than either “Empire of Light” and “Bardo” becoming the first film since 1949 (“She Wore a Yellow Ribbon”), when DPs were still awarded separately for color and black-and-white films, to win Best Cinematography without a bid in any other category.
Perhaps “Top Gun: Maverick” flying high on Sunday would’ve been a sign to keep expecting the unexpected in an irregular, stat-breaking season, but “Elvis’” victory is the reversion to the mean many have been anticipating.
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